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There are versions of Monopoly for all sorts of things. It has more variations than you can count, it seems.

First it was the cities: Monopoly Chicago Edition, Monopoly Denver Edition, etc.
Next it was the colleges: Michiganopoly, Gatoropoly, Stanfordopoly, etc.
Then it was the movies: Monopoly Indiana Jones Edition, Monopoly Star Trek Edition, Monopoly Three Stooges Edition, etc.

I thought that was it for the variations.

Then I saw this:

I’m sure that might be fun for some people. But then I got to thinking – when would you actually play this?

If you play this at home, then I’d think you need better ways to relax. Don’t bring work stuff home with you. Plus, where would you find other people with whom you could play the game?

And if you’re playing this at work, where the other people would appreciate the game, then you obviously don’t have enough to do and are risking getting your hours cut.

Either way, I can see why I never knew about the Supply Chain Edition of Monopoly before.

“Today is opposite day!”

That’s what Alpha told me a while back.

I forget to what he was responding. Whatever it was, he said something and then said it was opposite day, in order to let me know that his answer was the opposite of what he said. I’m sure he heard that somewhere at school, because I know we had never used that phrase here before that point.

I decided to use his declaration as a teaching point, both in logic and in truth. “Truth” being to mean what you say and “logic” being to have your words make sense.

The truth part of the lesson is obvious, and I didn’t dwell on that. Mainly because that wasn’t the fun part. The fun part was the logic part.

“If today really is Opposite Day, then what you said is false, which means that today is not opposite day,” I countered. I then went on to explain that opposite day can never happen. Or, more specifically, if a day really were opposite day, you could never tell anyone.

The phrase “today is opposite day” is always false.

• If it were opposite day, saying “today is opposite day” would mean that it is not opposite day.
• If it were not opposite day, then the statement is false right off the bat.

And the phrase “today is not opposite day” is always true.

• If it were opposite day, you would have to say “today is not opposite day” to convey that information.
• If it were not opposite day, then the statement is true right off the bat.

So if the only phrase that is ever correct is “today is not opposite day”, how can you tell the difference between a normal day and opposite day?

According to the internet, most people seem to think that January 25th is National Opposite Day. However, that makes no sense. My vote is for 12/21. Although 11/11 would qualify, it isn’t as obvious and it is already taken, as far as national days go.

Maybe, if those 1/25 guys as too entrenched for opposite day, I could start lobbying for 12/21 to be National Palindrome Day every year.

In general, I like Christmas music. We turn on the radio in the van for our travels during the month of December so that we can partake in the sounds of the holiday.

But the songs on the radio station get old fast. Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree might be fun to hear 3 or 4 times through the Christmas season, but when it becomes 3 or 4 times a day then something is wrong.

“I’m tired of these fake Christmas songs and I’d like to head some real Christmas songs,” I thought to myself recently. And that got me thinking:
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What makes a song a real Christmas song?

It’s easy to sort them as I hear them:
O Holy Night is a real Christmas song, and
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is not.

I figured it out today – fake Christmas songs are about the Christmas season and real Christmas songs are about the birth of Christ.

Alternative method: if it’s in our hymnal, it’s a real Christmas song.

I suppose you could use the terms “carol” and “song” to differentiate between real and fake. If that’s the case, then I’d like the radio stations to play more of the carols. And no, having 3 different versions of O Holy Night doesn’t count as 3 carols.

Although I haven’t obtained it yet, I’m thinking there must be a template for disaster news stories.

Think of it as Mad Libs for reporters.

Picture a TV reporter, covering a news story in the field. “Field” as in “not the studio”, not “field” as in “farm”.

Another _____ has struck the area. Damage was minimal, but residents aren’t taking any chances.

Are there really more _____ occurring, or just more reported because of today’s ease of communication?

Dr. _____, an expert in the field of _____, said “We have seen a slight increase in these cases over the last _____ years, but it hasn’t been enough to classify as a trend. We’ll have to keep observing.”

Stay tuned to action news _____ for important updates on this story.

I was visiting a building that had a large bird cage in the lobby. Not a huge cage, but bigger than your average birdcage. I thought about how it would be nice for the birds to have some more room so they could fly a decent distance instead of just flitting back and forth.

You know those restaurants that have a model train circling the dining area? Usually above everyone’s heads? Our kids love those restaurants. I got to thinking about combining a bird cage with the concept of something encircling a room.

What if the bird cage circled the lobby? It would be like a track for birds. A long, circular cage would let them fly at top speeds.

I sketched up a prototype, although this one is too small. The poor bird would always be turning. And you’d have to teach him to alternate directions so that his wings would stay even.

But a cage that big would cost a lot.
And be a pain to install.
And be a bigger pain to clean.

So I came up with a better plan.

This one was inspired not by the average treadmill, but by those endless pools. You know, the individual-sized pool that lets you swim without travelling. Same concept as a treadmill, but for swimming instead of running. Apply that to flying, and you get…

The Birdmill

A compact way to house your pet and allow him to exercise to his heart’s content.

Everyone has an app for me to download and use on my phone – the electric company, the grocery store, etc.

If I installed every app that was offered to me, I’d have hundreds and hundreds of apps. It would be a pain to organize them and find what I wanted quickly.

I have a solution for this problem, and I think it’s going to be a killer app. I call it the Meta App.

What it’s going to be is one app that can display a variety of information and handle a variety of tasks. The user would simply type the name of the company or service into the app-finder field, and the Meta App would call up the code from the target and serve it to the user.

Of course, to make things easier for everyone, the Meta App would use a common programming language so that apps would behave the same across the board (and across mobile phone platforms). Maybe I’d call it SGML, for Some Guy’s Markup Language…

Don’t you think Meta App would be much better than so many individual apps?

What’s that you say? A browser? No, I don’t know what you’re talking about. That does sound useful though. Why don’t more companies take advantage of this “browser” rather than developing their own apps?

I think that someday people will look back to this decade and wonder “What were they thinking?” regarding cell phones and tablets and notebooks and laptops. It’s about the same way that we wonder what people were thinking regarding cigarettes 50 years ago.

There are studies and research and stuff about the negative effects (or lack thereof) of radiation from cell phones. The results are mixed, but studies are always like that. (And by “radiation” I mean electromagnetic radiation, not nuclear radiation. “Radiation” as in something that radiates or travels outward from a point source, in this case the radiation is electromagnetic waves.)

Until the results start converging, I prefer to play it safe.

Every year, there are more and more signals added to the air waves. First it was just radio. Then came TV. Then microwave ovens.
Cordless phones.
Baby monitors.
Video monitors.
Cell phones.
Wi-Fi.
I don’t know what the breaking point is, but I don’t want to find out.

• I use my cell phone as my alarm clock, so it stays on my nightstand (right near my head) all night.
• My kids will occasionally play games on my phone. And their bodies and brains are still growing and developing.
• No one ever calls me, other than my wife. That’s fine – I like to keep the cell phone for urgent matters (They’re out of the sausage links that you put on the grocery list. Do you want something else instead or should I skip that one? Okay. Bye.) and not for chit-chat.

Because of all those reasons, I put my cell phone into airplane mode when I get home from work each day. There are still cell signals flying through the house, but they are reduced. My phone does not generate any cell signals (or wi-fi either).

As an added benefit, I don’t need to worry about my kids inadvertently buying or downloading games or clicking on ads or calling someone while they’re playing a game. And most of the games use a server to generate the ads, so without an internet connection, the ads don’t even appear in the games. And no phone call will interrupt my game.

That’s only at home. At work, I keep my phone in normal mode. But I don’t wear it. I set it on my desk so the radiation-generating point is not so close to my body.

Time may prove that EMR does not effect any health problems. But until then, why not play it safe? It takes me just a couple of taps to put my phone in airplane mode. It’s free and easy.