Taco Bell's statistically invalid promotion

So Jacoby Ellsbury just stole second base in game 2 of the world series. Taco Bell has a promotion that says everybody in the United States can have a free taco.

This has to be one of the most horseshit offers ever, both in spirit and statistical impossibility.

Lets look at the numbers.

• Offer is limited to 2-5pm local time on October 30, 2007. (180 minutes)
  
• Of course, most people are at work between 2 and 5 pm on a Tuesday. This is the "horseshit in spirit" reasoning. The MLB broadcasters even mentioned that they'd serve more between 2 and 5 AM.
  
• As of July, 2007, there were 301,139,945 people in the United states. (source)
• 202,360,787 between ages 14 and 65
• 12% live in poverty. Poor people are more likely to give a shit about a free Taco Bell Taco. 12% of the US population is 36,136,793
  
• The last 5 times I went to Taco Bell, it took them 5-10 minutes to complete my order.
• Lets be generous and say that they could turn around an order in 5 seconds, assuming everybody is just getting their free taco and nothing else, and that everybody pays attention and moves forward in line in an assembly line fashion.
• Lets be more generous and pretend that each store just continuously cranks out tacos and puts them in a big pile at the register, and everybody can just take one and go. Conceivably (but not practically) they could deliver 90 per minute, if every customer was running in unison through the queue and grabbed their free taco with the skill and precision of a relay racer receiving the baton handoff.
• As of 2006, there were 5,608 Taco Bell locations in the United States. (source) The numbers have been in decline for the past several years, and Taco Bell's food continues to suck, so there's no good reason to assume that that number has increased significantly in 2007. Again, though, we'll be generous and round up to an even 6000.
• So using the actual numbers and realistic estimates from above, 5608 stores can serve a taco every 5 seconds (12 per minute) for 180 minutes.
  
• 5806 x 12 x 180 = 12,540,960 tacos available.
• So there's no way "everybody in America" is eligible. They can't statistically be eligible. Not all of them. Each of them, individually, can *think* they're eligible. But they'll be wrong. Most of them can't be.
• Statistically, 96% of America is ineligible for this promotion.
  
• In other words: Look at the 12 people on your left. Look at the 12 people to your right. One of you is eligible.
  
• Remember, there's 36 million people living in poverty. That's only enough for 1 out of every 3 poor people.
  
• Using those generous numbers from above... 6000 stores can each serve 90 tacos per minute for 180 minutes.
• 6000 x 90 x 180 = 97.2 million tacos available.
• Again, there's no way that everybody in America is eligible. We're up to about 33% of the population give or take. Close to half the if you only include ages 14-65, but that's only if you concede that old people and kids don't matter, you ageist jerk.
• So now, look to your left, and look to your right. Now "only" 2 of you aren't eligible.
• 1 of you is eligible if you knock over the little kid or grandma next to you. (ageist jerks only.)
  

Some summary bullet points.

• Taco Bell states that 100% of America is eligible for this promotion.
  
• The actual number is closer to 4%
• Thus, Taco Bell is confused about the difference between 100% and 4%.

Nice job Taco Bell. You're 100% awesome!

Also, there's a rumor that Taco Bell taco meat isn't really beef at all (hence, that's why they call it "meat". It being made from "whatever" meaty goodness is in the scraps pile.) This is of course ridiculous. I'm pretty sure Taco Bell meat is made from 100% USDA Beef.

vanilla tootsie rolls

vanilla tootsie rolls are quite tasty. that's all.

Attention Arby's: You suck.

Reasons why Arby's, with particular attention to the Arby's on Hammond Drive, sucks.

1. They switched to Pepsi products last year. I could forgive this somewhat, because the Jamocha shakes are still quite tasty.
2. They no longer have baked potatoes
• The guy behind the counter suggested I get an order of the "Loaded Potato Bites", which are essentially deep fried tater tots with cheese and bacon in them. Not that I have anything against deep-frying, tater-tots, bacon, or cheese; on the contrary, I'm a huge fan of deep-frying, tater-tots, bacon, and cheese. But it's certainly no substitute for a baked potato
  
3. They no longer have HomeStyle Fries.
   
• Worse - they guy behind the counter said they replaced them with the potato cakes. I'm not sure what his definition of "replace" is, but they had them both (along with curly fries) for as long as I can remember.
  

Many times in the past I've gone into Arby's and ordered a loaded baked potato, an order of homestyle fries, and a diet coke. (see.. the diet coke cancels out the sour cream and cheese, and the healthy "baked" potato cancels out the french fries. I never figured out how to counterbalance the bacon and butter, though...) Now, apparently, I'm stuck ordering a milkshake and a dry-ass roast beef sandwich.

In summary:
Arby's -- you suck.

Sincerely,
Jake

those crazy vegans...

My sister recently got me a pizzelle iron for my birthday, so I thought it would be nice to make her a batch of tasty pizzelles for a treat. Unfortunately (for me) she eats a vegan diet. So the normal "4 eggs, 2 sticks of butter" recipe wouldn't work very well for this purpose. Interestingly, as far as I could find, there are no "vegan pizzelle" recipes on the Internet, so I got to make up my own. Not a big deal... there's plenty of egg substitutes and margerine to choose from out there.

So during lunch the other day, I ran over to Whole Foods (not a normal stomping ground for me) and finally found some Ener-G Egg Substitute. I figured I could get the rest of the ingredients at the local megamart, for about $302 less. I figured wrong. I started the process of gathering ingredients, and I noticed that the margerine had whey in it. Whey is dairy-derived, so I made an honest effort to find a whey-free margerine at the local megamart. No such luck. Butter-flavored Crisco it is! Of course, since I regularly eat meat and dairy and eggs and such, I am not 100% sure that Crisco is really *really* vegan, because none of the sample recipes I looked through (other cookie recipes, etc) ever used it. To me it seemed like an obvious choice - it's (artificially) buttery flavored, it's vegetable shortening - what more do you want? Apparently, from what I can tell, the big thing about shortening is that it's "hydrogenated", which, according to this site, is bad. I quote:

Hydrogenating vegetable oils is one of the worst forms of processing as it produces unnatural trans-fats which have an even worse effect than ordinary saturated fat in raising cholesterol and increasing heart disease risk.

To me, that sounds like a fair tradeoff. I'm making COOKIES. I'm making them in such a way as to avoid the use of animal products, because that's what my sister doesn't eat. Cookies are not supposed to be healthful. They are cookies. There's a bunch of similar rules that say you're
supposed to use "unrefined sugar" and fancy flour and crap like that. Maybe if I was making pasta or something, which as a main course should be the thing providing you with nutrients and such, I would use the fancy flour that wasn't super-processed. I'm not. I'm making cookies. If you're relying on the cookies to be healthful, and provide you with your daily nutrients, you're shit out of luck. If you want tasty cookies, well.. I can try to help out with that. I'll post the recipe I used below. If you stumbled across this page looking for vegan pizzelle recipes, feel free to use it. Post it elsewhere, if you want, providing you credit me. Linking to it is preferred.


The pizzelles turned out... okay. I ate one. They seemed... harder... than the ones I made a few weeks ago. I did, however, make those on a different pizzelle iron. So maybe this is a product of the hardware, and not the software. They are definitely harder, though, and much more dense. And they didn't seem to brown as quickly, which could be due to the fact that I was using an iron for the first time and it runs at a slightly different temperature, but most likely is a result of there not being any butter or eggs in the recipe.


*shrug*


Anyhow, the recipe I used is as follows.

• 1/2 cup butter flavored Crisco


• 1 cup sugar


• 2 eggs worth of egg substitute (I used Ener-G Egg Replacer - 1 Tbsp powder and 4 Tbsp water, mixed together)


• 2 tsp baking powder


• 1 tsp anise oil
  
  
  • or 2 tsp vanilla extract
  
  
  • or 2 tsp lemon extract
  
  
  • or 2 Tbsp cocoa
  
  
  • or 2 tsp cinnamon


• 1/2 tsp salt


• 2 1/2 - 3 cups flour - or enough to make firm soft dough. (not sticky)

Directions:

• Cream fat and sugar


• add wet stuff


• add dry stuff


• roll dough into balls. The size of the ball is dependenent on whether you have a 3" or 4" pizzelle iron


• put dough on heated pizzelle iron. Cook according to manufacturer's directions. My grandma timed them by saying a "hail mary", whereas my dad used the equally effective (if not quite as holy) stopwatch method.

That's about it.

the great Mini-Moo debate

By now, everybody knows that mini-moo brand dairy creamers do not *need* to be refrigerated. The outstanding issue, of course, is whether or not they *want* to be refrigerated.

Do Mini Moos want to be refrigerated.

Yes

No