1. Learning to tie my shoes.
2. There are currently one billion unwanted one dollar coins sitting in vaults across the U.S. with another billion set to be minted. Following the success of the state quarters program, a law passed in 2005 required the Treasury to create a series of one dollar coins featuring the faces of all the U.S. presidents, as well as an equal amount of Sacajawea dollars. Dollar coins are more cost effective than paper dollars (they stay in circulation ten times longer), but the trouble is Americans hate them, and demand for the coins from banks has been much lower than Congress expected. When the program ends in 2016, Congress will have spent $600 million creating coins nobody wants. (By the way, if coin nonsense is your thing, check out this rant about eliminating the penny, which costs more than one cent to make.)
3. A desperate man in North Carolina robbed a bank three weeks ago in order to get free health care in prison. This is what we have come to.
4. According to President Obama, bombing another country doesn't count as "hostility."
5. I've been hearing rumors about this for a couple years, but now it's finally a reality: a company called Lytro is marketing a point-and-shoot camera which allows the user to re-focus an image after it has been taken. I'm convinced it won't be too long before we will be explaining to our kids that when we were young, cameras had to be focused. You can try out a demo of this technology by clicking on different places on the image below (or go here for more).
Bonus Thing: Up to 10,000 shipping containers (which are bit larger than what a tractor-trailer pulls) are lost at sea each year.
Actually, if I have change after a transaction, I always drop pennies and nickels in the parking lot before reentering my vehicle. Now I feel justified.
ReplyDelete-Aaron
Do not appreciate the bonus - considering they are loading up a shipping container with MY stuff tomorrow...:(
ReplyDeleteI've been known to actually throw a penny or two away...
ReplyDeleteThe re-focusing ability is crazy! I love it and hate it all at the same time.
Shannon - If it's any consolation, that's less than 1% of the containers sent to sea each year.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of bummed about the focusing technology. It's a cool concept, but it takes all of the intentional creativity of photography. People won't know how to make a picture good, they'll just play until they like what they see. (Sorry if I'm stepping on any toes...)
ReplyDeleteIt is a small consolation. This inventory we have to do is not fun, either. And I'm not shipping anything over that I don't have a digital copy of! (i actually have photos of Silas from before the days of the digital camera when I stopped bothering to print pictures)
ReplyDeleteNow I want to add "coin nonsense" to my interests on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteWhat about tying your shoes? I feel this needs some explanation...
ReplyDeleteClick the link. It will change your life.
ReplyDelete6. There is now a country that wasn't around last week, the Republic of South Sudan.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good one!
ReplyDelete