Author: greg

This afternoon just after 4:30, we heard a low rumble and felt everything sway and tremble for about 15-20 seconds. It was strong enough to make you stabilize yourself, but not so powerful that people realized it right away.
We were at Open Campus Day at ISAS/JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Agency’s mission control center for Jean’s X-ray telescope satellite, Suzaku. We were in the lobby of the building; the sheet glass handrails along the central staircase all wavered back and forth throughout the quake.
In the mean time, a bunch of train lines across the Tokyo region were shut down, which backed up human traffic, even to Machida, on the west side of Tokyo. [Of course, watching the news, it turns out that Yokohama, on our side of Tokyo Bay, and opposite the epicenter, registered at least a 5 on the Richter scale.]
Anyway, the only real effect we’ve had is having to heft the stroller up five flights of stairs at the hotel because the elevators aren’t working anywhere.

A man can go his whole life waiting in vain for a week such as this one, where he has occasion to thank both Hulk Hogan and Pauly Shore for their [advertising] largesse.
From now on, I’ll just have to learn to live with the knowledge that it’s all downhill from here.

So maybe you’ve noticed the “1 in 12 wins!” promotion campaign on the lids of most Coke products the last few months. As a pathetically, alarmingly addicted, inveterate loyal Diet Coke drinker, I know I have. The lids are on 20-oz and even 2-liter bottles, but the prize is a free 1-liter bottle of product. While I have to admire the company’s insidiously effective strategy of getting America to change its idea of a serving of Coke [over the years, we’ve gone from 8-oz glass bottles, to 12-oz cans, to 20-oz bottles, and now to 1-liter, or, in NYC’s case, 1.5-l bottles which are, that word again, insidiously easy enough to drink out of], I have to say, from where I sit, the campaign is an utter and complete failure; it has turned my Diet Coke buying and consuming experience into an annoying, shame-filled, welfare hell.
It’s not that I never win; that’s not a problem. It’s that many retailers refuse to redeem the little caps, even if they sell product with the contest-bearing lids, and even if they carry 1-liter bottles (which turn out to be in far fewer distribution channels/retailer types than you might expect, especially in DC and NYC where we live). And it’s not like I can tell you which kind of retailers reject them; I’ve had it happen at grocery stores, 7-11’s, gas stations, Korean delis, newsstands, bodegas, on the NJ Turnpike (where I’ve won at one rest stop and was unable to redeem at another), chain drug stores–there’s no way to know if you’ll fail without trying.
It doesn’t take many failed attempts to redeem a winning cap, which have involved confounding–and even angry–explanations from store managers about how Coke won’t credit them for the freebies, or how they don’t use a Coke distributor so they’re not participating in the campaign, etc.–to make one weary of the fight for one’s right to free soda. Except that it’s not a right, it’s an entitlement. Welfare.
You’re reduced, essentially, to begging for a dollar (or $1.50-1.75, usually) from a diffident cashier or a put-upon manager, when it’s obvious that you can afford it, you cheap bastard, trying to get something for nothing. Meanwhile, the line builds up behind you, and now you’re the jerk who’s holding everyone up for what, a dollar? I’ll give you a dollar to get out of the way and let me buy these Pampers, ya junkie!
But it’s not like I sought this out; I didn’t scratch off anything, or Supersize to get two more chances to win. Coke put me in this situation where I feel like a wronged, government-cheese-stealing welfare queen, whose resentment builds with the fresh taunt of each unredeemable winning lid I find; they’re lining up on the kitchen window sill pissing me off at this very moment. Now every time I lose, I feel a small sense of relief, one less pang I’ll have to endure.
Before I decided to rant–I’ll show them, Don’t they realize I have a blog??–here, I actually called the Coca Cola company for redress, sure, but also to report that their marketing campaign was having the exact opposite effect on at least one loyal, concerned customer. A very sympathetic representative comforted me, asked who these offending retailers were (um, all of them? I got so ashamed, I stopped trying. choke back the pent-up tears.), and asked would I be willing to speak with someone from the marketing and promotion department within 7-10 days? Sure, of course, I just want what’s best for you, Diet Coke.
She took down my number, and then she offered to mail me eight coupons for free 2-liter bottles. No offensee, I said, but the one time I called to get my money back from a Coke machine, I got one of your corporate coupons, and I couldn’t find a retailer who’d take it.
[update: my wife reminds me of a recent development, where I was able to use a bottlecap at the on-campus “grocery” store at Georgetown, where we’d taken the kid to the pediatrician. I figured it was because these college students were Coke’s most important customers (and also their cheapest and most demanding, and with the most unalloyed sense of entitlement and self-absorption)… Oh, Diet Coke, you know me so well. I could never stay mad at you…]

Gotta give a big shoutout to the folks at NASA and JAXA, the Japan Space Agency, for the successful launch Sunday of Astro-E2, the next generation of X-ray telescope satellites.
Astro-E2 was the working name of the satellite on the ground; it was a rebuild of Astro-E, which blew up when its rocket went off course soon after launch in 2000. Since that mishap, there has been a gap in the X-ray spectrum that scientists could study. Two other X-ray telescopes (or spectrometers, actually) are in orbit right now: one is called Chandra, and there’s one called XMM-Newton, which is run by the European Space Agency. All three were designed to be complementary in their coverage of the X-ray spectrum and their resolution.
It’s traditional to wait and name a satellite only after it completes its second orbit, and after Astro-E2 made its second 90-minute pass over its Japanese launch site, it was announced that the name would be “Suzaku,” which translates variously as “red sparrow,” or “phoenix.” It derives from a creature guarding one of the four points of the compass on ancient Chinese astronomical charts, and it apparently has some regenerative characteristics like the phoenix in western mythology, something that obviously appealed to those scientists responsible for building and using this important satellite.
Those people include my wife, Jean, who is calibrating and characterizing the XRS, or X-Ray Spectrometer, and who will use it to continue her research on the composition and behavior of binary neutron stars. Congratulations and good luck. If I live to be 100, I’ll never figure out why someone so smart decided to marry me, but hey, I ain’t complaining.

Suzaku/Astro-E2 Homepage [nasa.gov]
How ’bout that, Suzaku is also the name of an anime demon character in Yu Yu Hakusho [absoluteanime.com]

“I mean, my first thought when I heard — just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, ‘Hmmm, time to buy.'”
– from an on-air transcript of Brit Hume, Washington Managing Editor, FoxNews, 7/7/2005.

Credit where it’s due: one summer in the Hamptons, a housemate picked up Zsa Zsa’s autobiography at the Southampton library booksale–the one written in response to her Beverly Hills copslapping incident, not the other one–and it was hi-larious. Lots of stuff like, “I wear nothing in bed. Except for diamonds.”

Zsa Zsa Gabor In Critical Condition After Stroke [nbc4, via trent]
Buy Zsa Zsa Gabor’s One Lifetime Is Not Enough, from $0.49 at Amazon [amazon]