In his 5/25 column, Lictor points out that spying software exists, and we'd better get used to it. Ok, so it exists for a reason, right? And the reason is that many employers think their employees are lazy bastards who aren't giving full eight-hour days to the company. Fine, fair enough; your company pays you for that time, so if you're slacking, they're losing money. Of course, there's a way for them to make money on your slacking. How, you ask? Oh, it's so obvious: They can track your web-viewing habits, and there are lots of people interested in that information. So your company can give you a choice: 1. Don't touch the browser; or 2. Use it all you want, but know that your company owns that information and can sell it to advertisers to recoup their perceived losses.
Just think about all of the wonderful information your employer can provide. With the right software, they can record what you look at, how long you look at it, all of those fun bits of info that Lictor mentions. And, of course, your employer knows everything about you. There's the obvious info, such as your salary, job title, and address. Then there's all of the other bits that will make advertisers wet their pants with glee: Your age, your gender, how many dependents you have, how many days of vacation you take per year and when you take them, how much money you put into 401K or ESPP, etc. Combine the personal statistical info with the web usage info, and employers are looking at a gold mine.
Fat
In his column for 5/27, Sun Ra mentions encountering an abundance of obesity in Pennsylvania. Hey, I a summer and a couple of winters there, so I know what he's talking about. And I wasn't just in PA; oh no, I was in Hershey, PA. Where the big Hershey factory is. The large building directly responsible for a significant percentage of those enormous backsides. And remember that I worked at an amusement park, in Hershey, so I've seen all kinds of fat.
It's not just the chocolate, not by any means. Take, for example, a popular restaurant chain in PA: Hoss's. An interesting thing about Hoss's is that you don't get a menu. When you enter, you're confronted by a very large lighted display, divided into a grid. Each section contains a picture of a piece of meat. Most of them are very large pieces of meat. All you have to do is step up to the register and point and grunt at the section of cow that you'll be consuming (or the section of pig, or some delightful combination). Obviously, there are no pictures of tofu. Mentioning tofu or garden burgers in Hoss's would be about as welcome as quoting from the Necronomicon in the Vatican.
To be fair, Hoss's dose have a salad bar, but I'm pretty sure it's only there to satisfy some sort of federal regulation. I also think it's a safe bet that the dressing choices are Ranch, Thousand Island, and Island of a Thousand Ranches. Who the hell would eat a light vinagrette with a steak?
Mercifully, Hoss's isn't an all-you-can-eat place. No all-you-can-eat restaurant in Pennsylvania would survive for long. We keep hearing about how the average American is now 85% processed pork product, and it's those damn east coasters who are skewing the results. I'm convinced that the Rocky and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges are the only things keeping North America from tilting sharply downwards towards the east.