Where
Things Work RightWhere
Things Work Right
** New ideas added 10/01/04 starting at number 68.
68. Smart aliens would throw smart rocks -
An article in New Scientist magazine argued that it would be much more
energy-efficient for aliens to send their
messages out through the cosmos in bottles instead of continually beaming
those messages to potential contactees.
The article should have taken that premise one step further though.
Smart aliens would throw smart rocks. If they
took the trouble to toss their messages out into space then they'd probably
take the trouble to make sure those
messages didn't crash into the first planet or star they came to.
Any bottles they sent out would be able to spot
solar systems where intelligent life was likely to evolve and then park
themselves in one of the stable Lagrange points
so the new species could find it when they had evolved far enough.
In our case that would be either the L4 and L5
Lagrange points. If we're going to go looking for alien bottles then
those would be the best places to start.
69. Let's alarm the thieves -
Instead of having car alarms that go off whenever someone bumps into the
car or a strong wind blows, why not
have them go off when they sense the car has been put in motion. Ramping
up the decibel level inside the car would
give the thief a little extra trouble for the trouble he put you through.
As long as you remember to de-activate the
alarm before driving off yourself this solution shouldn't cause you any
headaches.
70. Saving face web site -
Someone should create a web site that would pick up where Miss Manners
and Dear Abby leave off. The site
would be dedicated to providing solutions for rare but real situations
that are extremely embarrassing. For example,
what's the right way to tell someone they've got a piece of toilet paper
hanging out of the back of their pants when
they leave a restroom? Advice on how to handle these situations would be
both amusing and useful.
71. Periscope for the lazy -
Being tall it's usually a pain to be the first car in line at a red light.
I keep having to flip up the visor to watch for the
light to change (or bend down to look under the visor). It would be nice
to have a little clip-on periscope I could
attach to the visor that would point up towards the light so I could see
when it moved without any effort on my part.
72. Clone Clothes -
Based on the work of Engineering Professor Susumu Tachi (University of
Tokyo) we'll soon be able to buy clothes
that make us invisible using retroreflective materials. While some of us
might want to be invisible it won't take long for
there to be a more profitable line of clothes. These would be Clone
Clothes. They would have sensors embedded
in the collar to scan a 360 degree area around the observer for several
meters. The clothes worn by people in that
zone would then be analyzed on a casual-to-formal continuum. Based
on the results the new clone clothing would
adapt to its surrounding, always making sure it was one step higher or
lower on the fashion rung than anyone in the
vicinity (the wearer would tap a button to tell the clothes which direction
to go). Of course if two people wearing
these clothes were in each other's zone it could be the start of the First
Clone Clothes War.
73. Locating lazy witnesses -
Studies have shown there's a direct relationship between the number of
people who witness something and the
number who step forward to help - the higher the number of people the less
the chance that someone will offer to
help. One explanation suggested for this is that if there are a lot of
people around then we tend to think that
someone else is already going to help.
We could take advantage of the current state of cell phone technology to
help offset that misguided assumption.
Since the location of cell phones in use can now be easily tracked we should
allow people to join a mobile
neighborhood watch when they buy a phone. That way if something happens,
an accident, carjacking, bank robbery,
etc... a system could track down all of the cell phones that were in use
at the time near the area concerned so the
police could call those numbers to see if anyone saw anything of any use.
It would greatly increase the odds of finding
witnesses. The system could even be used to broadcast recorded messages
to phones in an area where a child has
just been reported abducted to increase the chance of finding them (similar
to the Amber Alert system used on
highways in the US).
74. Hacked satellites as weapons -
Here's an excerpt from the October 9 2002 issue of New Scientist magazine -
"Commercial satellites used by the US military, secret service and Federal
Aviation Authority could be hijacked or
disabled by computer hackers, a new government report has warned....The
satellites are typically used for
non-critical communications, as well as tracking and telemetry...the command
channels used to control these
commercial satellites are insufficiently protected against misuse...If
false commands could be inserted into a satellite's
command receiver, they could cause the spacecraft to destroy itself."
Here's an extrapolation -
Instead of causing the spacecraft to destroy itself smart hackers would
redirect them into the path of military satellites
that are protected, causing an explosive collision. Secured channels
on military satellites aren't any good if the
satellite itself is unprotected.
75. One welfare solution -
Families living at the poverty level could relocated by charity organizations
to an area that has an abundant natural
resource already being extracted, say a gold mine for instance. Once
they became the majority they could tax the
mine into bankruptcy, take possession of it for the delinquent taxes, and
then work the mine themselves, paying for
their own welfare. (A communist economy thanks to a democratic government.)
76. Organ transplants for criminals -
The question of whether or not criminals should receive organ transplants
when there are others who aren't in jail
needing them came up after a convict in California received a free heart
transplant. It seems to me that we could
avoid this kind of ethical dilemma by simply abiding by the rule that each
culture is responsible for supporting its own
people - criminals would only get organ transplants from criminals and
free people would only get them from free
people. If there were any organs left over that one culture didn't
need they could of course be donated to the other
culture.
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