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Inventions: Duct Tape Belts
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Technology
- Hits: 957
Now I had this semi-brilliant idea, or not brilliant at all idea but when does an idea have to be brilliant...
Anyways, I was looking to shop it around, checked out 3M's website -
Terms
- Acceptance of your submission imposes no obligations on 3M, and in particular:
- 3M has no obligation to acknowledge or review your submission, or otherwise respond to you in any way regarding your submission,
- 3M has no obligation to keep your submission confidential, and may publish or otherwise publicly disclose your submission in any existing or later developed media;
- Your submission and its contents automatically become the property of 3M, without any compensation of any kind owed to you;
- 3M may use or redistribute your submission and its contents for any purpose and in any way, including but not limited to using it in new 3M products or services, or to improve existing 3M products or services;
- You are authorized to make the submission, and that your submission does not include the confidential information, proprietary know-how, trade secrets, or other intellectual property of any other person or party.
Now, if you had to sum up what was wrong with corporate culture you just do a careful reading of the above...
So I won't be submitting my idea to them, but I'll throw it out into the universe anyways:
Duct Tape Belts. Given how handy Duct Tape is, and how inconvenient carrying around a roll is, why not simply form duct tape into belts - and, if in a pinch you needed some, you could tear off a precut strip. Or the buckle might conceal a cutter, like tape guns have. Belts might be 10 or 20 ply deep, in a wide array of fashionable colors, and would very much suit the "survivalists" or people who always have a Swiss Army Knife or Leatherman on them. Duct tape is handy, but never handy when you really need it. Now it can be.
Think of the ads - great viral marketing. Couple goes on date. Boring. Belt comes off, and a couple of strips of duct tape (black with a latex finish), date gets interesting...Family goes on vacation...children squalling in the back, out with the duct-tape, happy vacation. And there's more, more, more, Duct Tape - the original utility belt.
So that's my million dollar idea for the day. I'm throwing it out there. If you make a million off of it make sure you:
- Remember you saw it here first
- Don't be a 3M. My idea, we can both be rich here.
In the Mouth of Madness
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 752
Horror, after Lovecraft...
Watched this tonight and kinda enjoyed it - Mainstream, John Carpenter, but there are some intriguing ideas around authorship and God, and it's open to a few sideways interpretations.
A Trove of old letters and photographs
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1209
I was looking for this, on behalf of an acquaintance who wanted some pictures I had. And I found it and opened it and...
This is a lot of psychic baggage. A lot. Digging through old photos, looking for the ones requested, looking through old letters, how to deal with this, how to deal with this...
A bonfire would be best, but it's not all mine, some of this belongs to - well, other people. But - after a night of brooding I simply begin, ripping up old letters, shredding them, they are of no interest to anyone but me and it's been a long time since I looked back, I'm not starting now. And the photos - many, just the tacky tourist photos, a few are good, many of me aren't, of my friends, most of whom the children don't know, will never, and so it's get the scissors, snip, snip, 2000 photos down to perhaps a dozen, how we edit history, pruning it to suit our needs, and I know I've not been the only one. This is a luxury few people get, and I should be taking advantage...
Social 30
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 2664
The daughter calls for a conversation, we've had a few of these, a bit of light banter followed by: "So, what to you think of...". I did really well in English 20 and 30 this year, now she's on to Social Studies. I don't mind, it forces me to think a bit...
..."the most important or transformative ideologies have been...", or words to that effect. This is good as I haven't given it a great deal of thought, but, running through it with her we come to 3: Agriculture, Monotheism, and Monogamy. In that order.
- Agriculture - in that we go from being one with nature to harnessing nature, agriculture allows for the growth of cities and specialization by groups in mining, metallurgy, pottery, allows for the arts, the development of science, the accumulation (for better or worse) of wealth and power, in short - we went from being one with the land to being it's master, which is as transformative an ideology as there could possibly be.
- Monotheism - 1 God. We take a pile of errors - praying to various deities, and combine them to make 1 error. 1 error, (presumptive of me - I know, maybe, then, not an error) - is better than many, and this is a huge evolution in thought - if 1 God created the world, we might by that discern the rules by which he created it; if many gods created the world there might then be many rules - as many, conceivably, as there are people - this small change in ideology makes a big difference in how we understand the world.
- Monogamy - the equal distribution of resources (women), the earliest form of Communism. 1 woman for every pot, as it were. This had the effect of reducing wars (no longer was there are surplus of idle manpower that might usurp a kings position, hence wars were a good idea to keep down the eligible competition) - and allowed civilization to proceed. It's an easy thing to shrug, but without monogamy there would be no debate about equal rights for women - so - clearly I should have 50% of the populations support right there!
I could think about this a lot more and make better arguments, revise, tinker, maybe even abandon some ideas in favor of others, but - hey, it's not my assignment.
After this conversation she'll call her brother, and sound him out with the same questions, then counter with "her" thoughts, essentially rephrasing my own, but giving him an "A" for effort...
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