That is a very clever photo and it does a good job explaining the value of commonsense.

Your photo above is very inspiring. This should be sent to the US government. Especially since they spend more than 1 penny just to make a penny. Even without a hole!

Chris, the thing I find quite amusing about the idea of "it costs more to make a penny" is that you don´t hear people complaining, "it doesn´t take $100 worth of materials to make a $100 dollar bill." I personally don´t care if it costs more, they make it up in the other bills.

You´re completely right, unfortunately there is no common sense school, and common sense really can´t be taught. That may be a little discouraging to the programmer or designer with absolutely no common sense though.

I have seen your blog and its really very great

Solving Difficult Questions with Simple Answers.or simplistic ones?

I get your point but the photo is a poor example. In real life, the metals in "copper" pennies costs more than the material used in the "non-ferrous metal washers" (couldn´t you have said "aluminum"?). More importantly, the photo on the bottom is an inaccurate cost. It shows a drilled out penny but NOT THE VALUE of the work needed to get the thing drilled out. Not exactly a fair comparative if the example above does illustrate the value of the washer. But I get your point. If you´re in a crisis and need a washer, grab a penny (not a bad source of needed scrap metal in certain circumstances) if you have the means to process it, creating a hole. Personally, I´m lucky to find the right size drill bit. Drill bits have peculiar behaviors and tend to wander off. Either that or all of mine have run away from home, particularly in the smaller sizes.

Exactly right about simple answers. Many years ago there was a massive fire in Ohio USA. Millions of tyres went up in smoke. At the same time a shipment of old tyres went from Korea to the US to be recycled. With the tyres cam a new deadly strain of mosquitos. Tyres being the perfect home for mosquitos.

Greenpeace got on the world media and where asking for millions in funding to address the problem of used tyres lying in dumps around the world.

So I sent them a simple cheap design (Free) for a process that could be applied to not only old tyres but new ones also. These tyres would never wear or puncture.

Guess what, to simple, never used.