Picked these up the other day for The Yankee. She likes them for her longer bike rides. I think I’ve eaten most of them.
So I looked it up, so boastful is Haribo, of their claim to be the original. Turns out they are. Haribo is German, was founded in 1920. Hans Riegel Sr. died either during, or in, World War II. Haven’t yet found a conclusive answer. His son, Hans Jr., is one of the richest men in Germany.
They came to the United States in the 1980s and were popular almost immediately. Haribo has factories all over Germany, but this particular bag was made in Turkey. And it turns out they are thought of as the original.
The slogan on the bag says “Kids and grown-ups love it so, the happy world of Haribo,” which sounds a bit Wonka-ish. Translations from other countries are worse. In Bulgaria, they run the government via cult of personality apparently, “With Haribo we are happy, Haribo we love.” Things are much better in Hungary “Kids and grown-ups are in a good mood – sweet is life Haribo.” The old Danish slogan — “Open up for something good, open up for Haribo – it’s good.” — has thankfully been re-written as “Haribo… it’s good.”
So beware the gummis, apparently.
The Haribo Wikipedia page is very perfunctory about this. “Haribo is accused of using Jewish forced labor in its factories during World War II but denies it.” There is the briefest mention in a Time piece from 2000:
Haribo, makers of the jelly bear candy sold around the world, was named in the German parliament as having used forced labor, a charge it denies. It says of the fund that “under the cover of alleged solidarity the thesis of collective guilt is being brought up again. There is no doubt about the suffering that existed but that cannot be righted now.”
At the writing of that Time story that sort of stance was more the rule than exception. Since then, 6,500 companies contributed to the Remembrance, Responsibility and Future fund, totaling 5.2 billion euros.
That’s a lot of gummi bears.
Elsewhere, just doing research for my dissertation. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Back into the swing of things today. It was this evening before I realized I felt normal today. Weird. I’ve plowed through many long projects, pulled far more consecutive all-nighters and found myself in lots of anxious tests, papers, projects, work assignments and so on. But the comps last week beat me up far better than any of those things. I wrapped that up Thursday and I couldn’t get back to feeling normal (meaning exhaustion and general ease) until tonight.
I went to bed last night before 10 p.m., for example. That just doesn’t happen.
Anyway. Back to it today. Back to the phones and the email and the syllabus and grading and so on. Lots of grading this week.
Also rode the bike a little bit. A tiny bit. My pedals arrived — I’m not sure if I care for them — and so I did a few laps around the neighborhood sizing everything up. Feels like a good bike, the new Felt. Now I just have to remember how to ride.
It’s like riding a bike. Yes, I know. I learned to ride a bike on a gravel road. Merry Christmas, and thanks. It was no one’s fault in particular. My first big boy bike was delivered by Santa to my grandparents who, until the last few years, were so far out their county didn’t even realize they were out there. Necessity being a mother, I was taught the Jedi trick of balance, was pushed, pedaled and fell.
But if you fall on gravel you learn quickly how to prevent that from happening again.
[I fell off a bike just a few weeks ago, so take that gravel road! (My grandparent’s road is paved now) I couldn’t stop fast enough, and I had the choice between a curb or a port-a-potty. I got over the curb, saved the bike and managed to execute a perfect fall, distributing the kinetic energy of my motion as evenly as possible over the ground … and laughed as I was covered in mud.]
So maybe gravel doesn’t teach you how to never fall again. But you learn quickly all the same.
On this day in history, since I couldn’t anywhere to take pictures today, this is stripped directly from my Twitter stream and indulgently embellished beyond the 140-character limit.
In 1997 there was the North Hollywood shootout. It was a Friday. (I just clicked back through my calendar to be sure. You want depressing? Click back to the point you were in college and wonder why carpal tunnel is kicking in. Too many clicks.) I was a sophomore, so I’d probably gotten smart about morning classes by then. Let’s say I was just waking up. Two bad guys killed, eleven officers and seven bystanders shot. More than 2,000 rounds of ammunition were expended. There was a television movie, which was better than it should have been. Some of the footage was made at the scene of the shoot out, six years earlier. Also, the film used 40,000 rounds of blanks.
You can just imagine how that played out in production meetings.
“So we’ve got to find a way to get more than 2,000 rounds in 44 minutes. That’s almost a shot per second!”
“Have you seen the work of John Woo?”
“Right. Better make it 40,000.”
On this day in 1993 the Branch Davidian raid started the standoff in Waco. I was in high school (and, thus, am not clicking back that far to see what day of the week this lands on.) Four feds and six Davidians were killed as the ATF tried to serve a search warrant. Since that worked so smashingly they decided to lay siege for 50 days. Seventy-six people, including almost two dozen children, died in the infamous fire. Not the government’s best moments.
Something brighter then! Remember 1991? I don’t recall specifics of this, but I clearly remember when the Gulf War began. But on this day, 20 years ago, President Bush declared victory, seemed destined for a second term — if Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf didn’t swoop in — and life was grand. Oh, sure, some folks wondered about Baghdad and why the good guys didn’t march on in, but other than small details like that, life was good.
A few others wondered how they could spell Schwarzkopf and make it count on write-in ballots. So beloved was the general from New Jersey that even Madonna had a lyrical fling.
Can’t imagine that these days.
In 1983, there was the M*A*S*H finale. I don’t remember seeing it then. I wasn’t even in kindergarten yet, but I do remember the intro from the original airings. It was years before my mind could convince my eyes the helicopters weren’t flying backwards. Optical illusions are tough, I guess. It was longer still before I would see the finale. And I worked for a year or so at a television station that aired M*A*S*H constantly.
It is still in the top five, ratings wise. There are four Super Bowls and the farewell. I wonder how that show would do, today.
And, finally, in 1958 a school bus rear-ended a wrecker on a foggy morning in Kentucky. The bus fell off into a ravine and, ultimately, into a flood-swollen river. Twenty-six kids escaped. Twenty-six more, and the driver, could not get out of the bus and drowned. This is the worst school bus disaster in American history. The other worst bus disaster in the country was in 1988, also in Kentucky, also killed 27. (That one was a drunk driver hitting a school-turned-church bus, causing a vehicle fire that the victims could not escape.)
Because of these two incidences Kentucky requires buses to have more exits (nine) than anyone in North America.
The drunk driver that hit that bus in 1988, incidentally, received a 16-year sentence as a repeat offender on 27 counts of manslaughter. He was considered a model prison and was released after 10 years. (He declined an offered probation.) The church members, those most profoundly impacted by what was a truly national story, largely forgave him. The profound amount of courage that must take will always mystify. Now he lives just a few miles from the crash site.
You’d think you would get as far away from that as you can.
And now, for no particular reason, Dilbert:
I went back 20 years (more clicking) on this date. Dilbert has said exactly five things on February 28th. You’re welcome.
Today was a day. This video was one of the nice highlights.
Also I had great conversations with two students, one just to chat, and the other to encourage. Those kinds of conversations seem to happen outside of the classroom, in a hallway or office. I really enjoy having that opportunity.
Otherwise things got accomplished. I am now only one phone call and one online form away from having all of the important small things off my To Do List. Lots of meetings and ponderings and talks and cameras and other things that somehow, remarkably, fill up a day. But that’s all mostly done for now.
Which means I can return to the important large things on my To Do List.
Also it snowed this evening over half the state. I’m just going to flip the calendar to March if that’s OK with everyone.
Just for fun: I’m having my lunches with Robert Remini’s The House, which is a history of the House of Representatives. I’m to the point now where Kentucky legend Henry Clay has come to Washington, but there were a few entertaining passages just before he arrived. One section noted that church services were held in the original, temporary parts of the capitol building. The Marine Band played along as church goers sang hymns. But that was discontinued because, as Remini quotes Margaret Bayard Smith, “it was too ridiculous.”
In Washington.
Also, he lists the congregations that worshiped there for a time. “Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, an Anglican, a Unitarian (that caused an uproar).”
Oh, to be glib in history.
Tonight was a doo-wop night for my listening pleasure — the iPhone, when you get a good song, sounds like a good and proper transistor radio — but first I heard Linda Rondstadt. So we’ll end with a video, much as we began. We’ve marveled at science, we should wonder at art:
I have a new gimmick for this space on Mondays. Since the day is spent pinned beneath the computer — picture it, the machine has fallen on top of me, on the monitor is a vaguely human expression of determination, I am feebly trying to crawl out from under it — I’m just going to make this the day of a great dumping of links.
Oh there’s still Monday history, for the 1.4 people who come here to find out what I find interesting. That’s been transmorgified (Now there’s a wonderful word. It means something, but as yet has not been defined. We just know it is something about a mutation, but that G sound in there just makes it sound … unpleasant.) into a little elaboration on what I put on Twitter in the morning.
And I do that every morning on Twitter. There the habit seems to be recent history, mostly American or culturally impactful things that I find in a daily history app. I’d do more meaningful tidbits, but it is hard to explain 16th Century context in such a small forum. So I limit it to the baby boomer set when I can. From there and the two following generations people just know stuff. Right? That’s why President Obama talked about Sputnik, because it has seeped into the public consciousness, even if it was someone else’s actual event. Everyone knows what “we” did with Sputnik. And certainly the recitation of that storied tale was accurately told in the brief news packages the next day. Sputnik, when Russia launched us into space! It was Sputnik that put us on the moon!
This isn’t a new phenomenon, actually. There’s a great quote by John Adams after Benjamin Franklin died, where in his most bitter, paranoid way imagined the way the story of the American Revolution would be:
The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod and thence forward these two conducted all the policy, negotiation, legislation, and war.
The word insecure, in the psychological sense, only dates back to the early 20th Century (make your jokes here). But if they’d had that concept at Philadelphia, New York and Washington, they might have used it to describe Adams.
Stories change, is the point. Maybe it is enough that people remember Sputnik with fear and wonder, or bemusement, and tell their kids. And then one of those children grows up to inject it into a speech that his boss, the president, gives before a joint session of Congress and the nation. Anything is possible when that kid grew up with a father who used Old Spice.
Did you know there’s a new Old Spice commercial?
I wildly digress, but that’s OK because Monday, in the original Latin, means Stream of Consciousness.
If you’re really suddenly very curious about what recently historical things I’m trying to condense into 140 characters, then by all means, follow me.
From that storied feed of valuable historical information we remembered that today:
In 1990, the Soviet Union collapsed. This is oversimplified, of course. It took about two years, but on this particular day the Central Committee let loose of it’s power. They’d finally gotten around to watching Rocky IV and saw the writing on the wall.
I remember watching television when the Berlin Wall fell, but not this day in particular. So let’s make it up. This day in 1990 was a Wednesday. I was in class. I was in the seventh grade. So let’s say I was in … Coach Tucker’s social studies class. Why not?
This was before my time, but I remember reading about it on the 40th anniversary. In 1967, at a rooftop fine dining restaurant in Montgomery, Ala. a fire broke out in a cloakroom. The flames quickly spread, blocking access to the elevator and stairs. When they finally put out the flames they pulled out 25 bodies, including a prominent former state official, the wife of a newspaper editor and one of Jimmy Hoffa’s chief lobbyists. Here are two contemporary accounts, including one from a reporter who had dined there the night before, and considered returning that night.
Here are the recollections of survivors and firefighters:
In 1964 the Beatles invaded. In 1962 the United States stopped trade with Cuba. If I could have lived in the sixties I would have stopped just after the British invasion began. After that it was a long time to sit around for something fun. Sure, there was Apollo and the moon in ’69, but that would mean wading through five more years of that decade.
My mother asked me once, I’m sure I’ve written of this here, if the moon landing meant us much to my generation as it did her’s. From the exploration and science standpoint, sure, it is incredible. But, on the other hand to my age bracket we’ve always been on the moon. The previous generation got the experience of seeing it happen.
Of course, they didn’t have Google Moon. Come to think of it, they might have won this round.
Other links of varied merit: AOL is paying $315 million for Huffington Post, approximately 10 times HuffPo’s reported last year. From a financial point of view they overpaid. From an intangible point of view, it is anyone’s guess. I’m siding with Alan Mutter:
If HuffPo’s revenues triple this year to $90 million, then Armstrong can tell his shareholders he paid “only” 3.5x more for HuffPo than its sales are worth. If HuffPo sales triple again to $270 million in 2012, then the value of the deal is likely to be about 1x HuffPo’s revenues at that point and Armstrong, assuming he remains on the job, can tell the skeptics he was right.
The question to ask yourself in evaluating the long-term financial benefit of the acquisition to AOL is whether you think HuffPo is capable of bringing in a $270 million in annual sales within a couple of years.
Poynter’s Damon Kiesow finds some problems with Rupert Murdoch’s newest venture, The Daily:
I have been reading The Daily regularly since it launched on Wednesday, and almost every time I open the app, I’ve been confused to see a message telling me that “a new issue” is being delivered.
The Daily is published every morning, but Editor Jesse Angelo also said that it wouldn’t be “static” and would be updated as events warranted.
He’s quite forgiving of the experience, which is a better reception than The Daily has received in many corners. Of course there will be problems to overcome, this is a new enterprise, after all. These things must be done in full view of your audience, which is tough, but familiar to news types.
If only they’d announced it as a beta, everyone would be more willing to accept the learning curve.
Finished up a social media presentation for tomorrow. Three dozen slides should just about do it, right?
Try to make sense of that if you like, but it is mostly images and not too much text. The places with text will be, I suspect, where notes get taken. More to the point, though, I’m hoping to demonstrate the virtue of a PowerPoint presentation where every word isn’t read from the screen. This is an entry-level class and this is meant as something of a not-quite-vague overview.
Sadly I won’t be talking about cool stuff like this, where Coke is looking to move into SMS as a mobile priority:
“If you want to reach every consumer on the planet, texting is the way to do that,” said Daly, speaking Friday at MediaPost’s Mobile Summit conference in Miami. To underscore his point, he noted that 2.3 trillion text messages were sent worldwide last year. And as one of the world’s most pervasive consumer brands, Coca-Cola is always interested in reaching as wide an audience as possible.
Texting has even helped the beverage giant sell more Cokes through vending machines equipped to handle mobile short codes and cashless payments. The unlikely combination of traditional and newer technologies has given vending sales a 14% lift where the specialized machines have been rolled out, said Daly.
That’s just fascinating. You don’t often see Coke making bad marketing moves, so if Coke says they’re concentrating on SMS, you should be the next group.
Did you know our accents are changing in the South? Seems that way. Language is a fluid thing and it is always changing, everywhere. There’s a lot of neat stuff in this story as researchers ponder how and why this happens. I’m surprised no one is thinking of mediated influence. Naturally that wouldn’t be the only cause, but certainly it could be a significant contributor in modern times. Television and radio shape and influence patters, too.
But then I’m a media effects scholar. Here’s my hammer, there’s a nail.
This week Dr. Oz is unveiling his choice of Unhealthiest Cook in America. And Paula Deen’s boys are somehow involved in the promotional aspect of this, but it isn’t Paula. That’s odd. There are less healthy cooks than Paula Deen and her sons — it’s good, food, sure, but your doc would be displeased. Would you eat this:
Place burger patties on English muffins or buns, and if desired, on glazed donuts, as the buns. Top each burger with 2 pieces of bacon and a fried egg.
I made fun of this on Twitter, just as The Yankee uploaded a picture of the cupcakes we bought this evening for dessert. The secret to comedy is timing.
Mondays, apparently, have become my least interesting day. You’re naturally riveted six days ago. OK, maybe five. (Four? Two? Any?) That being the case, we can all forgive a Monday that is spent buried in a computer screen or a book. So I’m just falling back on Twitter, here, which is something I haven’t in a long while.
And since it is Monday, and since Monday is history day around here, the On This Day section rides again!
In 1990 McDonald’s opened their first restaurant in Moscow. That means most of the college students have been able to eat a Big Mac in Russia their entire life, had they visited Pushkin Square. Here’s the scene. They serve an estimated 30,000 people a day.
In 1971 Apollo 14 launched.
They were the third mission on the moon. They almost had to try the landing without radar because of a software glitch, but an in the nick of time fix put them down closer to their original target than any of their fellow astronauts.
This was also the trip with the famous moon trees. Five of them are planted in Alabama. I’ve been near four and didn’t even realize it. Need to fix that.
Fifty-three years ago Explorer 1, the first satellite from the United States made orbit. Sure, Sputnik got there first by three months, but the value was largely propaganda. Otherwise the thing was not quite useless. It helped with some atmosphere detection and then tumbled out of the sky in three months. Explorer, on the other hand, transmitted data for almost four months and stayed in orbit for 12 years. It achieved more than 58,000 orbits, says Wikipedia, and began a series of 90 Explorer satellites.
Sputnik moment? Let’s try another Explorer moment.
And way back when, in 1930, 3M starting marketing scotch tape. Did you know? The Scotch Tape Test measures the adhesion strength of conducting polymers adhered to indium tin oxide glass slides? Neither did anyone else. Also, it can make X-rays.
Other links: Sometimes I like to find the outrage of the day and consider it’s relative merits to the big scheme of things. When you do that, you realize modern life could be a lot worse.
Pay walls! More pay walls! Also, and still, a bad idea. The problem for the industry being that there aren’t a lot of other prominent and viable ideas at the moment.
Finally I watched American Pickers tonight. (They aren’t letting you embed the episode for some strange reason.) Love that show. Love the premise, love the show, love the thing the guys do. Everything about it is fun. \
They subtitled a Kentucky man, suggesting he was unintelligible. I found this to be unnecessary. But, before I became my own outrage of the day, I called my Connecticut bride into the room and played clips of the man for her. “Don’t look, just listen.” She couldn’t make him out. So what do I know?
