Global Public Articles

The biggest investment most people make is a house. Then there’s the cost of maintenance, repairs and improvements. After a few years remodeling is a possibility, but insurance is a must. With a house it’s always something; but as long as the interest on mortgages is tax deductible, homeowners can sleep in a tax shelter.

Those who are skittish about investing in the stock market can let their money ride - on tractors. Antique tractor collecting became popular in the 1970’s. Some names are familiar - John Deere and Case - and some aren’t - Oliver and Silver King. Some are already restored and others are waiting for hope to be restored. As the number of tractor aficionados has grown, prices have increased. Prices drastically increased in recent years because of European investors benefiting from the exchange rate. Prices of older tractors can double in a year - making tractors a down-to-earth investment.

Then there’s Elon Musk’s out-of-this-world investment. Musk is the 37-year-old, mega-millionaire co-founder of PayPal, who invested $100 million of his own money in Space X, a low-budget rocket company. His goal is to radically reduce the cost of putting objects into space. Unfortunately, Musk’s three attempts to put a Falcon rocket into orbit have failed - so it seems some things do require a rocket scientist.

No rocket scientist is needed to get to Mars - Mars, the chocolate manufacturer, that is. That Mars is investing $10 million to study the genetic makeup of cocoa. The world’s cocoa supply is produced by 6 1/2 million subsistence farmers in Africa and the Americas; but their plants are suffering from disease, pests and climate change. Knowing cocoa’s genetic makeup will enable more resistant plants to be grown and Mars is willing to provide its information to anyone - even to the Hershey Chocolate Company. That is an offer that should be sealed with a kiss.

Finally, the owners of an upscale supermarket in Chevy Chase, Maryland have sealed the deal on investing $7,000 a year in a car wash for their shopping carts. According to the supermarket owners, shopping carts are more germ-infested than pay phones, soap dispensers and toilet seats in public restrooms. By spraying a peroxide-based mist on the carts, the system supposedly eliminates 99.9% of the germs. The company that makes the cart wash system has sold 20 units in the U.S. and South Korea. Unfortunately, that is far from a clean sweep.

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Tamien Bain was fourteen when he and two friends robbed a McDonald’s. Tamien was tried as an adult and served twelve years in prison. Unlike some prisoners, he didn’t find Jesus. He found music. Now twenty-nine, Tamien is known as Miami rapper “BAING The Locksmith”; and he knows it’s never too late to be a hero. BAING started “Real Talk”, a program which brings rappers to youth detention centers to talk about their mistakes and to share their music. BAING’s latest music is a jingle which qualified him as one of five contest finalists. When BAING turned his life around, he turned in a complete circle. The jingle was for McDonald’s.

Joel Armstrong was sitting in his second-floor, Spokane office when he saw that a duck had laid ten eggs in the awning outside his window. The day after the eggs hatched the mother duck jumped ten feet to the sidewalk. After the first duckling jumped, it lay limp on the sidewalk. That’s when Joel jumped into action. With a friend telling him when each duckling jumped, Joel caught the remaining nine. Then, after the first duckling surprisingly revived, Joel put them all in a box and carried them to the river. When the mother duck waddled into the river, all ten ducklings followed. Obviously, this would be a better world if none of us ducked responsibility.

Sean Tevis is a Web designer who wanted to run for political office. After being told he needed $26,000 to campaign against the incumbent Kansas state representative, Sean went door-to-door. Two weeks, $25 and two dog bites later he decided to use his Web skills. Sean posted a stick-figure cartoon on line. In “Running for Office” a political advisor tells Sean it’s easy to raise $26,000. He just needs fifty-two people to donate $500 each. Unconvinced, Sean keeps breaking $26,000 down until he gets to three thousand people donating $8.67. Less than a day later Sean reached his goal - proving small change can make big change.

Rochelle Behrens is a 25-year-old Washington lobbyist by day. By night she literally bridged the gap to clothes designer. Tired of having a gap between the buttons of her dress shirts, Rochelle designed a shirt with hidden buttons. Because these buttons button through the interior side of the shirt’s placket, the shirt looks normal from the outside. Rescuing women from bra-showing gaps made her a her-o.

KNIGHT PIERCE HIRST takes humorous looks at life.
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The law for taxing cell phone use was written 20 years ago. That’s when cell phones were the size and weight of bricks - when they cost $4,000 and were used only by top executives. Today they’re smaller, lighter, cheaper and used by almost everyone - but the law hasn’t changed. Personal calls made on company mobile phones are still taxable. The IRS considers them part of an employee’s compensation package. Just like using a company car, employees are expected to document all use, indicating which was personal use. Obviously, a new law is called for - but not from a company cell phone.

Ken Smith, senior lecturer at Bucks New University in England, is calling for new spelling. He thinks some misspelling should be considered variant - not wrong. Among the 10 words he proposes for variant spelling are Febuary for February, twelth for twelfth and truely for truly Joe Pickett, executive editor for American Heritage Dictionary, says spelling changes aren’t accepted until they become mainstream in print publications. Fantasy became an accepted variant for phantasy in the early 1900’s. In 1996 consideration was given to alot as a variant for a lot - but for now it’s still rong.

Most fisheries still operate on a simple system - when regulators declare opening day, fishermen catch fish as fast as possible. In the past few decades this has caused a 30% collapse in commercial fisheries worldwide. Now federal regulators are considering a catch-share system. Fishermen would be given a quota for fish to fill in a year and that quota could be sold. A survey of 11,000 fishermen worldwide found that fisheries using the catch-share system are only half as likely to collapse and that likelihood decreases the longer they use the system. Because this survey was published in Science magazine, it’s obviously a fish story without exaggeration.

Unfortunately, not all change is good. The number of fireflies worldwide is decreasing. Although researchers attribute this to urban sprawl and industrial pollution, increase in artificial lighting is another factor. It interferes with females seeing and being wooed by flashing backsides of males. The severity of the decrease isn’t known because among the 2,000 species of fireflies, many females spend most of their time on the ground and other females don’t flash. Further complicating the count is their 1-3 week lifespan. Nevertheless, because these insects are key to understanding the health of an ecosystem, fireflies count.

KNIGHT PIERCE HIRST takes humorous looks at life.
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Despite Darwin’s theory of evolution, there are people who don’t seem to have evolved mentally. A man from Tennessee booked a hotel room so he and his girlfriend could celebrate the first anniversary of the day they met. To make the room more romantic, he arranged candles on the floor to spell “I Love U”. After lighting the candles he went to get his girlfriend. By the time he got back, the carpet had burned and the television had melted. The Tennessean had to pay for damages, but he’d proved that romantically no one could hold a candle to him.

Then there was the man in Greenville, South Carolina who went to the BB&T bank and gave a note demanding money to one of the tellers. After getting an undisclosed amount of cash, the man left the bank and got into a waiting taxi. Moments later, after asking the cab company where the man had been dropped off, police arrested him. However, because the taxi driver wasn’t involved in the robbery, it wasn’t a taxi-ng case.

“Men on a Mission” - a calendar featuring shirtless, male missionaries - has sold almost 10,000 copies. This caused the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to officially reprimand the publisher. In defense, the publisher explained his projects are about stepping outside stereotypes; but considering he’s a Mormon, he’d stepped too far.

According to a judge in New Zealand, parents went too far when they named their nine-year-old daughter “Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii”. When the couple appeared before the judge in a custody dispute, he ordered them to change the name to something that would cause less ridicule. Since then the judge has turned down two names suggested by the parents - “Sex Fruit” and “Fish And Chips” - but I’m sure he’s thought of appropriate names for the parents.

Finally, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has asked Ben & Jerry to keep cows from suffering by using breast milk instead of cow’s milk in their ice cream. La Leche League International, the world’s oldest breast-feeding support organization, said it would be difficult to make ice cream with breast milk because every woman’s breast milk is different. Considering it takes 1 1/2 gallons of milk to make 1 gallon of ice cream, every woman who has used a breast pump is painfully aware breast milk ice cream is udderly impractical.

KNIGHT PIERCE HIRST takes humorous looks at life.
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Do cutbacks in government spending have silver linings? They do for some people in Utah. Utah is the first state to switch to a four-day workweek for government employees. Although state police, prison guards and employees of the court and public universities aren’t included in the one-year experiment, 17,000 employees will be working 10-hour days Monday-Thursday. This will enable lights, heat and air conditioning to be turned off in 1,000 buildings, providing an estimated savings of $3 million. Thankfully for the government employees now celebrating 3-day weekends, employees of state-run liquor stores will still be working on Fridays.

A group of 500 small manufacturers in the Cleveland area are experiencing a silver lining in spite of selling mostly to an automotive industry experiencing record loses. As oil prices go up, shipping cheaply made products from China has become more expensive. Add to that the slowly rising Chinese labor costs and American car manufacturers are rethinking buying parts overseas. Because of the increased demand for their products, these Cleveland companies are making something else needed in America - jobs.

Even being in the brig at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina has had a silver lining for a few marines. They are participating in a program to train service dogs for fellow marines wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of the more than 70 tasks they will be teaching the dogs are opening the refrigerator, turning on and off light switches, putting clothes in the washer and completing ATM transactions. For these marines being able to train service dogs has given new meaning to being in the dog house.

Finally, according to a panel of doctors headed by Peter Roland, an ear/nose/throat specialist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, our ear canals also have a silver lining. It’s called cerumen - or earwax. Earwax is a self-cleaning agent with protective, lubricating and anti-bacterial properties. It starts as a watery substance made in tiny glands in the outer ear canal. As jaw movements move this substance through the canal, it mixes with bits of dead hair and skin and becomes earwax. In turn, the earwax moves through the canal and removes dirt, dust and other small particles. To avoid interfering with the wax and blocking the canal, we shouldn’t put anything smaller than our elbow in our ears. Actually, the doctors’ advice was more detailed than that; but ENT doctors tend to wax on.

KNIGHT PIERCE HIRST takes humorous looks at life.
Take a minute to make yourself smile at
http://knightwatch.typepad.com