In a few years we'll look back and say..........

There are few things in life that annoy me as much as people just being plain dumb, but today I came across one of the best or worst examples (depending on how you look at it) I've ever seen.

Let me give you some background on this post. I've been doing research for school on the new High Speed Rail system that is beginning to be put in place across the country. If everything comes together like they're planning it's going to be pretty cool and revolutionize the way we travel in the US. The other bonus to this is that it's going to create ALOT of jobs right when our country really needs them.

That is unless you live in Wisconsin.........If you live there then you just elected a guy name Scott Walker to be your next governor and part of his political platform was to keep High Speed Rail out of Wisconsin because it would cost over $800million to build and cost taxpayers $10 million per year to run it. He did fail to mention that it would create 5,588 jobs starting in 2011 (in a state with 7% unemployment), generate $25 million in revenue annually and that the Federal Govt had $624 million ready to give to Wisconsin and Ohio for the project (for free!!!!!). Well since Walker won the election he's rejected the Federal Govt's money for the railroad (Ohio's new governor did the same thing) and it's been diverted to 13 other states who are already working on their own development. Illinois has started to work on a rail line between St. Louis and Chicago and which received $42.3 million of the rejected money. They at least were nice enough to post billboards right by the Wisconsin border thanking Gov. Walker for giving them so much free money.

Below is the campaign video Gov. Walker made to promote his airheadedness and then a few response articles.



Illinois News Report 1



Illinois News Report 2
Milwaukee Examiner Report

So I've been absolutely swamped with school work and my work at Wheeler Machinery and haven't really had a chance to think of anything to write about, but here's an interesting thing I learned last week.

Unless a new company is able to capture 25% of it's first target market chances are that it will fail. Pretty crazy, so to everyone who's thinking that industry ZZZZZ has billions of $ flowing through it so if you only capture 2% you'll be a millionaire, think again!

Think you had a bad day?

Next time you complain about a $10 parking ticket (which I get plenty of and always complain about) be glad that you aren't Jérôme Kerviel, a French trader who almost single handedly made his bank go under. He's been given 3 years in jail and ordered to repay the $6.7 Billion (yes, Billion with a B) that he made the bank lose. Read more about it here.

Ever wonder what happens when companies don't evolve? 

I'm glad I'm not the only one that gets annoyed by bad advertising.  FastCompany put together their list of the worst commercials which you can see here, videos included.  It doesn't exactly match up with my list but it does bring up the question, who in the world see's the ad and thinks "That's great!  People will love it, lets put it up."  I'm working on my own list of awful commercials which I'll post in a while but for now you can suffer through these.

Brooklyn to Omaha

What does an 80 year Nebraskan investor who has lived in the same house for 52 years have in common with a 40 year old, multi-platinum rapper from Brooklyn who is married to one of the worlds biggest pop stars?  More than you'd think.

Here's a short (very short) version of the interview but it has links to the full text and video of.  It's pretty cool to see.

Bad ideas with time to kill

So originally I was just going to talk about another awful idea but each subsequent mouse click led to more bad ideas and people with too much time on their hands and should probably be on some sort of National Security watch list.  So here we go.

The first awful idea is Rear Gear.  As their slogan says "No More Mr. Brown Eye!"  This is basically an air freshener that you hang on your dog's butt.  My thought is if it bugs you that much, you probably shouldn't have gotten your dog in the first place.

The next thing that came up is called the Humunga Tongue.  What better way to have a great day at the park with your dog than to throw a ball with a giant tongue on it?  Who wouldn't get a kick out of it?  I've always wished my dog had a longer tongue and looked like a cartoon.

 

Now if you think the Humunga Tongue looks like a great time you'll probably like Pet Star Wars Costumes.  I've never understood the fascination with dressing up dogs in costumes.  It seems like the people who do it are lonely old people who never had kids or their kids never let their parents dress them up like an Ewok.  The people who dress their dogs up are probably the ones who dress their baby's up in monkey costumes or put leashes on their kids when they go to the grocery store.  And we wonder why drug use is going up.

So if you're dressing your dog up like Yoda you're obviously into torture.  Don't even try to deny it.  And since it's your thing I have something special for you from some people that have lots of free time on their hands and a twisted sense of humor.  Follow Me!

And one last link just because I'm amazed/scared by the creativity of some people (with paper in this case).

Bad ideas

I was watching a show the other night called something like "Worlds Stupidest Inventions".  I agree with most of them and thought I'd share them with you.

First is the R2 fish school just in case you've ever wanted to train your fish to play organized sports.

Revolution Horizon?

We think our economy is bad?  After reading this article in the Wall Street Journal this morning I decided that we have no idea how good we have it here in the US. 

Ride the unfriendly skies

This is one of those things that makes you cringe and wonder what in the world someone was thinking. Sitting on a horse for an hour is painful enough, I can't even imagine flying sitting on a saddle.  And I don't even want to think of hitting turbulence..................

For the full article click me