6 Months Later, Here’s How The 70K Minimum Wage CEO Is Doing

Dan Price shocked the world with his game-changing wage announcement.

by katherine speller 10/26/2015

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When Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price announced plans to raise the minimum wage for all his employees to $70,000 per year, it raised a lot of eyebrows in the business world. Many doubted the Seattle company’s odds of survival while following through with this promise.

“My goal when making this decision was for other business leaders to recognize you can pay a living wage and not only survive, but thrive,” Price wrote on Gravity’s blog back in July.

Six months out from the announcement, he’s doing just what he set out to do. Market Watch reports that “profits have doubled. Customer retention is up, despite some who left because they disagreed with the decision or feared service would suffer.”

Here’s Why The Fight For $15 Is A Really, Really Big Deal

In fact, in a lengthy profile on Price, Inc.com reports that positions at Gravity Payments are much sought-after — even by people who took pay cuts to join their ranks — as this policy makes a powerful statement about the life-changing power of a living wage.

While Price isn’t living large these days — he’s taken out mortgages on two homes, sold stocks and emptied his retirement accounts to invest even more into the company — he told Inc that it’s really not all that bad to live like the rest of his employees do. “So how come I need 10 years of living expenses set aside and you don’t?” he said. “That doesn’t make any sense. Having to depend on modest pay is not a bad thing. It will help me stay focused.”

Woman whose body turns food into alcohol beats drink-drive charge

This is pretty interesting. There's a woman ... well, let me say apparently there are a lot of people, but this woman got herself tested, and she beat the system.
The woman from New York state suffers from ‘auto-brewery syndrome’ but blew four times over the limit despite claiming that she ‘never felt tipsy’
 In tests by doctors, the woman blew well over the legal limit even though she had not had any alcohol, her lawyer said.
 In tests by doctors, the woman blew well over the legal limit even though she had not had any alcohol, her lawyer said. Photograph: Jack Sullivan / Alamy/Alamy
Associated Press
Thursday 31 December 2015 00.15 GMT Last modified on Thursday 31 December 2015 00.17 GMT
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Drunken-driving charges against a woman in upstate New York have been dismissed based on an unusual defence: her body is a brewery.

The woman was arrested while driving with a blood-alcohol level more than four times the legal limit. She then discovered she has a rare condition called “auto-brewery syndrome”, in which her digestive system converts ordinary food into alcohol, her lawyer Joseph Marusak said.


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A town judge in the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg dismissed the charges after Marusak presented research by a doctor showing the woman had the previously undiagnosed condition in which high levels of yeast in her intestines fermented high-carbohydrate foods into alcohol.

The rare condition, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, was first documented in the 1970s in Japan, and both medical and legal experts in the US say it is being raised more frequently in drunken-driving cases as it is becomes more known.

“At first glance, it seems like a get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. “But it’s not that easy. Courts tend to be sceptical of such claims. You have to be able to document the syndrome through recognised testing.”

The condition was first documented in the US by Barbara Cordell of Panola College in Texas, who published a case study in 2013 of a 61-year-old man who had been experiencing episodes of debilitating drunkenness without drinking liquor.

Marusak contacted Cordell for help with his client who insisted she had not had more than three drinks in the six hours before she was pulled over for erratic driving 11 October 2014. The woman was charged with driving while intoxicated when a breath test showed her blood-alcohol content to be 0.33%.

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Cordell referred Marusak to Dr Anup Kanodia of Columbus, Ohio, who eventually diagnosed the woman with auto-brewery syndrome and prescribed a low-carbohydrate diet that brought the situation under control. Her case was dismissed on 9 December, leaving her free to drive without restrictions.

During the long wait for an appointment, Marusak arranged to have two nurses and a physician’s assistant monitor his client for a day to document she drank no alcohol, and to take several blood samples for testing.

“At the end of the day, she had a blood-alcohol content of 0.36% without drinking any alcoholic beverages,” Marusak said. He said the woman, who cannot be named for reasons of medical confidentiality, also bought a breath test kit and blew into it every night for 18 days, registering around 0.20% every time.

The legal threshold for drunkenness in New York is 0.08%.

While people in cases described by Cordell sought help because they felt drunk and did not know why, Marusak said that was not true of his client. “She had no idea she had this condition. Never felt tipsy. Nothing,” he said.

NASA Erased First Moon Landing Tapes

The news is trickling out today that NASA, our government's space agency, apparently screwed up royally again a few decades ago by completely erasing over the original videotapes made on July 20, 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. The first humans to ever set foot on the lunar surface, Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, spent almost three hours outside the spacecraft collecting lunar material while astronaut Michael Collins piloted the command module in lunar orbit. All the action and suspense was duly videotaped by NASA's remarkable camera and recorded on 1-inch videotape for the world to cherish and remember forever. Or so we thought.

The television camera that recorded all the action was mounted onto the side of the Lunar Module. Armstrong was recorded stepping down onto the lunar surface, describing the event as "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." 

When the lunar module landed, it effectively ended the "Space Race" between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. and fulfilled a national goal proposed earlier in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy in a speech before Congress that the U.S. would land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth "before this decade is out."

The broadcast of Armstrong setting foot on the moon and subsequent video of the astronauts on the Lunar surface was recorded by NASA on 1-inch magnetic tapes. NPR attempted to find the tapes in 2006 and reported to NASA that they appeared to be missing. NASA launched an exhaustive 3-year search to find the missing tapes and determined that they had been inadvertently erased. Apparently the original tapes were probably destroyed during a period when NASA was erasing old magnetic tapes and reusing them to record satellite data.

"We're all saddened that they're not there. We all wish we had 20-20 hindsight," says Dick Nafzger, a TV specialist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, who helped lead the search team. "I don't think anyone in the NASA organization did anything wrong," Nafzger says. "I think it slipped through the cracks, and nobody's happy about it."

Since then, NASA has arranged with a Hollywood digital restoration firm to enhance old television footage of the event so that the public can see the first moonwalk in more detail than ever before. But the lost tapes mean that the world will probably never again see the original images beamed back to Earth by the lunar camera that is now resting on the moon's dusty Sea of Tranquility, right where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left it.

Wait a go, NASA! ;-{

Priceless Lunar Rover Model Saved From Scrap

Last week there was a story in the news about a prototype lunar rover that was inexplicably sold by somebody in Alabama to a scrap yard and apparently destroyed. Yup, a one-of-a-kind 600 pound NASA model of the moon rover that we all remember bounced around over the surface of the moon during the Apollo missions of the late 1960's and early 1970's.

Apparently some retard at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville picked the thing up and sold it to a scrap yard dealer. When word got out last week, there was a massive outpouring of disbelief, but what was done, was done ... at least as far as everybody thought.

But wait! It turns out that the heroic scrap dealer recognized what the thing was and saved the buggy after all. From his picture above, the rover matches the description given by NASA in its investigatory documents. The prototype rover appears to be the same one that is in the smaller insert above being driven by none other than Saturn V rocket scientist Dr. Wernher von Braun.

According to Motherboard magazine, the scrap dealer says, "The man who originally bought it ... bought it at a NASA auction many years ago. NASA just discarded a lot of that stuff back then. When it was brought to my scrap facility, I set it aside because I knew what it was. The unit does exist today. It is not scrapped. I have that unit in storage."

The junkyard owner told Motherboard that he had been planning to sell the rover before Motherboard published its story on Tuesday. He says he still plans to sell the rover. Anyone interested?

Army's NORAD Blimp Breaks Loose Causing Havoc

Here's another fine example of your tax dollars at work! Remember last year we told you about the billion dollar surveillance blimps that our government was planning to launch over Maryland? These things were supposed to protect us from a potential barrage of enemy missiles that might somehow be launched by evil villains presumably lying in wait off the Atlantic coast aimed at Washington or wherever.

Well, they actually did put a couple of the things up in the air and they've been hovering over I-95 northeast of Washington until, yup you guessed it, one of them decided to come loose yesterday morning and meander northward from its mooring base. On the way, it dragged along its 6,700 foot tether line about 150 miles up into Pennsylvania until it unceremoniously came down about four hours later in a densely wooded forest near Moreland Township. 

As the tether line bounced to and fro creating a path of destruction, school teachers herded children into their schools as the line raked across roads, bridges, highways, fields, homes and quite a few power lines causing about 35,000 to lose power in the Bloomsburg, PA area. The military scrambled helicopters and a couple of F-16 fighter jets came for a looksee from the New Jersey National Guard.

The 243-foot-long, helium-filled blimp that weighs about 10,000 pounds came loose from its mooring at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland at 11:54 a.m. according to the Army. No one there has yet been able to explain why it broke free from its mooring. The tether line is supposed to keep these things safely secured to the ground in winds up to 100 mph. But this is our government at work, so you know that when a little rainstorm came through with winds around 45 mph, that was enough to break it loose. And off it went!

The blimp landed in a dense Pennsylvania forest at the top of some trees and the Army fired over 100 shotgun rounds to blow enough holes in the thing to let the last of the remaining helium escape and allow what was left of the $235 million blimp fall to the ground. An Army Chinook helicopter is planned to lift the blimp out of the forest. Local residents said they were thankful that the blimp missed a nearby nuclear power plant when it descended. (I guess so was the rest of the eastern seaboard!)

The $2.7 billion blimp program was recently profiled in a scathing report by the Los Angeles Times describing it as the "quintessential runaway Pentagon project."

Guatemala Elects Comedian As President

In the news today is the stunning decision by the Guatemalan voters to send a former television comedian to the office of president. Jimmy Morales, who has never before held public office, won a landslide victory in Guatemala’s presidential election Sunday by taking a whopping 70% of the votes.

It seems Mr. Morales' platform of "Not Corrupt, Not a Crook" resonated throughout the voting public. According to The New York Times, Guatemala's political system has been "broken" for quite awhile and there has been ongoing corruption at just about every level. 

"With this vote you made me president," said Morales in a short victory statement Sunday night. "The mandate of the people of Guatemala is to fight against the corruption that has consumed us.”

The former Guatemalan president, Otto Pérez Molina is currently in jail on charges that he was involved in a multimillion-dollar customs fraud case. 

Morales' closest opponent in the election, Sandra Torres, wife of another former President Álvaro Colom Caballeros, admitted defeat after it became clear that Morales had won with about 68% of the votes cast. "The people have made their choice," she said.

Numerous street protests have been going on throughout the early part of this year calling for Molina to resign because of the corruption. He did so in September and the election for a new president was held Sunday.

Morales' campaign was heavy on style but light on any solid policy proposals. Many said his campaign headquarters looked more like a television variety show, with a band and dancers, than a politician running for office. Morales' biggest pledge during the campaign was the same as everyone else's, to fight the entrenched corruption that caused Molina to resign. 

The new president rose to fame as a TV actor and comedian, and starred in the Guatemalan TV series Moralejas ("Morals") along with his brother Sammy.

Pro Tip: Don't Steal A Stick If You Can't Drive A Stick
The Huffington Post  |  By David Moye
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Posted: 06/19/2015 1:05 pm EDT Updated: 06/19/2015 1:59 pm EDT

Yes, it's happened once again. Something you've read and laughed about every time it occurs and wonder how in the world anyone can be so ... er ... inept? You'd think these people would get a life, but thankfully (at least for us) they don't, and we can sit back and marvel at their stupidity.

Providence, Utah police report that Mr. Alexander Katz, 19, and his girlfriend decided to steal a car. They found one that was sitting all by itself with the keys in the ignition, so they hopped in.

Mr. Katz then apparently looked in vain for the gear selection lever and the usual "D" for "Drive" in a little window somewhere. It just wasn't there. It seems the car was not an automatic but was operated by using what us older folks would call a "stick shift" transmission, something Mr. Katz apparently was not at all familiar with.

Police say that Katz and his girlfriend were able to get the car to go a few yards into a nearby supermarket parking lot but no further, where they jumped out, ran to the gas station next door and called a taxi to pick them up. (I can't help but wonder if the phone had been a dial-type instead of push-button, would Mr. Katz still be there?) 

YOU STOPPED HERE


. in a man tried to steal a car, then had to call a cab after he couldn't figured out how to use a stick shift.

Officers in Logan said they arrested Alexander Katz on Tuesday after the 19-year-old and his underage girlfriend allegedly stole a car with the keys still inside, the Deseret News reports.

Police said Katz' girlfriend knew how to drive a stick and attempted to walk him through the process.


"I'm not 100 percent certain why she doesn't just get around and get in the driver's seat so they can take the car and use it," Police Chief Gary Jensen said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Eventually, the pair ditched the car at a supermarket parking lot in Providence. They fled on foot to a nearby gas station where they called a cab, HJNews.com reports.

When the duo saw police, they ran off again.

Katz's girlfriend was soon arrested. Police said she told them that she and Katz had started the evening looking for Benadryl before deciding to steal a car, according to the website.

Katz was arrested a few hours later after police found him using information he had given the taxi company, according to Newser.

Katz was arrested on suspicion of transferring a stolen vehicle, a second-degree felony, and failure to stop at the command of law enforcement, KSL.com reports. His teenage companion was released to her parents. Her case was transferred to juvenile court.