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Profit and Earth

Friday, November 20, 2009
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Sell all of it a 300 % profit (slurp!).
Die of scurvy.
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30 comments :

  1. My friend said when life throws shit at you, make manure.. woh toh aur bhi achcha hua!
    :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Umm...shit aur bhi achcha hua? Manure aur bhi achcha hua? Life aur bhi achcha hua? Lemonade aur bhi achhca hua? Scurvy aur bhi achcha hua?

    What do you mean actually?

    Since your friend said it before this post was ever thought of, what he/she said is probably not relevant here.

    So I will also type some irrelevant nonsense here that justs just buzzing in my non alcoholically drunken head.

    When life throws lemons make lemonade.

    Wife is Life......1)

    When wife throws lemons at you, she probably ate some too and wants to share.

    That means wife ate lemons.

    You are what you eat.

    So wife is lemons...2)

    From 1) & 2),
    when life throws lemons at you, it basically means wife is throwing herself at you. Thats the time to make love not lemonade. Stupid!

    ReplyDelete
  3. LOL!!!

    when life gives you lemon, try asking the life why it gave you lemons when you asked for oranges!

    ReplyDelete
  4. But Stupii, if I sell ALL of it, then how will I die of Scurvy? :S

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, I write weird stuff. And I write normal stuff in a weird way.

    I should just explain what I mean, without expecting anyone to understand.

    Lemons represent the good stuff provided by nature. It is finally this stuff that supports life on earth.

    Money (profits) in the post represents just money (profits). Money is a representation of 'good thing' humans invented to settle give and take of 'good things' between themselves.

    But then humans started thinking money itself to be the 'good thing' instead of representation of 'good thing'. So basically convert everything into money 'good thing' irrespective of what happens to the actual 'good things' in the process. If this wanton behavior continues, maybe one day humans will collect lots of numbers in accounts around the world (wow! good thing!) but die because all the actual necessary good things will be gone.

    So you have lemons, the good things. The real good things that life needs. But then, its nothing compared to the great good thing money! So lets convert the good thing lemons into 'great good thing' 300% profit is the idea! Of course when its all converted to the unreal thing money, we will all be so happy for some time. But in the absence of the real good essential thing for life itself, the end.

    The lemonade vendor got lots of money. But died of vitamin C deficiency as was more inclined to greedily convert ALL lemonade to money rather than enjoying and keeping some of it for himself :P

    Of course I am not saying money is bad. Its what gets all kind of ac 'actual good stuff' redistributed amongst humans as per needs. Without money Earth would not have been able to support as much human population.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi!

    You remember my also saying something similar (as this post) somewhere? Of course, the greater problem is nobody wants your lemonade (okay maybe, except for me ;) )! Simply because, an MNC has taken over all the lemonade-making business! They make lemonade in automated fashion, in huge quantities! There are just too many people out there willing to make lemonade manually! They sell this lemonade in hope that they could buy potatoes and internet connection! ;) But then the problem is everyone buys lemonade from that MNC! Nobody needs so many people manually squeezing lemons, when it could be done by machines, and bought at cheaper rates!

    I know, you're talking of an attitudinal problem, the existence of which I don't deny, but I think the problem I'm pointing out is more fundamental and serious.

    What we're now trying to do because of desperation to survive is trying to push our lemonade too hard through misguiding advertising, or by adding some weird flavors to it, only to make it more attractive, fundamentally not altering anything with the basic drink.

    Anyway, though I could understand the post entirely, it was good you also came with an explanation. Otherwise, the paranoid me was just worried if your next post would be:

    "When your doctor tells you, 'your gums are so much in pink of health that they're bleeding', it is not a compliment, but only means you're suffering from scurvy"!

    Anyway, though vitamin C is water-soluble, its excessive dosage could cause oxalate stones in kidney/bladder.

    So, my only request is please don't ingest all the lemons that you have! Pass on some to me, too! ;)

    Nice post! And nicer to see you come up with an explanation! :)

    TC.

    ReplyDelete
  7. first, i didn't think of the analogy, so an apology :)
    and WOW:)

    @ketan interesting and realistic addition, but i think many are going away from the mnc lemonade disgusted with plastic vitamin c powder it added in its chinese company..and there is no place to grow lemon because the bellary brothers are mining in your land..

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  8. stupidosaur, oneday the aliens are going to come and we are going to give them money and they are going to get a good laugh out of it..

    PS : if something happened to the data of the swiss type bank computers, what happen to the world (or rather Indian politicos)

    PPS : on the concept of money people buy land in jupiter and mars too..

    ReplyDelete
  9. @bond_girl

    Thanks.

    @Ketan

    I would buy hygienic manually made lemonade any day over MNC packed ones.

    The packed ones like Tropicana say in the contents (eg for orange juice):

    Orange juice concentrate + water.

    Both contents signal red flags for me:

    1) First orange juice concentrate was made from orange juice (perhaps for cheaper transportation, cheaper and longer storage etc). I believe that will definitely damage the nutritional value considerably. In fact I had heard that vitamin C is so unstable that it starts degenerating as soon as its exposed to normal light. And then again vitamin C is not the only nutrient! Even consider all nutrients identified by science, there would be many more unidentified I suspect. In fact more unstable the molecule, more is the chance that it has not been discovered so far! Anyways I read somewhere B12 was discovered owing to symptoms of people suffering from its actual deficiency. I am deviating from the topic! In short concentrated orange juice - poorer nutritional value. I don't mean litre for litre compared to fresh orange juice. That may be higher (or maybe not). I mean total quantity in a litre vs total quantity in concentrate made from that litre.

    2) 'Just add water!' - They never say how much water!!!

    In fact some brands of juice boxes say one more thing in contents : Nature Identical Flavouring substances!!!!! That is in fine print, while the main box says ->100%<- Natural in big letters! So basically they have identified & isolated the natural molecule(s) that give orange its flavour, so adding it to concentrate + water still keeps it natural it seems :P. So maybe they can't be sued. But what that tells me is that they can put any amount of water to the concentrate and add 'nature identical flavoring substances' to compensate for the bland taste consequently produced!!!

    In fact earlier Tropicana used to print the nutritional information including vitamins. But ever since this 100% gimmick has started (and also some times prior to that I think) , they print only the macronutrients (sugar free, cholesterol free juice! wow! who would have thought that possible!) and maybe some minerals. No vitamins. One vitamin they do mention is vitamin C, if the contents say ascorbic acid added. (did you know SCURvy was the first word, and what prevented scurvy got named a-SCORbic acid)

    And this adding water part is not just my opinion. After I formed that opinion I read somewhere that in USA itself there was huge outrage and lawsuit against Pepsico (Tropicana) for adding water to natural juice and shortchanging customers without clearly indicating it. Based on what I read (I am really trying to remember where but can't), this was few years or decades ago. Google search of lawsuit tropicana juice etc gives huge amt of results. So don't know where info will be burried in that, or if it will be absent in case it was in days internet was not such a rage.

    ReplyDelete
  10. However one interesting link I got at very top was http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/food-stores/4486689-1.html

    with little more details on same at
    http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/tropicana.html.

    Could this be the case that was at back of my mind? Maybe.

    Also when I went to Canada, I saw two varieties of juices. One which said made from concentrate and one which boldly highlighted 'Not from Concentrate!' as marketing strategy itself!. In fact some reserach on net indicates that Tropicana pioneered not from concentrate juice using some flash pasteurization technique. It 'retains flavour and texture'. I wonder if it retains nutrients.

    But then in India I see only juices from concentrate, with water and nature identical flavour that too touted to be 100% :P! I guess Pepsico is shortchanging Indian consumers that way. Maybe Indra Nooyi said go ahead! the suckers will not notice it!

    In fact one day I read a ridiculous article in some prominent newspaper/magazine that Indra Nooyi eats PepsiCo's junk all day. It cleverly/ridiculously inserted some 6-7 Pepsico products in the article as if thats what Indra Nooyi lived on! I just try to get something similar from google. The very first result for searching 'Indra Nooyi Lunch':
    http://sify.com/finance/indra-nooyi-addicted-to-pepsi-news-default-jegxbpjiabf.html

    Can't believe she stooped so low or approved of stooping so low for 'marketing'. And the original article didn't feature like an advertisement. The publication printed it like real significant news! And it was much more ridiculously detailed than the link I think! I started laughing somewhere from the first/second line of that article!

    The lemonade drinks which you seem to be referring to may be limca, 7 up. LMN etc. I haven't seen their ingredients. But I consider them just soft drinks with flavours and maybe little lemon juice added to substantiate claims of fruit content. They never mention volume of lemon juice vs other substances. I checked LMN one day. They added ascorbic acid, nature identical flavour etc. Why would they need it if they already put good amount of real lemon?

    Anyways I somehow trust Real Active brand more than others. It does not have 'nature identical favours' at least! So I can trust my tongue to 'sense' how much fruit they might really contain.

    //Anyway, though vitamin C is water-soluble, its excessive dosage could cause oxalate stones in kidney/bladder.

    I knew oxalates cause stones, and I knew high vitamin c is bad for kidneys. But I didn't know vitamin C would cause stones. I thought it might be causing some other kind of overloading related renal stress/damage/failure.

    In fact my aunt was diagnosed with a very small kidney stone. Doctor advised drinking nimbu pani every morning (I don't know if salt sugar were allowed in it) to 'dissolve' it away. It really worked and her pain has gone (as far as I know). Intuitively it sort of made sense to me thinking acidic nature of vitamin C might help eat away the stone. Or maybe nephrons would be happy to recieve vitamin and work better (though in right amounts, not overdose, which as I said I thought to be causing some 'other kind of stress' as blood vitamin C levels have to be kept normal and hence cells would have to overwork to remove the excess).

    So what explains oxalate producing vitamin C (as you say) removing the kidney stone?

    P.S.: Some years ago I read somewhere that Vitamin C in particular high concentration in lab 'inactivated HIV virus'. Wonder what they meant if virus are anyways never active outside their host cell. Did theu mean the virus no longer remained capable of infecting even when brought in contact with host cells?

    P.S.2: In another article i read that vitamin C itself has carcinogenic properties in high concentrations!

    P.S.3: Sending lemons to your place cost more than the lemons themselves! So I won't pass em on ;)

    ReplyDelete
  11. @wise donkey

    //first, i didn't think of the analogy, so an apology :)
    and WOW:)

    Title was supposed to be a hint. But never mind. I am weird ;)


    //stupidosaur, oneday the aliens are going to come and we are going to give them money and they are going to get a good laugh out of it..

    ..if those aliens 'laugh' ;)

    //PS : if something happened to the data of the swiss type bank computers, what happen to the world (or rather Indian politicos)

    Well any company does have lots of tape and such backups taken, and even distributed to geographically different location in case one place gets artificially/naturally destroyed.

    Its all standard part of what companies call 'Business Continuity Plan'.

    Especially when so much money is involved, Swiss Bank would have definitely taken all possible measures even if costs are high. So go ahead and open a swiss bank account without worries ;). Except the worry of "What the heck will I put in it?".


    //PPS : on the concept of money people buy land in jupiter and mars too..

    I had heard of moon. Not aware of jupiter and mars property deals. Anyways, who sold them? Nasa? US government? Russian space agency/government? Now that we also have Chandrayan and stuff done, can our government also sell some? Politicians will take all the money home I guess.

    ReplyDelete
  12. didn't read the title :(

    aliens will atleast learn to laugh, when they hear us offering money..

    i heard about some guy from hyderabad buyin a piece of land in moon..i think jupiter and mars also will search and give link..

    on swiss..just wait..someone is going to send a virus into those mainframes. nothing can be definite..

    ReplyDelete
  13. This is the cancellation of the belief that most ppl are stupid.
    And since i do believe that belief, you are either not stupid, or you're not weird. Since most ppl are stupid, stupidity is not weird any longer. But then, most people are stupidly stupid, you are creativley stupid. :-| Hence, the belief was just a stupid belief. Hence you're weird not stupid. ~x(

    ReplyDelete
  14. http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/mar/27moon.htm
    http://www.lunarregistry.com/?lr_link
    http://www.moonestates.com/cat_Mars.asp

    (not jupiter just mars and venus)

    ReplyDelete
  15. When life gives you lemons,cut them in half and rub them on your elbows and knees.

    ReplyDelete
  16. do you DIE of scurvy? *doubtful*

    ReplyDelete
  17. whats worse?
    when life gives you lemon, claim its some dead celeb's lemon and auction it to someone for 30000% profit and let everyone suffer from scurvy..

    ReplyDelete
  18. Ohhh. Mujhe bhi analogy nai dikhi thi! :(
    But now I get it. It had hidden moral meaning behind it. I totally get it.

    Of course, when the guy squeezes the lemons in front of you, its obviously so much better. And the packaged lemonade doesn't even taste like lemonade. Like, REAL lemonade.
    Btw, is lemonade supposed to have sugar? I hope so, because I always make lemonade as lemons + sugar +water.
    But you know, Real juice is not good. Have the mango flavor. Its like Frooti, I swear! Or Jumpin. And we ALL know how 'fresh and juicy' Frooti is.
    Your Just Add Water theory is awesome!! You should totally send it to a newspaper and get on this mission where you investigate the Juice factories in the dead of night and as soon as the guard is about to catch you, you all run out. And then the next day in the newspapers, the headline is 'Witty Blogger exposes Juice people's Dark, Evil Face' or ' Juice people's monopoly over juices exposed by a man who likes to be called 'Stupid' '
    You'll be famous overnight!
    But then, I dunno who you actually are so maybe you're already famous...like some writer or investigative journalist.
    Also, even if all of this is exposed, our consumer laws aren't strong enough, I think. I heard about this case in USA where this girl's father died due to cancer caused by cigarettes. So she sued the company even though they printed on the box that its hardul to health and all. But the consumer laws are pretty strong and her arguments were supposedly genius so they won and she got compensated. I dunno much about this case, but I'll look it up and let you know.

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  19. Well Ketan. I understand what you say. But then again, I believe many people started drinking so much juice in India after so many packaged juice came to be offered? (I don't have statistics just a feeling.)

    The people who buy these packaged juices would not go to the usual roadside juice wallas considering hygiene. I myself suffered from jaundice during rainy season 2 years ago. Just a few days prior to that, I had noticed as I started drinking the juice that the person who peeled the mosambi and extracted the juice had extremely long and dirty nails. fingers were also quite dirty. I did scold him (I was a regular there.). But still it haunts me as one of the potential causes of my jaundice, which started a series of disastrous events for me.

    Anyways, so much juice culture has started quite recently in India I think, with people having disposable income. My father once commented that he finds my drinking almost 2 glasses juice a day weird. He said in their days they never needed juice and such! (its a different thing that he too now stocks boxes of juice in fridge and drinks. Hence my above depth of analysis ;). I prefer the fresh juice though, again as explained in the analysis.)

    In fact its not just me. Where I work, even most other 'IT people' throng around fresh juice stall even though the shop next to it sells boxed juice, and even though the boxed juice is cheaper per unit volume, and one doesn't need to wait to get it like fresh extracted juice.

    So, it isn't like MNCs are like invincible superbeings. Well ok they kinda are, but even MNCs can go kaput if consumers disown it. Besides, MNCs also serve their good function. We get so many things at their present cheap rate due to bulk mfg by big companies.

    MNC would also constantly find some alternative products or even line of business, basically 'diversify'.

    So if the market isn't there, those too many MNCs and too many people would be stupid if they keep trying to sell lemonade. They will need to find some other occupation, like it or not. Like I am in IT, like it or not ;)

    I think there will be quite a big class of people who will start drinking juice less frequently or drink soft drink instead of juice if these boxed juices stop. So consumer base is there precisely because product is there! (of course I am talking all qualitative theory as its coming to my head. I don't know statistics.) I guess even though fresh juice is better than boxed, boxed juice is better for their health instead of no juice?

    Human world and economy is not so black and white, evil and good. By not black and white I don't just mean there are in between gray shades. Rather instead of black and white its all multicoloured where we cant even begin to conclude if it would be appropriate to compare a shade of one colour to another shade of entirey different colour!

    Few years back (before jaundice and other stuff) I was quite a 'health buff'. My major spendings of the day used to be at fruit and vegetable vendors. I used to sometimes think, what if all these rich yougsters setup a deal with all those farmers who were committing suicide to provide a guaranteed market? It would be in selfish (Ayn Rand happy ;) )health interest of these richie richs, and those farmers would survive (of course Ayn Rand might despise those 'vermin' or something?).

    Right now lots of thoughts branched out from above. Some of them are old and used to be clearer earlier. These days I don't have much clarity or linearity of thought or time. Hope to continue some day...if the brain becomes clearer :P

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  20. Well Srishti, if you see box of Real juice, they do honestly claim to put all added junk to it. However Real Active is another line from same company (Dabur). Even if I didn't know all the ingredients, I would tend to trust Dabur more than Pepsico (Tropicana) any day! Of course blindly trusting even Dabur wouldn't be advisable!


    P.S.: I am just a Stupid IT programmer guy(Electronics Engineer by qualification. What a joke ;) )

    ReplyDelete
  21. @ramya

    I wouldn't die. Nor would you. Doctors wouldn't let you. Treatment with vitamin C even though life saving, would be simple, and miraculously effective. But in olden days soldiers and sailors and travellers who didn't get fresh food for long time actually died miserably of extreme scurvy.

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  22. heheh..lol
    u explain more in ur comment section :P

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  23. Aaah! I had to read your comment here to understand the scurvy part ;) Good one as usual! :D

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  24. For someone who restricts posts to 100 words at max, you seem to do a lot of explaining in the comments section :P

    Don't get me wrong, both are equally enlightening and equally hillarious! Keep up the profound philosophy ;)

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  25. LOL! Can't resist following your blog from now!

    ReplyDelete

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