Where
Things Work RightWhere
Things Work Right
** New ideas added 06/01/05 starting at number 221.
221. You Call the Pitch/Play -
Now that a lot of people have cellphones this is a possibility. Upon
entering the stadium your ticket would be
scanned to see if it was one of the few that had been randomly picked to
win. If it was, and you had a cellphone,
you'd leave your cellphone number at the gate and be given a phone number
in return. Then at any point in the game
you could call one pitch, or play, and your team would have to throw the
pitch or run the play. An even number of
winning tickets would be given out, half for one team and half for the
other. Maybe 6 pitches in baseball for a game
or 2 plays in football. The coaches would hate this of course but
the fans would probably love it, especially if their
call proved to be a good one. Think of the bragging rights. "Did
you see so-and-so just miss the curve I just threw
him!" Or, "How about that 30 yard gain! Wow, that was my play all
the way." Of course if the pitch got hit out of
the park or the pass was intercepted you might not want to say anything.
222. Earpods -
Hearing aids that play random comedy routines
When you're sitting at your desk and want to give your eyes a break you'd
just close them and tap a toggle on the
back of your earpiece. Random comedy routines that were downloaded into
the earpiece when you put it on its base
station the previous night would start playing. (Might be nice for
boring meetings too, as long as you could keep
yourself from laughing out loud.)
223. Bulletproof Balloons -
Cheaper than Predator drones.
These would simply be balloons with a Kevlar shell that would be tethered
to rooftops scattered throughout a city
that's experiencing anarchy like Baghdad is at the moment. The same
type of camera used on the Predators would
be mounted inside the Kevlar shell with only its lens exposed. Cameras
at the base of the tethers would also be used
to identify anyone who tried to cut the line.
Insurgents would take pot shots at the balloons of course, but it would
take something like an RPG to knock them
down. It's unlikely that they'd use RPG's, for two reasons.
First, every miss would be a waste of precious
ammunition, and second, every miss would land in a neighborhood where they
might have a few friends they didn't
want to accidentally kill.
224. Soft Door Shell -
Let the solicitors knock as much as they want.
Adding vinyl padding to a line of specialty doors would keep you from having
to get up and answer the door only to
find a solicitor there waiting to bother you. The padded door would make
their knocking useless.
Of course they'd try to get around this by ringing the doorbell, which
is where the new Friend-or-Foe doorbell would
come in. Using fingerprint-recognition technology, this doorbell
would remember prints you'd told it to save in its
memory as friends. The bell would ring whenever they pressed it.
The bell wouldn't do anything when a solicitor
pressed it.
We'd have to have a backup system for colder climes though, where your
friends wouldn't want to take off their
gloves to ring the bell. This is where the Doormat Stomper would
come in. It could be set to respond to a number
of stomps. Your friends would be given that number, solicitors wouldn't.
If the doormat sensed the set number of
stomps it would send a signal to the doorbell, triggering a ring.
225. Recycling Rain -
A thought on how to end the drought in Cuba.
Paper mills. Help Cuba build plenty of them. The plants would
produce dimethyl sulfide which has been implicated
in significant cloud formation when released by algae. The clouds
would provide rain, which would increase crops,
which would provide a stream of revenue for buying raw materials, which
could be used in the mills to create dimethyl
sulfide and more clouds. (The paper would be worth a little money
too.) See links for the logic behind setting up this
cycle.
The natural effects of dimethyl sulfide
A little more about the chemical
226. Kid Spray -
For dogs who don't want to be friendly.
A friend of mine has a very unfriendly Dalmatian that kids just love to
try to pet. Fortunately for them she's been able
to keep them from getting too close. Some day she might not be quick enough
though and they're going to get bit. A
special collar designed for ill-tempered dogs might add a measure of safety.
Whenever a child approached the dog its
owner could tap a button on the lease to release a suitably foul odor (from
the child's point of view, not the dog's).
This might be just enough to make the child back away and keep his skin
intact.
227. Holographic Scarecrow -
Put a little life into your scarecrow.
Mounted on a large weather vane in a field, the holographic image of a
scarecrow would move wherever the wind
moved it, making it a more lifelike threat to crows.
228. Roaming Glasses -
These would be glasses that had small, wireless webcams attached to them
(or to a headband you could slip onto
your hat). The popularity of fixed webcams in public places has already
been established. These moving webcams
would give you a more dynamic view of events.
The way they'd work would be pretty simple. Whenever the webcam entered
an area where wireless signals could
be sent it would start broadcasting (after the user flipped a switch to
turn it on since there are times when he or she
wouldn't want it on). The pictures would be transmitted to a web
site that worked somewhat like mapquest. You'd
pick an area you're interested in, zoom down to a picture showing the active
cameras, and click on the one you
wanted to see. That way you'd see everything the wearer saw.
The issue of transmitting audio along with the visual signal would be open
for debate. In a lot of areas it's illegal to
record someone without their permission which is what could happen if we
let audio signals be transmitted. (There's
no such limitation on visual signals though.)
229. Bandwagon Identifier -
There are several well-known categories that both commercial and political
ads fall into (testimonials, bandwagons,
etc...) Back when our kids were little we used to make a game out
of spotting which group each ad fell into. Now
that we can put some intelligence into our recording devices it shouldn't
be too hard to set up a little display beside
the TV that would analyze the commercials in real time and run a scrawl
across the display telling you what group
they belonged to. It would be a good learning tool for kids and adults
who were too tired to think.
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