Where
Things Work RightWhere
Things Work Right
** New ideas added 02/01/05 starting at number 148.
148. Ego Alert -
For people who like themselves too much.
This would be a simple button you wore to keep track of how often the person
you're talking to says the words I,
me, my or mine. If they go over a certain limit (number of times per minute
or ratio to other words) then it begins to
glow, yellow at first and then bright red if the speaker doesn't take the
hint. It would have to be able to keep track of
different speakers of course, and also be able to apply a different algorithm
to stutterers. Seeing their egotism glaring
back at them might be just the thing some of these people need to stop
and listen what you have to say. In the event
that you're the one with the big ego the button could vibrate at increasing
levels until you figured out there were other
real people around.
149. Stealth Windmills -
They only come out at night.
People object to building offshore windmill farms for at least a couple
of different reasons - they're an eyesore and a
danger to birds. Land-based ones also raise the temperature beneath them
by a couple of degrees too.
The solution might be stealth windmills. These would only pop up from beneath
the water at night when no one can
see them and birds aren't usually flying around. The power to raise and
lower themselves would get first call on the
energy they produced (and it would be stored in their base). They would
also have sensors built in that would turn on
a set of lights in the event that any aircraft of ship approached.
The warmth produced by land-based models of the pop-up windmills might
actually produce another benefit -
reduced heating costs for nearby houses during the winter.
One more bonus - in the event of severe weather the windmills could be
dropped back down into their silos, getting
them safely out of the way in time to avoid major repair costs.
150. World Lobbyist -
During this last election in the U.S. a lot of people in other countries
complained that it seemed unfair that they didn't
get a chance to vote on an issue that might ultimately have a significant
impact on their lives (i.e. the next President
and his policies). Creating the new position of World Lobbyist, funded
by the United Nations, would at least give
them a voice on a subject that concerns their future.
To make this happen, every country would elect a candidate for the position
via popular vote, and then each country
would have one vote to choose the ultimate winner (with each country being
forbidden from voting for its own
candidate). Once this lobbyist was elected his job would be to present
the rest of the world to the U.S. via current
media outlets inside the U.S. so its people would get a better picture
of how the rest of the world thinks about things.
It wouldn't be his job to influence U.S. policy one way or the other on
any specific issue - he would be paid to get
across the idea that people living in other countries really are people
and not just stereotypes. For instance, too many
Americans are surprised when they see a story coming out of Africa that
has actual buildings in it instead of just dirt
villages with huts. Commercials would tell short stories of real people
and what their lives are like. It would give the
audience something to relate to when they start voting to do this or that.
151. Handicapped Horns -
The other day a guy in a big truck was backing out of a handicapped parking
space. Right behind him was someone
in a small sports car. The guy in the car kept honking but the truck
backed right into him. This happened because
the handicap the guy driving the truck had was that he was hearing impaired.
Seems like it shouldn't be too hard to
design a small light that would sit on top of a car's exterior mirrors.
The sound of honking would activate it, letting
the handicapped driver know someone was behind him. This device could
also pick up sirens so if someone was
playing their radio too loud with the windows closed they'd still hear/see
that an emergency vehicle was coming up
fast behind them.
152. Polar Bear Express -
Saving the bears (sorry about that seals).
The first link below shows experiments currently under way to create a
solar-powered, underwater robot for long
term use in monitoring water quality. The second link shows how Arctic
warming is threatening polar bears who have
a shortened hunting season due to the ice melting sooner. The idea - disguise
the solar-powered vehicles as small
sheets of ice and periodically make them seek out radio signals that we'll
have tagged the polar bears with. This way
every so often a sheet of ice will show up to ferry the bear around the
hunting grounds, letting them stay out there
longer, increasing their chances of survival and decreasing their nuisance
factor to the communities in the area. (Of
course the 'underwater' adjective applied to this new vehicle would have
to be changed to 'partially underwater'.)
Underwater solar powered vehicles
Yes,
there are toxins out there
153. Death Spotting Satellites -
We'll see the lights go out if we don't get there in time.
Now that we have spy satellites capable of seeing objects 10 centimeters
in diameter it shouldn't be too hard to turn
the search over to them when someone's missing at sea. Any object that
looked round, like the top of someone's
head, or was emitting a thermal image outside the background range, would
be right where the rescue boats should
be sent.
Current capability (scan the link for 'centimeter')
Another
way to look (see page 33, multi-spectral imagers)
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