Four (or Five!) Reasons Why

…SPAM Is All The Rage

1. Despite all the teasing, taunting and endless jokes, SPAM is flying off the shelves. Much of its recent popularity may have something to do with American families trying to stretch already stretched budgets, or the fact that every other food group has seen a massive surge in prices, the meat that nobody likes is back on dinner plates and dining room tables. While the average price of a 12-ounce can of SPAM has risen in price by 7% (17 cents to $2.62) over the past year, it’s still pretty cheap. The meat’s renaissance helped boost Hormel Food Corporation’s, the manufacturer of SPAM, profits up 14% in the second quarter, on a 10.6% rise in sales. This, from a canned meat company!

2. While not the sexiest business, Hormel’s share price has held up pretty well in the face of turbulent financial circumstances. Its long-term performance has been fairly impressive, showing steady growth over the past ten years, rising from about $15 in 1998 to just over $38, after hitting a recent high of $42.77. If that doesn’t sound impressive, consider that it has crushed the performance of the Dow Jones, NASDAQ and S&P 500 indexes. Warren Buffett would be proud!

3. SPAM was a backbone for Monty Python’s greasy spoon cafe sketch, where the mostly everything on the menu consists of the mystery meat. As if this wasn’t funny enough, Eric Idle came along and created SPAMALOT, a musical combining the quest for the Holy Grail (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and SPAM. Find me a meat…nay, any food…that has had a musical created around it. The original Broadway production received 14 Tony Award nominations, more than any other show during the 2004-2005 season, winning three, including Best Musical.

4. Meat in a can. How different can it get? Apparently, lots different. For the Broadway debut of SPAMALOT, Hormel released a collector’s edition SPAM (who knew SPAM could be a collector’s item), SPAM Golden Honey Grail, followed by the “Stinky French Garlic” edition for the London launch. They also recently launched SPAM Singles - in both Classic and Turkey Lite - just in case you’re on the move and had a hankering.

If you’re looking for some cool gifts, check out the SPAM Store.

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….Sex is Good for You

1. It’s a great way to relieve stress, which is something everyone feels these days. Nothing like getting all calm and zen-like after a good session in the sack - much better than a massage, that’s for sure. And according to a study done at the State University of New York, semen acts as an antidepressant. Females in the study who had sex without condoms had fewer signs of depression than women who used condoms or abstained from sex. (By the way, 4RW is an advocate for safe sex!)

2. It makes you feel alive and fights aging. If you can still do it, you’ve still got it. Sex makes you feel vital and king/queen of the world unless, of course, you find yourself unable to perform, um, properly. Then, you just get depressed, which should encourage you to have some sex if reason #1 has any validity.

3. It’s a great way to lose weight. From what I’ve heard, sex burns 300 calories an hour and involves every muscle group. Of course, a recent survey of sex therapists found the optimal amount of time for intercourse was three to 13 minutes, which works out to 15 to 75 calories.

4. Sex fights colds. Actually, regular sex (one or twice a week) can protect you from getting cols and the flu, according to psychologists in Pennsylvania, who found it helps maintain healthy levels of immunoglobulin A (IgA), an antigen found in saliva and mucosal linings. IgA is the first line of defence against colds and flu. It binds to bacteria that invade the body, and then activates the immune system to destroy them.

For more on why sex is good for you, check out a recent article on MSNBC and m-squared.

Technorati Tags: Sex

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…The Internet Can’t Kill Cable TV (Yet)

1. When it comes down to it, cable television still rules the roost when it comes to content. The three pillars of cable are high-definition broadcasting, sports and a centralized platform. The first pillar, HD, is clearly the wave of the future, regardless of how many crappy YouTube videos are watched each day. Yes, you can stream some shows in HD, but it is not a ubiquitous offering. The second pillar, sports, is a mainstay of cable, as is evident in the depth and breadth of coverage. Again, sports can be streamed, but the quality for live action does not deliver a good enough viewer experience. Plus, the intersection of sports and HD is too rich to turn down - it’s a sports junkie’s dream come true. Finallly, the third pillar, centralization, is something that the Internet may not solve for a while - having everything in one box, with one remote, at your beck and call. No downloading, no seeding, no buffering.

2. Digital/personal video recorders through a cable system are easy to set up. They are more or less plug-and-play. For those out there that are not technically savvy or don’t have kids that can/will show you the ropes, most cable companies will gladly offer you the services of a technician to set things up (for a fee, of course). Unless you are downloading shows, the Internet in its current state will never truly be on-demand. DVRs, on the other hand, make time-shifting easy as pie.

3. Throttling. Until the pipes are so big that this becomes a non-issue, broadband Internet providers (often the cable providers themselves) will always have the upper-hand in content delivery speed and reliability. While throttling is currently targeted at P2P participants, who is to say that the practice won’t be expanded. Furthermore, broadcasters who use P2P networks as means of distribution, like CBC has done, get applauded for technological foresight, but penalized nonetheless. Will we get to a point where you have to buffer an entire show to ensure that you can watch it without breaking up?

4. Sitting in front of my laptop or desktop is no way to watch television. It’s not comfortable. I can’t recline. And it’s hard to match the large screen sitting in my living room. Understood, there are ways to hook up laptops/desktops to televisions, but it’s not that easy to do so unless you have a built in hardware and the right cables on hand. Until this type of system is available for Luddites (i.e. the masses), forget relying on the Internet to deliver. Additionally, when you do finally hook the two systems up, the broadcast quality blows!

5. This probably only applies to the male species, but channel surfing is an inherent birthright. It’s natural. It feels good. It feels right. Until Internet technology can create a seamless channel surfing experience, I’ll stick to my cable box, thank you very much!

More: CrunchGear doesn’t seem to agree.

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….Golf is So Frustrating

1. To play well, you need to play a lot. Sadly, playing often can be expensive unless you’re playing in a rural moose pasture where they cut the grass every two or three weeks, and the greens remind you of one of the Apollo landings on the moon. And the more you play, the more you start thinking that if you had better clubs and more comfortable shoes, your game could be that much better. Of course, that takes money as well. Ka-ching, Ka-ching!

2. Once in awhile, the Golf Gods shine down on you so brilliantly that it makes you get down on your knees. You’re in the rough, 250 yards from the hole, and all you want to do is get the ball back on the fairway where it rightfully belongs. So, you keep your head down, shift your weight properly and pray for a miracle. Boom, you hit it perfectly and the ball miraculously ends up a few feet from the hole. Of course, you’ll probably never be able to replicate that shot ever again but it’s the remote possibility that keeps you coming back.

3. For those of us who aren’t scratch golfers or anywhere near being a scratch golfer, the silver lining is that cold beverages are served on the course. How cool is that! Of course, the more you indulge in those cold beverages, the worse your game becomes, which is why you can only dream about being a scratch golfer.

4. You have to behave well and dress properly. Like tennis, golf has a lengthy list of traditions and established etiquette. For example, you can’t talk while someone else is taking a shot, and it’s a no-no to walk across the path of someone as they’re lining up a putt. And you’re not even allowed to give your ball a slight foot wedge if you land in deep grass with no chance in Hades of getting out. Then, you have have a shirt with a collar, and there’s little chance of being able to play wearing flip flops.

5. If, by chance, you get a hole-in-one, you have to buy everyone in the clubhouse a drink - whereas it should really be everyone buying you a drink given you’re the one who did something amazing!

More: Sports Illustrated’s Jay Mohr wrote a great column a few years ago on how frustrating golf can be. It includes this succinct paragraph:

I hate golf. I do not understand how anyone can enjoy it, much less love it. I think golf is a waste of time and a waste of a sunny afternoon. I also stink at it. I have never found anything, including divorce and a sexual harassment suit, more frustrating.

As well, check out this video from the Colbert Report in which Steven Colbert describes golf as a “bitch” while interviewing Carl Hiassen, author of “The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport”.

Technorati Tags: Golf

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…To Go To Conferences Out Of Your Comfort Zone

1. You meet new and different people. In this age of desktop friendship, the people we interact with are generally within our existing network of friends or those that are accumulated online (who arguably are not really people with whom you interact in the traditional sense). Brush off those social skills and put yourself in a situation where you are forced to meet new people. If you can get something/anything out of meeting someone for the first time, every conversation is worth having.

2. New ideas are easier to come by. Whether from the sessions you attend or the people that you meet, going to a conference that is out of your area of expertise will both inspire ideas or give you ones that you can borrow. Call it cliche, but “thinking outside the box” doesn’t happen to easily when you are stuck in a routine.

3. It’s an opportunity to take existing ideas that you may have and bounce them off of new sounding boards. We often get too close to the things on which we work, becoming too wrapped up in the details and lose the trees for the forest. Having an objective, fresh opinion on something can often help work through roadblocks and hurdles. It may even provide new direction or point out something you may not have seen before.

4. It’s a great opportunity to get out of the office or from behind your desk, which can be a cleansing experience. Short of taking a vacation, attending a conference in which you are engaged in new concepts can revitalize the mind, be relaxing and get the creative juices flowing again. Just tell your boss you’re taking your brain to the spa.

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