10 Great inventions we don't pay a lot of attention to

We don't really think about these things, but they really are INCREDIBLE.  We live in an age of wonder and we really can't even see it.  There are things around us that we enjoy and use without thinking about all of the trouble and time that went into them.  These are a few things that might not be so obvious and others that might be.

10.  Mylar - Seems like mylar has been around forever.  Candy bars fall out of their wrappers (Wax coated paper before this invention. In fact, many wrappers use mylar because it doesn't stick.   Balloons that have shiny pictures on them and take weeks to go flat.  Mylar holds our electronics static free.  Mylar is all over the place and we should be glad for it!  If you ever get stuck on the moon, those reflective heat blankets saving your lives?  MYLAR!

9.  Utensils - Wait, like knives forks and spoons?  Yes.  Before we were mass producing our own place settings having your own set was kind of a big deal.  People used to carry their own around though usually the spoon wasn't included, you just drank your soup out of the cup like your mom told you not to.  Now we have the common utensils and just pull them out of a drawer.  We have special ones for special occasions.  Yet there was a time they weren't to be taken for granted.  Here is a tip.  take a set to work and keep them in a drawer.  INDISPENSABLE when the company buys lunch but furnishes those bits of plastic to eat it with.  You'll be the envy of all your co workers.

8.  Batteries -  What's the big deal right?  We always know what the big deal is when our car battery goes dead.  We certainly don't like it when our cellphone batteries go out.  We only really appreciate batteries when they are dead.  We do have an interesting habit with them.  When we think there is some power left in them, we put them in a drawer.  The only time they have a ghost of a chance of coming out in public is Christmas when you forgot to buy batteries for that one toy and then you load it up with the drawer batteries and it works for about 3 minutes.  Better than nothing I suppose.  Here is something interesting.  If you take a lantern battery and take it apart, you'll find a boatload of AAA batteries but I think it has to be the right lantern battery.

7.  Digital Sound - We go to the movies now and we are bathed in sounds both amazing and true.  We have near equal sound at home.  If you close your eyes in a theater and concentrate on the sound, you will immediately realize just how amazing it is.  Only a short time ago the best a movie had to offer was SENSURROUND.  They could have called it mega-bass because that's really what it was.  When I was a kid, I saw Rollercoaster in Sensurround.  Loud bass heavy stereo.  That was pretty much it.  loud enough to make your seat shake.  What was I thinking it was going to be?  Almost exactly I thought it was going to be D-Box.  It wasn't.

6.  Cloth - Woven fibers creating cloth are as old as humans.  An amazingly delicate process and yet all too common.  Cloth used to be hand woven and very labor intensive.  It was a big deal to have fine linen because it took a lot to make linen.  If you are a REAL crafty person you have your own loom and create your own custom cloth designs.  We don't pay attention to it because we are so very good at it we use it for all kinds of things.  Bandages, Duct Tape, Fiberglass and the same technology that gives us cloth gives us things like Kevlar with some different base materials.  CLOTH!  It's like a miracle made of strings.

5.  Lasers - I remember when I was a kid, Lasers were weapons fired from a pistol shaped device.  A light saber was sometimes mistakenly referred to as a Laser Sword.   Amplified light of single wavelength is used in so many technical applications it's staggering.  We use them as pointers and they make our digital sound we talked about earlier.  We use them for a lot of measuring applications.  The laser level assists builders in making sure the entire room is true by spinning around and creating a uniform line to use as a guide.  Here is something fun to try.  Take a laser pointer and point it across the room.  the longer the distance the better.  It looks like the point has gotten a bit bigger.  It hasn't.  If you have a friend hold the laser pointer and you go to the wall, you'll find the point to be pretty much the same size.  It's strange.

4.  Recycled Content - More and more we use recycled content.  We don't think about it much, but there it is in our containers and cartons.  When you separate your recyclables it appears you are actually helping out!  We don't think much about it other than that we separate certain things for recycling based on where we live.  When I was a kid, recycling meant turning an empty milk carton into a puppet.  We don't take for granted the recycling thing.  That's still kind of a hassle, but for some reason you feel like you might be doing something good if you do it.  It's when things are made out of recycled material that we don't care.

3.  Zippers - We just use these little marvels over and over and over and expect that they will last forever.  When a zipper breaks you try desperately to realign the teeth so it will work again.  Once in a while we are successful, but it's temporary at best.  When a zipper has lost it's zip, there is only one thing to do and that is scrap it or use safety pins.

2.  PVC - Like Mylar PVC is used increasingly in homes and underground. It doesn't oxidize and it rarely breaks (unless you are talking about sprinkler pipes seems like those need to be quite a bit thicker).  PVC is great for water, but it's also handy for making conduits for wires and even furniture!  Wanna go back to copper, lead, or Galvanized pipes?  I didn't think so.

1.  LED lights - These seemed to break onto the scene about the same time as lasers.  Before LED we used flashlights with regular light bulbs in them.  They tore through batteries like your uncle goes through butter-mints at a wedding reception.  Seems like you could never have flashlights last that long, in fact they made lantern batteries for more life, but now everything that makes a light seems to be made of LED.  They use much less electricity and they are very bright.  They aren't the same as yellow lights, but more and more they are in places you don't think about.  Traffic lights, Car indicator lights, and TV.

Well, clearly this well is drying up.  But just a bit of brackish water will probably show up in another 15

Top 10 Inventions better left not invented.

Necessity is the mother of invention.  Well I'm here to tell you that Mom has been dead for quite some time now.  Really, what was the last thing we NEEDED?  Do we really NEED faster computers?  probably not.  Do we really NEED TV's with brighter pictures and more colors in 3d so realistic that you feel like you could trip a contestant on Dancing with the Burnt out Stars?  I don't think so.  Yet every year we get more and more clever in our inventions.  Well, before we go too far, here are some we don't need.  If you are inventing them.  Please stop.

10. Light Saber-  I can still remember seeing Star Wars for the first time.  When I saw Luke handle that elegant weapon for the first time. I thought to myself.  'It really isn't clumsy like a blaster'.  Here is the problem.  If we had light sabers we would see buildings crumble within a day.  Kids and adults would not be able to resist just taking chunks out of stuff all the time.  We would use light sabers to do all of our digging and demolition weather or not we actually needed to do it.  We would want to get in light saber battles.  It would all be fun and games till someone loses a hand.  Seems like a cool idea, but yeah, if we get those invented, nothing good would follow.

9. Lie Detector - We are on the verge of being able to force the truth from everyone.  Scientists have discovered some of the areas involved in telling lies and telling truth.  Great.  now we can know the truth from everyone all the time.  Is this what we really want?  remember the Gilligan's Island when they found sunflower seed that let you read everyone's mind?  Well if you didn't it goes like this.  Gilligan can all of the sudden read peoples minds.  nobody knows how but they will be lam-basted if they are going to let that scrawny kid have that secret alone.  They find some ancient seeds that allow you to hear the thoughts of others.  Well now that everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts, There is nothing but trouble.  Ends up being one of the myriad reasons they never get rescued so Gilligan burns the seed bush and they can go back to thinking nasty thoughts about each other in relative obscurity.

8. a REAL universal solvent - Water is known as the universal solvent.  This is great except it is neither universal nor is it a solvent.  But that's a different story.  If you actually could find something that would continue to eat away through everything well, what would you hold it in?  I think you can see where I'm going here.  I think all the universal solvents are already located in the middle of the earth where gravity collects it into a small ball.

7. Holo-suite rooms - Back in the 90's Star Trek introduced the Holo Deck.  The idea was that computers generate an artificial reality that allows you to live any fantasy you have alone and without Mr. Rourke.  A room was created that had holographic emitters that would partially project and partially create a reality based on what was programmed into it.  You want to go to another planet?  just feed the characteristics of the planet into the computer and boom, there you are.  You want to know what it's like at a Scottish Caper Toss?  Tell the computer and it will re-create a tournament for you.  What's the problem with this?  Are you kidding?  If you have a room where you can have anything you want, why in the world would you leave that room?  This would cause more inactivity than a Junior High Dance.  Fall of civilization. Bad Idea.

6. That house I planned when I was 10 - When I was 10 I drew a house.  Not just a house, but a sprawling mansion that would have been the envy of secret agents and despotic dictators alike.  This house had slides and elevators as well as a moat with sharks and flame throwers.  It had looping roller coasters in the back yard and a gigantic maze that only I knew the exact path through that also had hungry animals and laser shooting robots.  This house should never be built.  Aspects of this house should never be built.  This is why kids don't run corporations or countries.  Because their ideas are probably even more dangerous than they are amusing.  The house design shown here is eerily similar to the house I designed with some minor differences.

5. Wristwatches - We are nearing the end of the wristwatch era.  Soon nobody will wear them.  Why?  Because nobody needs them.  But long ago, the wristwatch was a rite of passage in a young persons life.  When you had a watch, you had some responsibility, you had to be somewhere, you had schedules to adhere to.  Sure you still have those now, but with smart phones taking over the world, the wristwatch is really only there to look good.  Why should they never have invented them?  Because then I wouldn't have been given one.  Then I wouldn't have lost it.  Then I wouldn't have fretted and worried about the ramifications of losing said watch.  Then I wouldn't have finally gotten into trouble for losing the watch.  yeah, screw watches...and schedules.

4. Personal Robots - Ok remember what I said before about Holo-suite rooms?  This is the same problem on a smaller scale.  Once again we are bidding computers to take the drudgery away from our lives.  Now robots can be our assistants, our personal guardians, our home maintenance.  They can do it all.  All we have to do is relax and think of what to do with all our free time assuming we don't have holo-suites.  This is where the computers wonder why they are doing all this stuff for us, since they figured out how to oil themselves long before.  BANG.  End of civilization again.

3. Flying Cars - Have you seen people driving cars in 2 dimensions?  It's laughable at best.  You really expect me to believe that if you add one more dimension and let the same people fly a car that currently drive them that this would be a good idea for anyone?  There is a good reason it's hard to get training and fly a plane.  Because we don't want idiots doing it.

2. Animal to English Translator - I'm pretty sure it would be fun to hear what animals are thinking.  A long time ago there was a TV movie called day of the Dolphin.  I don't remember much from that show, but I DO remember that it was creepy when the Dolphins started talking.  When my kids were young I would make animal voices and tell my kids what animals were saying.  So much that they would ask 'whats that cat saying dad?'  and I would come up with some pithy cat like comment like 'You all bore me' or 'Where is my lasagna'.  If we were to really hear what animals were thinking, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't like a lot of what  we hear.






1. Transporter - I've mentioned Transporters before in my blogs.  While it may be possible and certainly interesting, ultimately it would be a really really bad idea.  If we had transporters.  Disneyland would immediately raise their prices to 2000$ for park entrance and a churro would run you about 50 bucks. Why?  Well because everyone in the world could go anywhere they wanted too and a LOT of people want to go to Disneyland.  But that's not all.  Imagine how many people would like to visit the beach in the summer but can't?  well they ALL can now.  great.  local overpopulation and then everyone leaves.  The Hotel industry would be all but extinct.  Cars would evaporate of course except for the sport of it.  Not having the barrier of travel would be impossible to live with.  If you live in a nice place, everyone will be there.  If you live in a crap town neighborhood.  It will be a ghost town instantly.  Definitely a bad idea.

Thanks for reading.  DON'T INVENT THESE THINGS! Come back in 15 days or so!

top 10 inventions by the Devil

Satan is an interesting character.  He's often blamed for influencing us poor humans into doing some pretty bad stuff.  I know in my own case, I have nobody to blame but myself for the stupid/bad things that I do.  I'll take full credit when I ring my items out of the convenience store checkout counter of life.  There are some things in life however that I think may have in fact been invented by the father of lies.  They seem to be there and yet serve mostly an evil purpose.  I realize that all of the things I will mention have actual originators that may be offended, I'm sorry.  This is just my take, and perhaps the take of the Dark Lord of the Netherworld who had no part in this blog...that I'm aware of...


10.  Insurance - Every kind of insurance is based on a couple of things.  Distributing risk, and fear.  Invented by the Dutch to offer an alternative to bankruptcy when your ship sank at sea, Insurance is the sale of perceived protection from fear.  Without the fear part the whole thing doesn't really work.  Distributing risk speaks more to the product.  Fear speaks more to the profit.  In the end, no matter how much you pay, you rarely ever get your money's worth out of insurance.  Anyone who is a big proponent of insurance in general is probably someone that thinks that they benefit from it (like an owner or shareholder) or someone who is deathly afraid of having sudden expenses in the case of illness or accident.  Which they will anyway even if they DO have insurance.  The Devil thrives on fear, so if he didn't invent it, He'd be proud to take credit.

9.  Pharmaceuticals - Medical Doctors take an oath  to 'do no harm'.  I don't think there is any such motto in the Pharmaceutical industry.  I think it's motto is 'do harm that is small enough to not get you a class action suit'  Which I'm pretty sure is not even translatable in Latin.  Medicine tries to lengthen life.  Pharmaceuticals try to lengthen treatment.  Why cure something in once dose if you can do it in 20?  This has Lucifer's hoof prints all over it




8.  Teeth - Lets be serious.  Our teeth are a big part of enjoying food which is a big part of life.  If you had to eat everything from a straw, then things would get pretty boring on the food front.  So we have teeth that are great for tucking into all kinds of victuals.  If these teeth were designed like shark teeth, we would be just fine,  tooth goes bad, pop and in clicks a new one.  no problem.  Of course we have the other kind of teeth that get ground down and decayed if you eat anything sweet (which we happen to like a LOT). Pain and suffering?  Yeah, I think we know who appreciates that and it's not your middle school Gym teacher...wait a minute...it all makes sense now!



7.  Motion Picture council of America - Jack Valente is the leader of this OH so secret band of movie judgment passers.  You just never know what they are going to do on any given day.  The reason this group is probably spawned of Baal is due to the fact that they seem to be followed blindly and yet are so capricious in their judgments.  Sometimes you see a movie that's PG and it seems really violent.  You see a movie that has a little bit too much innuendo and it's Rated R.  Sure the ratings help us as parents and consumers, but it seems to also be a tool of money making for the film industry.  They can decide if a film makes money or not just by the right or wrong rating.  There are shifting standards and subjective rules.  I believe the Devil is in these details.

6.  2 and a half men - I just know the devil is involved with this show somehow.  I just KNOW it.
















5.  Publishers Clearing House - As a kid I was CERTAIN that we would win the PCH if we would just get a couple of subscriptions and do all the little things correctly we would be walking away with a giant cardboard check.  It was really my first introduction to gambling.  Those things were loaded with lots of hope but only offered vague despair.  Not only did you not win, but you had to send a self addressed stamped envelope to see if you won.  I never got the list.  I guess I never expected to be on it.  If this isn't the magazine club of the Devil himself, certainly it is that of a lesser demon since most paper publications are going the way of Ed McMahon.





4.  BCS Bowl system - This is more about protecting money than evil.  On the other hand, it's pretty evil to not let teams play in a bowl game just because they aren't a part of the 'club'  or better yet they can't play for the large rankings because some bunch of minions of Satan decide which direction the votes go.  If the college football Gods would deign to interfere with Beelzebub's racket I believe they would institute a end of season tournament.  Of course some sacred cows would have to be melted down in order to get that to happen.

3.  Technology - You buy something that is the treasure of your heart initially.  5 years later.  It is garbage and might not even be worth throwing away because it's probably too heavy.  Does it work?  Of course it does, perfectly.  Who other than the son of the morning would give us such a maddening situation as technology.  Working for things we throw away?!?  Talk about slaves.  My shackles are as great as anybodies.  I just hope that 3-D TV is the end of the road (as far as flat panel displays go.  I think we are a ways off of holographic style displays.  Lucifer LOVES to keep you buying the same things over and over again.

2.  Cabbage Patch Kids - I Still remember the year that the Cabbage Patch Kids came out.  It was my first experience with hot Christmas toy fever.  You see, the same year, Laser Tag hit the market.  It was HUGE!  but not nearly as huge as those butt-ugly collections of cloth and stuffing.  Each one more hideous than the next, but they were IT.  I saw lines of people waiting at stores at the mere rumor of one or two becoming available.  It was bizarre.  Only a true serpent would influence a child to love this kind of rubbish and in turn enslave their parents to burning blood and treasure in the pursuit of a silly toy.  A greater, more ironic perversion of Christmas there really couldn't be.





1.  Post Classic Loony Tunes -  Loony Tunes are a quintessential classic cartoons series.  Created in the days when censorship was limited to adult themes and even that definition was pretty loose.  Loony Tunes were so great that every cartoon series that came after was, and still is, influenced by the creative genius of the greats of the day.  I'm speaking of course of the Artistic direction of Chuck Jones, Bob Clampet, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Robert McKimson along with the ubiquitous vocal talent of Mel Blanc.  If you have read my blog on how suits ruin everything, then you know that this is no exception.  There have been so many re-mixes and re-makes of these classic cartoons and they all fall so far short of the Mark that Only Satan with his clever counterfeits of truth and beauty could create such monstrosities.  The vocals are usually done by Mel Blanc's son.  He has some of the pipes of his old man, but not quite.  The cartoon direction falls under any one of many nameless wannabe's.  The sad part is you can tell that the bottom line is the only bottom line in the production of these horrible rhinestones. 

If this is what awaits me in Hell, then I hope I'm only visiting.  Thanks for reading.  click on some ad's If you all do several times, I'll make something on the order of .38 cents.  SWEET!

top 10 Ideas for inventions by me.

Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door.  At least that's what they say.  The they is Ralph Waldo Emmerson.  He didn't build mousetraps, He wrote.  The sentiment is still the same.  Everyone has an idea about how to make things better.  99% of these ideas are stupid and not well thought out.  Oh, but that miraculous 1% is truly amazing.  The fact is, you have to wade through quite a bit of the 99% in order to actually get to the 1%.  We have had some great inventions in our time and those great inventions build on even greater innovations.  We live in an age of excess for less.  Thanks to invention/innovation we now live better lives than all the kings of antiquity.  All they had was good food and a soft bed.  We would be very mad if that's all we had now.  Well, my inventions are not life changing ideas that will turn society on its head.  Instead they are minor contrivances designed to make my easy life even easier.

1.  Shrink wrap present wrapping - So this idea is a pretty easy one.  It was made for guys like me that think present wrapping is for the birds.  you just have colored patterns on a bag made out of heat wrap.  drop whatever you want to wrap in, pick up the blow dryer and bingo bongo!  Instant wrapped present.

2.  Philadelphia cream cheese EZ style - So there I am in the office and someone has been kind enough to bring bagels and little tubs of cream cheese.  I'm spreading the cream cheese on my bagel and it hits me.  They have cheese in pressurized cans for spreading on crackers, why not cream cheese in pressurized cans for bagels?!  It makes perfect sense.












3.  New Christmas Day - I know I've harped on this one before.  Valentines day is a stupid holiday.  Christmas is in the wrong place.  We already know that late December is NOT Jesus' Birthday.  In fact Christmas was picked to be in December because of a bunch of Druids and winter solstice.  Great.  I don't know any druids, but I bet they wouldn't mind us taking our copy of their holiday and moving it to Valentines day.  MUCH easier to find snow and the other 2 holidays that surround Christmas will gain more meaning.  Thanksgiving and Newyears.  I'm not sure how you go about getting this changed, but I think it's a good idea.

4. LED lights around skate tracks. - My son dabbles in speed skating.  I've watched a bit here and there and I noticed that they superimpose on the ice, the flag and name of the skater as they go by.  This is great for the folks at home, but it sucks for the live audience.  Then last Winter Olympics there was in incident where the first place skater was incorrectly told by his coach to change lanes and it disqualified him.  That was horrible.  Then it all hit me.  They should have little LED chaser lights embedded in the ice.  They could be deep enough that they wouldn't impede skating, but they could shine the different color for each skater.  They could even light up based on the fastest time so you knew what you needed to beat.

5. LCD window shader. -  I had this one a LONG time ago, but I've seen it in practice since then.  I actually saw it on Knight Rider (the old one).  You adjust the LCD slider and the shading of your window changes from clear to dark.  I know they have it, but I had my idea around 1984.  Yeah, I know, a day late and a dollar short.

6. Medical Testing like fast food. - A lot of  Medical tests are not rocket science.  They take a sample from the subjects and mix it with some chemicals and tada!  You have your results.  Some are easy and some are a little more involved.  But MANY of them are just as easily read by the consumer instead of the local health official (with it's associated costs).  A couple of years ago I took one of my boys in to the local clinic after having given him a strep test.  While he did not test immediately positive I looked again after 24 hours and the test gave me a faint positive.  That warranted a trip to the Doctors office where I told the doctor that I felt like my son would pass the long strep test.  The doctor asked why I thought that and I told him because I had already tested him and it came up vaguely positive.  He looked at me like I had just looked into his magicians hat and discovered it's false bottom.  They administered the strep test and it came back negative.  I told him the long test would say otherwise.  He said 'I doubt it, your son just has a virus'  This is hypocratus greek for 'Yes you are sick, thank you for your money'.  The next morning the clinic called to ask me where to phone in my sons antibiotic treatment because he passed the long test.  The most interesting thing about this all is that MY strep test costed about 3 dollars.  Their strep test costed me about 80.  So I thought that a convenience store type of place where medical tests are sold but not administered would be a good idea.  a nurse practitioner could be on site to inform people on how to read various tests and there you go.  I would make a boatload of money just by charging 8 dollars for a 3 dollar strep test.  I would be embarrassed charging 15 and ashamed to charge 80.

7. Dart Board with LED through fiber-optic to approximate the bristle effect. -  I love to play darts.  Unfortunately I'm not that good, but I still like to play a lot.  I have an automatic scoring steel tip dartboard.  It's great fun, but as I was playing I thought 'wow, those bristles are really not any more around than fiber optic cable so why not sprinkle the dartboard with cheap fiber-optics so we can see visual effects and targets etc?  I think it would be great!  (probably good for a lot of games)

8. Faraday cages to house movie theaters. - I'm tired of people texting and getting calls etc. in the Theater!  It totally puts me off of my movie experience.  Well, if you put the theater in a farraday cage, no signals would get in.  It would be awesome!  I would also love to see the looks on peoples faces as nothing shows up on screen and all the bars are 0.  Can you hear me now?

9. Large returnable containers for real BULK foods.  - My political leanings are definitely to the right.  That being said it doesn't mean I think that we should run around filling up holes with trash.  Without going into the political sides which I know only too well, I will say this.  If the people embrace recycling as an economic engine then it will work.  I don't like the idea of throwing away plastic packaging over and over and over for the same goods.  It seems a waste, and it is.  We have 'bulk' food areas in the grocery store but we really just give them a cursory glance.  they are called bulk because they don't have packages.  But we need packages because we need to hold our stuff.  So I thought that any dry good could be held in large bins and filled into smaller plastic containers  once used those containers would be handed back for washing and a rebate against the next container of product.  Not a really original idea I know, but I think they have the scale wrong.  I would like to see an end to cereal boxes.  But not the prizes.  I would miss those, so i'm not sure what to do with that.

10.  Universal Time Zone. -  Mountain Standard, Pacific, GMT, UTC (the current time model for the world, and it already started off on the wrong foot.  UTC stands for Coordinated Universal Time or CUT which I guess doesn't trip off the tongue like UTC does.) it's all nonsense.  Since we are a more connected globe perhaps we should act like one.  We should take a time zone that has nobody living in it.  Say, the international date line and make THAT our UT or Universal Time.  This would be the real time all around the world.  Yes, I know, the problem is, that if it's 10 Oclock all around the world, in some places that would be the middle of the night and others it would be the early morning.  That's ok.  But when I'm traveling and I have a flight to catch and I have to base the timing of that flight on when the people of that particular region get up in the morning thats when I think things aren't quite right.  If it's the same time all around the world, then that flight leaves at the same time no matter where it is because it's based on the International Date line (out there in the Pacific Ocean).  Also cross country business meetings conducted on the phone would not be missed because of some daylight savings nonsense also rooted in time zones.  I'm afraid it's like the metric system in the US.  Nobody is in the mood to change to it, even though it is more efficient.

Thanks for reading!