MPAA Releases New Movie Ratings

Hold onto your nachos, you're about to see some new movie ratings this Christmas. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is releasing new movie ratings starting with the holiday films.

The MPAA film-rating system is used in the United States and its territories to rate a film's suitability for certain audiences, based on its content. The MPAA rating system is a voluntary scheme that is not enforced by law; films can be exhibited without a rating, though many theaters refuse to exhibit non-rated or NC-17 rated films. Non-members of MPAA may also submit films for rating.

There were numerous factors that led to the additional rating systems including a study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center which found that stupidity in films since 1985 has quadrupled in frequency. The number of scripts of total garbage, the study found, has reached a critical point. Therefore you will see the OM-FG rating on many upcoming films.

Some science fiction films have a cult-like following and fans have been known to worship the characters, going as far as seeing the film dozens of times wearing full costume. These films will have the NCC-1701 rating.

It's never a pleasant experience to be around a bunch of  old hippies still living in 1972 when they are jarred back to reality.  Don't even start to tell them that Jerry passed away.  Nothing ruins the cinema like someone freaking out in the audience.  For these aging hipies the rating PG-54 will be added to films that may be too harsh for the hippy mind to process in real time.

And the last rating to be added for Christmas is the "W" rating.  A potpourri of people, a gumbo of freaks.  Be warned that the "W" rating is for Weirdos.

We surveyed 100 theaters in the greater Detroit area about the additional ratings and an overwhelming majority of them were anxious to see the new ratings added to the system.

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Theologists celebrating discovery of lost religion

Theologists are celebrating their recent discovery of a lost religion. What scholars had written off as lost a long time ago was discovered, quite by accident, thriving in New York City. The Procrastenazi Apatharian religion is alive and living in Brooklyn, New York.

Procrastenazi Apatharian, also known as Procrastenazi Apats or simply Procrastenazis, are a Apatharian ethnic division who coalesced as a distinct community of Apatharians in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the 1st millennium. The traditional language of Procrastenazi consists of various shrugs and single word grunts such as “Yup”, “Dunno”, and “Naw”.

They established communities throughout Eastern and Central Europe, which had been their primary region of concentration and residence until recent times, but they’ve been meaning to move for several decades.  The Apatharian Procrastenazi do not have a whole lot of documented history, and those interviewed didn’t really care. Only by sheer accident are portions of their history are recorded.

A 5 year search determined that the Procrastenazi have made "no remarkable contributions to humanity" and while European culture doesn’t ignore them, they tend not to be noticed.  A substantial number of Procrastenazi have a literature, art, music or science background, but never applied their knowledge in society

It is estimated that in the 11th century Procrastenazi Apatharians composed about three percent of the world's Apatharian population, while at their peak in 1931 they accounted for 92 percent of the world's Apats.

We spent a day with a Procrastenazi family who did noting remarkable all day, nobody could care whether it was night or day. We questioned the family if perhaps some family historic documents may be stored in their attic; the elderly parents agreed to look for it next week.

We walked the neighborhood and household after household told the same story. They’ve been meaning to take some photos, write things down and do something–but just never got around to it.

Next week we hear the story of a family on Prozac.

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Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI): An untapped profit center

As Hospitals look inward for new business, elevator buttons are realized as a revenue generator.

Skit Tjänsten, a leading patient management group, recently concluded a 5 year study on medical facility lost profits.

The goal of the study was to balance the number of patients checking out (ie: lost business) with new business.  Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI) was determined to be the most affordable technique.

The campaign Elevinate is rolling out to industry journals and trade shows. When loved ones come visit a hospital they rarely contribute to the profit.  Now friends and family members are infected and become customers or patients. According to Skit Tjänsten's Director of North America Infectious Disease, this will balance out the negative impact that cures and healing has on the bottom line.

Infection is quick and usually unnoticed for days.

Most standard elevator panels are already designed to facilitate bacterial transmission. The objective of this campaign is to increase the prevalence of bacterial colonization on elevator buttons in large urban hospitals.

During development, test swabs were taken from 2 interior buttons (buttons for the ground floor and one randomly selected upper-level floor) and 2 exterior buttons (the “up” button from the ground floor and the “down” button from the upper-level floor).  The results were fantastic. The colonization of elevator buttons was 61% (95% confidence interval 52%–70%). No significant differences in colonization prevalence were apparent in relation to location of the buttons, day of the week, or panel position within the elevator. Coagulase-negative staphylococci were the most common organisms cultured, whereas Enterococcus and Pseudomonas species were infrequent. 

Conclusion: A low cost application of disease on hospital elevator buttons is projected to increase revenue; keeping beds occupied 23% more in 2016. All this will be done while keeping patient costs up.



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Does a shorter tweet affect your civil liberties?

Twitter, the social-media giant made popular by brief 140 character messages shared over the internet, is planning on cutting their Tweeters by 8%.  Depending on the math, rounding the fractions, the shorter tweets will be a max of 129 or 130 characters after the reorganization.

Our Wall Street sources told us on Tuesday morning that Twitter's CEO tweeted a DM to employees who will be eliminated in the process, "SMH OMFG you R SOL GTFO."

"We feel strongly that our giant servers will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler tweet," company officials tell us.

Tech blog Re/code reported last week that restructuring was coming as a result of Twitter becoming "too bloated." The company had recently been talking about longer tweets, paragraphs were mentioned -- but Twitter's core user base can't form a sentence and offering paragraphs will only intimidate longtime, loyal users. Civil liberties groups have called out a number of laws on the subject for potentially violating the First Amendment because they say nobody can tweet a good rant in just 130 characters.

Investors liked the 8% news: Twitter shares were up about 3 percent in early trade Tuesday.

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The pros and cons of FedEx using cheaper alien technology

The shift in consumer preference toward slower/lower-cost delivery options have contributed to the birth of 51Ex, a budget delivery option introduced by FedEx that possibly uses Area51 alien technology. 51Ex transports packages from a local source point directly to a delivery truck already en route to the residential consumer. As good as this sounds, the science fiction solution carries risks, mainly due the technology failing 40% of the time, and most of the successful teleportations land up as an unidentifiable mangled package. But consumers are readily accepting late and lost as the tradeoff for cheap or free shipping on their ecommerce transactions.

Let's consider the risk of late & lost as the new norm, and why it matters to FedEx. 51Ex has three principal risks, each related to using of alien tech for delivery:

Tracking 

There is no information available on the transportation technology being used, some say it doesn't even exist.  Since Area51's primary purpose is publicly unknown, and secretive in nature, traditional package tracking is unavailable, which could be a cause concern for the consumer.

Quality control

Second, ensuring customer satisfaction is a key component of protecting the brand name of FedEx. The company worked hard to set the standard for customer expectations in the shipping industry, and the 51Ex "Late Lost" tag could bleed over and create negative backlash on established premium delivery options.

With the value of global trade now at more than $18 trillion, FedEx has continued transforming its business to better align with projected worldwide population and economic growth. One key to that has been the acquisition of transportation companies that allow them to directly serve specific markets and provide better service, but the new 51Ex may be here before its time.  Essentially, packages are scanned, encoded, dematerialized to anti-matter, teleported, rematerialized and delivered anywhere in the world, the same day, usually within 30 minutes. But 40% of parcels are lost in vaporware.  It's somewhat concerning for investors that FedEx will rely on secret imperfect alien technology risking consumer deliveries.

Increasing competition

As the world we live in continues to change, so does FedEx. With that in mind, you can be sure the spirit of FedEx innovation is hard at work delivering a brighter, better future for the universe. But when FedEx reported that 51Ex volume declined 7% in the second quarter, there was no explanation. Critics claim the service sucks, and free isn't going to win in the long run.  As of today, quality of 51Ex remains uncertain and a growing concern of consumers.

The takeaway

51Ex carries risks due to this secret partnership, but the service does not contribute a significant amount to the total profitability for FedEx.  As such, FedEx could probably stomach some take a wait-and-see approach to acceptability.

The question for FedEx is whether they want to carry on increasing shipping volumes, and carry the risks outlined above, or rein in volume growth by trying to shift retailers from cheapest way to their traditional, more reliable, Earth based offerings.

Science and Logistics state that management teams shouldn't focus too much on expanding their budget brands, and instead try to maximize profitability and maintaining high quality in their ground operations via being selective in their acquisitions and the partnerships they form.


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