Boing Boing: Skytyping

… The Skytyping process utilizes five airplanes that fly abreast, 250-feet apart and "type" up to 30 character messages in a dot-matrix-like pattern. When Skytyping, the airplanes create messages in the sky that are 5 miles long, as tall as the Empire State Building and can be seen for 15 miles in any direction or nearly 400 square miles.

God Bless America!

Did you ever stop to think what this ridiculous species of ours might achieve if it expended one tenth of the ingenuity it expends on advertising on—oh, I don't know—seeking a cure for cancer, ending famine, fighting climate change, or bringing about world peace?

We've got what it takes, you know.

No commercial nouse, that's my problem. That and scruples.

I've had a few freebies over the years, thanks to Gruts and my Darwin website: occasional Darwin-related books from publishers, and the odd unexpected present from my Amazon wishlist. Hell, I've even made over a tenner from Amazon referral fees. But I don't have that killer business instinct—the ability to recognise and seize upon a nice little earner.

Take this proposition I received via the Darwin site the other day, for example:

I can offer you $35 if you'll place an ad on [this page] for a website that provides information about LASIK eye surgery. I can supply the ad to you with payment if you're interested.

You see, all I had to do was act the pimp, turn my personal hero, Charles Darwin, into a whore, and $35 could have been mine. That's £15.22 in proper money. A few thousand more offers like that each year, and I could be living the life of Riley. If it weren't for my scruples, that is.

DAMN SCRUPLES!