Saturday, April 21, 2012

Real thing

Updated 4/22/2012

An Italian contemporary art and design blog entitled CocaColla.it, apparently quite a good one, gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago—it had existed since 2010—under assault from a certain large international company with a similar-sounding name, for infringement of copyright.
Found at Bloggokin.it.
You can read about it, in somewhat undependable English, here, and a more extended text in Italian and English here. I don't think there's anything that can be done about it, but there is some other Coke news: [jump]

Coca-Cola and Pepsi have revised the way they prepare the caramel coloring used in the drinks, not so that it won't give their customers cancer, but so that they won't (according to California law) have to warn their customers that it might give them cancer—
"While we believe that there is no public health risk that justifies any such change, we did ask our caramel suppliers to take this step so that our products would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning," [spokesperson Diana] Garza-Ciarlante said in an email.
Natasha Harris. Photo from AP.
A New Zealand coroner's inquest heard evidence on Friday that the heart attack death in February 2010  of 30-year-old stay-at-home mother of eight Natasha Harris, of Invercargill, South Island, may have been caused by her daily consumption  of more than two gallons of Coke per day, which left her body dangerously depeleted of postassium.
Vivien Hodgkinson said her daughter-in-law would “go crazy if she ran out… she would get shakes, withdrawal symptoms, be angry, on edge and snappy.”

“We never knew it was any harm because it was soft drink with no warning labels, I’ve never seen her drink anything else the fridge was always full of Coke,” she said. “Maybe it needs warning signs.”

Coca-Cola Oceania told Fairfax [Media] that excessive consumption of any liquid, including water, could have health impacts.
And what do you suppose ever happened to the other Coca-Colla, this one in Spanish, the Bolivian energy drink launched with great fanfare by President Evo Morales in April 2010? It was a bit of the Real Thing! I can't find any references to it from later than that summer.

Update 4/22
ABL at Raw Story and Balloon Juice notes that noted Twitter twit Senator Chuck Grassley has sent out a missive in his inimitable style inviting a boycott of Coca-Cola:
U might think abt not drinking Coca Cola since companysucombed to pressure fr Leftist not to support ALEC
— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) April 22, 2012
Obviously the American Legislative Exchange Council is dear to the Senator's heart. What's not to love, for a legislator, about an organization that writes your legislation for you, for free, leaving you that much extra time for your main work, tweeting and dialing for dollars? You can bet he would have loved to have ALEC around during his 15 years in the Iowa state legislature. Of course they didn't have Twitter then either (1959-74; ALEC was founded in 1973), so he had a lot more free time.

As ABL indicates, Grassley will be warming to Coke again once his handlers tell him how much corn they buy (corn syrup is the principal ingredient of the drink).

Isn't it something to think of Grassley being a legislator (without ever learning to spell "succumb") since 1959, the year the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, Hawaii became a state, and Buddy Holly died? And did he once see Shelley plain?

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