WHO declares Swine Flu pandemic

… and will probably damage the economy further with the panic is will create.

Now, the main excuse of WHO is to increase the production of treatments available, increase funds, and kick governments into high gear to contain the virus.  The are declaring it as “unstoppable” ….. along with saying “oh, it’s just of moderate danger”.

OK … When people think of something being called a “global pandemic”, they totally ignore the part of the WHO stating “it’s just of moderate danger”.  People will freak, closing schools, camps, businesses, etc hurting the economy. SWB thinks that Dr. Margaret Chan needs to use brain before declaring a global pandemic possibly hurting the economy when it’s just getting ready to recover.  SWB thinks Chan is thinking more about Chan staying in the news than helping people deal with the virus.

Anyways …. Click Here for the Associated Press article by Maria Cheng and Frank Jordans as it appears on Yahoo!

-SWB

PS – Somehow I can see a Steven King movie coming out of this …

Robo-World … Cool Stuff

Looking for something to to with your kids since they are home now from school … or at least something to keep them from continually saying “I’m boooooooooored ….”?

Take your kids (small and big) to Robo-World at The Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh starting June 13th.

Exhibits range from a robotic air hockey game to a basketball shooting robotic arm to Andy.  This is definitely the stuff that makes kids of all ages jaws drop and go “oh …. ahhh, neat!”  It also give you a little “new reality” of what is to come.

Click Here to check out the article by Michael Machosky of The Tribune-Review, which also contains a very informative list of Robot Hall Of Fame inductees.

Kudos to the science center for creating one of the world’s biggest robotic exhibit.

-SWB

PS – SkyNet and Terminator ….. here we come 🙂

Review: Popeye’s Chicken

Caught off guard with a review having a “Rant Files” pic on it?  Read on, you’ll get it.

Update: As requested by a reader from New Orleans we would like to clarify this is dealing with mostly the Pittsburgh site (SouthSide) and the Waterfront.  Primarily Pittsburgh.

Products – decent.  The food is decent, etc. etc.  That’s where it all ends.  Search up Popeye’s Chicken Complaints – you’ll find sites and sites about issues ranging from major customer service issues to stories about racism (I consider reverse-racism straight-out racism also simply because not matter what color against what color ….. RACISM IS WRONG!!)

Before I rant … here is where I come from:  I lived in an area which had what I call allot of hidden “racism”.  If you were white, it was a great place to raise a family.  If you were a black family coming in in the late 80s (when I lived there), there was a good chance of a cross burning.  No, I’m not kidding.  This place was near Pittsburgh also.

Fortunately I was brought up with enough influences to not care what skin color a person had.  The proper skin color is definitely not a requirement to become someone’s friend, or simply be treated like a human being. Therefore since I was friends with and knew black people in the area I lived in in the lat 80s, and surrounding areas I was called a “n***** lover” and took the occasional beating for it.  Needless to say I find any racism (white against black, or black against white) extremely offensive.  All it does it breed hatred.

Well, when I went in to a certain Popeye’s with my family with a coupon that had no start date and an ending date of 07/09/09 I would told very rudely that they would not accept it because it was sent out to early – do indication of when it stared at all.  Fast food establishments all have provisions to work with these issues, that was customers are never refused service.  So I know it could be sold regardless of the issue.  Keep in mind the cashier treated the people in front of me nicely, but immediately changed her tone when we stepped up.  The people in front of us and behind us where black.  The manager took the same attitude when he told me to either order something else fairly rudely and addressed the customer behind me nicely. If I would have done this as a white business owner I would have had the NAACP down my throat, not to mention the news and every lawyer in town at my business.

Also … as a supposedly EOE (Equal Opportunity Employer) the site clearly was not supporting that either.

When I looked on the web for other complaints (to make sure I wasn’t judging wrongly) I found an amazing amount of complaints similar, and an overwhelming amount of customer service complaints.  This is sad as Popeye’s is a business that is seen as representing the black community, and due to the very poor customer service (I have yet to be at a Popeye’s that had anything that resembled customer service at all) and apparent support of hatred towards others by the company, it’s making that community look very bad. I have been in and supported (and still support) many black owned (or non-white owned … if you want to be P.C.) businesses because they are run extremely well.  I will support any business that is run well – Popeye’s is not one of them.

Final Decsion – Don’t ever eat at Popeye’s again …. oh, and good luck finding or getting contact information for them online.  It’s there, but you’ll have to search hard – they obviously don’t want to hear it.

Reference site examples:

• Complaint Board
• My 3 Cents 1
• My 3 Cents 2
• Measured Up
• Rip-Off Report

-SWB

Final Word – racism is racism, humans are humans ….. your skin color isn’t the deciding factor on whether you should be treated as a human being or not.  Don’t support this chain … it supports the hatred everyone is trying so hard to get rid of.

Last but not least …. Popeye’s gets  a clueless trophy for two things:

• The poorest possible customer service in any fast food chain.
• The continued breeding of racism and teaching the wrong way to treat human beings.