It seems like the fees never stop, doesn’t it?  Once you pay one, a new one crops up.

Cities are instituting fees for more services.  Colleges are charging for things that had been free for years.  And don’t even get me started on high school and middle school.  Try walking your son or daughter out of a public high school for less than $250 when you leave registration.

Years ago, you went to school, played sports, engaged in extracurricular activities for free.  Your taxes paid for it.  There were no hidden charges, no silent auctions to raise funds to support certain causes, and no extra fees owed just so you could participate in band or the science club.

Now your kid brings his or her own Kleenex to school and if they run out, I’m sure there’s a fee you can pay to get a new package of tissue.  Or maybe students could deal with a good nose blow the old fashioned way – by getting some paper towels or toilet paper from the rest room and using that.  We can’t let that happen in our ultra-sanitized world though.  In fact, parents would probably be charged some fee to ensure each child had a hand dispenser of sanitizer.  Oh wait, you mean that already is the case?

A close friend and coworker recently ranted about college fees she is paying for her son.  The one that drew her ire was a library fee:  “He has probably never set foot in the library,” she said both humorously and angrily.

Then there is the page of college activity fees you get at state universities, which both she and another good friend can attest are out of control and a way to hide the full cost of what it takes to you’re your teenager to college.  One friend pulled his sheet of paper out a few years back when I was visiting him.  He started reading them off, one by one.

I’m confident it included some of the following:  Cleanup service for your dorm room; intramural fees; parking; special lab or research usage; Internet services.  In fact, who would be surprised to see a fee for using the sidewalk or bike path.

Then there are the medical fees.  Even if you have insurance, and the college provides insurance on top of that, there are extra fees to get certain types of coverage.  Sign me up.

Schools are not the only place where the hidden costs are emerging and nickel and diming us to death.  Airlines are probably the most visible example that demonstrates how difficult it is to get a straight rate that covers everything  you want.  “Just add it all together and give me the full price.  Don’t low ball me, then add on, and add on, and add on extra costs.”

A friend of mine was to fly a year ago from Ann Arbor, MI to Dallas.  He got a straight rate and a low ball.  The straight rate was, let’s say, about $460; the low ball was something like $190.  He was pumped when he emailed me to get the lower rate.

Then he started looking more closely at the airline touting its $190 low rate.  Carry-on bags added costs; how much you weighed cost extra; if you sat in the first 30 rows, that took more out of your wallet; if you needed a haircut, they charged you an extra $25; and if you were taller than 6’0”, it was another $40.  All told, the fees brought this cost to $460.  It was a stalemate.

Ban the fees.  Give it to us straight.  So the next time you have to use a hospital, that $40 bandaid isn’t a surprise.

As half the world floods and half the world fries, it’s become increasingly clear that water is the key resource issue of the here and now.  It’s no longer just the future we need to worry about.

While flooding is terrifying and dangerous, the bigger issue is the drying out of areas that are already arid. Wild fires expand.  Groundwater drops.  Lakes turn into holes in the ground.  River beds shrink.

We’re seeing photos of these types of distressing images all over the world.  They become more frequent as we encroach and expand our human habitat. 

Put up more buildings, and everyone in that building needs to use the bathroom, drink water and wash their hands at some point.  That doesn’t make the water disappear, as all that comes back to the sewers as wastewater and can ultimately be reused after filtration and cleansing systems are applied.

In contrast, water disappears at an alarming rate because we want to green-ify our world.  We love to have the lawn looking sharp.  We want to grow flowers where only cactuses should flourish.  We plant trees in dessert sand.  We farm in areas that don’t get enough rain to support crops. None of this is good.  We continue influencing local environments in ways conducive to human ends.  Our thoughts are not about longer term sustainability or what other creatures should live where we live.

Better minds than mine work on projects speak out to rectify some of these increasingly dire situations.  Some will likely succeed, hopefully on a wide scale.  Others could prove useless.  At least the effort is being made.

When you talk about the coming water wars with people, many come up with two solutions:  1) Build pipelines from where the water is to where it isn’t, and 2) develop desalination techniques.  Both hold potential, but also face pitfalls.


For pipelines, you’d have to get agreement from a water rich area to send that resource hundreds or thousands of miles away to where it is more needed.  That is going to be a fight.

For desalination techniques, the issue is cost.  It can be done, but it the price is astronomical.

Which puts us back to the question for those increasingly drought-stricken areas we see highlighted in red on the weather maps around the world, “Is there some other way to store/save scarce water so it can be used when needed?”

My two cents might sound weird.  But who knows, perhaps it is workable.  We can let the engineers decide.

Typically in extra dry areas, when it does rain, it pours.  This runs off and overflows streams, roads, ponds.  The water just runs off like a stray dog who sees fat squirrel.

What we need is a gigantic funnel.  We should build these in climates where it is dry, but prone to thunderstorms, like west Texas.  The huge funnel captures torrential rains, runs it through a filtration device, then pumps it into the local groundwater supply to recharge it.

This prevents future evaporation and rebuilds the water table.  It allows the water to be used later for the surrounding communities, their ranchers and farmers.

We water our lawn, and after the soaking, it evaporates.   That happens on millions of yards a day, on golf courses, college campuses, and the landscapes surrounding many businesses.   We water and water and water.

That water is not going to be around forever.  It gets depleted from lakes and groundwater supplies.  It evaporates in hot/dry climates.  If we don’t come up with some smart solutions, the human tribe is going to start migrating again, because if you take water and electricity away from the Southwestern part of the U.S., no one could live there.

We were nomads once, and could become nomads again.

Do you follow the herd or break from it?  A friend and coworker made a remark recently that took me by surprise regarding how infrequently people break from the herd mentality.

Most of us go along for the ride.  We may question the reigning cultural attitudes, political opinions or business direction, but for the most part we don’t do anything to change our behaviors.

We get up and put on similar clothes the next day, do our jobs in a repetitive manner and stick to our beliefs. The oddball is singled out, and most of us want to remain anonymous.

My buddy made the point about how important it is to stand up and be yourself.  That can come in many forms.

He cited an example at his son’s high school baseball game.  I forget what he said the team color was.  Let’s say it’s red.  At the games, everyone is supporting the team.

How do they do that?  They wear the team colors.  Everyone joins the herd.

My buddy, to retain his individuality (and probably to swim against the current, which he enjoys doing), wears a different color.  Let’s say it’s electric blue.

He walks into the stands and people don’t know if he’s with the team or not.  If they don’t know him by face, he could be with the opponent. This drives his wife batty. Perhaps some people will purposefully hate him because he has on the opponent’s color.  Boo, hiss.   He probably loves this, as it reinforces his desire not to follow the herd.

It’s easier to go along with the crowd than stand against it.  We don’t want to be outcasts.

This plays out in many venues throughout our lives.  Regardless of what you think of Edward Snowden, you have to admit he was someone willing to break from the herd and do what he felt was right.  Not many people would go as far as he did.

He is an extreme example of taking a stand on something he believes in strongly, and suffering the consequences for it, partially because he must fight against an entrenched view.  Despite it being such a highly visible and volatile case, what he’s done is instrumental for many of us when issues get closer to home.

Whistleblowers, in general, are hard to find.  Anyone willing to stand up to a business or government entity risks his or her career or good standing within his sphere of influence.

For these reasons, speaking out about corporate malfeasance or government cronyism in a public way is a big risk.  You put yourself and your career on the line for your beliefs.  You have to not only break from the herd, but also accept the circumstances that could mean you’re never allowed back in the herd again.  That’s hard.

Instead, we go along, and then whine to others. We complain.  We pretend we’re in agreement, nodding our heads vigorously when we’d rather shout, “This is insanity.”

There is much more room for reasoned discussion than we presume.  Airing differences and raising opposing views brings more creativity to the table, and frequently generates new solutions to problems.

You don’t need to break from the herd to get this done.  But you certainly can be assured that if you go along to get along, you’ll continue to experience frustrations in work and life. 

So peel away from the herd every once in a while to sample the air and view from a new place.  It will make you feel better, and give you a broader perspective.

Recently, a close friend of mine took his son and five of his buddies to see the movie, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.”  Not his cup of tea, but he enjoyed the animation and brought up a fascinating topic that wasn’t addressed by the plot or theme, but occurred to him afterwards regarding the logistics of making the movie.

As he termed it, “In fact, it was the best job of combining live actors and computer generated characters I’ve ever seen.  You really had to concentrate to tell what was animated and what was real.”

This begged the question, “How long will it be before there are no live actors or outside shots?  When will it all be generated on a computer?”

After he posed the question, my first response was that I had never thought about it.  I don’t sit around wondering when humans will become obsolete actors.  It never occurred to me that that could ever  happen.

But he makes a good point.  If they can generate action and animals so real like they did in this movie, they could certainly generate human figures and make them perfect.  You could also make them jump, bend, roll over, shoot, fly or run at just about any speed in any direction with their bodies contorted into seemingly impossible positions.  That’s an added bonus for getting rid of humans and using computer-generated images.

Are we coming to this scenario?  I don’t know.  I can’t see it happening soon, but my buddy sees it as inevitable.  “It’s only a matter of how long.”

If he’s correct, and I don’t subscribe to his theory (though I also won’t discount it), you do have to wonder how quickly we will move down that path and what the consequences are.  For one, there will be another huge disruption in the job market as humans are replaced by digitally enhanced replicas of us.

That will be a huge factor mitigating against it ever happening.  People will fight it.  Actors will weigh in against the change.

Imagine the messiness:  “We want Denzel Washington for the role.”

“He’s too old.  We can create a perfect replica of him for a hundred grand and use it in perpetuity.  We can make him any age we want, and in fact we can change his age in the course of the movie.”

If the movie requires the actor to age over time, the fake Denzel would make an ideal choice.  Don’t let Denzel know though.

It reminds me of the lawsuit brought by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon for allowing a likeness of himself to be used in a video game.  Because money was made off of it, he rightfully wants a slice of the pie.

That could be the route – actors give the okay for replications.  Then they get a cut every time it is used.

“Hey, Jake, I don’t have to act any more.  I just let my imitation do it, and collect all the royalties.”

“Awesome, dude.  Where do I sign up?”

You’d probably even get some lazy bums who’d take the dough and run.  But I think the human ego would come into play in most cases, and the actor would fight to stay in the flick.

Most of us wouldn’t miss the whole celebrity worship culture so prevalent in our society.  There’s no value to that.

We’d probably replace it with Replica Celebrity Worship anyway.  We’ll find the new action hero and imbue them with characteristics that we wish we had ourselves just like we do now. 

And what about the actors who are cast away?  I guess they’ll be selling cell phones.