I ate some delicious brownies and I thought to myself, "Why don't my brownies turn out that good?" I looked up brownies on the computer and along with recipes, I discovered that a brownie is a mythical creature. Who knew?
According to Steve at the Mythical Creature A Day blog, "A brownie is a type of folklore creature that usually inhabits houses, performing a variety of different types of chores in exchange for small gifts or food. They do not like being seen and will typically only work at night and live in unused parts of the house. They reportedly love porridge and are considered good natured."
I recently attended a march in San Francisco to help hotel workers get a decent wage. If I was the hotel manager, I wouldn't deal with the workers. I would fire them and hire some brownies. The brownies would work all night cleaning up after the guests and I'm sure porridge and honey are cheaper than minimum wage.
So, my advice to hotel managers and managers in general, hire some brownies. But be careful, these are not the kind you eat!
For more information on brownies go here.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
#4 2/17/09 Canada and Our Bailout Plan
The February 16 Newsweek magazine had an interesting article about Canada's banking system entitled "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative." As Fareed Zakaria, the author this article, put it, “Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it's Canada.”
Canada is flourishing in the current economic crisis for a number of reasons. Their banks are leveraged at 18 to 1 where U.S. banks are at 26 to 1. They have a system that works much better than social security and their house prices didn’t drop as badly as in the United States. Also, they have smarter rules about immigration and health care. Canadians don’t mess around when it comes to their economy.
We should take some of Canada’s ideas. They are clearly doing a better job at handling this situation than we are. Why not use their bank system, taxes, health care system, and immigration policies as a model for our own?
Now we have this ridiculous bailout plan that was supposed to jump-start the economy but it probably won’t work and future generations will just end up paying it off. Instead of using the money for silly programs, we should have taken the 700 billion dollars and divided it so that every person in America would get an equal share. There are a little over 300 million people in the United States. 700 billion divided by 300 million is around $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. Imagine if every person in your family was given a check for 2,000 dollars. That would get our economy going really quickly because everyone would start buying stuff again and then there would be demand for jobs so people could go back to work.
“So what accounts for the genius of the Canadians? Common sense.” We need some common sense when thinking about our economy and our bailout plan.
Canada is flourishing in the current economic crisis for a number of reasons. Their banks are leveraged at 18 to 1 where U.S. banks are at 26 to 1. They have a system that works much better than social security and their house prices didn’t drop as badly as in the United States. Also, they have smarter rules about immigration and health care. Canadians don’t mess around when it comes to their economy.
We should take some of Canada’s ideas. They are clearly doing a better job at handling this situation than we are. Why not use their bank system, taxes, health care system, and immigration policies as a model for our own?
Now we have this ridiculous bailout plan that was supposed to jump-start the economy but it probably won’t work and future generations will just end up paying it off. Instead of using the money for silly programs, we should have taken the 700 billion dollars and divided it so that every person in America would get an equal share. There are a little over 300 million people in the United States. 700 billion divided by 300 million is around $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. Imagine if every person in your family was given a check for 2,000 dollars. That would get our economy going really quickly because everyone would start buying stuff again and then there would be demand for jobs so people could go back to work.
“So what accounts for the genius of the Canadians? Common sense.” We need some common sense when thinking about our economy and our bailout plan.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
#3 2/10/09 Star Trek
I watched an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "The Drumhead." I had never seen Star Trek before and I was a tid bit confused by all the different species so I looked them up on the Star Trek wiki. In "The Drumhead," there were humans, Klingons, and Betazoids. Romulans were the bad guys but they were not in the episode.
Klingons are a barbaric, warrior race with dark brown skin. They have what appears to be a small mountain range on their foreheads. Klingons are friends to the humans aboard the USS Enterprise.
Betazoids are people that look almost identical to humans. They are can communicate telepathically and they can sense other peoples' emotions. This unique ability came in handy during the trials when trying to figure out if Tarses was lying. Like the Klingons, they are friends to the Federation.
Romulans have pointed ears and eye brows that are angled upwards. They are at war with the Federation so it was really bad that the spy was able to give them important information.
Klingons are a barbaric, warrior race with dark brown skin. They have what appears to be a small mountain range on their foreheads. Klingons are friends to the humans aboard the USS Enterprise.
Betazoids are people that look almost identical to humans. They are can communicate telepathically and they can sense other peoples' emotions. This unique ability came in handy during the trials when trying to figure out if Tarses was lying. Like the Klingons, they are friends to the Federation.
Romulans have pointed ears and eye brows that are angled upwards. They are at war with the Federation so it was really bad that the spy was able to give them important information.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Post #2 2/3/09 Meaning of the title "The Crucible"
After finishing "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller, I was left wondering, "Why is it called 'The Crucible.' I never saw anything about a crucible in the book." So, I did a little research on dictionary.com. I found out that a crucible is a container made of a refractory metal that is used to heat substances to high temperatures or to purify a substance. It can also mean a severe searching, test, or trial.
I came up with a few different explanations for the title. A crucible is extremely hot when it gets heated so you don't want to touch it or be inside it. Salem turned into a giant crucible. No one wanted to be there because everyone was getting burned (hanged). Abigail got away before she was burned but it didn't end as well for John Proctor or some of the other townspeople.
Another reason for the title is that the witch trials were meant to purify Salem, just as crucibles are meant to purify metals. The witch trials started because people thought their neighbors were doing witchcraft. They wanted to cleanse their town of the evil people. Crucibles were invented to get the impurities out of the metal. The only difference is crucibles work and the witch trails failed horribly.
My last reason for the title, "The Crucible," is that is was a test of John Proctor. He was tested to see if his faith in God would waver. He was also tested to see if he would lie and stop standing for what he believed in. He passed the test. He almost signed the confession but he realized that it would tarnish his good reputation. At the very end, his morals were more important than living.
I came up with a few different explanations for the title. A crucible is extremely hot when it gets heated so you don't want to touch it or be inside it. Salem turned into a giant crucible. No one wanted to be there because everyone was getting burned (hanged). Abigail got away before she was burned but it didn't end as well for John Proctor or some of the other townspeople.
Another reason for the title is that the witch trials were meant to purify Salem, just as crucibles are meant to purify metals. The witch trials started because people thought their neighbors were doing witchcraft. They wanted to cleanse their town of the evil people. Crucibles were invented to get the impurities out of the metal. The only difference is crucibles work and the witch trails failed horribly.
My last reason for the title, "The Crucible," is that is was a test of John Proctor. He was tested to see if his faith in God would waver. He was also tested to see if he would lie and stop standing for what he believed in. He passed the test. He almost signed the confession but he realized that it would tarnish his good reputation. At the very end, his morals were more important than living.
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