Global Public Articles

In 1953 Dick and Mac McDonald used golden arches for a sign. They put an arch on both sides of their first, walk-up hamburger stand in Oak Brook, Illinois. When viewed from an angle, the two arches looked like the letter “M”. Although McDonald’s stopped putting golden arches on most of their restaurants in the 1960’s, the marketing of healthy happy meals shows that McDonald’s is still interested in angles.

In 1959 Harry Wheeler, an industrial arts teacher, built a sign for his Western store in Canyon, Texas and named the sign Tex Randall. Tex is a Stetson-topped, jean-wearing cowboy that stands 47 feet high and weighs 7 tons. Today the store is gone, Tex is starting to show his age and the property on which Tex’s size 75 boots stand has been bought by an outsider who - unlike the locals - doesn’t look up to Tex. The good news is Tex was bought for $5,000 by the owner of the local diner. The bad news is it would cost $55,000 to move Tex to that diner. It seems in Texas even the problems are big.

Because the Islamic holy time of Ramadan occurs in September, September 2008 was the time chosen by the grassroots Islamic awareness group, the Islamic Circle of North America, to start an ad campaign. The group sponsored signs in 1,000 of New York City’s 6,000 subway cars. The two-paneled signs featured the words “Islam Head Scarf or Prophet Muhammad” and the phrase “you deserve to know”. The ads also included a phone number and Web site for those people who wanted to learn more about Islam. When the ad campaign was first announced, there were derogatory headlines in the New York Post and angry statements by some local politicians. These were stronger signs - of the times.

Then there’s body language. According to Joseph Navarro, a retired FBI Special Agent, body language that deals with emotions is fairly universal and hard to hide. Biting our lip is a sign we’re insecure. Putting our hands on our hips is a sign we’re not pleased with the present situation. Raising our shoulders is a sign we’re not confident about what we are saying. Although Navarro used his body language skills to read criminals, he’s now teaching them to employers, doctors and poker players. Although it’s possible to have a poker face, don’t bet you can have a poker body.

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One way to cut the cost of living is to cut the amount of electricity we use. A brick, the box that’s attached to a power cord, consumes electricity even when the laptop, cell phone or other piece of electronics isn’t plugged into it. Televisions and cable boxes use power even when they are turned off and a big screen TV can use as much power as a refrigerator. Then there’s that innocent-looking, electric toothbrush. Leaving that plugged in uses two watts of electricity. That may not seem like much, but it could be more than is used by the bathroom lights. To plug in on electricity savings we have to unplug.

McDonald’s is another way to cut costs. Because of the down economy restaurant-goers are saving money by scaling down from casual dining to fast food. McDonald’s global sales have gone up and its stock reached an all-time high. Because it’s the world’s biggest restaurant chain, its franchises are usually located closer to customers than the competition. Customers can save gas driving to McDonald’s to eat and - according to some - get more gas while they’re there.

As more and more people cut costs by shopping at Wal-Mart, the nation’s biggest grocery seller is cutting costs too. It’s buying local produce. Over the past two years its partnerships with local farmers have increased 50% across the country. In 2008 Wal-Mart expects to buy $400 million worth of local produce, which will mean millions of dollars in fuel savings for the company. Although Wal-Mart stretches the meaning of local to include anything grown in the same state, customers don’t mind because it helps them stretch a dollar.

Stretching a dollar is especially important to people earning minimum wage. Three-fourths of minimum wage earners are adults - not teenagers. On July 31, 2008 the second phase of the three-phase minimum wage increase went into effect. The minimum wage went from $5.85 to $6.55. This means an extra $28 a week for those who work forty hours. That’s not much. That’s why more than half the states have higher minimum wages. The 12% raise means $262 a week and $13,624 a year - which is still $8,000 below the federal poverty level for a family of four. The good news is only 2% of hourly earners are affected by minimum wage. The bad news is 2% of hourly earners are still affected by minimum wage.

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Embarrassment comes in all shapes and sizes. For example, police forces across the country use unmarked cars in undercover work. The Dallas police recently used a 2004 Infinity they’d seized in a drug raid. They used the car for 2 months before discovering $400,000 worth of cocaine hidden in hydraulically controlled compartments of the car. Obviously, their undercover work didn’t include under their own cover.

Then there was the incident at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. According to The Project on Government Oversight blog, the base was put on security lockdown after it was discovered nuclear weapon launch codes had been lost. In a press release the Air Force said the codes were never missing. The crew guarding the codes had just fallen asleep - which seems to be another way of saying our national security is nothing to lose sleep over.

When the Army Corp of Engineers was called to protect the wetlands around Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana, the engineers set up two-dimensional cutouts of coyotes to scare away geese that were eating the wetland plants. Unfortunately, the geese were fooled for only a couple of weeks; but the engineers’ embarrassment didn’t end there. Concerned citizens who saw the cutouts called the local port authority to report having seen dogs stranded on the lake’s islands. When PETA called about the dogs, an appropriate response would have been, “Doggone!”

Detroit’s embarrassment has to do with its population. Because of the slump in the auto industry, Detroit is now second only to New Orleans in population loss. However, it’s not just people needing jobs who are leaving. According to the Detroit News, dead people are leaving too. Between 2003 and 2008 more than 1,000 of the city’s deceased were disinterred by suburban relatives and moved to surrounding areas. Looking on the bright side, this means Detroit isn’t a dead end city.

Surprisingly, not all embarrassment is embarrassing. For an Indiana man it was lucky. When Bobby Guffey bought his usual lottery ticket, he had forgotten his glasses. Although he always plays the same numbers - a combination of his 5 children’s birthdays - he entered the last number incorrectly. Yes, that mistake earned him $3 million; but because he was embarrassed by his mistake, Guffey went back into the store and bought a ticket with the correct numbers. That ticket won him $1,000 - proving it pays to see your mistakes.

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More and more professionals are moving to small towns. The good news is they’re not having to move back in with their parents. These professionals are responding to Web-based recruitment campaigns from rural areas - campaigns that offer both good jobs and a better quality of life. In rural southwest Virginia the program’s called “Return to Roots” and lists jobs in technology, engineering, education and health care - jobs provided by companies moving to rural areas to save money. Similar programs have been started in other states. In fact, more than 500 job seekers have moved to South Dakota since it started its program in October 2006. Obviously, “Build it and they will come” applies to fields other than the “Field of Dreams”.

Text messaging may subvert letters and numbers to produce ultra-concise words and thoughts, but there’s good news. It’s not ruining the English language. In a 2007 British experiment children who texted scored higher in reading and vocabulary tests. The better they were at text abbreviating, the better they were in spelling and writing. It seems the more exposure children have to any kind of language, the more verbally skilled they become; and the children who had cell phones longest scored highest. That’s a message all phoneless children want their parents to get.

Ford’s good news is it’s introducing a blind spot mirror on its 2009 Ford Edge. This small mirror in the outer corner of the side mirror will give drivers a view of the area alongside their vehicle. Unlike aftermarket add-ons, these mirrors will be specifically designed for each car and truck model, thus providing an optimized field of view. Although a spokesman wouldn’t say how much the feature will cost Ford, it’s definitely af-ford-able.

LS9, a biotech company in San Francisco, has developed a good news fuel. It has the same properties as fossil fuel, but without the 100-million-year production wait. The fuel is a genetically-altered, harmless form of E coli bacteria that eats sugar and excretes the equivalent of diesel fuel. Unlike ethanol, which is made from corn, LS9’s fuel can be made from plants with no food value. Unlike ethanol, it won’t corrode oil pipelines or require cars to have special adjustments to use it. LS9 may not end oil dependency; but because it can program the bacteria to also produce gasoline and jet fuel, LS9 may be the Rumplestiltskin of the 21st century.

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It used to be thought that only chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants and humans could recognize their reflection in a mirror. Now German scientists have added magpies to that list. When magpies were marked with a red or yellow dot that was visible to the birds only in a mirror, they scratched the dot. To prove the birds scratched the dot because they recognized themselves in the mirror - and not because they were investigating what had been done to them - other magpies were marked with a black dot. Those birds didn’t scratch. This means self-awareness isn’t limited to mammals. It also means birdbrains are brainier than we’d previously thought.

A German study done by the University of Duisburg-Essen found that cows can sense the Earth’s magnetic field. Using Google Earth, the researchers looked at more than 8,500 cows in 300 pastures all over the world. They discovered that cows line up their bodies to face north or south when they are grazing or resting - regardless of the sun’s position or which direction the wind is blowing. Although birds and bats use internal compasses for navigation, the researchers don’t know why cows use theirs. For now they’re cowed by the unknown.

Scientists recently discovered mice can smell fear. Mice have a tiny bundle of cells in their nose that enables them to smell “alarm pheromones”, the chemicals produced when animals are afraid. Mice that had the cells removed showed no fear when exposed to air in which other mice had been euthanized. When mice with the cells in tact were exposed to the same air, they froze in fear. Although fish have the same ability to smell these pheromones, scientists have discovered that water pollution can interfere with it. This is nature telling us we don’t take “suffishient” care of our environment.

According to research done at the California Institute of Technology, time flys for flies - especially when they’re about to be swatted. A fly has less than one-tenth of a second to perceive danger with its eyes, determine what direction the danger is coming from and use its legs to reposition itself to jump away from the danger. All this is accomplished by a brain that is the size of a poppy seed. For humans to successfully swat a fly, they need to anticipate the fly flying away from them and extend the swat in that direction. This is basic SWAT training.

KNIGHT PIERCE HIRST takes humorous looks at life.
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