Thinking Thru the Thoughts of the Time at the Online Think Tank

All Think Tanks must think of things to Think About and so each and everyday anxiety disorder Online Think Tank considers various concepts, original thoughts and ideas to think about. Mostly, to solve problems, device better systems or create new inventions, but sometimes they try to figure out answers to local problems or plans to change the adverse effects of linear decision-making. For instance below are listed the thoughts of the day at the Online Think Tank to give you an idea of what I am talking about and to spur thought in your own mind as well:

1. Get Rid of Time Clocks Using Cell Phone Digital Camera Features

In most companies when the employee comes to work, they go to the time clock and punch in. The time clock Theexperts usually in a room that is far from their actual office or workspace. This is problematic because it loses efficiency and time. This procedure could be changed to promote efficiency using a modern cell-phone - Why not when the employee came to work, have them pass through the front door where there would be a new sign, that would be changed each day.

The employee could take a picture of that sign with their cell phone, which would identify it is them and it would send that to the human resource department's computer and sign them in. The picture would have to match otherwise obviously they were not there that day. Kind of like taking a picture with a Newspaper in hand to verify the date.

2. Are We Running Out of Rogue Nations to Conquer?

We live in a cruel world, and unfortunately every decade or so, the United States Army must show a sign of forced. Otherwise, the evil empires of the world will think we are pushovers and take advantage of us. It appears that the international terrorists and the nation-states, which sponsor them through proxy have forgotten, but if we are to have a display of force every 10 years, that means we need a rogue nation to attack.

Currently there are only a few rogue nations such as; Venezuela, North Korea, Syria, and Iran, but since these nations will no longer be rogue as they will either have made smart negotiations for peace, stopped their willful funding of international terrorist groups or their leaders will be thrown out of power by their own people. This will leave fewer nations to use as examples to keep all nations in line with how the world expects nations to behave. Without being able to show for us, what will keep the future nations in line?

3. Outsource Offshore US Prisons for Illegal Alien Criminals - Make Work Camps to Pay Costs.

In Arizona 65% of the inmates are illegal aliens in this costs a huge amount of money. Each illegal alien in jail for a violent crime costs $35,000 per year and it is estimated that the state of Arizona can stand every graduating senior from high school to the University of Arizona for the same amount of money currently being spent to house these illegal aliens. Perhaps we should have offshore prison camps run by private industry in places like Tierra del Fuego. If someone escapes from the prison, they would have to walk nearly 8,000 miles to get back home.

These prisons could be run by corporations, which would use the labor for manufacturing to offset the costs of the prison. This is one idea that someone in our think tank came up with, and it would work they say. It would free the state and the federal government from millions of dollars bill spent on putting illegal aliens in prison, who are not even supposed to be in the United States in the first place.

4. Thecleanest US Asian Families Force Their Kids into Simulated Study Sweat Shops?

Why do Asian kids outperform their counterparts in our school educational system? It is because the parents and families demand excellence in education as it is part of their culture. However, some educators think that the Asian families are forcing their kids to work too hard to do their studying, and they are not able to grow up and have a normal childhood life. Could this be considered akin to allowing their children to work all day in sweatshops? At least one person believes so and cites 10 examples of children who are locked in their room each day to do homework. What do you think about that comment? It is of concern.

5. True Free Markets Bring Poor People Up Much Faster than Re-distribution of Wealth Strategies.

In many communist countries or even socialist countries it is believed that by helping the poor people in managed hosting providers the wealth from the rich, that the society will be fair for all concerned. However, in reality, it has been shown that true free markets bring people up much faster than in socialist countries, which redistribute the wealth. Additionally, although there are no true free markets, because they have never actually existed; the more free the markets, the better the population will do as a whole. You only need to locate the United States of America's middle class to see, this is true. Still, there are those that dismiss these ideas and are doomed to repeat the follies of all of the collapsed socialist and communist nations that have ever been created in past periods.

6. There Seems to Be a Big Disagreement on How Much Water It Takes to Grow Our Own Fuel -Ethanol.

There are many problems with growing our own fuel through Ethanol. One of the biggest complaints is the huge amount of corporate welfare that goes into the agricultural industry to prop up the growing of corn for ethanol. Additionally, corn is not the best material to make ethanol. Despite all these complaints, there is a bigger disagreement and problem and that is the amount of water needed to grow the crops to make the fuel.

The refining process takes between eight and 10 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of ethanol. This of course is on top of the amount of water it takes to grow the crop in the first place; thus, we see a huge amount of water usage, and in times of drought, there may not be enough. Then we have to pay the food we need against the fuel we need to run our civilization, who will get the water?

Eating is a higher priority than transportation, but even the food has to get to market and will need fuel. You can see the big problem. Many ethanol producers say it does not take that much water to grow corn that has genetically modified seeds, which use less water, still the refining process takes quite a bit of water. In that water has to come from somewhere.

7. Should We Harvest More Rainwater in Drought Stricken Areas?

The state of New Mexico allows people to collect water running off of their rooftops, but any other water running off of impervious surfaces on the ground, that water belongs to the state of New Mexico, and must be allowed to go into the storm drain, which will if eventually go into streams and rivers. The water in the river helps wildlife in when there is a severe drought, the wildlife has no water in the river in there for the wildlife comes into the city and will get either run over on a highway or cause a nuisance for humans.

The state of New Mexico does not want the desert species to run out of water and have to come into the city. But water that lands on your rooftop can be collected and used to water your garden, wash your car or water your lawn. This makes good sense, but what about the water on your driveway, is on your property, why can't you collect it? Fundamentally, this argument may sound ridiculous, but after a decade of droughts in serious water issues. Human civilizations are pitted against other species that live down river.

In many places, water that comes from rain is collected into water retention basins, unfortunately, in many cases, the water evaporates during the hot summer months before he can be used in therefore is wasted. In many parts of Colorado and New Mexico, the evaporation rates are very large. In Nevada's Lake Mead, the amount of water evaporation is so huge that some want to put a cover over the entire lake, which really isn't feasible.

8. Questionable Use of Environmental Regulations in China.

The world has been getting after China to increase their environmental regulations and cleanup some of the rivers and polluted waterways within their country. Since the 2008 Olympic Games will be in China many people will go and look to see if the environmental controls have been put in place - is the water in the rivers clean? China says it has closed 400 factories, due to polluting of waterways. They have also fined 762 other companies.

One global economist said that China was closing down companies with huge foreign capital interests that had a stake in these companies - not because they were polluting. Is China using the world's environmental concerns against foreign invested capital by only closing down those companies that are not owned by the state or that have a high stake of foreign investment?

Will these environmental pollution regulations which have already generated 97 million dollars in fines actually clean up the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers? Are they killing two birds with one stone, removing foreign owned companies and cleaning the rivers or are they really doing nothing to fix the pollution and only pretending, while effectively Nationalizing some companies and eliminating competition? Consider it, because these issues are very real.

9. Will China Become a Knowledge Based Economy and Out Innovate the World?

Many nations believe that they will become the innovators of the world in the knowledge-based economies, while China will produce and manufacture everything that they design. This is a fallacy because China plans to become an innovation economy. While some people laugh at that scenario, because presently China is stealing everyone else's technology, China sees it differently.

China's central planners are smart. They are slowly trying to slow the rate of growth of new factories in dirty industries and move towards more clean industries. This should not surprise anyone because this is what the rest of the world is also trying to do in China is merely copying what works, as they copy everything anyway. China wants our aviation industry, computer industry, biotech industry, automotive industry, software industry, IT industry, NanoTech, space industry, military weapons industry, and that is to just name a few. They plan on designing, innovating and manufacturing and anyone that thinks they are incapable is lying to themselves, as they are well on their way now.

For industrialized nations like Canada, Germany, UK, the United States, Japan, and most of the EU to think that they will be the designers of new technologies in China will be the place to produce them and manufacture them is blue sky thinking and simply outrageous forward-looking statements; it ain't going to happen. CNN reported China as saying:

The stakes are extremely high," says Lan Xue, head of the Institute of Science and Technology Policy at Beijing's Tsinghua University. "The environmental costs make it impossible to go on growing like this; we have to transform growth so it is based on technology and innovation.

The OECD has made many errors in judgment, and many other reports that claim that China is going to be the world's manufacturer allowing other nations to do all the thinking and creating are silly. The Chinese have more engineers and scientists with Ph.D.s since 2003 than the United States [Scientific American September 2007], which have published more research and scientific papers than all but the US, Germany, Britain and Japan. [BBC Article September 10, 2007]

The gap is growing more each year and China is leaving other nation's Knowledge Based Societies in the dust, plus consider all the 6000 Chinese spies stealing American technology in our country [GAO Report on Technology Spying] . China says it wants to be an "innovation oriented society by 2020," you can see they think long-term, and you can bet that they will surpass the US GDP by 2018 or 2020. [The Economist August 2007].

10. Would an Unwritten Constitution Be Better?

Interesting comment on an unwritten constitution, as it would not ever have to be interpreted literally in the future after things change so drastically. One individual who recently asked to join our Online Think Tank suggested this. Does it makes sense? Well, it is known that many societies and civilizations have performed wonderfully without written Constitutions. Many in the US do not understand how that could be, but it is so. There certainly wouldn't be problems with the changing of societies in future periods would there.

Many cringe at the thought, however all this mess with legislating from the bench in a way is changing the words of our Constitution and perhaps an upgrade is needed as well or an easy to recite spoken Constitution that is simple and covers the basics might be worthy of note? Just a thought, remember this is a Think Tank and we consider all, even if it does seem somewhat farfetched at the present.

Well, there are ten of the items we considered today, there are 33 in all today, yesterday we had 27 and the day before 40 items to discuss. What will we discuss tomorrow, well we shall wait and see. Sincerely, Lance.

"Lance Winslow" - Online www.WorldThinkTank.net/">Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/">www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for www.ourspokanemagazine.com/">Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington