Google Transit now in Rhode Island

A semi-Earth Day related post for Earth Day:

Google Transit now covers RIPTA buses in Rhode Island. I will use it for all my route planning needs. (In fact, I don't have a choice as the official RIPTA trip planner now simply embeds Google Maps.) Unfortunately, while the service is quite useful now, imagine what it would be like if it included systems that actually connect? Currently, the Bay Area appears to be the only area in the US which covers multiple systems (and it already has its own multi-system route planner). I think Google has an initiative to help transit agencies publish their information (which allows us to use alternative route planners).

The trip planner passed my sanity check: I asked for directions to the airport and it was smart enough to know that one should never take the 20 (it always leaves earlier and arrives later than the 14 -- not sure what its purpose really is).

Also, some tiny annoyances involving the walking direction. Walking directions currently lack detail (known bug) and you need to do more searches to get distances or routes for these (though strangely, timing information is given instead). There are also no controls on the preferred amount of walking distance.

The Tea in Honesty

No, this isn't an article about Honest Tea. Nor is it even a big deal, but as I sit here with my smoke detector having its second false alarm of the day, I thought I would share this.

It's hard to say if this happens more often in the tea industry than others, but there's a certain lack of honesty for many of these tea flavors. Take Good Earth's Red Tea Raspberry. The front of the box (seen here) shows pictures of raspberries, which isn't surprising. Until you look at the ingredients:

Rooibos, Chicory Root, Chamomile, Hibiscus, Ginger Root, Rose Petals, Spearmint, Licorice Root and Natural Flavors.

As I see it, even if those "Natural Flavors" are raspberry, they're a bit too far down the list for that flavor to invoke raspberries.

Here's another example: Republic of Tea's Wild Berry Plum (seen here). Again, the box shows what appears to be wild berries and a plum in the background. The ingredients read: China green tea, black currant pieces, natural flavors. At first glance, this might seem worse than the first case, but wild berry is another name for black currant, (in case you didn't know) so the only missing item is pear. Also, unlike the previous example, this tea actually tastes something like pear and black currant (I was told that I should add sugar if I wanted the raspberry tea to taste like raspberries).

How widespread is this? Please post your mistitled teas to comments. Also, your thoughts on why the tea companies do this. I guess raspberry teas sell better than "Chamomile Hibiscus Ginger Rose" teas (or whatever the real name should be). Neverthless, I won't be buying it anymore since I was looking for something that actually had raspberries in it.

Strange satirical dream

I had a dream where a friend was having trouble breathing and needed medical attention so I tried to call 911. I've been told that when you call 911 from a cell phone, the cell phone goes into a sort of lockdown mode, though I'm not sure if this is true. In any event, after misdialing several times, my phone went into a strange mode and launched a tiny web browser rather than connecting my call. The 911 "website" was a disaster -- all I wanted was an ambulance, but the website had all of the most frustrating aspects of websites:

1. It required registration ("New user? Click here!")
2. It had CAPTCHAs which were very difficult to type on the telephone keypad. Apparently, the site was the target of fake 911 calls by spammers.
   
3. The web page was extremely long and hard to navigate on the phone.
   
4. I think it had advertisements.

Obviously, this is not the future of emergency telephone services, but I find it sort of amusing in some ways. I woke up before things could get worse.

Laws, sausages, and misleading packaging

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
-- Otto von Bismarck

The connection between laws and sausages is clear, but what about sausages and false advertising? While I don't eat pork, I do eat chicken and occasionally buy (what I thought were) chicken sausages. While I try to examine food items (ingredients, manufacturers, etc.) I clearly missed a thorough reading of these. Of the three or four brands of chicken sausages I saw in an overpriced health-focused supermarket (you know what I'm talking about), all but one use a pork skin casing. This bothers me since I bought the chicken sausages to avoid pork and have assumed that others do the same. Additionally, since there is one brand that doesn't use pork, that tells me that it's possible.

See Al Fresco or Aidells (pick "Chicken and Apple") for some examples. I'll update this post later when I determine which brand is the "good" one.

Cutting down on snail-mail spam

Following up on this post: I got the nth credit card application in the mail and finally looked closely enough to see this phone number:

1-888-567-8688 (1-888-5-OPTOUT)

Searching for that phone number takes you to the FTC Privacy Protection Page, where you'll find several useful links for cutting down on junk mail from credit card companies and direct marketers.
In related links, take a look at carbonrally where you can "compete" for carbon reduction by making various promises. One of the actions you can take involves going to CatalogChoice.

Update (2.26.2008): A friend shares a link to GreenDimes -- a similar service, though this one seems to cost money.

Copying links from Google search results

You may have noticed that when you copy links from Google search results, you don't get what you expected -- when you hover over them, your browser says one thing, but when you right-click on them, it says another. For example, searching for snappletronics, Google gives you the code for a link like this: (emphasis not in original, obviously)

<a href="http://snappletronics.blogspot.com/"
class="l"
onmousedown="return rwt(this,'','','res','1','AFQjCNGxo5T82OPvPMIGpTmHTE3JzTBwzg','&sig2=vMD0Ey969KDVrwhFXwVgBw')">

What does this mean? It means that when you right-click on the link, some Javascript function gets to run and change the link, so the link turns from Snappletronics to Snappletronics (watch the tooltip or your browser's status bar). The second link tells Google that I clicked the link and maybe other identifying information. I believe this surreptitious link-changing is a pretty strong violation of "Don't be evil."

Fortunately, there's help if you use Firefox. If you have Greasemonkey, this script will remove their hooks and prevent them from changing the link on you.

Update (11.12.2010): The above script is now outdated. Depending on when you read this, this script might be a decent replacement.

Recommended viewing: Daily Show 1.30.2008

Jon Stewart takes apart CNN's The Situation Room. Hilarity ensues.