Steve's Favorite Inventions

Hi everybody! Welcome to a new feature in my blog called: "Steve's Favorite Inventions." Every so often (which I will loosely define as anywhere between a 2 day to 12 month period), I will cover one or more of my favorite inventions in the world. Because there are SO many inventions, you will know that the ones that are covered here are TRULY the cream of the crop. In fact, if you see something covered in this series of articles, you should get yourself one immediately.

Without further adieu...

ONE OF MY FAVORITE INVENTIONS IS:


Yes. The Swiffer Duster. These things are BAD ASS. Powered by equal parts science, voodoo, and components of basic to advanced black magic, one can effortlessly drag this along surfaces and they will be dust-free in one pass. I used to use a wet rag to dust, but it just wasn't as effective- I mean, yes, it picks up the dust... But eventually you reach a point where the rag is more or less saturated with dust. The Swiffer somehow accumulates more and more dust, yet leaves none behind.

It kind of reminds me of this science trick my buddy and I used to do back in the day. We would go around to elementary schools and teach ULTRA-basic chemistry. One of our staples was that we would bring in large bags of styrofoam peanuts and some acetone. We would then give each group of 4- 1st graders a plastic cup, and a bag of styrofoam peanuts, and bet them that we could fit more styrofoam peanuts into OUR cup than they could fit into theirs. We typically bet whatever was in our wallets- between us, about $50 (we were in high school at the time... definitely not high-rollers yet). Anyway, what the first graders didn't know is that our cup had a good two inches of acetone in it which would dissolve the styrofoam peanuts. SO, after about the 200th peanut, the kids were baffled and in complete awe of our power. We then explained what was really going on and the whole class instantly joined forces to demand the money in our wallets because "YOU CHEATED!!!!!!!!"

Where I was going with this is that the Swiffer Duster does the same things as the acetone! It EATS dust! It feeds off of it and grows stronger through its consumption. Truly amazing.

What I haven't told a lot of people, is that for the past year, I have been secretly trying to develop the formula behind whatever compound is in the Swiffer Duster's cotton-candy-ish makeup. Just recently, I finally realized it what it was. It is now presented here for all of humanity to see and to use in their own battles against dust bunnies:

A Penny for My Thoughts

I really hate pennies.

More times than not, I go to Panera in the morning to get a large Hazlenut coffee. It's a highlight of my day. I put about 1/4" of honey at the bottom of the cup, 3 seconds of half and half, and 3.5 Sweet and Lows. Then, I take a sip of it and everything about life is awesome! I enter the waking world and am ready to kick ass! THEN, I pay for my coffee, and it comes to $1.97. So, I give the cashier $2.00- TWO one-dollar bills. And what do I get in return? 3 pennies. This infuriates me. What in the hell am I supposed to do with 3 pennies? Save them?

Assuming I were to buy coffee every day I work (50 weeks x 5 days a week = 250 days), I would end up with 250 days*3 pennies/day = 750 pennies. That's $7.50. Whoopdee fucking doo. I'd rather just throw the pennies away every day. I usually just leave them in on the counter in disgust. I once thought about giving the 3 pennies to a homeless person that I would encounter. But then I thought about it. You know what...


... EVEN HOMELESS PEOPLE HATE PENNIES!

I don't blame them. You can't get anything for 3 cents. It's just not 1920 anymore...

Anyway, let's go back to the concept of saving all 750 pennies. I typically take all my change and throw it in a jar at the end of the day. Then, every now and then, I'll roll up the coins- I LOVE rolling quarters, am NEUTRAL about dimes, have general dislike towards nickles, but HATE rolling pennies! The 60 seconds it takes to roll 50 pennies is worth WAY more to me than 50 lousy cents...

I'm getting to a point. There's no sense in bitching about something if you can't propose a solution. SO, my solution is this. Send all pennies to some sort of steel mill that can melt them, and then make a giant dinsaur out of zinc. 3 pennies I don't see every day would make me infinitely happier, and it is most definitely worth a dinosaur down the road.

Think THIS, but 500000 X larger!

This is clearly the optimal solution to an annoying problem. I will begin collecting signatures for a penny dinosaur tomorrow.

I took a test...

I took the "Political Compass Test" today. Apparently, instead of categorizing people as either "left" or "right," it pinpoints you on a two dimensional grid where one axis measures your economic outlooks, and the other measures your social outlooks:

Above is how they break it down...

My results were:


In spite of what results may imply, I still basically feel that all politicians are pretty much incompetent and not in touch with reality, no matter what quadrant they would fall in...

Take the test yourself at: http://www.politicalcompass.org/test