The Smarmy Carny

Google is giving away $10 Million through Project 10¹⁰⁰ (pronounced as "Project 10 to the 100th"). The money will go to fund between one and five ideas that will help humanity in a great way.

The guidelines are extremely loose for this project: They would prefer submissions in one of the following eight categories: Community, Opportunity, Energy, Environment, Health, Education, Shelter, and "Everything Else" . . . So even if your idea doesn't fit into the seven extremely vague categories, they are still willing to accept it.

Sure, those very basic guidelines are great and leave it open to your own creativity, but what sort of idea are they really looking for? The example Google offers to us is the Hippo Water Roller, which essentially looks like one of those heavy rollers used to even out landscaping, but filled with healthy drinking water. This allows people who have to transport their water supply to easily roll 24 gallons of water at a time, compared with a 5 gallon bucket of water on top of the head.

You can upload an ancillary video to YouTube to help you express or display your idea, but the meat of the presentation must be filled out via the web form. Google has put out a video presentation for their project:

How many people could your idea help?

All you need to do is submit your idea via the website before October 20, 2008. The submissions are reviewed and on January 27, 2008, 100 ideas will be voted on by the general public/Webosphere. The top 20 submissions will then pass to an advisory board, who will choose between one and five ideas, which will split the $10 Million prize equally.

For those looking to get rich from their ideas, you might want to look elsewhere. As the site's FAQ says:

Q: What do I get if my idea is chosen?
A: You get good karma and the satisfaction of knowing that your idea might truly help a lot of people.

The $10 Million is not going to the people who come up with these ideas. The money is going toward the development of these ideas to help make them a reality.

If coming up with a great idea to help the world just isn't your "thing", you can always try to win the $30 Million Lunar X Prize that Google has also posted. For that prize, you'll have to do a lot more than come up with ideas, though. $30 Million goes to the first team to send a robot to the moon, have that robot travel 500 meters along the moon's surface, and receive back video, image, and data transmissions here on Earth. You might want to hurry on that offer, though: 13 of the teams have been working on this since September 13, 2007, so you've got some catch-up to do!

How can you possibly pass up Cold Stone Creamery's World's Largest Ice Cream Social?

On September 25, 2008 from 5pm until 8pm, Cold Stone Creamery is giving away free 3 oz. "Make-a-Wish"-sized creations. This free portion is about 60% the size of Cold Stone's "Like It" (small) size, which is approximately 5 oz. The stipulations are that your sample will be Emily or Jack's Creation:

• Jack's Creation — Marshmallow ice cream with OREO® Cookies, Chocolate Chips and Fudge
• Emily's Creation — Nutter Butter® ice cream with White Chocolate Chips, Kit Kat® and Yellow Cake

These are two new flavors created by two Make-a-Wish children named — you guessed it — Jack and Emily, who are 9 and 10 years old, respectively.

Why free ice cream? Cold Stone is doing this for a good cause: About 85% of all donations given during that time will go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Visit these official sites for the full "scoop":

• Cold Stone Creamery's Promotions page
• Make-A-Wish Foundation's page for The World's Largest Ice Cream Social

Kahala Brands owns Cold Stone Creamery, and some of their other stores are also having giveaways during the last week of the month. If you live near Blimpie, The Great Steak & Potato Co., Samurai Sam’s Teriyaki Grill, or TacoTime you can grab some free stuff from those locations, too! Of course, don't forget to donate to a great charity while you're there!

On May 17, 1972, Don Gorske ate a Big Mac.

"No big deal," you might say, but Gorske never stopped. In that first month in 1972, he ate 265 Big Macs.

Due to his obsessive-compulsive disorder, Gorske continued eating Big Macs every day. In fact, Gorske has had less than 10 Big Mac-less days in those 36+ years since. According to the AP, Gorske recently hit the 23,000 Big Mac milestone. Currently, he generally eats two Big Macs a day.

What, you don't believe Gorske? Lucky for you, he has also saved all of his Big Mac receipts for all those Big Macs!

Gorske wrote a book about his experiences titled 22,477 Big Macs

Watch this video to get an idea of what the man is like . . . and no, he's not obese!

Here's to you, Mr. Obsessive Compulsive Big Mac Eater.

It's National Pizza with the Works Except Anchovies Day!

If you don't know what to order from the pizzeria today, you're probably just not paying attention.

So call up your local pizzeria and ask for a large pie with:

• pepperoni
• sausage
• mushrooms
• extra cheese
• bacon
• onions
• ground beef
• ham
• chicken
• green peppers
• red peppers
• jalapeno peppers
• tomatoes
• garlic
• black olives
• green olives
• pineapple
• salami
• prosciutto
• turkey
• artichoke hearts
• feta cheese
• spinach
• oranges
• oregano
• capers

. . . but don't ask for anchovies!

When you look through your kitchen drawers, you'll be surprised to see the dozens of tools and utensils available to help you make food. Even most bachelors have a relatively large number of such tools. Which are worth their salt?

• Basting Syringe: B The basting syringe earns points for its simplicity, but mostly it's just great because it's useful for indoor water fights, too. Just as we love miniature corn because they're so much smaller than we're used to seeing, the basting syringe is great because it's so much bigger than we're used to seeing.
• Can Opener: C If there was another way to open a can, the can opener would get an F. Most can openers have so many little blades and gears and such, it usually requires several minutes and an engineering degree to figure out how the darned thing is supposed to open a can. I've seen someone cut the entire upper section of the can off instead of just the top because of a confusing can opener.
• Candy Thermometer: F This is one of those tools that sounds a whole lot better than it really is. "A candy thermometer? Awesome!!! Oh, wait — you mean it's just a high-temperature thermometer? Rats."
• Cheese Grater: D Sure, it's a wonderful tool when you want to turn a block of cheese into a bunch of little tiny cheese shavings, but this device is really just a torture machine. Use this tool to get rid of any skin on your knuckles. Usually, you end up feeding your knuckles to your family because, let's face it, who wants to go and grate more cheese?
• Egg Beater: A Egg beaters are fun! Electric-powered egg beaters are good if you're making food, but the hand-operated ones are much more fun for anything else. Plus, if your sister starts annoying you, just let it rip and hold it up to her beautiful locks of hair. She'll leave you alone for at least an hour.
• Flour Sifter: A- This has always been one of my favorite kitchen tools. Crank it, and the flour falls out the bottom. No flour, no problem! You can have hours of fun just cranking an empty flour sifter and listening to the metal scrape along the sieve.
• Whisk: B- Simple, elegant, and a pain in the butt to wash. The whisk definitely loses points for being difficult to lick clean. And I wanted all the brownie batter!

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which kitchen utensils do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

Condiments — what would we do without them? Eat our food plain? Enjoy the taste of the food we're eating??? Imagine the horror!

• Hot Sauce: C Hot sauce earns a middle-of-the-road grade because it can go either way. The name of the condiment itself promises only to be hot, so many hot sauces do not have a particularly good taste. In the end, its best uses are for novelty purposes and practical jokes.
• Ketchup: B+ Ketchup is one of the standard condiments, and it has earned that status. It's the standard condiment for America's classic food, the hamburger. It's so good, some people even like to use it on eggs. Plus, we've somehow got dozens of varieties of ketchup.
• Mustard: A- Mustard is another standard, typically for topping off a hot dog. Face it — who really wants to taste their hot dog? Mustard helps the nation ignore the actual meat between the condiment and the bun. Summer picnics wouldn't be the same.
• Relish: D This is the most overrated condiment of all time. Relish breaks one of my primary food rules by consisting of something pickled. Another broken rule is that it's a condiment in which you can pick out the various pieces of the food that created it. I don't want to see poor Larry the cucumber's sad face staring up at me from my food! Another problem with relish is that you never know if it's going to be sweet, hot, or whatever. If you're going to be a chunky condiment, you should still have more sauce than chunks and you better taste as delicious as tartar sauce!
• Tartar Sauce: A There's just something about tartar sauce that awakens my taste buds. I'm no fan of relish or mayonnaise, but tartar sauce takes two awful ingredients and turns them into a super-flavor. I've always said it: Fish is a great excuse to have tartar sauce.
• Worcestershire sauce: D- Based on taste alone, Worcestershire sauce would quickly fail with an F–. I think I'd rather eat raw radishes than spread any of this on anything I'm about to eat. The only reason this one gets bumped up to a D- is that it's one of my favorite fun words to say.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which condiments do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

The Beehive is the flagship program of One Economy Corporation.

The Beehive offers information on various topics including Money, Health & Fitness, School, Jobs & Careers, Starting & Owning a Business, Family, Emergencies, and Insurance. While these might seem like "obvious" pieces of information, an isolated, low-income person may not know how to go about obtaining a credit report, picking out affordable insurance, performing an online job search, or saving for retirement. The site is not only multi-lingual, it's written in language that low-literacy individuals should be able to more easily understand. I plan on writing more about each of these sections of the website throughout the later hours of Blogathon.

Since its launch six years ago in 2001, the Beehive has been visited over 10.7 million times. What are people getting help with when they visit The Beehive? By the end of 2006:

• 400,000 got help finding and evaluating child care
• 315,000 high-school students found homework help
• 325,000 people learned how to plan a family budget
• 650,000 people learned how to file for unemployment benefits
• Income tax filers got $1.8 million in refunds on their 2006 income tax returns

Please note: When you first visit The Beehive, it will ask you to select a region. If you don't see your municipality (mostly only major cities are listed), just click National Beehive and begin enjoying the site. If you do see your local community listed, you're in great luck, because you'll find even more information tailored just for you!