Craig's Corner

The Pope has been in the news this week.   Not all that surprising with Christmas being celebrated around the globe.   His Highness's high profile pardon made the bulk of the news coverage.    According to CNN : “ Pope Benedict XVI has pardoned his former butler, Paolo Gabriele, weeks after he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for leaking the pope's private papers .”   The Pope’s visit to the prison and his forgiveness of a long trusted ally nicely echo’d the spirit of Christmas.   The Pope even set up the Gabriele family with a new house and a stipend for the rest of his life.   That loving gesture is applied far too selectively by his Emminence. The Pontiff’s annual Christmas message to the world is one of the most important and listened to speeches of the year.   Per the Huffington Post :     “ He dedicated [his Christmas message] this year to promoting traditional family values in the face of gains by same-sex ma...

Somewhere around age 10 I wrote a newsletter to family and friends and called it Here, There & Everywhere.   I’d ditto copy it on the machine at Dad’s school and mail it.   I can’t quite remember all the details, but I vaguely recall charging a subscription rate.   The originals are safely ensconced in a box in a storage facility somewhere in Southern California, but the ethos lives on.   The goal of that enterprise was to have entertaining and interesting tidbits that would interest readers.   A lot of things have changed since then, but today’s media environment requires even more effort to grab people’s attention, whether it be a family newsletter, a blog or mass media. Being able to multi-task and manage a variety of things simultaneously is a given in today’s fast paced world.   It’s interesting in a world that is more fractured, with more demands on our focus and attention that the media landscape has become more singularly focused. ...

HGTV’s “ Color Splash ” has been on the air since 2007 – transforming bland spaces into festive rooms thanks to the innovative use of color.   It’s often over the top, but an amusing distraction.   I don’t think host David Bromstad has ever used Tangerine Tango, the 2012's color of the year.   2013 is the year of emerald.    Pantione determines the color for each year – they are (per their site) “…known worldwide as the standard language for color communication from designer to manufacturer to retailer to customer.” Who knew?  Color me educated. Green M&M’s became developed a mythology that they were an aphrodisiac.   Green is also known as the color of envy and jealousy making it an interesting juxtaposition with the candy legend.   In fact, color has an entire psychology around it.   Studies have also been done on the impact of human behavior as it relates to color.   Given the identical set of information, people react o...

In the sea of $16.3 trillion of debt that grows by another $3.5 billion each day ($1.3 trillion each year) – Congress has an innovative solution:   do away with the $1 bill.    Of course this issue isn’t really related to the debt – but I found it amusing with all of the fervor of the supposed fiscal cliff (that I earlier wrote is really a bump in the road ) there was actually a Congressional sub-committee that once again wants to replace the dollar with a coin.   They can’t seem to figure out how to balance the books - but let's focus on paper money and whether to dump the penny. Retire the Penny is a website sponsored by citizens who want to abolish the one cent piece.   The most obvious justification is that it costs 2.4 cents to produce each penny.   Each year it costs $120 million to produce currency that is worth $50 million.   Nickels are even worse – at a cost of more than 11 cents per. The Mint provided the sub-com...