Where
Things Work RightWhere
Things Work Right** New ideas added 01/01/05 starting at number 132.
132. Fish Movies -
Let your stories tell themselves.
Never say 'you should have seen the size of the one that got away' when
you can say 'hey, take a look at the size of
the one that got away'. A new camera based on the colonoscopy pill
camera could make this happen. The camera
would be disguised as a weight (or lure if you want to see the innards),
and start filming the minute the fish struck and
you hit the record button. If the fish got away you could then play
back the tape to show all of your friends you
weren't lying. A bonus feature would be a weight calculator that
could figure out how much the fish weighed based
on the dead weight during times when you were pulling it in and it wasn't
fighting back.
133. Fair Market Monopoly -
Who cares where Marvin Gardens is?
This new electronic version of the monopoly game would have a GPS in it
so it would know where you were
playing when you turned it on. The game would do a quick search of
the property appraiser's office in your area
and give the spots real names based on the values in your locale.
At least then you'd know what you were playing
for. (I guess it would stink if your house turned out to be the cheapest
spot though.)
Since it's an electronic version you could also have driveways coming out
of each property that linked up with a
network of roads. That way when you bought a house the board would
sense its presence and generate a random
reaction from the former owners as they drove off. (We'd need a couple
thousand potential reactions in the database
to keep it interesting and unpredictable.)
134. Floating Doctors -
This idea mainly applies to the U.S. where doctors are leaving the profession
because they can't afford to pay the
high malpractice premiums. One of the major reasons the premiums are so
high is because insurance companies have
to set aside a bundle of cash in case they have to pay off ridiculously
high court judgments.
Here's the idea. There are two piles of money being collected now, premiums
from companies/employees to get
regular insurance, and premiums from doctors to get malpractice insurance.
A new company would offer to cut the
size of both payments in half. It could do so because its costs would be
cut in the following manner.
Routine medical care would continue to be provided the way it is now by
doctors who joined the company in return
for the reduction in their malpractice premiums (the premiums would be
paid to this new company). If a patient
needed surgery though they'd be ferried out to a ship sitting in international
waters for it (like casino gambling boats
do now). Since the operation was outside the U.S. borders the doctors couldn't
be sued in U.S. courts thereby
saving the new company lawyers fees and those huge malpractice awards.
Now and then a doctor would still do something wrong though. To protect
the patient in that case a nine person
board would decide whether the doctor was guilty. This board would have
2 doctors on it, 2 investigative reporters,
and 5 students who had been given full scholarships to the schools of their
choice (and who didn't major in either law
or medicine). The students, having already been given non-revocable
scholarships by the new company, could be
impartial and would be the majority. This would insure that the patient
got a fair hearing. If the doctor was found guilty
the patient would then receive an amount in damages based on the rates
originally agreed to when they signed up for
this insurance plan with their employer.
When discussing this idea with other people some questions kept repeatedly
coming up so I've listed the most
common ones and their answers in more detail below.
1. How does the board find guilt or innocence? The two doctors on
the board would perform a peer review the
same way it's done in hospitals now. The doctors would come from the pool
of physicians who signed up for
the program and would be chosen on a case by case basis to make sure they
had the same qualifications as the
doctor being investigated. The investigative reporters are there to get
whatever additional information might be
needed.
2. What methods are used? Doctors signing up for the program would
agree to give the board full access to their
records for the operation in question, and any previous operations that
had been challenged. The whole
9-member board would review these records and make a decision the same
way juries do. (The doctor being
investigated would be allowed to defend himself too.)
3. What authority is exercised? The board would just note minor mistakes
in a file so during the doctor's annual
evaluation they could help the reviewers decide if an accumulation of mistakes
warranted dropping the doctor
from the program. In cases of extreme malpractice, the doctor would
be immediately dropped from the
program and a complete history of the case would be sent to the licensing
authority in his state.
4. How are punishments enforced? See question 3.
5. What rights to access do you suggest? If by access you mean who
can join this type of insurance program, it
would be available to any employee whose employer offered it. Geography
would be a consideration. It would
probably only be cost-effective in locations with easy access to a coastline.
6. How is this funded? There would primarily be two sources
of funding - the malpractice premiums coming from
doctors (who decided to join the program because these premiums would be
50% less than whatever they're
currently paying), and the employee payroll deductions made by those who
joined the plan. Not that the truly
wealthy would need it, but they could join as private-pay clients.
Self-employed businessmen would also have
the same option.
135. Robot Ball Boy -
We've got robot vacuum cleaners and robotic lawn mowers to help get the
work done, it's time we made a robot
to help get the playing done. A simple modification to one of those roomba's
could make it recognize tennis balls at
rest in a 5 foot strip along the outside edge of a tennis court and pick
them up. Periodically it would return to a
bucket near the playing area and dump all of the collected balls into it.
136. Peg Leg Prisoner Control -
Decreasing violence via Joint Cuffs.
Whenever a new prisoner entered the prison system he or she would be outfitted
with a new kind of cuff. A ring
near the ankle would be narrow enough to keep it from being slipped off,
and a ring above the knee would hold the
other end of two metal rods attached to the lower ring. The combination
of rods and rings would force the inmates
to walk peg leg style, thus stopping them from running around and kicking
other inmates/staff. The same kind of cuffs
would run from the wrist to the elbow. One of these cuffs would have
a keyed joint though so it could be unlocked
as needed for dining or bathroom breaks. (The keyed cuff should be
put on the arm that the patient doesn't normally
use, further decreasing their punching power.) The rings on all of
the cuffs could be moved up or down a few inches
and snapped in different positions so sores wouldn't develop.
Picture a prison full of young Forrest Gumps and you'd have a pretty close
approximation of this idea.
137. eSpecies -
An auction for the benefit of science.
There's never enough money for science (unless it relates to weapons research).
Auctioning off the names of new
species might provide a new source of funding. Right now whenever a new
species is found, and we're finding them
all the time, it's often given a name referring in some way to the person
who found it. These discoverers might be just
as satisfied with 10 percent of whatever an auction could bring in, especially
if they've already had some bug named
after them. The other 90 percent could then go towards funding more explorations.
As to whether or not there would
be willing buyers, the fact that people pay to have stars named after themselves
and friends when those names don't
hold any official weight proves there's a market out there. The market
would be even bigger for something like this,
especially when the names would be official and stuck in every catalog
of species from now until the end of man.
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