Random Photo XXXVI: Waterlily

This one's pretty self explanatory. It's always nice to remember the beauty of nature's seemingly simplistic patterns.


tagged: random photo, flower, waterlily, nature

Getting rich

Let's say, just hypothetically, that you wanted to be rich.

I'm talkin' Bill Gates rich. Rich enough that you don't merely write your own ticket, you write your own ticket to fly on the airplane that you own. You know what I mean? So rich that you don't just have lawyers on your payroll, you have judges on your payroll.

Well if you wanted to get rich (hypothetically), you'd probably focus on creating a product or service that everybody needs and then selling it to them. Things like indicator plastic wrap, or tick repellent pills, or cargo dress slacks.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Right? So You'd develop these ideas for useful items then sell them on QVC or find someone to buy the idea from you. Right? That's what you'd probably do.

But you'd be wrong.

The best way to get rich is to come up with a way to take cheap useless crap, rebrand it and market it to elementary-age kids. It's the American way.

Need and example? Of course you do.

Those of you with elementary-age kids are no doubt familiar with these:

I'm referring of course to the rubber-bandy looking things, not the Moleskin notebook or the earbuds (which I threw in to give you a sense of scale).

These little rubber bands are known among the social circles my 7-year-old runs in as Googly Bands.

They are the latest rage sweeping the grade school set. That's right, the kids are crazy about them. They're more than just cheap jewelry. They come in all different shapes and colors. Animals, toys, modes of transportation, clothing. Some are tie-dyed, rainbow colored and others glow in the dark. The kids, boys and girls alike, collect and trade them the way I used to collect and trade baseball cards.

Only here's the thing, there's absolutely no value to these things. Well, maybe there's some minute value. I mean, I'm not an expert on rubber production (but I play one on the Internet), but according to one of my many inside sources, there's about one twelfth of a cent of material and labor involved in producing one of these things. They are sold 12 to a pack, so a pack cost exactly one penny to produce.

I recently took my kid to a large discount retailer (which I won't name since they don't advertise on this site, but I think you can guess which one it was) because she just had to spend her hard-earned chore money on some of these useless trinkets. We found them on sale for a dollar a pack, which you math wizards can see works out to almost a 100% profit, or something (what do I know about business? Who am I, Donald Trump?).

So yeah, all you have to do to get rich is come up with a product that costs almost nothing to produce, and sell it for a minimum 100% profit. It's just that easy. Pretty soon you're be up to your eyeballs in party jets.

tagged: rich, kids, fad, Googly Bands, rubber, scheme

Breaking Schnack

You remember a few weeks ago when the guy from Lenexa disappeared in Shawnee Mission Park?

Then a bunch of family and friends scoured the park looking for him? But after weeks of searching they couldn't find him and gave up?

Then last week he was found wandering down a trail sunburned, bug-bitten and dehydrated but otherwise unharmed?

No? You don't remember? Doesn't ring a bell? Well, here's the gist:

Police said Larry Schnackenberg, 58, has been found along a walking trail in Shawnee, Kan. A security officer, Rick Reynolds, who has known Schnackenberg for 15 years, found him on Wednesday … walking along a trail in the 6100 block of Barker Road, police said.
…
It was July 8 when Schnackenberg disappeared. His car and wallet were found at Shawnee Mission Park, just south of the trail. Police used K-9s and helicopters to search the park and more than 600 volunteers spent two days conducting their own search. Outside of his car, there had been no trace of Schnackenberg…

And that's basically where we find ourselves today. As the SOB points out, there was a lot of what industry people call "media weight" behind this, and we've been left with a rather unsatisfying ending.

Well, I'm here to rectify that. I have what I think is a pretty solid theory about what really happened.

Now, I'm not a cop, or a police investigator, or "security officer" or any kind. I don't have years of experience tracking down missing persons and/or pets. But I do have years of experience watching cop shows and such on TV. And based upon that, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that Schnackenberg's "disappearance" was a ruse.

My theory is based upon the fact that a well-educated, middle-aged suburban man faced with the prospect of death by lung cancer will turn to the production of methamphetamine as a way to build a nest egg to provide for his family after he dies.

This is well documented in any number of situations. What tends to happen is that said individual, under pressure from "businessmen" higher up in his distribution chain, will need to take an extended period away from his family to ramp up production.

Typically, he'll drive his RV-turned-meth lab into the Chihuahuan Desert to produce his quota of methamphetamine. This could take anywhere from a week to three weeks depending on the demands of his wholesalers.

But then, because his occupation is a secret to his family and friends, he has to find a way to account for his disappearance. This he does by taking off all of his cloths and wandering into a public place to be discovered, confused and disoriented but mostly unharmed, by local authorities or passers by.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Schnackenberg invoke a "fugue state" defense caused by some generic medical condition, if any public statement is made at all.

Well, that's my theory. I can't guarantee 100 percent accuracy and some details might be different. But if I know my TV dramas (and I can assure you that I do), that I'm pretty sure some version of this is what happened.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Good day.

tagged: headlines, Johnson County, Lenexa, Kansas, Shawnee Mission Park, Schnackenberg, Breaking Bad, fugue state

YouTube Tuesday: Pottopia

Here's a cute little piece of propaganda showing us how awesome marijuana is and how evil the people who want to prohibit it are.

This cartoon shouldn't change any minds on the issue of legalized pot, it's obviously aimed at reinforcing the beliefs of those who already favor freedom to toke.

But something tells me that, at least in California where the state budget is eleventy-babillion dollars in the red, the prospect of getting higher (heh) tax revenue will be what ultimately sways the voting public.



tagged: Youtube, Tuesday, video, animation, marijuana, pot, utopia

Random Photo XXXV: Hummer

These guys were at my mother's house over the weekend.

It goes without saying that humming birds are really hard to photograph. The lighting and focus could be better, but this is the best shot I got. Maybe I'll try again next week.

tagged: random photo, bird, hummingbird, wildlife

Doubleplusungood

Okay, now that we've solved the health care crisis and everyone is living healthy long lives with instant access to the best medical care ever for free, and now that we've solved the financial crisis and our messianic leader has promised us that there will never, ever be another financial bailout by the government ever...

Now that we've accomplished those things, I think it's time that our administration turn it's attention to possibly the new most important issue facing our society: The problem of bad journalism.

By now you've heard of the deliberately sloppy reporting by an unabashedly biased conservative blogger that resulted in the firing and severe emotional distress of Shirley Sherrod, a completely innocent and kind-hearted servant of the people who has absolutely no agenda of her own other than the ennobling of all of mankind.

To review of the situation, let me quote yet another ennobler, the late, great Xaview Onassis:

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a video of Shirley Sherrod (a HUGE PUBLIC TARGET, being Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture) addressing the NAACP.

The video appeared to show her exhibiting a racist attitude towards a white farmer who came to her seeking help. In a knee-jerk reaction by the racially sensitive Obama Administration, Shirley Sherrod was immediately fired.

But guess what? The 2 minute video had been intentionally and maliciously edited down from a 44 minute video to make it appear that she was saying exactly the opposite of what she was actually saying!

That a mere blogger can have such an impact on the administration of our country is clearly a national security risk.

And this kind of thing isn't isolated or even rare. Examples of improper journalistic behavior are common. Remember Stephen Glass's scandalous reporting for neo-liberal publication The New Republic where he made up fictional facts, quotes and even people in his stories.

And who can forget disgraced TV journalist Dan Rather, who created fraudulent government documents for the sole purpose of attacking and discrediting a sitting president.

It's clear that there are systemic and endemic problems with the state of journalism in our republic. This is a problem that we cannot allow to fester.

Journalism is our window into the performance of our leaders. We, as voting Americans, rely on the news media to alert us to government malfeasance, to let us know what our leaders are doing with our tax money and what our national policies are, to keep us abreast of Lindsay Lohan's jailhouse granny panties.

So I think we can all agree that our news media is too big to fail.

Given that, I think it's time for the Obama Administration to step in and take action. We need new regulations that will ensure that the news media is telling us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Since the free market is unable to guarantee this, we obviously need better government regulation of the news industry.

I propose a new cabinet level position in the White House, the Secretary of Truth.

This new secretary-level position, which I'll just call the Truth Czar, will lead the Department of Truth which will be given the mission of monitoring all news media (including blogs) to make sure all communications are truthful and contain no misleading opinions or partisan slants.

Using the latest technology from various other government agencies, the Department of Truth will be able to exert real-time control over all online, broadcast and print content.

Through the efforts of the government's new Truth Czar and his various regional Truth Agents, we will finally be able to rest assured that we're getting only the highest quality information.

Never again will we have to worry about good people losing their jobs because of unsubstantiated opinions posted on a person's blog.

tagged: Obama, Shirley Sherrod, journalism, reporters, news media, government, Andrew Breitbart

YouTube Tuesday: Battle of Branchage

I recently stumbled upon this kick ass multimedia video art project from the 2009 Branchage Film Festival.

The artists used high performance projection technology to present their vision of the nearby castle. This is an amazing example of how technology can be used to alter our relationship with our environments.

With the level of processing power finding its way into mobile devices these days, I think it won't be long before flavors of this find their way into our everyday life.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, art, projection, Battle of Branchage

Random Photo XXXIV: Up up and away

Sunday evening was downright chilly compared to what we've been through the last few weeks.

With evening temps in the comfortable low 80s and a nice summer breeze (makes me feel fine) wafting down the prairie, it was an ideal time to go for a hot air balloon ride. Which is what a few folks above southern Johnson County did.

The dramatic clouds and sunset made for a pretty backdrop, which even my comparatively craptacular cell-phone camera couldn't entirely uglify.

tagged: summer, weather, clouds, sunset, balloon, random photo

Friday Blogthing: I write like...

It's been a while since I've been interested enough in any of these online gizmos to give one a try. But lots of people have been doing the I Write Like one.

Here are my results:

I write like
Chuck Palahniuk

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Okay. Not bad. Not quite mainstream, which is good. Fight Club was kind of cool. So, yeah, hard to argue with the results.

But I do get the feeling, after looking at a lot of peoples' I Write Like results, that there are really only about half a dozen possible results that anyone can get on this.

Still, I'm just glad it didn't tell me that I write like a fourth grader, or that I write like an idiot, or that I write like Stephenie Meyer.

tagged: I Write Like, Friday Blogthing, Chuck Palahniuk, Stephenie Meyer, pop culture, meme

The hunt is on

Since spring I've been catching glimpses of him.

Driving up the street in the morning or coming home after work. A small white flash set against the dark green of the well-kept lawn a few houses up. A furry blur shooting into the shrubbery or up the opposite side of a giant oak tree.

The first few times I saw him, I wasn't even sure it was real. A trick of the lighting perhaps. Maybe just a piece of litter or debris blowing in the wind. But I kept watching. I kept looking each time I drove by the house near the top of the hill until I was sure I saw him.

The white squirrel.

I'd never seen a white squirrel before. I named him Moby. Yes, you're correct, a reference to the squirrely white 1990s-era techno music artist. I vowed to capture the white squirrel no matter what it took. But first I hit up the internet for a bit of research on my quarry.

It turns out that, while rare and uncommon, white squirrels aren't unknown in North America.

Although these squirrels are commonly referred to as albinos, most of them are likely non-albino squirrels that exhibit a rare white fur coloration known as leucism that is as a result of a recessive gene found within certain Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) populations, and so technically they ought to be referred to as white squirrels, instead of albino.

Dr. Michael Stokes, a biology professor at Western Kentucky University, commented that the probable cause for the abundance of white squirrels on university campuses was due to them being originally introduced by someone:

We're not sure how they got here, but I'll tell you how it usually happens...When you see them, especially around a college campus or parks, somebody brought them in because they thought it would be neat to have white squirrels around.

Dr. Albert Meier, another biology professor at Western Kentucky University, added that:

…white squirrels rarely survive in the wild because they can't easily hide. But on a college campus, they are less likely to be consumed by other animals.

Armed with this information, I set about my hunt. I kept my camera in my car, a 200 mm lens attached. And as I passed by the yard each day, I kept my eye out for the opportunity to finally take a shot at the elusive prey.

Finally, my patience was paid off.

Here you can clearly see Moby's fluffy tail as he flees for cover in the shrubs at the side of the house.

Okay, as I look at that picture now, I can see that it might not be as clear to everyone where Moby is. Let me zoom it in a little for you...

There. See the tail sticking out from behind a branch? No? Still having trouble? Let me try this...

Okay. Perhaps the photographic evidence isn't yet as clear as I had thought.

But believe me, this isn't over. I shall not give up my hunt for the White Squirrel. I'll follow him into the neighbor's back yard if I have to. I'll follow him around the Horn, and around the Norway maelstrom, and around perdition's flames before I give him up.

tagged: white, squirrel, Moby, suburban, wildlife, animals, Johnson County, Kansas