Stuff I noticed today

OK, I have a couple of interesting things to talk about today.

Firstly, the new Cheerios advert which appeared on You Tube last week seems to have whipped up an astonishing frenzy of strong feeling. If you haven’t seen it, it’s here. The advert features a cute young girl of about 5 years asking her mummy if Cheerios are good for your heart. Her mother tells her that they are “heart healthy” and the child runs off with the packet. Her father wakes up bemused on the couch with a pile of Cheerios on his chest. Cute right, what could be controversial about that?

Well, as it turns out, the only controversial thing is the fact that the father is a black man, and the mother is white. The child is clearly mixed race. Incidentally, I showed the advert to my Asian wife and she didn’t actually seem to even notice this. I think I’m going to show it to my mixed race son and see what he says. It would appear that not everyone is as liberal however. The You Tube page last night had gained 30,000 likes, and 1,800 dislikes. And there were so many negative comments from people passionately against mixed-race relationships that the comments facility had to be switched off.

The more cynical amongst us might suppose that the people at Cheerios deliberately made a controversial advert to gain some notoriety. For once, I am not one of the cynical people. Had I not know about the controversy before seeing the advert, I don’t think I would have guessed that it would happen. I’ve been in a mixed race marriage for nearly ten years and I don’t think I have ever had any negative comments; a few inappropriate jokes occasionally, but not serious malice. In any case, despite the controversy, Cheerios have said they are not going to pull the ad, good for them, and the anti-mixed-race-marriage mob have only succeeded in making the advert more powerful than it otherwise would have been. I’m going to make a point of buying Cheerios this weekend anyway.

My final word on this subject; I can sort of understand a reluctance to have a relationship with someone outside one’s own race. I think it’s weird, but if that’s how you feel, stick with someone from your own race. What I cannot understand is why these people care what anyone else does, or who appears in an advert. Thus I am genuinely astonished by the reaction this 31 second advert has provoked.

And on to something lighter.

Domino’s pizza has demonstrated the viability of using drone helicopters to deliver pizza. It was of course only a publicity stunt, and I think it was probably a remote controlled device rather than a truly intelligent drone. It was pretty cool nevertheless. I think you should be able to employ a GPS system to make the thing properly autonomous. I’m not sure how it would ring the doorbell though. It’s a good proof of concept exercise.