Day: October 20, 2007

Here’s something I don’t see too often in Phoenix.

Usually it’s just flies, bees and the occasional West Nile carrying mosquito.

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I’m not sure what the logic is behind it, but Tesco has decided to try to crack the US market. They bombed miserably in Taiwan and sold out to Carrefour, a French equivalent.

Now, I suppose I could understand wanting to move into the US market. There’s money to be made, but why oh why did they decide the Phoenix was just the right demographic for their opening salvo? Phoenix is not the right demographic for anything.

Tesco is not actually opening stores in the US, they’re pioneering a new kind of market, under the name Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market. These stores will be smaller than a standard supermarket, but larger than a convenience store. They’ll stock fresh, organic foods, and they’ve picked locations all around town in every kind of neighborhood – from the rich snobsville sections of town right down to the deadly gang-infested meth-house areas.

I’m sure the meth makers will appreciate being able to walk down to a nearby store and pick up some nice arugula that hasn’t been treated with nasty chemicals.

It remains to be seen how successful this will be, but the first stores open Nov 8.

The one near my house is behind the others and has just started construction with the demolition of a long-lived bar and a really seedy business complex – good bye and good riddance. Who knows? They’re on my way to work, perhaps they’ll fill an important part of my breakfast routine in the future.

One interesting thing about these stores is that they are supposedly using the latest in energy-efficient buildings. According to the Fresh & Easy website, every employee is given a postcard with a polar bear on it, to remind them that all the polar bears will drown if we don’t all make a difference.

I think the polar bear thing might be a little bit heavy-handed, but energy-efficient building is an area that I’m 250% in favor of.

Many years ago, while paying for college, I used to work in construction, and I know how miserably and inefficiently constructed homes and businesses are – at least in this part of the world. There are loads of technologies and building techniques that could drastically improve energy efficiency and they should be standard in every new building. I’ll go a step further, they should be mandatory in the building code.

Inefficient building is just throwing money away, wasting energy and needlessly increasing greenhouse gases month after month for years or decades to come.

We’re still enormously happy with just the radiant heat barrier we had installed in the attic. Energy usage has been down significantly every month since installation compared to last year (even before adjusting for the hotter and longer summer this year.) My calculations put the energy savings at over 20% each month.

I’m just waiting to see the new stores, I’m sure they’ll be flaunting their energy efficiency and maybe there will be some more ideas to be adopted.

I’ve been looking forward to the Tesco invasion for some time now. Not because I’m any particular fan of Tesco, or because I’m looking for a bold new vision of the market of the future. I’ve been looking forward to it because it really pisses off the grocery-baggers union.

I first found out about the Tesco when a little color flyer was pasted to my door. It told about how the kids in my neighborhood were at risk because because Tesco sells alcohol to minors, and that a group of concerned citizens had gotten together and were urging their neighbors to contact the liquor board and tell them we don’t need their business in our neighborhood.

In fact, one Tesco in Yorkshire even had their liquor license suspended for 90 days for selling alcohol to minors.

If it’s against the law in Yorkshire then Tesco shouldn’t do that. But somehow, trying to get a new business closed down before it opens because a completely different store, half a planet away, with a (no doubt) completely different management hierarchy, completely different staff and subject to completely different laws and enforcement and in a country that drinks a lot more than we do just doesn’t seem like a reasoned, rationale response to me. In fact, it smacked of deception.

So I did a little checking. Was it really concerned neighbors trying to protect our youth? Of course not, it was the local trade unions trying to squash competition by whiping people up with unfounded ad hominem attacks on the company.

So, of course, I sent in a letter of support to the liquor board instead, and I plan to give Fresh & easy at least some business just to spite the local unions. I don’t mind the unions, but I don’t abide hypocrites (like minors don’t buy beer at local grocery stores already) and I don’t like dirty pool.

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BBC NEWS => Star Trek film names Kirk actor

Well, they’ve finally named the actor to play Captain Kirk in the upcoming Star Trek: The Wonder Years movie.

• Captain Kirk – Chris Pine
• Older Mr Spock – Leonard Nimoy
• Young Mr Spock – Zachary Quinto
• Scotty – Simon Pegg
• Nero – Eric Bana
• Uhura – Zoe Saldana
• Chekov – Anton Yelchin
• Sulu – John Cho
• Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy – Karl Urban

I really have strong misgivings about this concept. (That concept being “The movie will show the crew meeting at the Starfleet Academy and embarking on their first mission.”)

I have no problem with recasting the show with new actors. They’re just actors, after all, they aren’t actually the characters themselves. (Somewhere a get-a-lifer just committed suicide.) How many times has the Saint been recast? Or 007? Or Charlie Chan? Or Robin Hood? Or Hamlet for that matter? The play’s the thing, not the actors. Not that actors don’t make their own contributions, they do, but it is largely a phenomena of the “television character” that has created this perception that the actor and the role are inseparable.

What does bother me is why bother making this an “origins” story? Why not just recast and set the movie during the run of the original 5 year mission? By setting this at a specific time, they screw up continuity.

Why is Chekov here? Chekov was obviously fresh out of the academy later in the series. It’s like redoing Doctor Who to say that the Doctor and Romana both left Gallifrey together at the same time. They don’t need Chekov here. The cast of the show was unwieldily large to begin with. Why not just jettison an unnecessary character with the perfectly sound justification that he wouldn’t have been there at all. They actually have to go out of their way to bring him into the movie.

Second, do you really think that Kirk and all his junior officers were at the academy together. That’s not the way it works. Yes, some people get promoted faster than others, as presumably Kirk was, but generally, the lower ranking officers are younger officers also.

It’s doubtful that McCoy would have ever been at the academy at all. Star Fleet might be different, but military academies are rarely medical schools, and, he wasn’t even the ship’s doctor in the first episode.

Spock, of course, was already serving aboard the Enterprise before Kirk took command, and, based on the longevity of Vulcans and the length of time quoted between the events of Talos IV (Spock served under Pike for 11 years, the events of Talos IV occurred 13 years prior to the first season of Trek) and Obsession, in which Kirk’s first posting after leaving the academy was 11 years prior to the second season of Trek, would indicate that Spock was likely already aboard the Enterprise before Kirk left the academy.

No, the established history of Trek – not that the current producers really give a rat’s ass about continuity, nor ever have – precludes this premise from the start.

Simon Pegg as Mr. Scott? I’m really not sure about that casting. Couldn’t they have gotten Gary Oldman?

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