41 Acres

Its been forever since I've posted to Vox. I can honestly say that I almost about it. I just don't see the point of constantly updating to a social network that none of my real world friends are apart of. I believe that kind of defeats the purpose of even being apart of a network. So instead of searching for people who only have mildly similar interest on Vox, I spent my time update my facebook and myspace pages. That and convincing my real world friends to join me on twitter, which is quickly becoming my favorite social networking tool.

But I was reminded of Vox by TypePad's BlogIt application for facebook. Which is clearly designed to tie together all of your different blogs. While it doesn't bring all of them under one roof....it does make it much easier for me to update most of them from a primary location. So if you're like me and not to good at updating all of your site then make sure to check out this application.

And all of it boiled down to me on one knee and the most beautiful woman in the world, in my eyes, saying yes

What a day

So I was reading my feeds as I do everyday and I stumbled across the Freaknomics blog in the New York Times. Here's a snippet of what I read:

This made me wonder further about a situation I've wondered about in the past: do restaurants ever blacklist their low-spending customers?

Let's say you call to make a reservation at a fairly high-end restaurant. It can't be that hard for the reservation agent to access the data on your past visits. Imagine that the last few times you went to this restaurant, you and your spouse ordered salads, split an entrée, had no cocktails, drank tap water instead of Panna or wine and had coffee with no dessert. And, for added effect, let's say that you lingered for a while over your coffee, tying up the table for a potentially more profitable customer. Maybe you even registered a fairly serious complaint about your meal.

What does the data-savvy restaurateur do with customers like these?

Perhaps someone out there in the business can answer the question: do restaurants turn down reservations for customers who have proven themselves to spend too little money? Perhaps it never happens (but I wouldn't be surprised if it does); perhaps restaurants don't have fingertip access to past-spending data (but I would be disappointed if they don't).

Deep. Well actually not that deep on face value...but then you start thinking. If restaurants or any place for that matter start with this practice it would definitely be a new form of racial economic discrimination. Now I know a lot of people that I've gone to college with that I simply despise going to dinner with. Why? Because they act nergo-ish. If you're a person of color then you'll know what I'm talking about: going to a restaurant in large groups and acting a fool, playing spades on the table, ordering multiple plates of the free bread, and asking for separate checks after running the waiter/waitress ragged¹.

So if restaurants decide to follow this model they could deny black people in droves from restaurants...actually would that be so bad. Wait. Yes. Yes, that would be horrible. But maybe it would show us that we need to act better in public. Especially when we're in groups. I'm tired of being embarrassed by other black folks when I'm out. Because as the old saying goes...one bad negro can spoil the bunch².

I know I'm not the only other black person out there who goes out in public and are just in shock with the way people act now a days. The profanity spewing from their mouths, the way they act like spoiled uneducated brats. Let me stop and get back to the point of this post...

Oh...I had to stop for a second to try to remember what I was talking about. The plot of a restaurant to ban the black frugal from dinning. The way that it is pointed out in Freakonomics presents it as a negative thing. But I can see some positives in it. If customers generally get the same thing, the waiter can present something similar to show the diversity of the restaurant. Restaurants could alter their menus around their most popular offerings based upon the information...

or they could just keep people out of their restaurant based upon them chewing up all the free bread. The choice is out there to make...

[More Info]
1 - It's quite sad, which is why I always ask who is going to a place before I decide to head out.
2 - Actually that old saying might be a little different. Probably referring to fruit or something...

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You tell me...