Blue Sky Limousine

I heard about a thing with Cadbury Eggs, where they had gotten smaller this year. I figured it was because of the weakened U.S. dollar, and the slower economy. So my guess is that certain items, instead of increasing in price, will shrink in size.

This was evidenced at the store the other day. Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, which usually gets sold in gallon containers, now came in one of those cardboard tubs with a plastic cover. But more than that, the tub itself seemed smaller than average. It was like they made it mini on purpose. I thought, “Oh, of course, there must be a whole range of sizes to choose from.” Like at the movie theater, you can get regular popcorn, large, and jumbo. Well, I didn’t notice any larger ice cream packages. Maybe they were out, but I think they’re just slimming things down a bit.

I wonder if it will ever get to the point where certain items become too small… to be seen by the naked eye?!

It’s time to merge. Fusion!!!

I guess since things are becoming tough, economically speaking, it makes a lot of sense to consolidate various businesses. When two companies come together in a good way, they are both stronger for it, and each can now better handle former weaknesses. Two heads are better than one.

In “Village Of The Damned,” a bunch of freaky blonde kids went around acting as one. They’d sit in class and absorb pages out of encyclopedias. I think how they did it was kind of like how a normal group of friends divides up pieces of a project.

“Alice, you take chapters 1 and 2. Fred, 3 and 4. Daria, 5 and 6, and Beavis, you take 7 and 8. We’ll all meet back here in 5 days to go over each other’s notes.”

But what I think those Damned children were doing was each reading one page, and immediately contributing it to their shared mind. They were rapidly assimilating information into the collective.

A company usually has a certain way of doing things, trade secrets. So a competitor would have to cobble together their own way of doing the same things. Sure, spies might be able to capture some of the methodology from Company #1, but I think, usually, Company #2 simply figures out the steps in the same logical manner that Company #1 originally used. There might be gaps. And Company #2 might fill inadvertently fill a gap that Company #1 is still struggling with.

Then the economy starts hurting, and both Companies need help. So they unite. BOOM! Their entity just doubled in size and intelligence.

But what really concerns me is what does this all mean to us? How does it impact us consumers when competitors unite? As long as the new Super Companies still have formidable opponents, then competition should remain, pushing value higher and prices lower. So hopefully the mergers will produce good news in most ways.

It’s hit the fan.

I read on Yahoo today that, “The Supreme Court affirmed Wednesday that police have the power to conduct searches and seize evidence, even when done during an arrest that turns out to have violated state law.”

So what this means is that cops can arrest you for any reason. Can search your stuff, and take it away from you. Then later, if it turns out your arrest was unwarranted and illegal, it doesn’t matter. They can still use your stuff for any purpose, including your prosecution.

It’s my understanding that disallowing the use of evidence that was wrongfully obtained provided motivation for officers not to illegally arrest people or trespass on private property just to find said evidence. But all that’s out the window.

You can get arrested for anything now, it seems, because there appears to be a significantly reduced penalty for officers involved in illegal arrests. Indeed, such arrests might even prove rewarding, as they would allow the seizure of property that could prove useful later.

So… say bye bye to the Fourth Amendment.

Lots of change going on. If you look at things one way, we face many problems that have the potential to make things bad. But if you take a different perspective, we have a major opportunity to do some good.

I remember hearing about the Greatest Generation, great because they triumphed over incredible adversity. Now we have adversities of our own to face. If we face them with confidence, intelligence, and resolve, then we can finally live up to the excellence in each of us that has been handed down from the Greatest Generation.

I just realized that the “One Day At A Time” mentality could be used to accomplish far more than beating an addiction.

Well, really the first “new” application of the technique that occurred to me had to do with eating. Like someone might want to change their eating habits or pattern, but be so used to eating in a certain style that changing it becomes difficult.

I’ve heard that it can take up to 3 months (I think) to break an old habit and replace it with a new one. So until that can happen, each day the habit is altered will take a concentrated effort.

Just one day at a time…

I was thinking that there are a bunch of rich people out there who could possibly make a difference by giving most of their funds to efficient, useful causes and organizations.

But then I imagined a negative version of the scenario. Negative and perhaps common sense.

Say Angelina Jolie decides to be good to mankind, and give away everything she owns, all her millions of dollars, in an effort to start and spread a campaign under which every rich person does the same.

This isn’t just giving money to people who’ll waste it. It’s the systematic reorganization of monetary funds in a way that will hopefully benefit all of us. The groups that are working to solve problems and producing results will get the most funding.

So Jolie becomes poor, in the hopes that other rich people will help like she did.

But they don’t. They don’t believe it will work, and in thinking that way, cause her program to fail. She becomes a regular person, and people treat her rudely.

Bleak. I could go into more detail, but I get the feeling that doing so would serve no purpose other than painting a poorer picture of humanity.

Or would it be accurate?

No, I have faith in people. We can work together, it just takes certain circumstances.

It just occurred to me that if you are moving really fast, it would be a terrific benefit to be able to somehow avoid crashes. This could be accomplished by some kind of phase shift, where when you move quickly, you do so on an alternate plane of reality. So you can see where you are and where you’re going, but if you “hit” a mountain, you won’t die. You’ll simply slide right through it.

If UFOs have accomplished this, it might explain why they’re difficult to track down.

If individual entities have done this, it could explain why ghosts seem to be fading in and out, or seem half-present.

Perhaps the government has phase shifting in place on various craft and with various people, and they explain all the recent ufo and ghost phenomena. Time travel could be used to explain all the other ones… Either that or aliens who’ve been using this technology for a long while.

Wow… that was out there.

I’ve heard and read in numerous places that if you eat your biggest meal in the morning, your second biggest meal for lunch, and your smallest meal for dinner, things will be better for you somehow.

I also read that in some part of the world, people who live to be in their 100’s have a light dinnertime meal.

From a short-term practical standpoint, I think eating like that prevents your body from having to process food at night, when you’re less active. I think during this time, you’d store more of it as fat, and burn off less. So eating a ton at night would seem to promote unnecessary weight gain, which itself can lead to a number of other problems.

Breakfast, here I come!

One of my favorite scenes is of the guys sitting out in the desert practically worshiping the aliens, who aren’t there, and singing the tune that we hear again at the end of the film.

Something just occurred to me. I’ve never thought this before, but it seems to make sense. At the end of the film, one keyboard/computer expert communicates with the mother ship by matching the musical tones and sequences.

All those guys in the desert were able to do that, as they showed by repeating the simplest part of the song. So what if for those guys, their adventure had already taken place? What if the alien ship played its music to them, and they answered?

Now that I think about it, I’ll bet the ship either didn’t seek a more complicated answer like it did at the end. Or if it did while still in the desert, it didn’t get it. Why? Because it waited until later to exchange previous humans for modern ones (if I remember correctly).

Wow, this is interesting to think about…

In a certain frame of mind.

I was wondering about the really rich guys high up in the food chain with million/billion dollar stakes in the Oil industry.

I realized that if you’re living in a selfish mindset, then it makes perfect sense to extend the reign of oil and pollution as long as possible.

Similarly, it makes sense to slice and dice the rain forests for whatever profit they’re worth.

What about the world? Isn’t there the risk of doing damage?

Yes, but someone high up is probably wealthy enough to pay for the creation of their own little world. Pay for irrigation, air conditioning, generators… Who cares about everyone else? Let them go sit in the air conditioned movie theaters.

Like I said, the selfish mindset seems to justify those types of actions.

But what doesn’t make sense to me is why all the wealthy people don’t become philanthropists. I thought it was a generally consistent part of human nature that once you reach a certain level of success, you can stop worrying about yourself, and start helping others.

For some people, you don’t even need to have money to operate that way…