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It seems there's also a "Coca Cola distinguished professor of marketing" and a "Yahoo! chair of information systems technology" too.

It's gross

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While I imagine it just means they sponsored the academic institution, likely a good thing, but there's something unshakeably "idiocracy"-flavored dystopian about fast food product placement on professors.

It turns from Idiocracy-flavored comedy-dystopian into bona fide dystopian rather quickly once you dig into what a multinational corporation does around and besides the product they're recognized for. "Taco Bell Distinguished Professor of hospitality business management" may sound funny, but if I ever heard about McDonald's Professor of Genetics, or Disney's Professor of Applied Robotics, I'd start getting worried.

(In other words, "Continuum" vibes. An underrated Canadian sci-fi show featuring "Corporate Congress" and a bunch of luxury brands of today turning into serious industrial/energy/medical players under 50 years from now.)

> Disney's Professor of Applied Robotics

Disney's robotics are legit though, they do a lot of work and research in that area

I think they had a skunkworks spin-off out in a Connecticut suburb working on hyper-feminine, hyper-realistic androids at some point.

That's precisely my point. Disney may still be mostly a kids' brand, but I bet their robotics department would hold its own if corporate decided to enter heavy industry or military robotics markets. The brand may seem like a joke, but the expertise isn't.

I think the reply was to point out that people respect disney robotics. I bet more people know about disney robotics than boston dynamics.

I think it is a "you"-thing thinking others also devalue disney because "kid movies" or some other property. There is no joke because people respect them already. Now, the fast food folks? That is silly. Unless it is about production efficiency from McDonalds. Or marketing by coke.

Innovation and imagineering (cough, largely robotics) are synonymous with the image of disney.

> Innovation and imagineering (cough, largely robotics) are synonymous with the image of disney.

Maybe it's' indeed a "me" problem, but I only vaguely know about "imagineering" thing via HN; it's not something I think I'd stumbled on otherwise. As far as I can tell, for most people I know, Disney is the kids programming producer that often makes stuff adults enjoy just as much, if not more, than kids, plus the company that took over Star Wars. A subset of them is also aware that the House of Mouse has a scary legal department.

> There is no joke because people respect them already. Now, the fast food folks? That is silly. Unless it is about production efficiency from McDonalds.

McDonald's must be a powerhouse in logistics and process engineering - and in case of the latter, it's not a big leap from making food to making drugs or advanced materials. I know a little bit about adjacent fields from the software side; the food processing plant and a chemical manufacturing plant use pretty much the same tools and processes.

A couple of years ago the University of Cape Town had a property called the "Shell Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building".

But nowadays only the weathered shadows on the facade remain where the letters "Shell" once were mounted.

Western Australia announced a "Greentech Hub" for environmental technology and innovation, sponsored by Chevron [0].

Chevron is, as you know, an enormous fossil fuel corp. The simplest and best method of improving the environment would be simply to shut down their oil and gas operations. The irony is almost overwhelming.

As usual, nothing has been heard from the Greentech Hub since it was announced by the relevant minister almost a year ago. Which is fine, because the entire point of the thing was to have it announced by the relevant minister.

It's all very Yes Minister / Utopia, and we all see straight through it.

[0] https://startupnews.com.au/news/minister-dawson-announces-ne...

And to think Australia was basically the first major country to try to introduce a carbon tax back in the Julia Gillard days. Now, it looks more like the last major country still resisting any change, no matter how small, to the oil-fueled economy, by spinning words and actions to the extreme in order to look "green" while splurging in oil like Texans gushers in the early 1900's.

> Chevron is, as you know, an enormous fossil fuel corp. The simplest and best method of improving the environment would be simply to shut down their oil and gas operations. The irony is almost overwhelming.

Yea, but that would just make some other player take their place. The game-theoretic choice seems to be to keep doing what they are doing, while allocating some of that dirty money towards research in green tech.

Presumably one would shut them down by making their cost externalizations illegal, not by specifically dismantling the single company.

I think you meant "towards marketing claiming green tech".

Ok but what if I said: we shouldn't arrest cartel hitmen, because that would just make some other murderer take their place. The game-theoretic choice seems to be to keep doing what they are doing, while allocating some of that dirty money towards research in nonviolent conflict management?

Believe it or not, law enforcement agencies actually do that, more or less every day, in every country. There is value in having crime organised, predictable, somewhat circumscribed, and controlled by people you can communicate with and influence to a degree.

Real life is rarely binary.

Aren’t fossil fuels from plants and good for plant life ? I mean plants breath in co2 and out o2. Higher co2 levels could probably turn deserts green.

> Chevron is, as you know, an enormous fossil fuel corp. The simplest and best method of improving the environment would be simply to shut down their oil and gas operations.

The catastrophic levels of human deaths resulting from food shortages and supply chain disruption (and basically everything supporting civilization) would surely lower global CO2 emissions!

Y'see, I have more faith in human ingenuity than this. We'd cope. Yes, there'd be a bunch of deaths and life might get a little less pleasant. But we'd cope. We'd find something else to fill the gap, and get everything back to a new normal.

Coca-Cola Professor of Marketing seems fitting though - Coca-Cola is probably one of the most capable marketing organizations the planet has ever seen.

In sports this happens all the time. I guess it was only a matter of time before it hit education and professors.

Ex.

The Poulan/Weedeater Independence Bowl

Guaranteed Rate Field

Smoothie King Center

And my fav: Bargain Booze Stadium

These are all things not people

Sports teams are named by and/or owned by brands too.

And that brand naming also sounds terrible. Candlestick Park or Comesky Park is a way better name than Levi's Stadium or Gauranteed Rate Field, for eff's sake.

Entire leagues as well.

The Barclay Card English Premier League comes to mind.

There was a post a TechCrunch article posted here a couple of months ago referring to the Panasonic Professor of Robotics Emeritus at MIT. This probably happens in other fields too, but every time I've seen one of these brand-deal titles has been in an AI related article.

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