Oh so Stupid: Shake 'n Pour

I'd like to shake some sense into the marketing geniuses at Betty Crocker for their amazingly useless and wasteful new product:

Bisquick Shake 'n Pour.

Get this: It's pancake mix in a plastic jug.

Now for only a few bucks more you can buy a plastic jug to mix your pancakes in, and throw it into a landfill afterward for all eternity. That right, it's SO easy and convenient that you no longer have to suffer the drudgery of washing the bowl and spoon used for your pancake mix. Heck, why not thrown away the rest of the breakfast dishes while you are at it. You know, those other dishes (plates, forks, etc.) that you wash still have to wash after cooking pancakes? To save yourself the horrible inconvenience of bowl-washing, all you need is this product and a little bit of water (What! I have to add my own water?!? What a rip-off!), shake it up (that part might at least be good exercise) and you are ready to cook light, fluffy, and delicious pancakes.

Somewhat more seriously, has our society become so degenerate that we can no longer mix our own pancake batter? Have people forgotten such basic cooking skills as stirring? The marketing people at Betty Crocker seem to think this is the case. They seem to think their customers are THAT stupid. I hope the plastic jug is at least recyclable, but I still won't forgive them if it is.

Disclaimer: I'm probably going to cook pancakes for breakfast tomorrow morning, from a Bisquick mix. I will take extra satisfaction in the stirring though. Also, I think I might need to start making my pancakes from scratch.

Correlation

[From XKCD. Now go there and do the mouse over!]

MORE over at Built on Facts

M&M Statistics

[From GraphJam]

more music charts

To Your Scattered Bodies Go

One of my favorite authors when I was growing up was Phillip Jose Farmer. I just learned that he passed away two days ago. Featured here are the covers of some of his books, most in the versions I owned and read, and read, and read. Maybe the saddest part of growing up is losing touch with some of the things that made growing up interesting, and Farmer's books were quite good at that. His books had a prominent place on my bedroom shelf for many years.

Good Luck, Mr Farmer. I'm pretty sure the Ethicals will pick you out for special treatment. Don't forget your grail!

January 26, 1918 - February 25, 2009. R.I.P

[Hat Tip 2 IO9]

Prehistoric Sex

Something had to do it first, so why not the jawed fish?


Video at Nature.com

Careful!
Prehistoric Naughtiness Ahead!!

--- UPDATE ---

PZ Myers has this to say ...

The media is getting another science story wrong. I keep seeing this discovery of an array of fossil placoderms as revealing the origins of sex, and that's not right. Sex is much, much older, and arose in single-celled organisms. Come on, plants reproduce sexually. A fish is so far removed from the time of origin of sexual reproduction that it can't tell us much about its origins.

Let's get it right. These fossils tells us about the origin of fu…uh, errm, mating in vertebrates.

The Rodriguez File, Revisited

I find myself short of time and ideas tonight, so I shall regale you with past exploits.

I encountered The Rodriguez File one day at Improbable Research, where I was intrigued by the question ...

"I would like to explore the statistical chances of getting such a line".

The straight line being the arrangement of words to the right such that 5 or 6 spaces line up to form a line.

So I took a stab at the problem, and Kees (duck researcher extraordinaire) choose to post it for the world to see:
The Rodriguez File (part 2).

However, I was not satidfied with that effort, and made a second attempt, which appears here:
The Rodriguez File (part 3).


Then someone asked the question a different way, and I had yet another go at it:
The Rodriguez File (part 4).

It's good to be a statistician. We get to consider all kinds of strange and interesting questions.

WWMD

From the gallery of Glenn Jones.


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