I had emailed the CEO of the company regarding the east bay express claim and got responses from him denying the claim but using quite possibly the worst logic imaginable and making me more suspicious of yelp after talking to him.  It turns out that yelp is getting sued over their extortion racket.  They deny the charge and say that they will fight it in court.  I can’t wait to see how this plays out.

There are people that give a rats ass about economics though: Bankers.  The Swedish National Bank is called “Sveriges Riksbank“.  In 1969 they decided to start giving out prizes to economists.  The name of their prize is “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences”.  Of course nobody cares about a prize given out by the Bank of Sweden, so they dedicated their prize to Alfred Nobel, making the full title of the award “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel“.  In order to help people make the common mistake of labeling it the Nobel Prize in Economics, the Prize is awarded in the same manner and with similar ceremonies.  The winner also gets to stand with the actual Nobel Prize winners in a ceremony on Dec. 10th.  instant prestige with only a minimum amount of gerrymandering.

In the New York Times article about the recent winner of the fake Nobel prize, the author states that the prize was started by the bank and that the prize is in memory of Alfred Nobel.  The full title of the prize is never given in the article, however Nobel’s name is used in the title, the first sentence, and throughout the article.  There is one mention of the Swedish Central Bank, but only in passing, and also right before giving some bio information about Alfred Nobel to make the reader forget that Swedish Bank stuff.

Of course the fact that the New York Times even made a token mention of the Swedish Bank is impressive.  Most people just call it the Nobel Prize in Economics (especially business writers).

CNN misnamed the prize (here).

The San Francisco Chronicle at least calls it the “Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences” (closer to the real name and hints at the true history of the prize) here.

Businessweek of course misnamed the prize (here and here).  Nuance comes when they quote the AP (here).

The wall street Journal also fails.

Anyhow…you get the idea. Even if you don’t think that calling the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences the Nobel prize in economics is that big a deal, it actually serves as a pretty good canary in the coal mine for various sources of news.  Are there fact checkers at a particular institution and are they doing their job?

——Update—–

One institution got it right the first time.  Real journalism is alive.  The New Yorker’s comments on the Nobel Prize:

“As for the relatively new economics prize (full name: the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel), it is neither hard nor soft, just kind of mushy—a Golden Globe, not an Oscar.”

If I had done more searching I would have know this was a problem, see the review here.  I’m not going to be suckered into buying another glass carafe.  Of course Bodum knows that you will eventually get fed up with buying the glass carafe and makes an insulated stainless steel one as well.  Sneaky sneaky.  I will not be lured into your money trap Bodum (and apparently your steel one doesn’t hold heat in very well).  I’ll have to see if Frieling pots are any better (the bar has been set pretty low).

So the CEO of Whole foods wrote an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal.  In it he starts off with a quote from Margaret Thatcher about socialism.  I’m going to stop right there for a second.  If John Mackey, CEO of Whole foods, wanted me in a bad mood, the quickest way to do so would be to start his ideological screed on health care with a quote from Margaret Frign Thatcher.  Has John Mackey never been in a single Whole Foods store?  Whole Foods customers are not the type to start up Margret Thatcher fan clubs.  John Mackey launches into his hatred for a single payer health care system apparently unaware that his own customers most likely favor a single payer system with greater percentages than those any other major corporation’s customer base.  I cannot back that up with an actual poll, since I don’t think one has been done, but I would be shocked to find out if it were untrue.  So now the stockholders and the board of directors of whole foods can feast on the images such as the one above made by former customers who now feel the burning desire to take their dollars somewhere else.  Either A) John Mackey has found a way to make more money by getting his customers pissed off at him or B) he is a colossal idiot.

The major point of the article that he makes is that there is that the government shouldn’t be paying for people’s bad eating habits and if people would just shop at his stores, the private health insurance would be just fine.  His article badmouths government plans in Britain and Canada which are wildly popular in those countries (UK conservatives were out defending the NHS from US criticism).  Whole foods has stores in the US the UK and Canada.  Trash talking popular government programs in two out of your three of your company’s current markets is…(I’m having a hard time coming up with more synonyms for dumb or working in the name Captain dumbass).  One has to wonder how Whole Foods got as big as it did with a CEO that has the same wisdom and tact as a man yelling your momma jokes into a megaphone to Godzilla while simultaneously throwing things at it’s crotch(Godzilla is notorious for his sensitivity regarding the reputation of his mother).

The worst part about the whole thing is that this is not John Mackey’s first mistake.  He’s been caught trying to inflate the price of his company’s stock on yahoo.  Being an idiot once is one thing, but twice it starts reflecting bad on the board of directors and the stockholders if no action is taken against him.  The guy is drunk with wealth and doesn’t have a proper outlet for his stupid.

Top Searches

1. roomba troubleshooting
2. aca 24
3. troubleshooting roomba
4. uc regents salary
5. farting tubes

From this list I know that I provide internet users help with their roomba, inform them about California legislation, help them even more with their roomba, and let them know about the UC regents salary.  I am however leaving a very important group of google users unserved by my blog.  That group of users are those with a burning desire to know more about farting tubes.  I will not allow those with a burning desire to become knowledgeable in the area of farting tubes look at my blog, and leave unsatisfied.  This very important demographic will finally find their home in this post.

So have you every been in a situation where farting is just not an appropriate option?  Perhaps a sudden unexplained odor is fine, but the sound is a serious problem.  Well a solution to this problem exists!  Using what I can only assume is similar technology to a gun silencer, the farting tube is placed near, to be more precise in, the problem area.

To view a video of said silencer being tested by a guy using his mouth (I’m hoping this is a brand new silencer) click here.

Now this is not the only farting tube.  Farting tubes are also a term for exhaust systems on rice rockets that make the car sound like you filled it up with buckets of beans.

Well now that my civic duty to the denizens of the internet is complete I can start contemplating ways to get people searching for pirates to land on my blog…  I recently restocked my pirate soap supply.  I highly reccomend grabbing a bar if pirates are your thing.

1) I have a blog

2) said blog is awesome

3) anyone can read my blog, including people at the University of California

4) The UC started its own blog.

The fairly obvious step at about 3.5 is that the University of California decided to copy my genius idea of starting a blog after seeing how awesome mine was.  Of course the UC has a lot to learn about writing a blog.  First, they need to open up their blog to comments.  Second, they need to post more pictures and videos (the whole blog looks repetitive and boring).  Lastly, they need to post that they are going to cut UC salaries fairly and proportional to the total compensation package they receive (including the cost of any car allowance and or houses) and not just salaries.  As a side note I find it slightly hilarious that UC president Mark Yudoff’s car money is called an allowance, the same thing little kids get each week to learn about money… “Now be a good boy UC president and enjoy your car allowance.  Play nice with the other kids and don’t mess up California’s higher education system”.

I’m going on a slight diversion about the UC budget before I get back to talking about the UC blog.  The proposed salary reductions for staff at the UC following the California budget crisis are as follows:

Looks like a fair deal right?  The people making the most money take the biggest hit.  I’m surprised the higher ups at the UC would approve something that would hit them the hardest, since they are most likely to land in that 7th salary band.  What is that asterisk doing up there at the top of the table?  It sort of hovers like the home run record of a steroid injected baseball player.  Let’s read what that refers to:

The UC system carved out the lowest cuts for senior managers, less of a cut than the lowest paid employees at the UC.  All of the sudden this very fair system is a big middle finder to everyone that is not a senior manager.  I became a fountain of 4 letter words when I found that little nugget of information.  Anyhow, end of diversion and now back to the new UC blog.

The UC blog is unfortunately just a place where the UC is posting all its press releases regarding budget issues and other PR fluff.  I was disappointed to find out that the blog was not a place where Yudoff posted the random thoughts that pop into his head before ADD draws his attention away by something shiny. That place would apparently be his twitter page.  On his twitter page Yudoff reviews the latest harry potter movie: “No joie de vivre in new Harry Potter. Idealism trumped by combating evil. Good special fx, but plot is a pastiche. Is it my age or Harry’s?”. Yudoff needs to A) learn to write a movie review and B) Fix the massive Budget issues facing the UC (equitably) instead of tweeting a critique of the writing in the latest Harry Potter movie.  Yudoff also apparently has a facebook page.  Perhaps by calling it web 2.0 marketers have made time sinks such as twitter and facebook somehow a legitimate use of time for the president of the UC. Marketers are evil geniuses. I can’t wait to read Yudoff’s review of Twilight in 140 characters or less.  Of course there are other scenarios that would be even worse for Yudoff to tweet about.  Perhaps the most useful thing that the UC blog can post are pictures of Yudoff not wasting all his time on facebook and twitter or carving out salary cut exceptions for upper management.  Even in this down economy, that would be a sound investment.

——————–

UPDATED (7-31-09):

I kept commenting on this post because of new information so instead I have decided to merge my comments with the original post.  My original post was quite tongue and cheek but unfortunately the reality of the situation is depressing as hell.

Those in the Senior Management Group (SMG) can be found in a link contained in a Human resources document. The HR document is found by following the link titled “SMG 110 — SMG Salary and Appointment” on this page. In this document the Senior Management group is defined by Standing Order 100.1:

“the President of the University, Executive Vice Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents, other Vice Presidents, Associate Vice Presidents, Assistant Vice Presidents, University Auditor, Chancellors, Vice Chancellors, and Directors and Deputy Directors of the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Directors of University hospitals”

The reason given by the SMG that their cut should be smaller is because in May they took a 5% pay cut. See: http://www.public-press.org/content/2009/07/15/uc-staff-faculty-rally-as-regents-meet-on-budget-cuts

Of course in May, a 5% pay cut was not some altruistic act performed by the office of the president. Freshman enrollment was reduced by 2,300 students, student fees were increased by 9.3%, hiring freezes were put into place, and many people were fired. Of course the 5% pay cut still does not touch the other perks that the senior management group gets including car allowances, mansions to live in, and very large retirement plans. When you look at how much total compensation is lost, the SMG exits the cuts quite well because a 5% drop in salary does not cover all the money handed out to the SMG. I’m sure those making under $40k would be fine with a 5% pay cut if they lived in a mansion paid for by the state and have over $8k a year car allowance.

ALSO: The UC approved pay increases through a stipend system (sneaky bastards), and got around the May Hiring freeze by utilizing stating: “In accordance with authority previously delegated by the Regents, interim action was taken on routine or emergency matters” and then hiring a bunch of people. So you can cut the base salary of upper management (constituting a pay cut), then raise the salary by large amounts, some as high as a 47.5% salary raise, through a stipend system and somehow claim that you are sharing the pain of the budget cuts.  Effing brilliant.

The full deal given to UC staff is this:
SMG will take at maximum a 9% salary cut (5% in May and some number less than 4% now). The Mansion and car allowance will not be touched and neither will the very large retirement plan. Then SMG officials will possibly get a stipend to increase their total pay. Normal Staff will either get fired (sorry I don’t know the percentage of those fired, but I do know people at UCSC who have been fired so it is not a trivial number) and if you still have a job, you will get a 5-10% pay cut. No car payments, mansion, or sneaky stipend for this group.  After a year, the furloughs and pay cuts will go away and be restored to their original levels, but those fired will remain fired.

You’ve got to give it up for the Unions, they’ve researched the crap out of this.

Transformers 2 finds ways to make robots racist, put testicles on a robot, have inane and unrealistic dialog and characters, and horrible plot devices that don’t make sense. Oh no, the thingey we need turned into shards, now we can’t use it….oh wait….after carrying it around for 15 minutes, as dust, it is now put back together conveniently right when we need it with little/no explanation of how. Almost every character in the movie doesn’t appear to have a point. By the end I was really hoping that about 90% of the characters would die because I didn’t want to listen to them any more. I wonder if George Lucas had a hand in the character design because most of the characters have the same feel as JarJar.

The screen cap in the picture is of Megan Fox, the girlfriend, being scared of the robots outside. I was making similar faces, but more because I was vomiting slightly in my mouth. Please do not see this movie, even if you are curious what an on screen suck fest looks like.

We have many thousands of advertisers on Yelp these days, I suggest a much simpler and faster solution… pick up the phone and call a handful of advertisers (they are easy to find on our site) and ask about their experiences with Yelp.

The East Bay Express did that and buried their findings at the end of their 4k word piece…

Interviews with more than a dozen local business owners suggest that Yelp sales reps may be wording their sales pitches more carefully these days. Owners who were approached by Yelp in recent months said they were told they could choose one positive review that would appear at the top of their page, which would clearly be denoted as a “sponsored review.”

And plenty of Yelp advertisers still have negative reviews on their pages. “You pretty much have to fight tooth or nail to get a bad review moved or removed,” said one East Bay restaurant advertiser, who wished to remain anonymous. Peter Snyderman, the owner of Elite Cafe, said his sales rep never mentioned moving negative reviews.

Basically Jeremy thought that the scientific approach  that I suggested was too labor intensive, and instead suggested that I should personally collect anecdotal evidence instead.  I really just want to tell him that you cannot draw any conclusions from anecdotal evidence, that his approach is inferior, and that if he was serious about dispelling the accusations about review manipulation he would invite more transparency and an open and fair evaluation of yelps advertising program from an independent 3rd party.  If I did that I would of course just be repeating myself yet again.  In discussions with Jeremy I feel as if he speaks loudly and carries a stupid stick. I’m gonna go ahead and let him have the last word on the matter because like a kid on a spinning tire we keep going around and around with our arguments and frankly I’m dizzy and if I keep this up my sanity is gonna puke.

So what is to be gained from all of this?  The take away message of the back and forth with the yelp CEO is this:

-Jeremy Stoppelman will respond to random people on the Internet very frequently which means his duties as CEO are taking a back seat to his attempts to converse with anonymous Internet users.  That makes yelp a horrible investment since the CEO obviously has skewed priorities.

-I still have large doubts regarding the ethics of yelp since the CEO would constantly avoid direct questions.

-On the positive side of things I found in this article about a guy from Vancouver getting banned from yelp.  In it he mentions a competing service to yelp called urban spoon.  Seriously check it out.  I must admit that during the back and forth with Jeremey, I stil used yelp because there was no real alternative.  Urban spoon provides an alternative without the questionalbe ethical policies.