SWCAMBORNE

Thinking outside the box sometimes isn’t good enough. This is thinking outside the ocean.

A humpback whale in Alaska

Whale oil was a major source of lamp oil in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It was clean, available and renewable. But petroleum was discovered and most of the whales were killed so it went out of favor. But conditions have changed. Petroleum is harder to get, global warming is a concern, and renewable resources are all the rage. Meanwhile whales have become one of the “charismatic megafauna”. This idea when implemented will make “saving the whales” a profitable enterprise, will reduce global warming and will ease our transition away from petroleum.

It is wrong to kill whales but what if once a year we used massive liposuction machines to harvest their blubber? The whales could be induced into the machine with training and incentives. It would have to be painless so the whales would cooperate. Think of how dairy cows are managed. Suddenly we could have commercial whale farmers negotiating with whales representatives (think Greenpeace) about the payment for blubber and ocean restoration projects. Whale herds would grow and as our dependency on whales grew our concern about krill and ocean pollution would rise.

This seems like a win-win opportunity. Less dependency on petroleum, more whales. Less global warming, more living in harmony with the other creatures of the earth.

You read this idea here first. Please be sure to attribute it to this site and add a link.

I thank you and so do the whales.

“Today is a good day to die.”

Nez Perce Indian saying

Speaking of the Autry Museum.  A very bright young lady we know works at the Autry in the fund raising area. After visiting the museum and Disneyland and talking to her about the difficulties of fund raising all in roughly the same time frame I came up with this idea for the Autry to get corporate sponsors money,  to give valuable consideration in return and to perform an important community service.
Some background:  The museum shares a parking lot with the LA Zoo. Lots of school groups visit the zoo. Why not organize a California History Parade in the parking lot to coincide with the school visits. It could consist of about a dozen eductional but fun floats, each with a sponsor, all loosely based on a combination of the Rose Parade and Disney’s Electrical Parade.

A Rose Parade Float

The sponsors would get lots of publicity (advertising) and the children would learn history. The magnitude of the opportunity for the sponsors would perhaps take the decision out of the corporate giving department and put it in the marketing department where the real money is.
Some examples of the floats to get your juices flowing:

• The Native Americans sponsored by The Morongo Casino
• The Mission Era sponsored by Mission Foods
• The Gold Rush sponsored by Morgan Stanley
• Statehood sponsored by Wells Fargo
• The Railroads sponsored by Amtrak
• The Automobile sponsored by Toyota
• Flight sponsored by Boeing
• Space sponsored by JPl
• Also Food, Water, Shipping, Recreation, Education and Tourism

Valuation of the sponsorships would be based on factors like:

• the cost of commercial time on childrens TV
• The cost of Rose Parade floats per viewer
• Secondary sighting based on photographs viewed by parents.
• Political goodwill

The floats would be designed for minimum maintenance. The riders could be selected from the daily audience and the selection of the daily “Grand Marshall” would create a patronage opportunity for the museum. What a great idea!

We were at the Autry Museum for their exhibit of painting of Yosemite. In the parking lot we saw this lady loading a life size plaster deer into her brand new convertible Mini Cooper. With ingenuity you don’t need a pickup truck.

“The most popular nonfiction book of 1957 was an attack on American education standards called Why Johnny Can’t Read, warning us that we were falling dangerously behind the rest of the world..”

From The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

From this data point we can either deduce that the crisis in American education is continuing or that the perception that there is a crisis in American education is continuing.  Since America did quite well in the last fifty years I have to conclude that the issue is one of perception.  Which leads me to believe that the current set of worries about education are at best overstated.