DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Undeniable Forensic Proof that Paul McCartney really was replaced with a Look-Alike in 1966.

(Seen at the headline archive of The Morning News, a really great site.)

I consider myself a skeptic, but Andrew Spooner Jr. offers compelling photographic evidence. He presents a strong argument that Sir Paul is not the original Paul McCartney.

I’m less convinced by Spooner’s analyses of vocal recordings, as there have been controversies about who actually performed all those songs for years. I would not be surprised to learn that the original recordings were “augmented” by studio musicians and stand-in vocalists. In any recording session, performing sonic surgery to improve on reality is standard procedure.

(We even did some of that on the JAR album. Although, ahem, all those drum tracks really were mine.)

But performing plastic surgery to make an imposter look like the deceased original… that’s something else.

The idea that the person we’ve all called Paul McCartney for 40 years is an imposter makes McCartney impersonators even more ridiculous.

In related news, I never posted the resolution to the story of the Mike Portnoy imposter. The phony was arrested in April. He told the police, “I’m Mike Portnoy,” not knowing that Portnoy was waiting for them at the precinct house. Ha!

Here’s an entertaining and amusing novel, a mystery, on the subject of faking a celebrity death: The Suspense is Killing Me, by Thomas Maxwell. Buy it at half.com; it’s the best two bucks you’ll spend this week.

Earlier this year I became a fan of Amazon’s Gold Box. I hit Amazon.com nearly every day, rabidly clicking through the 10 offers. I remember buying at least two items I wouldn’t have bought had they not appeared there: a high-end rice cooker, for example, and a Calphalon griddle (75% off!). I didn’t purchase, but I appreciated, the steady parade of MP3 players and NetGear products and Leatherman tools in my daily offer set.

But last week, my Gold Box became infected with toys. Gone are my sleek, charcoal gray metallic audio components, my hardened steel drill bits, my eternally-warrantied kitchen appliances. In their place: “Pose Me Pets Environment: Bedroom”, which I can’t even parse much less fathom… Fisher Price Screwy Looey… some kind of Home Depot action figure… Seven of my 10 offers are for toys today. Never has any single product category so monopolized my Gold Box.

I think the problem is that I searched for a toy at Amazon’s site recently. Two friends have recently given birth, so I’m following the traditional American response pattern of sending some molded plastic crap with a happy face stamped on the outside. Amazon’s opportunistic profiler instantly branded me as a parent. It’s bad AI, and it has cost them a customer. It’s just too depressing to see my 10 Gold Box offers wasted on day-glow plastic baubles that don’t even plug in.

This idea is not original; I’ve seen it suggested before: Amazon ought to have a widget on their site so that users can indicate “I’m just researching — don’t construe the following action as any statement of my actual interests.” It could be as simple as a “gift mode” button. It would allow me to browse items from a category I find distasteful without being subjected to more of the same for months to come.

I emailed a complaint to Amazon’s customer service group. Here is their response:

We select your personalized offers based on a variety of factors. I’m sorry, but it is currently not possible to request or exclude Gold Box offers in specific product categories.

But even though they don’t offer overt control, I ought to be able to influence the profiler. I’m going to try searching for anti-toys for a few days, in hopes that that will skew my profile back from the realm of “things that get sucked on.” I’m not real sure what constitutes an anti-toy, though… wrestling videos, maybe? The cure could be worse than the disease.

I just discovered a tool on the account page called “Improve Your Recommendations.” Maybe this is the overt control I’ve been hoping for? I’ve tried to check all the aggressive and unfriendly categories, the genres of entertainment media that imply impatience and close-mindedness and callousness, in hopes that Amazon determines I could not possibly be a parent.

Is it worth it to me to have Amazon’s profiler conclude that I’m a mean-spirited, selfish prick? If that’s what it takes to get Playskool out of my Gold Box, yes.

We’ve achieved a milestone here at debris.com: last week I received a demand letter (via email) from a lawyer regarding a piece I wrote in February. It begins,

This office represents Scott Mc______. This letter is intended to be a formal demand for retraction and notice that further publication of defamatory statements regarding Mr. Mc______ exposes debris.com to substantial liability.

Accompanying the hot flash that developed while reading the letter was a desperate question: who is Scott Mc________? The name wasn’t even vaguely familiar. I had to search my own website for it.

Turns out he’s the concierge at the Marriott in San Francisco. I wrote a reaction to a wonderfully revealing cover article in the SF Chronicle Magazine called Power Brokers, in which Mc______ said some things that I found cocky, and a few I found offensive. My article’s title was a play on the French origins of the word concierge; I called it “that’s French for ‘$20, please’.”

But if you’re looking for defamatory language, you won’t find it. Mc______’s attorney specified an allegedly libelous sentence in my article and demanded that I remove it. So I did.

I hear about this sort of thing all the time: someone receives a letter from a lawyer and, seeing no recourse but an expensive battle, complies without a fight. Would I give in so easily? The answer is yes. I folded like an origami crane.

I consulted my attorney first, of course. In her opinion, the sarcastic comment in my piece was not likely to be considered libelous by a judge. But the bigger issue for me was the cost of the battle, and my desire to prove a point. What was it worth to me to fight for my text? In this case, not a lot, for reasons implied in the demand letter: apparently Mr. Mc______ is no longer an employee of the SF Marriott.

How could he go from “power broker” to unemployed in six months? The implication didn’t make sense; a top hotel wouldn’t fire its chief concierge, who just last December had earned the hotel a Silver Plume from WHERE Magazine as “Concierge of the Year”. A moment’s research exposed the story. According to Bruce Bellingham of the SF Examiner,

Scott Mc______, former chief concierge at the downtown Marriott, was laid off by the hotel and was suspended by the Clefs d’Or, the dignified concierge clan, for one year. Scott was apparently a victim of hotel budget cutbacks. But the Clefs d’Or people are more outspoken. “Scott should not have been so indiscreet in his remarks to a Chronicle reporter about how gratuities might be handled,” said one vet of the service industry.

The news changed my opinion. I realized that Mc______’s comments in the “Power Brokers” article had cost him enough grief. I didn’t need to add to his problems. That’s why I rewrote my article without argument. I even toned down some of the comments not identified by Mc______’s attorney, in a good-faith effort to appease Mc______.

As you probably know, I’ve said some dumb things in my time; it’s one of the peculiar joys of being me. I’ve been fortunate that none of my really poorly-considered statements have ended up in the newspaper… which is not to say they don’t get printed, for I write ‘em here all the time. But at least I can change my articles later. In contrast, there’s no reprinting hundreds of thousands of copies of the Chronicle Magazine.

I decided that I didn’t want to cause Scott Mc______ any harm. Per the demand letter, I immediately removed any and all [allegedly] defamatory language from my original article, and this piece is my retraction.

(That said, I’m not sure what the point of writing a retraction is. In print, I can see the value of “setting the record straight.” But online, it seems to me that writing yet another article just reminds everyone of the first one, which might have been better left in the past. But I am not a lawyer, as the saying goes, so I’ll just assume there is some value to them for me to write this.)

Persistent beeping from the front of the house roused me from the deep concentration that marks my typical work days. (No, really.) We don’t get many callers out here, so I had to investigate. I found a cherry-picker parked in my driveway, and an anonymous hardhat peering up at a utility pole.

The hardhat guy thought I intended to ask how long he’d be blocking my driveway. I imagine that’s the sort of inquiry he gets all the time: “do whatever you want, but don’t get in my way.” He couldn’t predict that I have concerns of a different sort — I rarely go anywhere, but I have extreme reservations about unannounced meddling on my property.

He said he would be upgrading the cable hardware. “We’re not customers,” I pointed out. “There’s no need to upgrade the hardware.” He said, “this is the end of the line,” which seemed to prove my point more than his: if this is the end of the line, and I’m not using it, why upgrade the hardware?

I asked him for ID. “I don’t have it with me,” he said, providing an early contender for a mental competition I judge called “the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day.” I told him, “I’m afraid I can’t let you go up the pole then.” He called his supervisor, who showed up with no ID, no papers, and no uniform. He did have a sidekick, who was fashionably dressed in a track suit.

His explanation: “We’re making new IDs, but they haven’t been sent out yet.” I can invent better lies than that with one brain hemisphere tied behind my back. I asked whether they had any papers authorizing the work, hoping to find some official work orders from Comcast, the alleged employer. The supervisor said that all such papers are kept at headquarters. Sigh.

Then he pointed to the magnetic “Comcast” label on the door of their rented Penske truck, as if that should authorize them. I said, “I can buy a sticker like that for five dollars.” In truth I could probably print one on my inkjet for less. “OK, so you have no ID and no papers, no proof at all. Why should I believe you’re from Comcast?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Doesn’t Comcast provide uniforms?” Even the guys who spray for bugs have corporate logos on their shirts.

He said, “my orange vest is my uniform,” which made me wonder, what about the guy in the track suit? He offered to show me drivers’ licenses as IDs. I agreed. I fetched my digital camera.

I was pretty bothered by the whole episode. They’d interrupted my morning, annoyed me with their inability to satisfy a fairly basic security inquiry, triggered my paranoia by promising to interfere with data cables, and beyond that they were doing something I didn’t need or want done. Add to that the close proximity of their cable to my ISDN line; there was, as far as I was concerned, some risk that through carelessness they could knock me offline.

One of the crew managed to produce an ID — a generic vinyl-covered hanging badge with a photo and name. I snapped a picture of it. My camera took about 10 seconds to make the exposure. That’s a clear indication that something is wrong, but under the pressure of the moment (I was facing down four irritated-looking linemen with leather gloves and helmets at this point), I ignored it. I shot a picture of the guy’s driver’s license next. It took another 10 seconds. Stubborn to the last, I shook off my doubts, ignoring the accumulating evidence that I’d overlooked something (e.g. “why can’t I see anything in the camera’s LCD besides a reflection of my nose?”) The crew then dispersed, and the supe offered his driver’s license. “Sure,” I said, “I’ll have the whole collection.” And then it hit me… my lens cap was still on.

This may be why I never went to law school. I’ve mastered the part about righteous indignation, but I missed out on some of life’s lessons about basic preparation for a fight.

But I rallied. I salvaged what was left of my indignation and snapped a picture (with actual light coming into the camera lens) of the supervisor’s license, and another of the truck’s license plate.

Comcast has an opportunity to improve its public relations here. Their website shows no obvious telephone numbers, and the “contact us” area seems to dead-end in a feedback form. I resorted to directory assistance and found the corporate telephone number.

After about three levels of voice-mail navigation I found an option to list the maintenance crews in my area. Ten minutes later, I hung up; the voice was reciting the name of every street in every town within 25 miles.

Comcast needs to furnish IDs and business cards to their linemen. Sure, such credentials can be faked, but that’s a lousy argument for not bothering to make them.

So anyway there’s a decent chance that my unrest is being closely monitored, keystroke by keystroke, by a team of Ashcroft’s minions. See, an hour after the cable crew left, a second unit showed up. This team had company uniforms and trucks that weren’t rented. And they didn’t know who the first crew was. What are the chances that two separate crews from one cable company need to work on the same pole on the same day?

The Environmental Working Group’s report that farmed salmon contains PCBs is just the latest development in a trend. It’s been a tough year for the salmon farming industry. Let’s review.

In January, the European Union issued limits on the amount of the chemical compound canthaxanthin that can be added to poultry and salmon feed. Canthaxanthin is a pigment that’s sold as a feed additive and chemical tanning agent.

If canthaxanthin is so safe that companies sell it over the counter in pure form as a cosmetic, why would the EU ban it? Because it’s not as safe as everybody thought: it causes crystalline deposits in the retina. The EU knew this since 1997; the data is given in the minutes of their 107th Meeting of the Scientific Committee for Food. It just took them five years to act on the findings.

Why would fish farmers add a chemical pigment to salmon feed? Because farmed salmon isn’t naturally pink, but grey: farmed salmon is dyed pink because nobody would buy gray salmon. Salmon farmers pick a dye color just like you’d select paint, from a chip chart called a SalmoFan.

In April, Seattle law firm Smith & Lowney filed lawsuits against three major US grocery chains: Kroger, Safeway, Albertsons, demanding that farmed salmon be labelled “artificially colored.” Among other useful resources, Smith & Lowney’s salmon-dye lawsuit website shows a picture of a SalmoFan.

In May, all three grocery chains agreed to label farmed salmon as artifically colored.

So now, with the new labels in place and the publicity from the lawsuits, consumers are becoming aware of the risks of chemical additives in farmed fish. But there’s more to the story.

A November, 2000 report entitled Farmed and Dangerous: Human Health Risks Associated With Salmon Farming [PDF; 184k] details some of the problems. For example, antibiotics fed to fish lead to the development of antibiotic-resistant disease in humans.

A February, 2003 report entitled The Hidden Costs of Farmed Salmon (also available as a 511k PDF) details additional problems. For example, “it takes nearly two and a half pounds of smaller fish to raise one pound of farmed salmon — reducing the amount of seafood by 59 percent.”

Which brings us back to the latest gill-net threatening the salmon-farming industry, the EWG’s PCB report. Here are a few key findings:

• Seven of ten farmed salmon purchased at grocery stores in Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon were contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
• If farmed salmon with the average PCB level found in this study were caught in the wild, EPA advice would restrict consumption to no more than one meal a month.

It’s like the mercury-in-the-tuna problem… you might think that by eating salmon you’re doing something healthy, when fact you’re poisoning yourself, unless the salmon was caught in the wild. It is regrettable that this is happening, because there are probably nontoxic ways to raise salmon commercially. There’s just been no economic incentive to do so. Not until now, anyway.