Kentucky Fried Chicken

Yesterday's post about Dr. Pepper and the blend of 23 flavors got me thinking. The first famous consumer product with a famous set of specific ingredients that came to mind is KFC Original Recipe chicken. The Original Recipe has 11 herbs and spices. In one of the later episodes of the FOX television show Fringe one of the main characters, the crazy fringe scientist Walter makes a couple of references to KFC and the secret 11 herb/spice recipe.

During the course of my "research" for this posting, which did not include a taste test. I was intrigued that this famous American brand has three times more locations outside the US than there are in the US. About 5200 in the US and over 15000 outside the US. This is not the type of ratio that other famous brands like McDonalds (13000 US, 18000 outside) or Pizza Hut (7500 US, 5600 outside) have.

I also thought it was interesting looking through the history of KFC on their company website. The Original Recipe is 70 years old this year and another interesting (or trivial) fact is that they began selling chicken in buckets in 1957.

It was also neat to learn that the Governor of Kentucky named Colonel Sanders an honorary Kentucky Colonel for his contribution to the cuisine of the state, not for any military reason.

Dr. Pepper

OK, so I had a bit of especially random inspiration for this post, I looked over just past my monitor and I saw a can of Dr. Pepper sitting there and on the can it says it is a unique blend of 23 different flavors. This inspired me to go to their website, all the while singing a very old Dr. Pepper jingle in my head. I hope you enjoy what I have here on this very random post today.

So, in my investigation I learned that Dr. Pepper was introduced before even Coca-Cola was, though it didn't go national for nearly 20 years after its 1885 introduction.

Here is the jingle I was singing in my head, I apologize ahead of time if it gets stuck in your head (or is it part of my evil master plan to take over the world?).

"I'm a Pepper, he's a Pepper,

She's a Pepper, we're a Pepper,

Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?

Be a Pepper. Drink Dr Pepper."

There were several other interesting things I found in my brief exploration this afternoon. Here is a cool section of the Dr. Pepper website with information and pictures from the history of the brand.

Pet PEZ!!!

OK, some of you may or may not know that I am involved in pet retail as well as the rest of my world!!!

Today I was privy to see a new product that could only be shared on No-Profundity as it is perfect for this blog!!!

It is a very over-sized Pez dispenser with some bone shaped pez treats for dogs that do look very candy like (no, I will not taste them).

World Cup Scoring

OK, here is a short post that was inspired by the 7-0 drubbing Portugal gave North Korea this morning. Anyone who has watched even one soccer match will know this is an uncommon occurrence, let alone in the World Cup. Generally matches are more evenly played. It may surprise some people though that this was not the biggest blowout in world cup history, actually Hungary has twice won World Cup matches by 9 goals, once with the great team of 1954 and again in 1982, while Yugoslavia also won a match by 9 goals in 1974.

Here are a few more statistics that are interesting. Many people, especially those who watched the 2006 cup will know that Ronaldo has the record for most goals in the World Cup history at 15. A related statistic is that he is one of two people to score 3 times in three different World Cup tournaments, the other person is Jurgen Klinsmann, illustrating their relevance over time for their squads.

There have been three times that a player has scored 10 or more goals during a World Cup though this hasn't happened since 1974. The first time was Sandor Kocsis (11)one of the great Hungarians of 1954, Just Fontaine (13) of France in 1958 and Gerd Muller (10) of West Germany in 1974.

There are only 12 players ever who have scored 10 or more goals in World Cup History. In addition to the players mentioned already, Pele, Miroslav Klose, the Peruvian great Teofilo Cubillas, Gabriel Batistuta, Gary Lineker, Grzegorz Lato and Helmut Rahn.

Toy Story 3

OK, usually this would be a post for the Mullet of Blogs but I have already posted to that blog today so I will share this here! I read an article this morning about the voice of slinky dog in Toy Story 3 changing since Jim Varney was the previous voice and he passed away several years ago. Here is a link to the article. Here are a few clips as well!

World Soccer Rankings

Though World Cup Weekend has finished, today I wanted to post again about world soccer. Over the years Brazil has dominated the FIFA World Rankings but it has not always proven to mean a lot when the World Cup comes around. Brazil was not at the top of the rankings when they won the 1994 and 2002 World Cups and France was not on top in 1998, nor Italy in 2006. In recent years it has at least become more fluid with the top position changing hands much more often.
You may or may not be surprised to know that some of the current top 25 are not in the World Cup. In fact, Croatia, Russia and Egypt the #10-12 teams and neither are Norway or Ukraine the #22-23 teams. This is because of World Cup qualifying and the number of spaces alotted to continental soccer federations. Some notable rankings at the moment are Italy, Germany, Argentina, England and France are #5-9 in the rankings and between them have won 11 World Cups. Actually there are only two other countries outside that group who have ever won a World Cup, one is Brazil (currently #1)with 5 wins and the other is Uruguay (currently #16) with 2 wins.

World Cup Fans

Team Logos

First I have to start with my favorite, the Three Lions! Also known as the English National Team. Unfortunately they didn't live up to their full expectations today against the US. It was much better than having Beckham on the field as they did 4 years ago when he literally stood still and waited for set pieces, in essence leaving England to play 10 v 11 the rest of the matches. Thank goodness he hurt himself and is unable to play!Next we can look at Argentina. Here is the Azzurri with each star representing a World Cup Victory!
Though, I have never been a fan of Brazil, there is no denying their dominance with 5 stars counting for 5 World Cup victories!Here is Cameroon!The Netherlands (Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond) KNVB!

World Cup Weekend!

Since the World Cup is beginning today I think it should be World Cup Weekend at all of the blogs. Here at No-Profundity we will look at a few of the stadiums being used for the event.

Here is a great brief overview article from Yahoo Sports about each of the stadiums. You can see the other stadiums not pictured here in that article and it has a little more information about each one.

The first one here is Green Point Stadium in Cape Town. This is an amazing location for a venue of this sort though a lot of green open space is now taken up by it. It was only an empty space beginning construction when I was there 3 years ago.
This next stadium is in my opinion the most original of all of them, it is Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit. Though at first glance it looks like many European stadiums if you look closely the seating has a distinctive "wild" pattern and the orange masts that help support the canopy are shaped like giraffes.

The final stadium picture here is a night picture of Soccer City in Johannesburg and seats 95000!!! That is phenomenally large as only a few stadiums in the world approach or surpass it.

Elephant

I wanted to post more pictures of animals so today I am sharing a couple of my African Elephant pictures. I have only seen Asian Elephants at the circus and in zoos so I don't really have any pictures of them. Here is a picture of one in Etosha National Park in Namibia. Here are a few more from Chobe National Park in Botswana where there are well over 100000 elephants.
This one is watching me, watch him! This is in South Luangua National Park in Zambia.

Rhino

This morning I was thinking, maybe I will post about an animal that I have good pictures of. I have seen both white and black rhinoceros on safaris in Africa. Here is a picture of a white rhinoceros in Nakuru National Park in Kenya. Being a white rhino doesn't have to do with it's skin color, it is actually from a misinterpretation from the Afrikaans word that means wide for it's wide mouth. Likewise the black rhinoceros is not named for its color but rather to distinguish it from the name of the white rhino. Here is a black rhino in Etosha National Park in Namibia.
Even though in these two pictures the black rhino looks darker there is really no general difference in coloring. Though you can't see it in the picture the black rhino actually has a prehensile top lip, they are also known as the hook-lipped rhino.

Coppelia

Tonight I will be attending Coppelia at the Pacific Northwest Ballet. This will be showing the rest of this weekend June 4-6 and next week June 10-13


Tickets are still available and this is the final show during the 2009-2010 ballet season.

Coppelia is a comedy and according to the information on the PNB website is "known as one of the happiest ballets in existence."

Check it out if you are interested!