The other day I bought yet another shirt. However, when I got this shirt home and was removing the numerous tags I noticed something rather odd. There was a comment card attached to the shirt. I should mention the shirt was a Ben Sherman brand shirt, and I have bought shirts of this sort before - none of which had a comment card.

So, this begs the question, why do you need a comment card on a shirt ? I can somewhat understand a comment card at a restaurant - if you have a terrible meal the restaurant should know. However, putting things on shirts just seems weird.

I really do not get it. For some reason or another watching movies - any movies - seems to have strangely profound effect on me. However it only seems to work when I can unequivocally focus on the movie. If someone nearby is eating and getting crumbs on the floor, or is talking, the depth of thought inside of me just doesn't occur.

At any rate, I just saw Star Wars : Revenge of the Sith (not a bad movie by the way) and this terrific thought process kicked in. Enraptured in the film, I examined the problem being faced by the Republic and the Jedi. As a supporter of the ideology of democracy I felt slightly unhappy when, albeit fictional, a progressively less democratic republic crossed the line and turned into an authoritarian state. Then I considered how I might have approached the situation and create a solution to the problem.

Then it hit me.

Inside each and every person there are solutions to the most pressing problems posed to people. If everyone actually applied themselves to some sort of serious task, then every problem on the face of the earth could be solved. Amazing things could happen if everyone just innovated ! But there is no question that innovation is happening at far too slow of a pace. It is not being properly stimulated by all of the possible stimuli.

Look at stem cells. A potentially HUGE innovation. But we are caught up in this faux-moral debate created by people who are blindly following an institution which simply wants to maintain its power. Look what happened when America really innovated. When John F. Kennedy stood up and said, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard," it put the cogs of innovation into motion. Not only did we do the incredible and eventually send a man to the moon, but we inspired a generation of people to innovate.

The space program also brought about lots of things which have improved the quality of life everywhere. The satellites which came about can now be used to do everything from track tsunamis to provide satellite images over driving directions to link formerly isolated people together into a global network. Other things, like the microwave oven (originally used to dry spacesuits) and various synthetics (teflon comes to mind) changed life everywhere.

If innovation happened at its fullest then every problem on earth could be solved. From finite supplies to oil to the common cold. However, one real barrier to this is innovation are overly bureaucratic governments. I am, though, in no way, advocating (coming back to Star Wars) for a totalitarian or anarchist government. Government plays a key role in innovation and must be in place. Take a look at countries which have a totalitarian state. The Soviet Union was run by a totalitarian state, but, as it turns out, they innovated far less than the United States. Government is definitely a help, not a hindrance, to innovation.

I'm having trouble putting the rest of my thoughts into words. Perhaps I'll post something else a little later on.

Ahhh ! I wish I had some kind of device to record all of my thoughts. They are just pouting into my mind. It would also be nice if I could keep my mind in this thought-churning semi-euphoric state. My head hurts.

The other day I decided I wanted a bright blue bowler hat. Of course, one would think, with Google and the internet you could find such a hat in a heartbeat. This, however, is not the case. The first thing I tried were all of my shopping bookmarks. Urban Outfitters had nothing of the sort; mostly those baseball caps. Realizing that I was looking for a bowler hat, I stepped up the class a couple notches, as the great Lagasse might say. Nordstrom had nothing. Saks Fifth Avenue doesn't even sell hats. Neiman Marcus had hats, but they were mostly these $500 Prada hats for women. They were also kind of ugly.

Then I tried Google. I got lots of party sites that were selling these cheap looking $5 hats. No can do for me. I want something that's sturdy. So I'm continuing my search, but at the same time, I am very upset at how hard it is to happen upon a hat.

A couple of minutes ago I went to log in to my Movable Type system to post an entry about a website I had read about in the New York Times. It was related to that woeful font, Comic Sans MS. But then I hit a snag. For some reason my Movable Type login screen wouldn't load. So I tried to just plain look at my blog. That didn't work either. So then, in desperation, I typed in www.kibeland.com into my web browser. Guess what came up. One of those pages you see that says, "This page is coming soon!" At first I thought I had typed the URL wrong. However, as subsequent attempts revealed, I had not. Then the truth sank in. My domain name had expired and the hosting company had not had the tact to send me a notice.

So then I thought, "Well, I guess you could just renew it - it's only $10," however, this too would prove troublesome. A quick visit to Network Solutions revealed this. Some stupid company that crawls the web to snap up your domain name the second it expires had done it to me. I didn't even want to look at how much they were going to charge me to have the domain. Probably something nutty in the $200 range. Only something such as news.com would be worth $200.

Now the harsh truth has come upon me. I need to find a new domain name and a new hosting company. Additionally, I have to use this as my temporary home on the web. This is the second time this had happened to me, and it's not going to happen again.