Thursday, December 18, 2003. 4:19PM

Some time ago now I was reading the newspaper and a little article caught my eye. This article led to a website called Dead Man Eating. The site has a real good idea, being an exploration of what people who are convicted of a violent crime and sentenced to death order for their last meal. Now, personally, the site is a bit too sappy for my taste. It has a blog, and all sorts of speculation on social classes and whatnot. Were it my site it would be all about violent crime, and strange little statistics - stuff like "Seven-Eleven clerks constitute 73% of all store clerks murdered, but only 14% of those raped and murdered.*" However, it aint, and I'm not about to make a competitive site.

Right, anyway, I had a look at what the last ten people had ordered, and noticed that something like 6/10 had ordered a Coke with their last meal. Now, I was looking to frame a conjecture that Coke is the refreshment choice of serial killers, but needing a little more evidence than that, I went the long haul and trawled through every last meal for the last two years. Before I begin, however, I just want to make a comment. I also took a peek at the last words of all these people, and the vast majority of them used their final statement to apologize to their victims families. I mean, come on. The victim's families? Maybe you apologize to God, as is the manner of your belief, but you don't apologize to these people. They're having you killed! You say "I'm glad I killed that fucker. It was all worth it. I'd do it again." There were a lot who didn't say anything, as well. I remember one quoted Star Trek with "Today is a good day to die," and another said "I didn't get my Spaghetti-O's. I got regular spaghetti. I want the press to know this."

Some ground rules. What you order has to be available in the prison cafeteria, or in the nearby town. Cost is generally not an issue (although federal prisoners are limited to $20). No alcohol is allowed on death row. This covers most executions in the United States in 2002 / 2003.

* Speculation only.

Of these brands, the Coca-Cola Company owns Coke, Diet Coke, Vanilla Coke, and Cherry Coke. Here's where it gets complicated. On the Sprite website, Sprite claims to be owned by Coke. On the Coke website they disagree, and don't list Sprite among their 350 odd brands (as of the end of 2002). They do however, list Dr. Pepper and it's related friends (diet Dr. Pepper and so on) as one of theirs. Now let's toddle over to Pepsi Co. Among their brands is Pepsi, and our old friend 7-Up (best with chicken, I find). It wasn't until I was checking on RC Cola, that I came across Dr. Pepper/Seven Up. Inc, a company that claims to produce not only RC Cola, but you guessed it, Dr. Pepper and Seven Up. This company is owned by Cadbury/Schweppes. Schweppes is another brand listed as Coca-Cola's. I think I will have to search a bit of news media.

Ah ha! Basically, the skinny is this. Cadbury/Schweppes wants to dump its softdrink line in a lot of countries, so it sells the rights to distribute a particular beverage in a particular market. Now, it would do the same thing everywhere, but in some places in Europe, and even here in Australia, competition watchdogs have blocked the sale. In some places Coca-Cola sells Schweppes brands, in others it is Schweppes. All Pepsi gets is 7-Up, which it gets everywhere apart from the US.

Kool Aid is owned by Kraft. It seems to be their only beverage, the rest of their products being thicker. Mayonnaise, yogurt, custard and so on. I have no idea who owns Big Red Soda. All I can find out about it is that it tastes like bubble gum, and is only consistently outsold by Coke in Texas. It they have a website, it doesn't show up in the top 10 on a Google search for "Big Red Soda." The website, www.bigredsoda.com seems to be owned by some marketing company, who don't see, to have anything to do with Big Red Soda.

This next table is a break down of the brand families. I guess we'll use the US distribution, as hell, that's where all these people were killed, anyway.

Coke: To die for.

When you're in real trouble, why not have a Coke?

Coke: It's not worth dying for, but if you have to die, why not?

I wonder how many of these people's crime was the violent murder of a 7-11 Clerk (I remember seeing a few) because they needed money, and how many took a Coke as well.

In a strange twist of irony, according to this media report, Coke, the beverage of choice for America's violent criminals, is being sued in Columbia because of allegations that it hired paramilitary gunmen to murder union representatives that were giving it a hard time. This, in my opinion, is how business should be done. Were I ever to have access to a multi-billion dollar corporation, I would fund and arm a warlord group in one of those third world countries that has warlords, on condition that they take over the country. From here on they would form just another division of our company. Were they making a loss, the parent corporation would prop them up - invest a little in infrastructure or whatever, were they making a profit, however, they would be expected to return it back to us for propping up our struggling children's toy division. At some point, we might feel the need to expand that division, and we'd finance a war, until one day we ruled the world!

Ah... well... that's it. I'm sorry. There's really nothing in this log. Ah well. I was tossing up between doing this and doing an explanation of the creative choices I made in the lost log, and this won out. Maybe I'll do that next time.

I did a bit of a search of "Coke Girls" in Google image search, and returned a lot of comely lassies in bathing suits from the '50's drinking coke, and while that's all well and good, I was really looking for something a bit more sexy. I remembered that shot of Britney Spears drinking coke from a while ago (she is a Pepsi spokesperson), and I looked it up, but even that wasn't all that good. A sort of paparazzi moment. Then I meandered around for a little while - the Olsen Twins website has an article about how advertising is teaching children the word coke before the word "Mommy." Not if they watch cereal, bread or other breakfast ads it's not. Anyway, in the end, I stumbled across this picture from Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics. As far as guides to semiconductor physics go, this is one of the best.