Layaway has been a lost marketing strategy for a while, but is now back at many large retailers. The theory is very simple and came about in the 1930's depression era when there was limited money to spend; like now. A customer finds an item or items and pays a small amount down, and the remainder over 8 to 12 weeks. The store holds the item until paid for, and you take it home. Seems easy but there are some problems. For most stores there is a fee that is non-recoverable. Depending on the amount of the purchases, it could be between $5 and $10, and there is a minimum amount that must be met. So, as with credit cards, it is easy to spend more than a person has at any given time, and is faced with paying a lot to retrieve the items. Some stores allow online layaway, but others require in-store payment. But what happens if the item you select goes on sale just before the holiday and you have paid full price? And, even worse, what happens if the store closes abruptly which is happening with more frequency? Retailers want us to buy more than we can afford and we have become a spending nation and not a saving nation.
A far better idea is to return to the former system called the "Christmas club". You deposited a set amount of money in a special account at your bank starting in the summer. And then, just before the holidays, you withdrew the money and went shopping. Of course now, if its the Bank of America, they will charge $5 instead of paying interest. In any event, read any and all agreements covering layaway's, and CYA! Covet your assets...

There was a time not too long ago that an entertainer would spend a lot of time honing their craft. They would work in small venues, and when they thought themselves ready, they would knock on doors to "get noticed". Well, those days are long gone.
Today, with the many talent shows on TV, the trip from obscurity to fame is a great deal shorter. This is particularly true for singers as they make up the bulk of talent seekers. In just one TV season they can win, and get a recording contract, or lose and become part of a tour to promote themselves and the TV program. It seems to be an ideal scenario for the talented.
But wait! Then there is YouTube with millions of people with dreams of success in entertainment. The really good singers graduate to a daytime variety show or nighttime program. Good for them!
But here is the problem that seems to be very real. Will they have a career? In the past, singers had a long running time in entertainment. They made CD's, toured, and had a life as they wanted it. They could travel and promote their work and the public called them celebrities.
But now, the cost of music production and marketing have increased dramatically, and the demand for music has declined at the same time. The public is looking for free music as the line of new talent grows and waits at the door of fame. It is what the economists call a demand/supply imbalance. It seems as if we will measure career in terms of months and not years. Hopefully, these talented people have a backup dream; they are going to need it...

I have always been curious and willing to risk failure to obtain new information. It is great mental fun to take things apart, understand the parts, put them back together, and have some pieces left over! It is a greater challenge to synthesize new ideas using easily available parts of things. This is the art and science of invention, and it is what the brain does so well. We can look at a paper clip and see that is useful for holding papers together, or, we can see that it will be a different item if we straighten it out, bend it differently, or connect it to something else.  Ideas can be impromptu, or well planned in advance. We can then assemble, fabricate, or try out our idea and see if it works or not. It is then easy to say that it is a success or failure. But, it comes down to how we define failure and that is the thought about this post. Failure can be a good outcome.
Adam Savage, from the TV show MythBusters says it best: "There's a phrase I came up with early on in doing the show: "Failure is always an option." I had that printed on our crew hats and crew shirts and I realized, in fact, it is a deeply scientific phrase because people think of an experiment as something set out to prove something. And it's not. It's something set out to test something. So whether you're right or wrong about your preconceptions, the experiment that yields data is still a successful experiment. That's what we mean by "Failure is always an option."
As the webmaster for this site I am constantly trying to present interesting and useful ideas and commentary and sometimes I succeed, and sometimes not so much. Particularly for the Science/Experiments page, I am working on several ideas at the same time. In the past three weeks I have had a lot of ideas that did not work. I believe that frustration is proportional to the time spent on a project, and I do get frustrated. But, when I weigh what I have learned during those "failures" against what has succeeded, I feel that frustration goes away, but that the information builds on future projects. So here is a tip of the inventors hat to failure....