# 1. Meet Flippy the Buger Flipping Robot. Flippy is now flipping burgers at Caliburger in Pasadena. Flippy, using cameras, thermal imagining and 3 D sensing, flips and removes the patties at the right moment. However, with all those skills Flippy still comes up a little short. It seems Flippy can't do the most crucial task, putting the patties on the grill. That requires a human co-worker. Flippy costs about $60,000 but without a minimum wage helper, Flippy Flops.
#2. AMAZON workers on any given day share work space with as many as 6000 dogs. The Wolf Pack Manager, now there is a gig, says employees love bringing their dogs to work and love meeting co-worker's dogs. Wanna bet some of the dogs don't love meeting some of those other dogs. I wonder if Amazon hires dog walkers. Seattle's rainy weather could make that job unpleasant. Still, walking dogs might be better than stuffing stuff in boxes all day. I didn't see any mention of people bringing their cats to work. C'mon, no self respecting cats are going hang out at work with their owner's all day. They have lives. Notice I refrained from "they have 9 lives."
#3. Coca Cola is breaking a 130 year tradition by offering its first alcoholic beverage. It will be introduced in Japan. A Japanese alcopop known as Chu-Hi containing distilled shochu alcohol mixed with flavored carbonate water. Seems like a lot of effort when Coca Cola could just work out a deal with Barcardi to shoot some of their rum in with the regular Coca Cola. They'd have Rum and Coca Cola, a favorite drink since The Andrews Sisters invented it in the Forties.
#4. Recently, in Australia, the world's oldest message in a bottle was found. It was thrown overboard from The Paula, a German sailing ship, on June 12th 1886. Three things are interesting here. First, the name of the ship. The "Paula" is not a very German sounding name. Second, the message was found in gin bottle. I would have thought it would have been in a beer bottle. Third, the message. It said, "My name is Heinz and I was shanghaied in Dusseldorf. This sucks."
#5. So, how is California doing these days? There was a ranking of the top ten governors in the US. Our Jerry Brown didn't make the list. US News and World Report along with Mckinsey and Company ranked the best states according to health care, education, economy, infrastructure among other stuff. Iowa came in first.We came in 32nd. Weather was not a consideration. If it had been we undoubtedly would have been number one. Of course we have nothing to do with the weather. Now "climate changers" will want to argue that but I'm busy right now.
(Tom Murphy is a writer, humorist, actor, disc jockey and an occasional contributor to CityWatch. He lives in Los Angeles.)
-cw