Sometimes It's A Big Idea To Have A Bigger Boat

This pix just came wafting in from cyberspace. Don't know if it's a gen-u-ine unretouched photo—or a masterpiece of Photoshop manipulation. In any event, it's funny or, if you happen to be great-white-shark-averse, it's a tad unsettling.

The lesson here seems to be that this out-of-shape guy wearing a porkpie hat and sitting in his dinky 3.8 meter sea kayak perfectly illustrates the IMAGINATION-GRABBING POWER of a picture. It would be impossible to communicate the essence of this situation if you were limited to using words alone. BTW, if you click on this picture you'll get a much bigger, and much scarier, image.

TIP TO PORKPIE-HAT GUY: Keep your fat little hands inside the boat.

Big Idea Needed—Early Warning System for Cars

This story gets my goat. A month ago, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine was being driven at high speed in an official van—Corzine was in a rush to get to a non-essential meeting at the governor's mansion. The state trooper at the wheel had emergency flashers on and was doing 91 mph on the Garden State Parkway. As the press initially reported the story, a red pickup truck had "drifted off the road onto the grassy shoulder" then "swerved sharply back onto the road." This caused a Dodge Ramcharger in the right lane to move left to avoid the red pickup—and it bumped the side of the governor's van just as it was rocketing by. The van spun off the road and slammed sideways into a guardrail. Corzine, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was thrown around the van's interior and sustained serious life-threatening injuries, including a badly shattered femur that was broken in two places.

Initially, the bad guy was designated as the driver of the red truck. Especially since he had left the scene. But he turned up later and was absolved. I'm guessing that when the red pickup driver suddenly spotted the fast-closing van with lights flashing, he swerved onto the grassy shoulder to get out of the way. Then he began to lose control on the grass and pulled back on the highway to stabilize his pickup. After investigating, The New York Times concluded: "It now seems clear that Mr. Corzine's own vehicle was responsible for the crash."

So there you have it. This accident was caused by a vehicle bearing down on law-abiding traffic at an outrageous 91 mph! How often has this happened to you? You're moving along in the middle lane with cruise control set at the speed limit (oh, well, maybe you've got it 3 or 4 mph above) and from out of nowhere a car, truck, or state trooper whooshes by in the left lane—traveling at least 20 mph faster than you are. Yikes! Where did that guy come from???

How about something in the car that warns you about an approaching "highway missile" five or ten seconds before it hurtles by? I'll start the ball rolling with the video below picturing an idea that might work. If you've got another idea, post it on my blog for the world to see.

NOTE TO GOVERNOR CORZINE: As you know, the femur is the longest and strongest bone in the human body. It also takes the longest to heal. Last Labor Day Weekend, I took an 8-foot fall and shattered the top of my femur in four places. I had surgery similar to yours. It took a full six months for my femur to fully heal. Good luck during the wait—and when you're back in the van, fasten your seat belt and ask your "NASCAR driver" to keep it under seventy.

Big Idea In Washington DC Subway

At 7am this morning I was sitting with my cup of home-brewed Starbucks and reading The New York Times. Suddenly—wham!—a BIG idea hit me right in the eye. A story with the headline: "It's Not 'American Idol,' but Subway Station Auditions Draw Crowd in Washington."

The Times article reported that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority had been holding 5-minute auditions for an eager group of would-be "platform musicians." The artists ran the gamut from a trumpet-wielding performer to players of traditional Bolivian Andean music. There were gospel singers, jazz musicians, and African dancers. Artists competing for the 50 winning slots lugged along instruments like trumpets, guitars, banjos, electric keyboards, cello, and gourd rattles. The panel of four judges may not have included a cantankerous "Simon" but the article explained they had strict standards. During the first sixty minutes of the 3-hour audition, 30 acts came and went, dismissed with a quick smile and a "Thank you."

Fifty winning acts will be paid $200 for each regularly scheduled two-hour platform performance. Upside-down hats soliciting tips will not be allowed. But the big reason the winning performers want to do this is for the chance to turn a subway platform into a stage—and gain exposure to Washington's 700,000 daily commuters. Ah, fame... sometimes it's the best reward of all.

My congratulations to whoever thought up this Big Idea. There's no question in my mind that it had to be "pictured" in the innovator's mind to bring it to life.

Stop Global Warming—The $100 Billion Prize

An overwhelming majority of the world's scientists now agree that Global Warming is frighteningly real—and it's firing on all burners. The warming is caused by a thickening atmospheric layer of pollution, mostly carbon dioxide, that the rich, industrialized nations are spewing into space. Here's what happens: the energy beamed to us from the sun has a very short wavelength that allows it to pass easily through our pollution layer. The world's surface absorbs most of this solar energy and then, for billions of years, has been reflecting some of it back to space as infrared radiation. But here's where our new villain takes the stage: the atmosphere's "dirty space blanket" traps a portion of this infrared energy and recycles it back down to earth as heat.

This phenomenon is causing average temperatures to rise at the fastest rate in millions of years. The result will be horrendous. Hurricanes bigger than Katrina will become typical. Polar ice caps will continue melting and breaking up. Polar bears will be confused and then begin to disappear as their habitat disappears. And, of course, sea levels will rise noticeably. Oh, you can't quite perceive it yet when dipping your toes at the beach—but some scientific studies predict a 3-foot rise in sea levels by 2030. That would turn each of America's east coast cities into a sort of "Venice" with canals instead of streets. And a 3-foot rise also means certain death for a billion or so desperately poor people who live in the world's lowest-lying countries. Some studies predict as much as a 20-foot rise in sea levels by 2100. Tragically, more billions would perish.

But, hell, you already know this. It's probably accurate to say that most thoughtful, everyday citizens of the world know it. (We will pause here to gape with unbelieving eyes at a few politicians in Washington DC who, with their heads buried ostrich-like in the sand, remain steadfast members of a dwindling band of "GWD"—Global Warming Deniers.)

So, speaking on behalf of our abused, gasping, wheezing little planet, I'd like to suggest that we need a Big Idea. And the guiding principle of this blog is that the best way to get Big Ideas is to picture them. Before you run the video, let me explain what "The $100 Billion Prize" is all about. It's cash, folks. HUGE cash. One-tenth of a trillion dollars as a winner-take-all prize to the scientists or engineers who concoct a brilliant Big Idea to dissipate the pollution layer and begin reversing the climbing temperatures.

Who pays for the prize? It should be funded by the world's worst-polluting nations, with their shares calculated according to their percentage contribution to the planet's pollution layer. And it would be an incredible bargain. After all, if sea levels rise by 3 feet in the next 25 years, my home town of New York City will probably try to cope by building a system of dikes and levees around Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island. What would you guess that immense undertaking would cost in 2030 dollars? I'll wing a number—$1 trillion. Now, that puts a $100 billion prize in perspective—it's a mere drop in the bucket. And if we earthlings are lucky enough to have someone win it, then the entire planet—not just New York City—is a big, big winner.

If the video inspires you to come up with an idea, post it on this blog. If I like it, I'll crank out another video and sketch your idea for the world to see—giving you full credit of course. You could end up getting more than your fifteen minutes of fame. You could end up richer than Bill Gates. (He's currently worth a measly $72 billion.)