Where
Things Work RightWhere
Things Work Right
** New ideas added 04/15/05 starting at number 195.
195. Why This is a Stupid Idea -
A new online course colleges could offer.
This course would be based on impractical or impossible ideas that tend
to get repeated way too often on 'new idea'
web sites like the halfbakery, creativitypool and whynot.. The help
file on the halfbakery lists some that could be
used for starters - "perpetuum mobiles, cloned fingerprints, and inhaling
helium to make you fly". It wouldn't be hard
to find enough material to fill out a course. The benefit would be
obvious. In addition to cutting down some of the
clutter on these sites it would free up creative people who happen to be
hung up on one particular impossible idea
(waiting for their genius to be recognized) to get past that idea and move
on to others that might be more plausible.
Unlike Physics 101, this course would be designed for people who are majoring
in other fields and just happen to
have ideas that relate to physics, engineering, and the like.
196. The Dead Show TV Channel -
For the rest of the story.
A lot of times TV shows getting only marginal ratings go on hiatus, never
to return. This almost happened to 'The
Last Comic Standing', where the last episode happened to be the finale
and the network dropped it before it was
shown. Fortunately the Comedy Channel picked it up so we could see it.
With other shows, like Fox's The Champ,
we weren't so lucky. The remaining episodes were never shown.
Subscribers to the Dead Show TV Channel would never have to worry about
being caught in a similar situation again.
This channel would buy up the unused episodes of every cancelled series
and let you choose when you want to watch
them (the same way HBO has set it up so you can see reruns by episode number
for its series). Since the networks
don't intend to show the remaining episodes they might be willing to sell
them for a pittance, especially if that pittance
included promos for their new shows. Getting the product (unseen shows)
cheap, and having a steady demand (the
subscribers) should make this new channel profitable. The shows might have
been cancelled because millions of
people weren't watching them, but that doesn't mean a few hundred thousand
wouldn't like to see the endings.
197. Detour Dots -
A bread crumb trail for those who are afraid to take detours.
When traveling through unfamiliar territory I tend to get a little nervous
if I come across a detour. Especially if it's night
and the roads aren't well-lit. The reason for this is that several times
the detour has turned out to be inadequately
marked, leaving me wondering how to get back onto the main road.
Detour Dots would solve this problem. Similar to Bott's Dots, these reflective
dots would be laid down as needed by
whoever's setting up the detour. A wheel on the front of their vehicle
would grab a dot each time they pressed a
button and slap it down on the road. The dots would have a sticky bottom
to keep them in the lane they were put in
until the truck (or police car) came back to pick them up. If they did
something like this then I'd have a clear trail of
bread crumbs to follow back to the main road, considerably easing my anxiety.
198. Removed
199. The Visiting Cop Company -
Filling in the gap during vacations.
For those of us who have teenagers at home who are old enough to stay at
home by themselves when we go on
vacation there's currently a patchwork of steps we can take to guard against
unexpected house party events. You tell
the neighbors you'll be gone and make it their responsibility, you can
hook up your PC to one of those little wireless
robots that can roam around the house and then be tempted to keep checking
on what they're seeing all during your
vacation, or you could ask the police (in rural areas) to check up on the
house now and then.
The Visiting Cop Company would give you another alternative. Policemen
already pick up extra money working
off-duty shifts for concert events and the such - this would just give
them a single point of entry into a system where
they'd be assigned houses to check on a random basis while the owners are
off on vacation. From the homeowners
point of view it would give them a dependable resource they could just
call and pay for 'x' number of days of
protection. Just the random factor alone would keep a lot of teenagers
from risking a party.
200. You're Getting Closer -
Several scientific studies have been done to determine what most people
consider ideal when it comes to
attractiveness. This idea would combine the images they ranked as ideal
with a facial comparison program and your
webcam. The idea is that you'd look into the webcam after getting a new
haircut so the program could compare your
last image with your new one, and then tell you if you were getting closer
to the ideal or moving further away from it.
No false compliments here.
201. Concrete Resonance Drill -
Vacuuming our way towards the trapped -
Whenever there's a strong earthquake in a populated area it seems like
one or more people get buried in the rubble.
Afterwards, rescuers race to dig out the survivors before they suffocate.
A lot of the time the digging involves hacking
away at large pieces of concrete until they're small enough to be pried
off of the stack and hauled away. The concrete
resonance drill might speed up the process. When placed against pieces
of concrete it would calculate the destructive
resonance frequency and spread it through the concrete, causing the pieces
to crumble under the strain. If they
crumbled enough we might even be able to vacuum them away with a modified
Dyson vacuum cleaner attached to the
drill. That would still leave us the tangle of rebar to cut our way through
but this would be easier with all of the
concrete stripped off of it. We might even be able to drill a hole all
the down to the survivors using this technique,
giving them some air and a better chance of survival while we work at cutting
through the rebar.
A
version of the drill using water instead of sound
202. New Kidneys for Kitty -
Being highly allergic to cats, I have no problem with this idea.
Recently there's been a lot of articles about pet owners who are willing
to pay big bucks for a clone of the family cat
so they won't miss him when he's gone. Since they're willing to pay so
much for a copycat they'd probably be willing
to pay just a little bit less for a revised version of the real thing.
Cat kidneys in particular, might prove to be profitable
transplant items.
Unlike those who have the kind of ethical qualms voiced in the attached
link, I'd have no problem letting the cats who
are going to be put to sleep in shelters donate their kidneys to save the
family pet, especially when a large part of
profit could go towards helping the remaining animals in the shelter stay
alive long enough to be adopted. The greatest
good for the greatest number and all that.
203. The Beeping Past -
Buy a 'Never-Lost Time Capsule' for future peace of mind.
The problem with most time capsules is that either the people who bury
them either die before it's time to dig them up
or lose track of where they buried them (I've experienced the latter).
The new 'Never-Lost Time Capsule' would
solve both of these problems. Like many modern time capsules, these new
ones would be made out of PVC. These
would have two passive RFID tags though, one mounted on their outside surface
and a backup mounted on the
inside. With this type of capsule you'd never have to worry about forgetting
exactly where you buried it again (as long
as you didn't bury it more than 3 feet deep). When it came time to open
the capsule you'd just scan the general area
the same way you do with a metal detector and be able to see right where
you should start digging. (Since I
mentioned metal detectors I should also mention that using this medium
instead of just burying something in a big
chunk of metal keeps you from wasting your time digging up false positives.)
For those who preferred to use their own capsule we could offer another
alternative - a small cube with identical
RFID tags on each face. They could just toss this in with the rest of the
junk and get the same benefit.
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