Friday 29 August 2008

Business Opportunity for New Yorkers

The global economic pressures are evidently not sparing anyone, and if you don’t believe me, well, here's the proof- the price of rat meat(!!!) in Cambodia has quadrupled in the past year from 31 cents to $1.28 per kg. Who saw that coming?

In addition to expensive rat meat, Cambodia is currently experiencing high unemployment, whilst the City of New York has twenty times the amount of rats than humans- a real problem for NY.

So I had a thought- send 2,000 Cambodians to NY for two months to chase rats (=job creation and solving rat-overpopulation problem), let them keep keep/eat 5% of all rats caught (=food and supplementary income) and send them to Cambodia for 50 cents a kg.

New Yorkers would get rid of the rats and in the process make some extra money to...I don’t know- polish the Statue of Liberty or something. Guess I don’t need to spell out the benefits for Cambodia?!

We should all pressure our Governments to think outside the square. I mean, think about it- who would have ever thought about importing labour to fix a serious problem, which would in turn lead to exports to a country in demand of such a sought-after commodity as rat meat?!?

Thursday 28 August 2008

Is Public Nudity Effective?

I just read an article (and watched the TV clip) in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, about two women showering naked right smack in the middle of Stockholm’s central square. They claim they did to raise awareness for the environment, animal welfare and for the poor people of the world.

One of the two showering activists was quoting how many litres of water it took to produce 1 kg of meat and how many showers that equalled annually. The sign on their very minimal shower screen called people to clear their conscience and become a vegetarian.

Is this effective you ask? Well, I for one agree that taking your clothes off is a highly effective way to get attention. In this particular case, however, I think it may have had a slightly different effect, as I am quite sure the majority of the male spectator got a real hunger for flesh

Saturday 16 August 2008

Future Olympic Sports?


On Thursday my creative sister published some suggestions relating to how to improve the Olympics and make sports more interesting (see link on the right- How to Open a Coconut).

Her suggestion focussed on combining existing sports thereby making them more challenging and entertaining.

These included:
• 100 m Fencing
• Synchronised Swim Boxing (two teams of synchronised swimmers would launch team members wearing boxing gloves at the other team to try to disturb their routine)
• Underwater Hurdles
• Synchronised Ski-jump Shooting
• Triple Javelin Jump
• Ice Tennis

I got inspired by this and came up with a few suggestions myself:
• Triple pole vault jump
• Canoe archery
• 400m high jump (instead of hurdles set the high jump bar at 2m)
• Basketball Tae Kwon Do (full contact basketball)
• Underwater wrestling (truly a test of strenght, stamina and holding your breath)
• Ski jump discus (throw the disc while in the air)

...and for the real challenge- synchronised Triathlon.

I did have a bit of a chuckle when I thought of how funny it would look to combine hockey and equestrian, only to realise that the English already invented Polo...