Unusual Stuff

When someone owns most of your company, it’s pretty hard to tell him no.  Sumner Redstone is a huge player in the media world, thanks to his company National Amusements.  National Amusements is a movie theater chain that also happens to own 80 percent of two massive media companies, CBS and Viacom.  So, in effect, […]

Fall is my favorite season.  The leaves change color, and food all takes on different properties.  That doughnut?  Now a pumpkin spice doughnut.  That latte?  Now it’s every white girl’s favorite drink, the pumpkin spice latte.  Pumpkin spice everything is out there, ready for the taking, so enjoy it while it lasts.  (Next is peppermint […]

When John Muir laid out the plans for Yosemite National Park in 1890, one of the things he’d included in the massive park was an area called Ackerson Meadows, which is a meadow and wetland area some 400 acres near the park’s Big Oak Flat entrance.  For whatever reason, that never happened, while other parks […]

College is a big business.  No matter that half of all college degrees, my own included, are wasted.  In fact, a lot of people would have a better life without wasting time and money on a degree, but for a lot of people, college is more about what it represents than the actual education.  That […]

I was never a Bill Nye fan.  For whatever reason, I just never took to the show.  My science TV show was, and always shall be, Beakman’s World, if only because a guy in a rat suit got to eat sugar glass.  Plus they taught me, a movie nerd, how to make sugar glass.  Still, […]

Let’s do lunch.  We need to have a lunch meeting.  Everyone bring your lunch, we’re working late.  Lunch is a big deal around the office, because for some people, it’s the only chance they get to leave the office.  For other people, lunch is an invaluable resource for making professional connections.  That’s where Lunchback comes […]

It’s not a rare thing to hear the United States national anthem during the Olympics; you hear it at every sporting event ever, it seems.  At the 2016 Rio Games, the US won 46 gold medals, so the Star Spangled Banner was played 46 times.  Not too shabby, right?  However, the anthem is a song […]

In November, eight states will be deciding on just how they’re going to treat marijuana.  Some states are offering up the option of decriminalizing the drug (like California, giving it another shot), while others are considering legalizing it for medical purposes.  However, the most powerful entity in the land continues to look down on legal […]

America is a country of excess.  We like big cars, big roads, and big food to go in our big bellies.  After all, this is a country of fried cheese sandwiches washed out with 10 shots of espresso, so it’s not surprising that America’s fast casual chains are all tempted to pile on the calories […]

Honestly, I don’t think I watched a lot of Sesame Street when I was a child.  I remember some vague things, like Kermit wearing an overcoat and a hat with a press card, but other than that, I think I missed out on the Sesame Street train.  Sadly, that means I missed out on a […]

Invasive species are a serious problem.  Once an animal gets into an environment where it has no real predators, there’s no telling what will happen.  Florida is overrun with pythons; they’re even fighting off local gators.  If a gator can’t stand up to invasive species, what could a flightless bird do against predators?  If that […]

Donald Trump has somehow become the Republican nominee for President of the United States despite being pretty unpopular, both in his own party and in the general public.  Trump hasn’t been afraid of anyone, and he’s not been worried about keeping anyone other than his rabid supporters happy.  No matter what he says or does, […]

Denver won the Super Bowl last season, beating Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers.  They didn’t beat them throwing the ball; gone are the days of Peyton Manning breaking records.  After a couple of great offensive years since joining the Broncos, Peyton Manning lost his arm last year and the team basically carried him through […]

Everyone’s downloaded Pokemon Go.  I have, you have, no doubt everyone I know has at least considered it.  It’s a boon for Nintendo; the company’s worth $5 billion dollars more than they were a few weeks ago.  It’s a boon for Niantic Labs and Alphabet Company (Google’s parent), because they’re behind the hottest game on […]

Driverless cars are the future.  We already have cars that help us parallel park, and every company seems to be getting in on the driverless car game, from Google to Tesla to the Department of Defense.  So far, so good, by and large.  There have been accidents, but they’ve typically been the fault of other […]