The Plastic Vacuum

Since plastic is one of the major ingredient in vacuums, Electrolux is planning to harvest trashed plastic from the supplies now swirling in the oceans and use it in a new household vacuum cleaner. Electrolux’s green line of vacuums is currently 70% recycled plastic and lack of available recycled material is limiting their goal of 100 %.
The region from which the plastic in each vacuum comes will determine where the appliance will be sold. So vacuums made with Northern salvage will be available in the North. Nice touch.

Electrolux is recruiting trained volunteers to gather plastic, either by diving after it or scooping it up from waves, from a variety of locations in the Pacific, Indian Ocean, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic and North Sea. Collection started in Sweden two days ago, according to Cecilia Nord, Vice President, Floor Care Environmental and Sustainability Affairs, Electrolux. Once enough plastic has been collected, Electrolux will press it together into a series of concept vacuum cleaners.

"Depending on what plastic we actually find, every vacuum cleaner will look unique," Nord says. "If we're in Sweden, the kind of garbage we'll get is from Northern Europe. When we're collecting plastic in Thailand it will look completely different. The vacuum cleaners will be a bit of a mosaic." from FastCompany

Gen. McChrystal’s awesome Rolling Stone happy hour

No telling what fate General McChrystal will meet in his hastily scheduled meeting at the White House with Obama .I have a feeling though not much good can come from any of this.(Updated below)

The volcano in Iceland, however, changed those plans. As the ash disrupted air travel, Hastings ended up being "stuck" with McChrystal and his team for 10 days in Paris and Berlin.
McChrystal had to get to Berlin by bus. Hastings says McChrystal and his aides were drinking on the road trip "the whole way."

"They let loose," he said. "I don't blame them; they have a hard job."

Something from the past came back while wondering what the circumstances were surrounding McChrystal and his staff speaking so openly to Rolling Stone
Back in 2009 a NATO bombing strike had taken place that killed 125 civilians.

Back then McChrystal reported that his subordinates could not be raised quickly. Steps were reportedly taken to limit drinking at headquarters after this, but the plan to do so reportedly had been in the works for some time.

General Stanley McChrystal tried to contact his subordinates after a NATO strike killed 125 civilians, but too many had been “partying it up” and could not be raised.
General McChrystal, head of International Forces in Afghanistan (Isaf), has since put a stop to drinking, admonishing staff for not having “their heads in the right place” on Friday morning a few hours after the attack, the Times reports.

FYI: McChrystal's favorite beverage is Bud Light Lime

UPDATE: I had some doubts he would do it but …Obama dismissed General McChrystal.
He will be replaced by Gen. David Petraeus – commander of the US Central Command and former head of coalition forces in Iraq.

“The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general,” Obama said. “It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system. And it erodes the trust that's necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan.” More here

Oops,We seem to have broken the Earth!

Here are some lines from from the Guardian by Naomi Klein in the Guardian. Her observations about the continuing Gulf oil leak,the climate crisis in general and the reactions to it are truly disheartening.

If Katrina pulled back the curtain on the reality of racism in America, the BP disaster pulls back the curtain on something far more hidden: how little control even the most ingenious among us have over the awesome, intricately interconnected natural forces with which we so casually meddle. BP cannot plug the hole in the Earth that it made. Obama cannot order fish species to survive, or brown pelicans not to go extinct (no matter whose ass he kicks). No amount of money – not BP's recently pledged $20bn (£13.5bn), not $100bn – can replace a culture that has lost its roots.

As climate change negotiations wear on, we should be ready to hear more from Dr Steven Koonin, Obama's undersecretary of energy for science. He is one of the leading proponents of the idea that climate change can be combated with techno tricks like releasing sulphate and aluminium particles into the atmosphere – and of course it's all perfectly safe, just like Disneyland! He also happens to be BP's former chief scientist, the man who just 15 months ago was still overseeing the technology behind BP's supposedly safe charge into deepwater drilling.

In other petroleum related news:

Fly away to a clean ocean

Corporate sensitivity and the small people in the year 2010

BP chief executive Tony Hayward, often criticized for being tone-deaf to U.S. concerns about the worst oil spill in American history, took time off Saturday to attend a glitzy yacht race off England's Isle of Wight.

Spokeswoman Sheila Williams said Hayward took a break from overseeing BP efforts to stem the undersea gusher in Gulf of Mexico to watch his boat "Bob" participate in the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race.

I seem to remember Capt. Joe Hazelwood of Exxon Valdez fame being roundly vilified by the government, press and the public(his ship and his image even had a cameo in the movie Waterworld). Maybe times and attitudes have just changed or Tony Hayward’s ilk don’t consider themselves to be of the small people whose lives can be disrupted by the disaster in the gulf. Fly away to a clean[er] ocean.

"It's a well-known event in the British calendar. He's entitled to private time with his family," said BP spokesman Robert Wine.

Texas Rep.Joe Barton demands Gulf of Mexico Appologize

In congressional hearings today Joseph Linus”Joe” Barton Repubican Congressman from Texas’ 6th district demanded that the Gulf of Mexico apologize to BP CEO Tony Hayward for soaking up all his crude oil.


What really happened is almost that bad :

A Texas Republican apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward on Thursday for having to set aside $20 billion for Gulf of Mexico damage claims, drawing ridicule from Democrats and embarrassing Republicans.

Representative Joe Barton, a major recipient of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, triggered an uproar with his lengthy apology to Hayward for being the victim of a White House "shakedown."

"I'm speaking totally for myself, I'm not speaking for the Republican party ... but I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," Barton said.

Forcast:Cloudy with a Chance of Global Warming

By only a six vote margin, 53-47 the Senate stopped a Republican attempt to block the EPA from regulating carbon emissions that it has deemed a threat to health and environment. Among those in favor of the effort were six Democrats. Climate change denier Republican Tom Coburn raising the fear of job loss said of allowing the EPA regulate that “Even if it is the right thing to do, now is not the time to do it.”

The New York Times points out:
But it [the close vote] provided a showcase for a Senate fight over global warming as well as an indicator of where lawmakers could be expected to come down on legislation aimed at carbon emissions. The near-even division among lawmakers showed that a 60-vote supermajority on climate change legislation remains elusive.

We all know Sen. Coburn (R,OK) dances to a different drummer but the razor close margins in the Senate don’t appear to reflect the what the country thinks. National polling shows support for legislative climate remedies, yet the Senate stumbles forth with Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham climate bill.

In the June 2010 survey, 86 percent of respondents said they wanted the federal government to limit the amount of air pollution that businesses emit, and 76 percent favored government limitations on greenhouse gas emissions generated by businesses. Only 14 percent said that the United States should not take action to combat global warming unless other major industrial countries like China and India do so as well.

Therecent survey by Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University shows a slight decline (even after the ‘climate-gate’ foolishness) in those who think global warming is happening 84 percent in 2007 to 74 percent today. Unfortunately little interest is shown in being motivated to reduce personal consumption through taxes.
Among other survey results:

• 78 percent opposed taxes on electricity to reduce consumption, and 72 percent opposed taxes on gasoline;
• 84 percent favored the federal government offering tax breaks to encourage utilities to make more electricity from water, wind and solar power;
• Four out of 5 respondents favored government requiring or offering tax breaks to encourage the production of cars that use less gas (81 percent), appliances that use less electricity (80 percent) and homes and office buildings that require less energy to heat and cool (80 percent);
• Only 18 percent said that policies to reduce global warming would increase unemployment.

Double the Flow Estimate !

The Flow Rate Technical Group, a special US government team was created to analyze the flow of oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak. This was thought wise after worries surfaced about British Petroleum low-balling the amount gushing from the damaged well.
They released some troubling calculations today.

The new calculation suggested that an amount of oil equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could have been flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days.

This assessment, based on measurements taken before BP [British Petroleum] cut the riser pipe of the leaking well on June 3 to cap some of the flow, showed that approximately 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil could have been gushing into the Gulf each day. That is far above the previous estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.

New York Times

Obama's Loyalties

Once again New York Times'Frank Rich on Obama:A Sneigwhblog bi-monthly nod to Frank Rich’s observations.

It’s also a great excuse to haul my Obama as admiral image(courtesy of the photoshop elves at Hyper Kitchen).

We still want to believe that Obama is on our side, willing to fight those bad corporate actors who cut corners and gambled recklessly while regulators slept, Congress raked in contributions, and we got stuck with the wreckage and the bills. But his leadership style keeps sowing confusion about his loyalties, puncturing holes in the powerful tale he could tell.

Obama has yet to find a sensible middle course between blind faith in his own Ivy League kind and his predecessor’s go-with-the-gut bravado.

A Dividend from British Petroleum

British Petroleum, according to reports will not cut its 10 billion dividend payment to shareholders. One stock analyst said “My take on the underlying message is that the dividend is safe.” This came only 24hours after US Senators Chuck Schumer and Ron Wydon urged British Petroleum to suspend stock dividends payments.

In a conference call to shareholders and analysts, Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP’s chairman, and Tony Hayward, its chief executive, stopped short of giving an undertaking that the payout would be maintained.

He added: “Future decisions on the quarterly dividend will be made, as they have always been, on the basis of all the circumstances at the time. All factors will be considered and decisions taken in the long-term interests of our shareholders. And we are aware of the importance of the dividend for you, the shareholders.

US Take Over British Petroleum? Updated

Obama should take over British Petroleum so says Robert Reich former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton .

“[But] under temporary receivership, BP would continue to have the equipment and expertise. The only difference: the firm would unambiguously be working in the public's interest. As it is now, BP continues to be responsible primarily to its shareholders, not to the American public.”

Mr. Reich argues that President Obama should take over British Petroleum giving the US authority until the gusher is controlled. He maintains that it is the only way the US public will be confident that enough resources are being put to use to stop the disaster.
What follows are his five reasons for take over and the final (and I think most persuasive) paragraph of his argument for take over.

The President should temporarily take over BP's Gulf operations. We have a national emergency on our hands. No president would allow a nuclear reactor owned by a private for-profit company to melt down in the United States while remaining under the direct control of that company. The meltdown in the Gulf is the environmental equivalent.

Here are his five reasons and a link to the full article CLICK

1. We are not getting the truth from BP.
2. We have no way to be sure BP is devoting enough resources to stopping the gusher.
3. BP's new strategy for stopping the gusher is highly risky.
4. Right now, the U.S. government has no authority to force BP to adopt a different strategy
5. The President is not legally in charge.

UPDATE:Follow-up from TPM

Closing the Hole in the Gulf: A Petroleum Engineer Responds by Robert Reich
A petroleum engineer who's worked in the oil industry tells me BP is doing the minimum to clean up the oil and everything it can to protect its bottom line. According to the engineer, here's what BP should be doing right now to mitigate the damage.

Vermont Yankee leaking news:The Weekend Report

Today's Vermont Yankee News

"The observed short duration and small volume of leakage from the drain line appears to indicate that the event did not result in any impact to public health and safety," according to an NRC statement.

Vermont Yankee by coincidence or design never fails to make a small headline sometime on Friday afternoon or some sleepy Saturday or Sunday morning .What are the odds?
The latest caps a busy couple weeks getting the beast back online after refueling.
The newest hi-jinks at the troubled plant comes on the heels of misleading Vermont state officials about under ground pipes leaking tritium and the state senate vote against re-licensing ,strontium 90 was discovered in a fish near the plant and almost as a side show the entire unit was “Scrammed”, automatically shut down due to a switching problem during power up.

Picture this power plant running for twenty more years, 2032?
Safe, clean and reliable headlines released every slow news day.

A new leak of radioactive material has been found and fixed at the troubled Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, officials said Saturday.
Vapor and water containing 13 different radioactive substances was found late Friday coming from a pipe in a hole workers dug to find the source of an earlier leak.

"This was a new leak," Vermont Yankee spokesman Larry Smith said in an e-mail. "The leak has been stopped. ... There is no threat to public health or safety."
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission also said the public faced no danger.

also posted at Green Mountain Daily

Chicken Suits Banned from Polling Places!

"Wearing a chicken costume would constitute 'wearing any type of insignia which tends to promote the success or defeat of any particular candidate'," said a Nevada voting official.
In Nevada voting officials peck away at our freedom of expression. In a move many would consider most foul, we have lost one more bit of our freedom and more than a little humor.

Voters wearing chicken costumes will be barred from polling stations in Nevada, election officers have decided.

Democrats have mocked Republican Senate hopeful Sue Lowden, accusing her of suggesting that people barter for medical care using chickens.
Activists in chicken costumes started appearing at Ms Lowden's rallies.

In the 'olden days'

In response to Ms Lowden's comment that her grandparents "would bring a chicken to the doctor", Democrats set up a website entitled Chickens for Checkups.

Sweet Crude Deals

Like oil, issues surrounding the Deepwater Horizon leak are flowing out into the media. Some details have been lying near the surface.

Taxpayers are receiving significantly less of a bang for their buck from offshore oil development—even though energy companies have access to six times as many leases as they did in the early 1980s.

Two research professors from the University of California and University of Louisiana published the results of their Federal oil leasing study last June. It can be found online in Miller-McCune magazine. A blog post here by Elizabeth McGowan revisits the issue in light of the British Petroleum oil leak.

Statistics compiled by two researchers studying the last 30 years of leasing policy show that per-acre lease rates have plummeted almost nine-fold from shortly after the time Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency to the tail end of President George W. Bush’s second term.
An average of $2,224 per acre for all federal leases sold between 1954 and 1982 careened to $263 per acre for federal leases sold between 1983 and 2008.

In March President Obama announced his plans to extend oil leasing he spoke of his overall energy policy strengthening the economy, but no plans were apparent to revamp the current leasing program that was originally altered in the Reagan era and again under Clinton to favor the oil industry.

The leasing study points out how the country could benefit from a change.

Big picture arithmetic shows that such leasing by MMS (Minerals Management Service) is second only to the Internal Revenue Service in dollars destined for Uncle Sam.
“The 300 million-plus Americans are the ones who own this offshore oil source,” he [Professor Bill Freudenberg] continues. “It’s precious and there isn’t that much left. We could use the money to pay for schools, parklands and other necessities, instead of just saying nobody should make money off of this except for top executives of oil companies.”

Successful Auto Hacking

Back in March an employee laid off by a Texas auto center sought revenge by hacking into the web based immobilization system installed in the cars. This system was for “getting the attention of consumers delinquent in their car payment.” The particular system will not stop a running vehicle but it does trigger the horn to honk continuously.

Hacking and gaining access to the main systems of a vehicle may be much more complex but a team of researchers at two universities have shown that they can “adversarially control a wide range of automotive functions and completely ignore driver input-”

The University of Washington and UC San Diego researchers say that through lab experiments and on-the-road trials with two vehicles and a program dubbed CarShark, they have demonstrated “the fragility of the underlying system structure” for modern cars that are “pervasively monitored and controlled by dozens of digital computers, coordinated via internal vehicular networks.” Bottom line, they say a typical car built in recent years has very little resilience against a digital attack on its internal components.

It would be possible, according to the paper, for an attacker to “adversarially control a wide range of automotive functions and completely ignore driver input — including disabling the brakes, selectively braking individual wheels on demand, stopping the engine, and so on.” Hackers could also cover their tracks, embedding malicious code in a car’s telematics unit that would “completely erase any evidence of its presence after a crash.”

They do stress that the attacks while successful are fairly unlikely in the real world but that it is a vulnerability that needs addressing in
As one researcher said: “what’s important is not that you have a glitch, [but] how the system responds to it.”

“Beyond Petroleum” or “Swoosh, Boom, Run”

Oil rig veterans say that in the event that pressure forces gas up to the surface “swoosh, boom …run”.

According to one interview transcript, a gas cloud covered the rig, causing giant engines on the drill floor to run too fast and explode. The engines blew off the rig and set "everything on fire," the account said. Another explosion below blew more equipment overboard.
"The swoosh is the gas, boom is the explosion and run is what you better be doing."

Now, after the first attempt at capping the runaway well with a giant dome has failed a BP executive can’t quite come clean. The gases and methane hydrates implicating in the original explosion quickly gathered in the dome causing the effort to be abandoned.

Heckuva comment Suttles

“I wouldn’t say it has failed yet,” said Doug Suttles, the operating officer for exploration and production for BP, the company that was leasing the oil rig when it exploded April 20. “What I would say is what we attempted to do last night didn’t work.”

I suppose the man has a point, as the Gulf fills up with oil.

Neanderthals and Human Hybrids!

What did they see in each other 45,000 years ago?
‘She made me laugh, we had some great times together, but it over now ’says Grok



Who is going to tell the creationists?

Any human whose ancestral group developed outside Africa has a little Neanderthal in them – between 1 and 4 per cent of their genome, Pääbo's team estimates. In other words, humans and Neanderthals had sex and had hybrid offspring. A small amount of that genetic mingling survives in "non-Africans" today: Neanderthals didn't live in Africa, which is why sub-Saharan African populations have no trace of Neanderthal DNA.
It's impossible to know how often humans invited Neanderthals back to their cave (and vice versa), but the genome data offers some intriguing details.

"It must have been at least 45,000 years ago," says David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School who was involved in the project. That's because all non-Africans – be they from France, China or Papua New Guinea – share the same amount of Neanderthal DNA, suggesting that interbreeding occurred before those populations split. The timing makes the Middle East the likeliest place where humans leaving Africa and resident Neanderthals did the deed.

Click here to read more

Giant Pigweed and Johnsongrass ! Updated below

Pigweed can grow three inches a day and reach seven feet or more

It took ten years from the first appearance of Roundup (the miracle chemical weed killer) resistant weeds for 10 super weeds to spread to 22 states infesting soybeans, corn and cotton. Common and giant ragweed, pigweed and most recently johnsongrass are all species of weeds exhibiting roundup resistant tendencies.

New York Times reports
Sales took off in the late 1990s, after Monsanto created its brand of Roundup Ready crops that were genetically modified to tolerate the chemical, allowing farmers to spray their fields to kill the weeds while leaving the crop unharmed. Today, Roundup Ready crops account for about 90 percent of the soybeans and 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States.

But farmers sprayed so much Roundup that weeds quickly evolved to survive it. “What we’re talking about here is Darwinian evolution in fast-forward,” Mike Owen, a weed scientist at Iowa State University, said.

Mr. Anderson, the farmer, is wrestling with a particularly tenacious species of glyphosate-resistant pest called Palmer amaranth, or pigweed, whose resistant form began seriously infesting farms in western Tennessee only last year.
Pigweed can grow three inches a day and reach seven feet or more, choking out crops; it is so sturdy that it can damage harvesting equipment. In an attempt to kill the pest before it becomes that big, Mr. Anderson and his neighbors are plowing their fields and mixing herbicides into the soil.

Strategies for fighting glyphosate resistant weeds are underway but currently they involve more applications of herbicides and therefore cause greater expense to the farmer .

Delta Farm Press reports
Pace Hindsley, a Marvell[Ark.] farmer, said the problem is forcing growers to go back to older ways of farming, including hand-hoeing to get the weeds out of the fields.
“We’re not just worried about the problem this year, but also next year and the year after that and each year until we can get a solution to the problem,” said Hindsley.
In addition to the frustrations caused by battling pigweed, cost is also a major consideration.
“You get to a point where it’s just not financially feasible to do anything else and you have to live with the results you’ve got,” said Jim Hubbard, who also farms in Marvell. “You pull your hair out because you’ve done everything you know to do and you just can’t beat this weed.”

UPDATE:
A great follow-up to this in the Room for Debate feature in the New York Times, which asks seven people familiar with the issue the following three questions:

What should farmers do about these superweeds?
What does the problem mean for agriculture in the U.S.?
Will it temper American agriculture’s enthusiasm for genetically modified crops that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup?

Michael Pollan, author, “Food Rules”
Stephen Powles, plant biologist and grain farmer
Blake Hurst, farmer
Anna Lappé, Small Planet Institute
Scott M. Swinton, agriculture economist
Micheal D.K. Owen, professor of agronomy

Left Handed Cat blogging

I needed a late Monday excuse for cat blogging and found it with this item from the world of science.

With cats, the team from Queen's University in Belfast concluded that females tend to favour their right paw when trying to extract a treat from a jar while toms prefer their left, with the same gender divide applying to dogs.
Fish tend to have a dominant eye when looking at potential predators, with right-eyed specimens circling threats clockwise and their left-eyed counterparts moving anti-clockwise.

The team's report in the New Scientist even suggests that dogs wag their tails to the right when they're relaxed and to the left when they feel agitated.

Science you can do in the comfort of your own home!


Dogs:
See if Fido wags his tail to his left or right. If he's like most dogs, furious wagging to the right means he is relaxed and ready to approach whatever he sees; if he wags to the left he might prefer to withdraw.

Cats and rodents:
Give your cat, rat or hamster a jar with a tasty treat and see which paw they use to try and extract it. If your pet is a cat, expect toms to use their left paws and the females to use their right.

More here

Dubie Scheduled to Ride the Tiger

The promo for the Vermont Tiger event called Crunch Time notes that:

“He [Dubie] has long been interested in new ideas and innovative policies to promote economic growth in Vermont and was a panelist at last year's ‘Compete or Retreat’ symposium.”

Compete or Retreat indeed.

During the recent budget debate Dubie has been absent and hasn’t presided over the State Senate for two days. Earlier it was reported he had canceled a scheduled candidate debate appearance for April 28 at a debate featuring 7th and 8th graders questions. The debate had already been rescheduled once to accommodate him.
But the man who could be the Where’s Waldo of Vermont gubernatorial campaigns will ride the friendly Vermont Tiger on May 25th.

The event promises to be mostly free from the probing questions of 7th and 8th graders.
Dubie will deliver the morning address at the symposium which will deal with the very serious and immediate economic challenges facing the state and discuss reforms and routes to prosperity. That Dubie actually missed a chance this week to practice governing and deal with the very problems under discussion at the symposium is significant of notice.

If it is true, as the overworked saying goes that 80% of life is just showing up how should we rate Lite Gov. Brian Dubie’s campaign?

Junk Food Obesity and Recruits

Food is in the news again, or still, but this time it is a matter of National Security.
Mission:Readiness a non-profit group of retired military officers including retired generals and admirals have expressed concern that 9 million young adults, or 27 percent of all Americans ages 17 to 24, are too fat to join the military.
"When over a quarter of young adults are too fat to fight, we need to take notice,” said, retired Navy Rear Adm. James Barnett Jr... He noted that national security in the year 2030 is "absolutely dependent" on reversing child obesity rates.
The group,Mission:Readiness is urging Congress in a recent report(PDF) to eliminate junk food and high-calorie beverages from schools, put more money into the school lunch program and develop new strategies that help children develop healthier habits.
The group referred to similar push military leaders made in 1945, when concerns about poor health and malnutrition resulted in the creation of National School Lunch Program.

Fast Food Insurance

A new study (found here) highlights the extent to which life and health insurance companies are invested in the fast food industry. Even as the recent health care bill increases, by mandates the number of people covered by private health care U.S., Canadian and European-based insurance firms own nearly $2 billion in fast food stocks. The study points out that fast food can be consumed responsibly but that consumption is linked to obesity, cardiovascular disease and some childhood health issues.

These are for profit companies so what would you expect? It’s sort of a life insurance profitability hedge fund perhaps.

The researchers, affiliated with Physicians for a National Health Program say this highlights the conflicts that may exist between maximizing profit and the expanding public health role of private health insurers. They state: “If insurers are to play a greater part in the health care delivery system they ought to be held to a higher standard of corporate responsibility."

U.S.-based Northwestern Mutual and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company both offer life insurance as well as disability and long-term care insurance. Northwestern Mutual owns $422.2 million of fast-food stock, with $318.1 million of McDonald's. Mass Mutual owns $366.5 million of fast-food stock, including $267.2 in McDonald's.

New Jersey-based Prudential Financial Inc. sells life insurance and long-term disability coverage. With total fast-food holdings of $355.5 million, Prudential Financial owns $197.2 of stock in McDonald's and also has significant stakes in Burger King, Jack-in-the-Box, and Yum! Brands (owner of Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell) stock.