Superbowl Ads and Double Dipping - 2008-02-06 19:24:06
<<< Previous - Peruse some Random Video | Next - Tag'd by the 123 Meme >>>This year's superbowl became a totally different animal when I discovered that
the commercials have their own MySpace page. That seems a little surreal, but smart of the companies to do - I tend to miss the first part of the commercials and some are actually humorous enough to want to see again. (And the ads can be
seen on YouTube as well.) The Bridgestone screaming squirrel commercial and the FedEx giant pidgeons did make me laugh. Oh and the Cars.com ads, those were also amusing. Sadly I could watch the
Sobe Lifewater ad with the dancing lizards over again because of the deep goofiness of lizards dancing to Michael Jackson's Thriller. But then I'm always going to be attacted to anything with dancing lizards.
Also the comic book geek in me hopes very much that the movie
Ironman won't suck. Not that I was ever an Ironman fan, but we seriously do not need any more failed movies derived from comic book heros.
Tide's talking stain ad was annoying.
Their website was just as annoying. But of course I visited the site anyway, so I suppose that meant the ad worked. However I have no clue who would want to download the stain voice to use as a ringtone. Unless they planned to use it to make someone else crazy - that I can imagine. Way too easily, ugh.
Garmin has
an entire site for their commercial with Napoleon. And I found it fascinating especially for the Making Of page - great little documentary showing some behind the scenes footage. But then I'm easily fascinated by production footage. The real reason I had to look up the website - the music in the background of the commercial. I still can't figure out what 80s band it's reminding me of - but on that site under the Media tab you can download it. Damn clever. Heineken did something similar on their
Draughtkeg site - watch loading screen, choose Get into the dancefloor, then Just Watch, then at the end of the dorky dancing robots with faces (you could add your own, wheee) - it gives you the Download Soundtrack option. Because those catchy adsongs to do indeed worm into your brain. Anyway, if someone figures out who the Garmin song could be reminding me of, please let me know. It's been bugging me for days and
my usual commercial music go-to site hasn't got any info on it.
And because Jon didn't believe - yes, the New York Times had an article on Double Dipping...
Dip Once or Dip Twice?
Harold McGee, New York Times, Published: January 30, 2008
"The study, to be published later this year in the Journal of Food Safety, is the only one I’ve ever seen to proclaim that it was inspired by an episode of "Seinfeld." It was conducted as part of a Clemson University program designed to get undergraduate students involved in scientific research. Prof. Paul L. Dawson, a food microbiologist, proposed it after he saw a rerun of a 1993 "Seinfeld" show in which George Costanza is confronted at a funeral reception by Timmy, his girlfriend’s brother, after dipping the same chip twice.
...Professor Dawson told me that he had expected to find little or no microbial transfer from mouth to chip to dip, which would support George’s nonchalance. The results surprised him.
The team of nine students instructed volunteers to take a bite of a wheat cracker and dip the cracker for three seconds into about a tablespoon of a test dip. They then repeated the process with new crackers, for a total of either three or six double dips per dip sample. The team then analyzed the remaining dip and counted the number of aerobic bacteria in it. They didn’t determine whether any of the bacteria were harmful, and didn’t count anaerobic bacteria, which are harder to culture, or viruses.
There were six test dips: sterile water with three different degrees of acidity, a commercial salsa, a cheese dip and chocolate syrup.
On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.
Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.
The kind of dip made a difference in a couple of ways. The more acidic water samples had somewhat fewer bacteria, and the numbers of bacteria declined with time. But the acidic salsa picked up higher initial numbers of bacteria than the cheese or chocolate, because it was runny. The thicker the dip, the more stuck to the chip, and so the fewer bacteria were left behind in the bowl.
Professor Dawson said that Timmy was essentially correct. "The way I would put it is, before you have some dip at a party, look around and ask yourself, would I be willing to kiss everyone here? Because you don’t know who might be double dipping, and those who do are sharing their saliva with you.""
Granted it became a
MetaFilter thread after I read it in the Times online, but there ya go, someone did an actual study using the Double Dip theory. And a great idea too - I can imagine that this is definitely the kind of assignment that would get college students interested in the scientific method. Granted I was already interested, but the idea of having test subjects to try various dips - including chocolate syrup, ack - seems like a fun thing to write a research paper on.
0
Comments
Comments:
There are no comments yet for this item
To add your comment, click here.
