Maybe Mackey should be posing with a giant bag of nuts.

When someone does this, its called using a “sock puppet.”  They create an online persona to make arguments they themselves can’t make, or agree to arguments made by his real self.  Its also a sign of an inflated ego or a deranged lunatic.

And because of this activity, plus because the merger with Wild Oats would create a natural-foods monopoly, the Federal Government is going to reject the merger.

From the WSJ here:

In January 2005, someone using the name “Rahodeb” went online to a Yahoo stock-market forum and posted this opinion: No company would want to buy Wild Oats Markets Inc., a natural-foods grocer, at its price then of about $8 a share.

The comments were typical of banter on Internet message boards for stocks, but the writer’s identity was anything but. Rahodeb was an online pseudonym of John Mackey, co-founder and chief executive of Whole Foods Market Inc. Earlier this year, his company agreed to buy Wild Oats for $565 million, or $18.50 a share.
 
For about eight years until last August, the company confirms, Mr. Mackey posted numerous messages on Yahoo Finance stock forums as Rahodeb. It’s an anagram of Deborah, Mr. Mackey’s wife’s name. Rahodeb cheered Whole Foods’ financial results, trumpeted his gains on the stock and bashed Wild Oats. Rahodeb even defended Mr. Mackey’s haircut when another user poked fun at a photo in the annual report. “I like Mackey’s haircut,” Rahodeb said. “I think he looks cute!”

Mr. Mackey’s online alter ego came to light in a document made public late Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission in its lawsuit seeking to block the Wild Oats takeover on antitrust grounds.

Mr. Mackey posted on the company Web site, saying that the FTC was quoting Rahodeb “to embarrass both me and Whole Foods.” He also said: “I posted on Yahoo! under a pseudonym because I had fun doing it. Many people post on bulletin boards using pseudonyms.” He said that “I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me.”

Mr. Mackey’s post continued: “The views articulated by rahodeb sometimes represent what I actually believed and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes I simply played ‘devil’s advocate’ for the sheer fun of arguing. Anyone who knows me realizes that I frequently do this in person, too.”

Like Whole Foods itself, Mr. Mackey, a 53-year-old vegan, is somewhat unconventional. He and his wife practice yoga and meditation and own a 720-acre ranch west of Austin. He once took a sabbatical to hike the Appalachian Trail.

There is a Whole Foods in my town, and I don’t shop there because the prices are way too expensive.  And I like eating produce that has been sanitized because e-coli infections like the two outbreaks this past year both came from “organic” farms.  But I like Whole Foods’ selection of spices.  If I ever make another batch of mead I might go there to get some fresh cinnamon or allspice.

But if this merger doesn’t go through and Whole Foods’ stocks continue to sink, will they fire their vegan nutjob of a CEO?  If you are interested, all of his posts are still on Yahoo here.

From the Times here:

Bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only the livelihoods of beekeepers, but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.

Bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why. Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold.

This bothers me mostly because I love to make mead. Less bees mean that there may be less honey, or more expensive honey in the future. Honey is running about 4 dollars per pound currently. I blame Al Gore for the deaths of the honey bees. As the prophet of eco-doom, he should have seen this coming and moved those bees somewhere warmer.

It should be ready in about a week, just in time for my Haloween Party.

My basic recipe is for homemade mead is located here.

This mead didnt taste very much different from the other types of honey I have used, but it does have a richer aroma. The blackberry tea lended the mead a lingering tartness that nicely counteracted the off-dry sweetness. During fermentation the mead was a blonde color, but now that it has settled, it is a rich amber gold. And its so tasty over a little ice.

One of the best surprises about the Renfest is the store that sells specialized honey. There are about two dozen different types of honey, ranging from clover to Tupelo honey to blueberry flower honey. You can actually do a honey tasting at this store to find out what honey you like the best. Most people like honey with biscuits or other baked goods. I like it for mead.

I got four pounds of honey last time I was there to make my mead with. One type is honey made from Africanized Bees in Brazil. Out of all the honeys I tasted, the Africanized Honey seemed to be the thickest with the most sugar. So I mixed that into a batch of mead tonight, along with a spiced tea containing cinnamon, nutmeg, juniper berries, rosemary and fennel seeds. For the fruit flavor, I chose a rich blackberry preserves to steep into a deep purple tea that I mixed with the honey water.

It should be ready next Sunday. If you want my complete recipe for one gallon of easy mead, check here.

You can still use fresh fruit, but I think the risk is higher that the mead fermentation could spoil.

Second, I recommend that you use a 1000 MG tablet of vitamin C ground into the herbs. The vitamin C tab will act as an anti-oxidant and will help keep the cloudiness down to a minimum.

The Maryland Renfest is probably one of the best in the country, and it will be open every weekend through October. They have beautiful wooded acres of land and very cool architecture like the “Rosie’s Posies” house below.

My wife is urging me to get my own costume too, and Im being a bit curmudgeony about it. No more jeans and sneakers for me, she keeps insisting. She was in full Renfest Garb (and she was really stunning too), and she wants me to play along and wear a costume too so she wont feel goofy being the only one of us dressed up.

I got the baggy pants on Sunday. They are forest green. Maybe I can blend into the Maryland woodlands. I need a shirt and boots and I’ll be set.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a blast when I go to Crownsville, MD, like I did this past Sunday. The food was great. Gnawing on a roasted turkey leg is one of my favorite things. The beer was really good. The mead? A little too dry and clear for my taste, but I drank that too and liked it! There were dozens of craftsmen and artists selling their artwork and pottery, and the actors and performers were outstanding entertainment.

But you know what I liked best about the Renfest? No, not all the well-defined cleavage protruding above tight bodices, although that was plentiful. The best part was the PEOPLE WATCHING! And not just watching visitors play “Drench the Wench” at the dunking booth or totally weak guys trying to hit the bell with the big sledge hammer and missing horribly. No, its the people that are either way too into playing dressup, or its the odd cliques of people who gather together at a picnic table.

The guy below was way into it, but he looked a little authentic. But he was obviously trying to be a “Mage.” I thought they burned people that practiced witchcraft at the stake during the Renaissance? Okay, Merlin was a mage, but that was just the legend of King Arthur, and that was supposed to happen in the Dark Ages. This type of mage has to figure out how many D6′s to roll to launch a fireball.

These two guys below struck me as odd too. One is a black knight and the other is some type of disfigured monk? They were blocking my path back to the Beer Stand.

And finally is the oddest collection of characters outside of World of Warcraft. We have a Goth Angel, a shirtless man and some sort of fox-tailed gent in a smoking section. All of the guys have hair that is really just way too long and no tans to speak of. The topic of conversation? “If hobbits really existed, what continent would they live on?”

Cheers!

I’m guessing that there may have been some type of contamination from the fresh fruit. Or maybe it just fermented way too quickly, and all of the sugars from the honey were converted to alcohol.

Now that I am staying put for a while, its time to run another batch. I whipped one up on Saturday. This time, I used ground spices of cinnamon, a few juniper berries, some rosemary and a little anise seed. I also used about two tablespoons of raspberry preserves for the fruit flavor. The honey was special too, since it was all from wildflowers. The honey was a deep, dark amber color, and the mead is a dark brownish red color like an ale.

It should be ready for drinking on Saturday. After a few glasses of it, I will provide an update.