Build A Better Mousetrap, And People Will Buy ItWritten by Thaddeus Collins
This is an old saying that many of us have grown up hearing since we were children, but problem is improving on an invention that has been around for years. This is especially true for simple inventions like common pet identification tag, or dog tag as it is normally referred too as. The pet identification tag has been a staple of our society for hundreds of years as a way to identify owners of a particular lost pet, but it was not until World War I that pet tag became famous and picked up its moniker as “dog tag.”The idea was simple, it was a piece of metal worn around collar to identify owner of pet, and this tag usually contained pets name, and owners contact information. During that time it was all a pet owner needed if their pet was lost, because generally they worked for one company for forty years, brought their home and lived there for about same amount of time, so there was no need to change contact information. Today it is completely different with average stay on job lasting about five years, and turnaround time in average house lasting only five to seven years. Because of this, average pet owner will have to purchase a new pet tag almost every three years to update contact information, and this brings us back to improving on that mousetrap. With pet owners constantly on move in an ever upwardly mobile society changing addresses and phone numbers, purchasing a new pet tag every couple of years has become a waste of time and money, because there is a service that allows pet owner to purchase only one pet identification tag, and update their contact information free for life of pet. This company also links that pet tag to their contact page on its website, so if pet is ever lost, no matter who finds it they will have up to ten ways to contact owner to return lost pet. This owner locating service is internet based, so it is accessible around world to anyone that has access to internet, this makes it especially valuable for those who travel with their pets.
| | My Wabi-Sabi Master is My DogWritten by Galina Pembroke
My Wabi-Sabi Master is My Dog Perfection is a gooey chew toy on a worn out old blankie By GALINA PEMBROKE Up until recently, three dominant attitudes have ruled my living space: my boyfriend's: if it breaks, fix it. my own: if it breaks, replace it. and my dog's: if it breaks, keep it and love it all more Without realizing it, my dog has been a master practitioner of wabi-sabi, a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that celebrates simple and handmade, including flaws. Especially flaws… More than just appreciation of unpretentious art and craft, wabi-sabi is a uniquely joyful way of viewing and contemplating world. As Leonard Koren describes it in Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers, wabi-sabi is "the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete." It is no coincidence that first practitioners of wabi-sabi were Zen Buddhist monks and tea-masters. My dog Tucker is a 30-pound, wooly sheltie-crossbreed; painted by creator with a wholly imperfect, abstract pattern of brown, black and white. With his flattened, rock-chewing teeth; he is an unlikely leader. Yet, through his actions, Tucker has shown me beauty of wabi-sabi . Presents and Presence Every year I celebrate Tucker's birthday which I maintain is day he stepped out of dog pound and in through my door. For me, this means renewed challenge of shopping for a new dog toy that promises to delight Tucker and light up his wabi-sabi life. For Tucker, this means aggravation of me dangling another squeak-toy or Kong product in front of his unimpressed snout. I am such a consumer fool. Every year it's same. Polite dog that he is, Tucker examines shiny new object with feigned interest before dismissing it. He then curls up in his war-torn blanket to gnaw on his ancient, barely identifiable, mangled ball. Once a perfect sphere, it now resembles a cracked egg. With its aged crevices and broken, rounded protuberances, I am unable to understand how he could be near it- let alone mouth it. Tucker, however, couldn't be happier. Drooling contentedly over his gooey-soft ball, he shows me that perfection cannot be bought, achieved, manipulated, or maintained. It is an inner experience: canine wabi-sabi. The Perfect Cloud In India, there is a mantra signifying this feeling of fullness. Translated, it is "That is perfect. This is perfect. From perfect springs perfect. If perfect is taken from perfect, perfect remains." Too bad this understanding is absent from so much of our "new is better" consumer society. Wabi-sabi is a less wasteful way of living. Even Tucker’s assortment of bought-and-soon- forgotten dog toys can be donated. Satisfaction with things as they are, though used and worn, means we replace less and save more. Handmade and one-of-a-kind, wabi-sabi pottery is deliberately and gloriously "pre-owned" right out of box. Wabi-sabi regards these flaws as enhancements. Western culture imitates this in marketing, with new-worn jeans and marked-up furniture. We tag this as recycled and call ourselves retro. Recycling doesn’t exist in wabi-sabi world. My attempts at converting Tucker’s ball into sheet-plastic via recycle box, have been met with prompt retrieval by digging paws and slobbering jaw. In wabi-sabi, decay replaces conversion. [Would be interesting to note similarity(?) to modern Western countercultural aesthetic of worn and torn blue jeans and recycled vintage clothing and furniture.] As Buddhist poet and musician Leonard Cohen observes in his song "Anthem," "There's a crack in everything; that's how light gets in." In life, rain and ice may crack and erode new and beautiful, but crumbling marks they leave behind are signature of water, ultimate life-giver. Thus, wabi-sabi doesn't simply see silver lining in every cloud, it sees cloud itself as a silver lining in a perfect blue sky.
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