My Brilliant Idea
Caroline, once a vegetarian, now eats organic and free-range meat. Her reason for not eating meat was because of the poor conditions in which animals were raised for slaughter, so now she financially supports stores and farms that treat animals well before humanely killing them. Whole Foods is the prime location for obtaining such meats.
However, because we don’t live in Portland, where meat grows on trees and people hug instead of shake hands, most of the restaurants in the area don’t serve organic and free-range meat. So Caroline, thirsting for the blood of innocent (but well-kempt) animals, is limited to vegetarian food when we eat out.
My proposal is this: I’d like someone to create a portable machine that turns regular meat into organic meat. A machine that injects that special “free-range” element back into the meat. A machine that turns that steroid-inflated chunk of strip sirloin into gamy organic bliss.
I envision a microwave-like machine where you merely select “organic” and set the timer, but it would need to be portable enough to bring to restaurants. Maybe make it toaster-style—you slide the meat into slots at the top and press down so they sink into the machine. That would be travel friendly.
Make it happen, meat conglomerates.
Their Brilliant Idea
I’m not the guy behind the camera at group gatherings on or trips. I prefer to absorb my settings and write about them later in the day. I don’t like posing for photos and I don’t like to ask people to do that—it always seems to take people away from the experience of seeing the world, asking them to smile for a camera. Plus, you when you look back on travel, particularly foreign travel, you never remember “that time we posed in front of the Eiffel Tower.” But you will remember specific candid moments that people capture on film.
However, you may not always remember exactly where those moments happened. Maybe you know you were in Ireland, but one lush countryside looks like the next, and your memory blurs them all together.
Now there’s a solution for this, as well as a way to easily convey the details and passage of your trip to friends and family. It’s called geotagging. The concept is so simple and brilliant that I’m surprised I didn’t think of it already. Basically, some camera manufactures are putting GPS chips in digital cameras now, so whenever you snap a photo, the camera “geotags” that photo with the exact coordinate of your location. When you get back home and upload those photos to certain websites (the article I read really lauded Flickr, which I will always associate with My Friend Flicka), the result will be a map containing thumbnails of all of the photos you took.
Although I’m not that guy behind the camera, this is a really cool concept. If anyone gives geomapping a try, let me know how it goes.