Unidentified and Unexplained

It has all the elements of a story that takes over the headlines for days. A voluminous investigation just published that interested parties have been chomping at the bit to see, but satisfies no one. Accusations of a coverup, wherein a whistleblower's concerns seem to have been ignored and lawmakers demanding answers on this very topic. And physical evidence presented by experts to policymakers which raise as many questions as it answers. And yet, because it doesn't include the name Biden nor Trump, it's all buried below the fold on page 23. I know, it's hard to believe, but there are other things in this world besides our latest political goings-on that should be raising eyebrows. Or in this particular case, maybe it's not of this world. And that's the point.

First, the report. More than a year in the making, it was penned by NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They set out to investigate, from a scientific standpoint, the reports of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAP, a successor term that includes both Unidentified Flying Objects or UFO's, as well as other events and sightings that cannot be "immediately identified as known human-made or natural phenomena."  The panel of 17 independent scientists held hearings, reviewed evidence and heard from witnesses and experts. Their findings, released this month, acknowledges the unexplained nature of the events, but says that the lack of any rigorous formal observation and measurement make it all but impossible to be certain of anything. Or as put by Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate, "While there are numerous eyewitness accounts and visuals associated with UAP, they're not consistent, they're not detailed, and they're not curated observations that can be used to make definitive scientific conclusions about the nature and the origin of UAP." To help advance the discussion, the panel recommends appointing a Director of UAP Research, as well as leveraging and integrating the various existing observational systems to provide better data to study.

Then there are the whistleblowers and accusations of a coverup. At a House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs hearing held in July, multiple allegations of the covering up of UFO encounters and evidence were introduced by a trio of whistleblowers. In response to the allegations, six Congresspeople sent a request for more information to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. The IG wrote back this month that it "has not conducted any audit, inspection, evaluation or review" of the alleged UFO programs. Incredulous that there might be other, more pressing matters to focus on, committee member Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn) said it was a "coverup." In a tweet he wrote "The IC IG office did nothing to look into the information they received from David Grusch on UAP crash retrieval programs? They have no information they can give to Congress???" This in spite of the fact that he also noted in another context that "other things are going on. The, you know, with the looming shutdown and all that other stuff." 

Finally, the evidence. South of the border, lawmakers in the Mexico were also holding hearings on UAP's. As part of that proceeding, they were presented with "alleged remains of non-human beings" in the form of tiny "bodies," displayed in glass cases with three fingers on each hand and elongated heads. Mexican journalist and long-time UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan claimed were the corpses of extraterrestrials recovered in Peru. He said that he had them analyzed at Mexico's National Autonomous University, and that they were about 1,000 years old. Said Maussan "I think there is a clear demonstration that we are dealing with non-human specimens that are not related to any other species in our world and that all possibilities are open for any scientific institution to investigate it." Congressman Sergio Gutierrez, from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's ruling Morena party, said, "We are left with reflections, with concerns and with the path to continue talking about this." 

Taken together, it would seem that our new AI overlords are not the only alien presence we should be worried about. But at this point it's all a distant sideshow to the main event happening in Washington. Until then, keep your eyes peeled for more stories about the unexplained, and be ready to call home when that which has been flying below the radar pops above it, both figuratively and literally.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford has never seen a UFO. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Send It Back

The mantra for many things used to be "one and done." The idea was that you made a deliberate choice about something and called it a day. You considered the options, weighed the pros and cons of each item or action, and then picked a single direction to take and accepted the consequences right or wrong. Of course, once you made your choice, occasionally it turned out not to be the best approach, and you had to backtrack and take another stab at it. But for reasons of money, time or simply convenience, the goal was to at least try to get it right on the first go. Or as one associate put it, "The older I get I only want to do things twice once."

That approach has changed in so many areas. Take photography. Used to be that you lined up a picture, considered the composition, made whatever adjustments you thought made sense, and snapped the shot. And that was it. Maybe you took a second snap for safety. But since you couldn't see the results until after you paid to develop and print it, all of which cost real dollars, you tried to get it right the first time. Now pictures cost nothing to take and you can see the result instantly, so there is literally no good reason to take just one. And so you take multiples of multiples. Check your phone: I'll wager that nearly every picture you have includes numerous options of the same. You likely haven't deleted any, save the ones where you put your finger over the lens. 

Perhaps the biggest change is in shopping. If you needed a pair of pants, you looked at the ads in the papers, reviewed the items already in your closet, and then headed to a store. You perused the racks, perhaps pulling out several pairs and putting them back before selecting a few possibles. Then it was a trip (or trips) to the dressing room to see how big your butt looked in the mirror. After several attempts you settled on a winner and paid for your purchase. Once you got home you tried it on for your partner, and only if they didn't say "what were you thinking!!???" you kept them.

No more. Whether it's clothes or accessories, home furnishings or sports equipment, you start not from the position of "that's the one I think I want" but rather "these are the ones I want to try out." While the TV is playing the background or your other is making dinner you scroll through different websites, looking at pictures, reading reviews and checking out prices. Then you order this one and that one, knowing full well that you have no intention of keeping them all. They show up, be they shoes or dresses, ipad holders or coffee cups. You try them all out, select the one you like, and then bundle up the rest to send back.

Online merchants have had to completely retool their economics and work flows to accommodate this change. In the brick and mortar world, retail returns are in the 2% to 10% range depending on the category. In ecommerce it's more like 20%, with some categories of apparel approaching 40%. By some reports, the annual retail value of returned goods in the US is approaching a trillion dollars.

That has also led retailers to change how they handle returns to optimize the economics. In many cases that has meant making consumer take their "free" returns to a central spot for drop off rather than individually shipping each item back. And in an increasing number of instances, they are telling you just to keep the item while they credit you. Someone has done the math, and the cost to ship back an unworn pair of socks and get it back into the supply side is way more than any profit margin.

If you're like me, you've added a new requirement for anything you buy online. Sure, it's gotta look like it will fit or work for my use, that's a given. But it's also has to be able to be sent back at no cost and with no explanation for a full refund. Because while it may be better to give than receive, it's best to be able to return. 

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford will often buy two options. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Objection, Your Honor

At present our legal system is getting a workout all over the country. Front and center are the various actions related to Donald Trump, be they related to the 2020 election (DC and GA), document possession (FL), business expenses (NY) and sex (NYC). In Washington, the federal government is taking a swing at Google, while in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is swiping at Disney. And challenges to laws on abortion rights, migration, climate change and a host of other hot button issues are making their way through the courts in Texas, California, Alaska and all points in between.

However, not withstanding Trump's line of "I'm being indicted for you," most people will never be involved individually in a lawsuit. While there are a reported 40 million civil actions filed every year, most involve businesses (Walmart alone gets sued 5000 times a year) and specific groups of professionals (doctors and landlords, for instance). As such, outside of estate issues, the majority of folks rarely have to consult the more than 1 million lawyers in this country with regards to settling a dispute.

The one exception involves a type of lawsuit that you likely have been involved in for a problem you never knew you had. Called a class action, it's been around a long time, first appearing as "group litigation" in medieval England around 1200. It went through various iterations, with the current form being codified in 1966 under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. That laid out that numerous people wronged by the same entity could be bound together and sue for damages even if they didn't know each other. Unless they decided to opt out, they could be represented by a single individual, and partake of any settlement that was reached. 

Those lawsuits are for a wide variety of transgressions, including securities violations, workplace issues, consumer complaints and increasingly, cyber breaches. You probably have gotten notice that you are a part of one or another in the form of a letter or email that states that unless you elect to go it on your own that you have been aggregated with other fellow sufferers, a group of people you might not even have known existed. In most cases you need to do nothing other than fill out a form that confirms that you did buy the electric toothbrush that was supposed to stop tooth decay, or bought the stock believing that that the company had a market for those rain proof boots. All it took was one dissatisfied consumer or investor to stand up to Big Footwear Inc. and call their bluff, and you each get a $20 gift certificate towards your next purchase of galoshes. 

The latest for us was involved our electric kettle. We had bought it paying no real attention to the brand or design. It had good reviews, heated water as advertised, and that should have been it. But the brand was Muller Austria, and the company's logo stamped on the bottom included an Austrian flag. Well, it turns out that one consumer took that to mean that it was designed and/or manufactured in Vienna or its environs, and made her purchase based on that representation. (I guess she thought that those who make Linzer tortes have a better handle on how to boil water.) Nope. It was merely a name, in the same way that Haagen-Daz isn't from Holland, but Brooklyn. She sued, and as we had also been purchasers, we were smooshed together with her and others. Rather than get into a protracted battle, the parent company of (now just) Muller settled with all similarly and egregiously wronged, writing each a check for $7.50, and dropping the "Austria" and flag graphic from their name. And just like that, I am a successful litigant.

As the grandson of a lawyer and the father of one, I appreciate the complexities of the legal world. But as a civilian, I also find it a strange universe with its own language, customs and sense of time, much of which make questionable sense. It all adds up to make me want to avoid interacting with it if at all possible. Or as Mort Zuckerman put it, "I decided law was the exact opposite of sex; even when it was good, it was lousy."

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to settle things in person. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Prescription: Pizza

Based in Basel Switzerland, the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, or MDPI, publishes hundreds of peer reviewed scientific journals encompassing a multitude of fields. Most of the stuff is highly technical in nature, catering to niches that appeal to only the hard core faithful. Typical of their offerings is "Agronomy," which focuses on all thing related to crops and planting, and includes such page turners as "Elucidation of the Genetic Diversity within Some In Situ Shea Germplasm in Ghana."  And no, other than the reference to an African country, I have no idea what that all means. 

That's just one example of their bread and butter. In the "Journal of Nanotheranostics" they focus on "exploring nano-enabled theranostics for personalized health care" (your guess is as good as mine). "Photonics," which is dedicated to optics and light, has an article this month on "Slightly Off-Axis Digital Holography Using a Transmission Grating and GPU-Accelerated Parallel Phase Reconstruction."  And in "Urban Science" you can catch up the "Current Plastic Waste Status and Its Leakage at Tam Giang–Cau Hai Lagoon System in Central Vietnam." Keep that in mind when you plan your next guided tour.

However, there are also occasional articles that seem more understandable (at least on the surface) to a lay audience. For instance, with all the focus on social media, the yearlong study in "Youth" titled "'She's Pretty in Her Pictures but in Real Life She's Ugly': School Pupils Negotiating the Blurred Boundaries between Online and Offline Social Contexts" is of interest. Speaking to our Amazon fixation, the journal "Economics" has one called "Buy Now Pay Later—A Fad or a Reality? A Perspective on Electronic Commerce." And the journal "Sport" was somewhat prescient, publishing just before the finals of the FIFA Women's World Cup a piece entitled "Emotional Intelligence in Spanish Elite Athletes: Is There a Differential Factor between Sports?" Perhaps the head of the Spanish Federation should have read that before he "celebrated" with the team.

Occasionally you find one that speaks directly to you. As I get older, my component parts are hitting their half-lives and not working as smoothly as they should. To combat that I try and get enough rest and regular exercise. And yes, I watch what I eat, trying to balance what I enjoy with what is good for me, not always an easy equation. Enter Dr. Roberta De Vito, the Thomas J. and Alice M. Tisch Assistant Professor of Biostatistics and Data Science at Brown University. Dr. De Vito and academic colleagues in her native Italy took to the pages of "Nutrients" to give me hope. Their article? "Does Pizza Consumption Favor an Improved Disease Activity in Rheumatoid Arthritis?"

Let me be clear: I don't profess to be able to follow all the science. They write about how "multiple robust linear and logistic regression models were fitted with the tertile consumption categories," and for each available pizza-related food item/group how "stratified analyses were carried out according to the disease severity or duration." But I did understand the conclusion: "Participants eating half a pizza >1 time/week (vs. ≤2 times/month) reported beneficial effects on disease activity, with the significant reductions of ~70%." My takeaway: pizza is good for your joints.

To be fair, the study focused on fresh, simple pizza, the classic Pizza Margherita. And they admit they don't factor in toppings, especially if they are fried or highly processed, such as eggplant or pepperoni. But they are unequivocal that within the given parameters of the study that the ingredients in pizza contribute to reducing inflammation in the sampled population. Wrote Dr De Vito, "These beneficial effects were likely driven by mozzarella cheese and, to a lesser extent, by olive oil, even though we were unable to assess the possible contribution of tomato sauce." She also notes, "larger and longer-duration intervention studies are still needed." I take that to mean that the jury is still out on hot peppers. 

The rallying cry these days is "follow the science." And so feel free to debate vaccines or climate change or the efficacy of masks. I for one will put my faith in Dr. De Vito and her colleagues. And I can only hope that their next study validates my contention regarding the rumored mental boost one gets from chunky peanut butter. If so, I'm good till at least 100.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford likes to look at trade journals. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Beyond Tab

Think of it as Wordle. Except with just 4 letters. And it’s all about soft drinks. And your starting word is "diet."

Like many, I try and watch what I eat, with health being the main driver. That means more chicken and fish, less red meat, less fried foods, less sugar and and and. That’s not to say that I don’t have a burger and fries on occasion, or a piece of cake or candy. And summertime is ice cream time: the full-fat, full-flavor stuff in a cup or cone from a roadside stand or a specialty shop that costs way more than it should. But, hey, it’s summer!

The same can be said for the beverages I drink. Fortunately, my default choice is usually plain old tap water, so no major issue there. That said, I enjoy a glass of wine or a mixed drink when at a party or out with friends, and some studies show that that occasional indulgence is actually good for your metabolism. The same can’t be said of the odd milkshake or soda, but again, consumed sparingly as a treat, a can of Dr. Pepper is hardly cause for alarm.

In both of these areas that theme of "health" also includes weight. Not only do these various choices bode well for my general well-being, they also are less likely to add to my general tonnage. On the other hand, the exceptions noted usually do the opposite. But even there one can choose healthier options, be it turkey burgers and sweet potato fries, fruit sorbets and low calorie sodas. Not that I’m on a diet per se, but an ounce here and once there and pretty soon you’re talking not being able to button your pants.

Reduced calorie beverages have become a powerhouse category for this very reason. Since the appearance in 1958 of Diet Rite Cola, which was originally stocked among medicine as opposed to soft drinks and marketed "as an option for diabetics and other consumers who needed to limit their sugar intake," the category of diet beverages has exploded. 

Up until now, that is. More recently the word "diet" has slowly been disappearing from the soft drink aisle. There are still some behemoths taking up shelf space, with the two 800-pound gorillas (maybe a bad refence in this context) being Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke. But beyond those, beverages with lower or no calories have been not so much phased out as reformulated and rebranded, (and here is where our Wordle reference comes in) using the "e" from "diet" to become "zero."

It's a change that has been driven by Millennials and Zoomers, who view soda in general as unhealthy, and diet as another kind of four-letter word. According to Greg Lyons, chief marketing officer at PepsiCo Beverages North America, "Younger people just don’t like the word diet." Additionally, the term traditionally has more feminine connotations, driving away a certain market segment of young males. That doesn’t mean they want the extra calories, they just don’t want the association with something less than macho. And what is the same thing as no calories? Zero calories. And a whole new-ish category was thus created.

So now there is Coke Zero, Mountain Dew Zero and Sprite Zero. If you compare their respective labels to their diet twins you will not find much difference, though the flavor profiles are slightly tweaked with the zero versions generally being a touch sweeter and closer to their full-bodied siblings. Or as listed on Coca-Cola’s website, "Coca-Cola Zero Sugar looks and tastes more like Coca-Cola Classic, while Diet Coke has a lighter taste because it’s made with a different blend of flavors." Either way, the calorie count for both is nada.

It's hardly a surprising shift. As one exec once remarked about the future of then electronics retailer Radio Shack, "No one buys radios anymore, and no one likes shopping in a shack." If no one wants to be on a diet, then no one will want to drink diet soda. But zero? That may mean nothing, but nothing has become good: zero waste, zero clutter, zero hassles. What’s next? Playing modified Wordle again, from "diet" to "zero" to "hero," and we did it in three. The only question is how long it will take before we see Coke Hero. You heard it here first.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford prefers Diet Coke to Coke Zero. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.