Eddie Farr

I wanted to give a shout out to some great musicians that I've had the pleasure to listen to throughout Maine. These are some great artists with some creativity and ability to play their own style and music.  Found these guys accidently: Midnight Ramblers or Midnight Riders. They rock the house with awesome stage presence: https://www.facebook.com/MaineAcousticMidnightRamblers/ Tom  https://www.giordanomusic.com has been around a few years. He's got a great sense of looking back at times gone by with his deep melodic voice. Martin is a songwriter's songwriter with vocals that drop low before bouncing back up.  www.martinswinger.com Martin is as much aapostle for the greatness of music and singing, he inspires just by being in the same room. The Boneheads are a band with some of the most amazing musicians I've seen. Why they aren't a household name across the country, I don't know. They should be.  Bob Colwell - Keyboards, Steve Jones - Guitar...

What would have to happen for you to change your mind about who you voted for? If you voted for Trump last election, what have to happen for you to no vote for him again? -Lies to you? -Increases your taxes? -Gets us into a war? -Damages our economy? -Gets charged with collusion? -What else? Anything? If you didn’t vote for Trump, what would have to happen for you to vote for him? -He create national healthcare system? -He creates a simpler tax code system? -Improves economy? -Reduces your taxes? -Anything?

What's the  best way to get a  discount on all your music equipment? This is not an advertisement. It's the law. Every rich person in America does this. Everyone should. If you play music and you want to play music live or you want to sell your music, then you want a music business.Start your own business now. It's extremely easy to do. 100% legitimate. It is even encouraged! So all those beers you drank while watching a great musician play? That's business. That new Les Paul Guitar? Business There's no law that you're business can't be fun! It doesn't mean that you get all this for free, it just means you can deduct your expenses from your income. The only catch is if the total deducted is less than the basic deduction then you're better off taking the basic deduction. The only other catch is that you will need to track it. You can deduct: Auto expenses: every mile you drive is money back Phone, hotels,  Food is 50% deducted from meal...

Incentives and priorities need to be aligned. If you pay someone 5 cents to return a bottle, you get more bottles returned. If your boss pays you for making more widgets, you'll concentrate on making more widgets. This works very well until the incentives and what we want are different. Would you want someone to be paid a ten dollars for hitting you in the nose? No thank you. I see the government doing this in a couple of cases. The two that stand out to me are 1. Healthcare and 2. Prisons. Prisons are easy to fix. Get rid of private prisons. Private prisons get paid per prisoner. They don't get paid for how well they do in recovering or whether they are treated with respect or provided a way to successfully integrate back into society. Just paid per prisoner. So the government (government being you and me) pays someone to open build and run a prison that is incentivized to have more prisoners. Bad model. Some things the government should be doing themselves and not priva...

The  U.S. Military is awesome. The people of the military are doing incredible things to keep us safe. The weapons we've developed are amazing. From nuclear weapons that can destroy a country to miniature flying bugs for reconnaissance. The Soldiers are provided incredible guns and protection.  The people in the military do a lot of things right. But they have the wrong job. Because we gave them the wrong job. To keep people safe, you need to keep them healthy. While the military keeps us safe from people from other areas of the world, our people in our country are dying and getting sick. Deaths from heart attacks, cancer, and other diseases continues to ravage our country. Just for cancer, i n 2018, an estimated 1,735,350 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and 609,640 people will die from the disease. That's more than the 400,000 Americans who died in World War II.  Let's refocus what we want from our Military. We want to be safe and he...

Here's an idea to provide college or other training funding. I'll say college education, but this could mean learning any trade as well. I think this should be a government program because as a government program we, as the government, get the most out of it. But maybe it's okay as a nonprofit too because people who invest in the non-profit can deduct the money from their taxes. Here's the education program: Give people $60k for education. We provide the funding to the people getting educated now and they pay it back through a 4% income tax for the next 30 years. If this is a non-profit, then this would be a volunteer tax to pay it forward. Right now, a college educated person makes more than 50% more than a person with a high school diploma. In terms of tax revenue, we (the people that make up this government) will make a lot more money from a college educated person.  That's a very good investment for us as the tax collectors and for those who pay the extr...

It's gotten out of control over the past 50 years, probably longer. Corporations have become more powerful than people. That just seems crazy that corporations are taking over since corporations are just people. That's it. No business or government makes a decision, it's like your desk making a decision. All businesses, governments, religious organizations, are just people. We are the people. We are the businesses. We are the government. We, the people. The government IS the people. You are the government. That's the way it works. You are also a part of the business you work for. You are also part of your family, religious group, etc. IT'S YOU! ME, US! So it's time people take back the government from the non-human entities called corporations run by immoral people making decisions that are not in the best interest of us or even themselves. I don't understand how a president of a large company can make decisions that destroy our environment, des...

The U.S. Military has a budget of $700 billion per year, so if the entire military budget went towards solar power, it would take 3 years to get all houses on solar. If we assume the price drops to 10,000 for each house, then the cost is 1.2 trillion, or 2 years of the military budget. Let's amortize the buying of solar power over 10 years and let's assume that the home owner pays $1500 towards the conversion (about what a typical household might pay in electricity for one year. So the price tag for the solar energy system, if paid out of the governments pocket, would be $8500 each or 1.1 trillion or $107 Billion per year for 10 years. Or 14% of the U.S. Military Budget in a giving year. This is about what is paid in a year to the top 5 Prime Contractors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, and General Dynamics ($97 billion in 2016). Another comparison is the F-35 Fighter Jet. Every, single, household in America could have ...

Coming Soon! 15 new songs for 2018 with a big combination of acoustic and electric guitars. And of course, Eddie Farr on vocals. Making new songs is the best part of music, except for maybe playing them and performing them. All is good. Stay tuned for updates as the album takes form. The image used on the front cover is from a camping trip to Bigelow Mountain in Maine, part of the Appalachian Trail. Unbelievably beautiful.  

What's easier to imagine? 2 million years ago your ancestor is supposed to be out foraging for food, but instead he's tired, climbs up in a little branch of the tree and takes a nap. He's asleep for a little while, but the tree branch breaks. But out of shear coincidence, he falls on top of an antelope that was underneath him. His weight kills the animal. He goes back to his village a hero for killing this animal that can feed everyone for days. Compare that to the idea of humans as runners, who run down their prey. Ummm no. I run. I'm not a marathoner, but I run. I can't even beat my 12 year old dog in long distances, short distances, hot days, cold days. Just no. But scientist are saying that's a possible way we evolved. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041123163757.htm "Humans evolved from ape-like ancestors because they needed to run long distances – perhaps to hunt animals or scavenge carcasses on Africa's vast savannah – and the ab...

Let's look at these numbers for online music listening. Spotify pays $0.0017 per song. YouTube pays a range from $0.0001 to 0.0003. To make $100 would take 59,000 views. $1000 requires 590,000 views $10,000 requires 5,900,000 views So what's the chances of making $10,000 1.2 million videos have received 1 million or over 1 million views (https://www.quora.com/How-many-videos-on-YouTube-have-over-1-million-views) Let's assume there are 10 billion videos on YouTube (I couldn't find exact numbers, but Facebook said 6 billion and YouTube I assume has more videos), so that's 0.012% of all videos reach 1 million views, please correct me if I did my math wrong... With YouTube, we can add in Google adwords, so I could make more money that way. So if I add ads to my videos and every 100 viewers click on one of the ads, then I could make an extra maybe $0.50 per 100 people, or $0.005 per view. That means to make $10,000 I'd only need 1.8 million views. Still not g...

I wrote a song with some lyrics that someone might not like. It's interesting how it effects me as the artist and singer. I'm nervous that I might not appeal to everyone! And that's crazy! Of course, not everyone will like it! And some people will brandish me evil. Should I hold back? Should I lighten the mood of the song? Change some words? The whole point of the song is to maybe think a little, but it gets to me. Will I be struck down by lightning? I doubt it, but I could and someone would say "I told you so!" I want to be provocative, but it's much easier to be funny. Someone can laugh at you and walk away and that doesn't matter. But if someone takes you serious, you have to be prepared. What's next? What if it gets deeper than a "how are you?"?

Imagine you are Adam on your first day of work. And your boss put you in charge, but didn’t give you directions. Hi Adam, You are in charge of my greenhouse. Adam: ah okay God: I’ll be back. Adam: ahh okay And that’s the instructions. Could you imagine showing up for your first day of work and not getting any instructions, without getting a job description, without anything!? Then instead of giving instructions later on, God just says “you need help.” Still no instructions except don’t eat the apple!” Adam: ahhh Okay Fast forward to the present. Has God giving any better directions? Maybe, I don’t know. Sort of, but it’s all a bit confusing. If you believe one group of people, yes. But then that means this other group of people are wrong, and then another group is wrong…if you are the boss, wouldn’t you give better instructions? Imagine teaching your 6 year old how to drive a car? Err…let’s not. That’s scary. But it is up to you to have faith through your free wil...

Check your social media, emails, voice mail (does anyone use voice mail anymore?), read a blog, check the weather, is that a text message? You could go all day and never do any real work. But you'd be really busy. That's at the individual ways you can distract yourself. What about a company? What about a country? The world has so many distractions. Add in there the companies and people who are adding distractions on purpose. Sometimes they do it to make money...like Facebook... I think they might be the worst add trying to manipulate people. But others do it too. And it's not just internet companies. Exxon-Mobile has done an amazing job of distracting us from the evils of petroleum. If we as a world organization just invested the profits from one Exxon Mobile year into solar power...oh how fantastic would that be! And what a next step! How many years would it take to reduce pollution? How many years until countries become energy independent? Politics is probably the...

Learn, observe, test, observe, theorize, test, observe, experiment. If something is untestable how will it effect us? Does it matter? What is effecting us that we don't even know about yet? Will we ever be able to know about them? We want to know. We want answers so badly that we make up answers. That's okay. But if we keep those answers despite learning of alternatives, are we not becoming satisfied with ignorance? Answers need to be tested to see if they are the correct answers. If we choose to believe something even when it's proven wrong, is that perseverance? Or stupidity? Businesses everyday keep on doing certain things because of momentum and because they think it is useful even though there is absolutely no evidence that it works. Some of it you do because you want to, some of it becomes it seems like it makes sense to do it. You can't test everything. But should you try? Should you try to test whether the blue button works better than the yellow? Should y...

Stories sell. Great I get it. But it is way overdone! Every business book or instructional book written almost always has the same format. The chapter starts with a random anecdotal story. Followed by a sort of connected rule that the author thinks is important. Followed by another maybe related story. And finishing up with a supposedly suspenseful last paragraph saying that the next chapter will be talk about the  next part. I just read The Click Moment by Franz Johansson. I'll sum it up here: randomness happens, be prepared for a lucky randomness. To be more successful try educated gambling more. The rest of the book was random stories...hmmm. now that I think about that maybe that was the point, random stories thrown together in a book in no real organization to show that the book is a lot like business success...random. No, I'm pretty sure the author tried to organize somehow, but just stop after awhile with the meaningless stories! I understand it's easier to tal...

I don't know if I ever filled out a poll. Why would I? It's the same reason I try not to read SPAM email or listen to SPAMcalls (is that a word?). I thought it was bad enough to have Polls use telephones to reach potential poll-people, but now they use the internet to poll people. The people who take polls are NOT the average person. NO way! The average person is too busy to waste there time answering inane questions. I know that's true because I took a poll. 100% of the people in my room here said they  don't have time for polls. However, 100% of them have made time to write about the taking of polls. If you're like me and you're walking down the street and you see someone with a clipboard, you turn away, pretend to be busy, or just plain ignore them. The last Presidential election proved the worthlessness of polls. But everyday, we hear more polls. I did another poll, and it said 76% of all statistical polls are made up on the spot (I know! That's no...

If our government representatives would get there heads out of their behinds they'd make automated phone calls and texts illegal. That's not going to happen because that's anti-business I guess. I remember the spam complaints  from 30 years ago. You'd sit down for dinner and you knew the call would come in from the telemarketer. That seems so quaint now. It would actually be a person on the line trying to sell you something. How many SPAM automated phone messages do you get now, every day? I think I average about 5. But now it's also turning into text spams. I feel like I'm being violated in quite disturbing ways. And email. I stopped buying from Walmart.com because of the SPAM, and Amazon has pushed it right to the limit and 2 steps beyond. It obviously works or they wouldn't do it. Could you imagine actually listening to one of those automated calls and then saying "oh yes, I was meaning to get a loan from a random phone message." I can...

The evidence suggests the climate is changing But maybe you just don’t agree With all those really smart people Or you didn’t look at the data yourself So let’s skip all the sciency stuff and get right to the point Pollution is bad We should stop it as fast as we can Blowing off mountaintops for coal Doesn’t seem like a good idea at all. Throwing trash into the sea. Seems kind of dumb to me You may think that climate change is just a hoax Maybe it is, but I’ll tell you this folks Pollution is bad We should stop it as fast as we can. Air Pollution:  It used to be ozone. The world did a good job of reducing that.  Now it's carbon dioxide Smog Acid rain (both air and water issue) Land Pollution: Water Pollution:  And then there's coal: it's air,water, land pollution all in one.  Coal appears to have been a good energy source 200 years ago when that's all we had. But is it still? "When coal mines move in...

Where do you find new music? There's a lot of  options. As a new artist, I'm trying them all. But it's a lot of work! I can't be on all these sites or I won't have anytime for music! Where you can find us if you already know we exist: Our website cdbaby, where we sell our music Places you might be able to discover us or other non-radio, non Pandora, non Apple sponsored good music. But it's a challenge. YouTube Facebook Do you have alternative ideas?

Are American companies losing the battle because of customer service? Here’s the story. I wanted to make some simple plastic parts. They are for a fish kit where you put together different shapes to make your own lure. The shapes are part of a kit where people can make their own lures. Cool project. We've been making the shapes ourselves for a year, but we wanted to make thousands of them so we needed an industrial process. Usually that means injection molding. First, to make sure my design was good, I had it printed at Shapeways, a 3D printing company. The part cost $12 to make plus $6 shipping, which is fine for a prototype. The sample looked awesome. Better than I anticipated.   Then I went online found several American companies to quote the cost to make 3,000, 5,000, and 10,000 parts. My initial quotes were so ridiculous I thought I was going to have to give up the job. First, instead of just telling me how much it would cost, the companies came back with lots of random ...