Culture
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Background: “Lost cat” and “lost dog” signs are often placed up on telephone poles (Fig. 1), but it’s unlikely that a specific person who sees a lost pet will also have seen the sign (or even know that the pet is actually lost in the first place). Proposal: In order to add more people…
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Background: Many companies issue ID badges to their employees. Sometimes these come in multiple forms: one type of badge for permanent workers, and a different color for temporary employees. Proposal: In order make the time-limited nature of temporary employees more clear—and perhaps to remind the temporary employee to start applying for jobs again—a low-power timer…
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Background: Once you know how to read, it’s impossible to see text the same way as you did before—you will inescapably recognize the symbols as letters the instant that you see them. The issue: This “automatic” parsing of written language makes it easy to forget how much effort was required to initially learn how to…
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Background: Rail-based transportation has an inescapable problem: in a single-track situation, there is no way for a train to pull over and let another train pass. The issue: Thus, a single stopped train can block an entire track indefinitely. And a slow train can’t be overtaken by an express train. This can be solved by…
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Background: When baking a pizza in an oven, it’s it’s easy to remove the pizza from the oven and instantly start devouring it. The issue: Unfortunately, molten cheese (Fig. 1) cannot coexist with human tissue, so this causes severe burns to the impatient pizza-eater. Proposal: We can prevent further occurrences of this culinary tragedy by…
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Background: When giving a presentation to a diverse audience (e.g. of experts and non-experts, or of employees from two different departments in a company), you have a problem: you can only make one set of slides, but sometimes you might want to tailor different parts of the presentation to a different audience. For example, one…
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Background: Moderating the comments section of any web site is a thankless and un-ending task. But what if there were some way to make it slightly easier? Proposal: Instead of just allowing any comments, we can require that comments be totally unique and never-before-seen. Once a comment is made, or an image is posted, a…
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Background: Print news has unfortunately been dealt a mortal blow by a combination of the Internet and mobile phones. But there’s still one way to take advantage of the physical nature of printed news—a way that cannot be replicated by news on a phone! Proposal: We can bring printed newspapers and promote a healthy lifestyle…
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Background: Art museums often display a wide variety of pieces. Some art pieces may be considered to be pretentious or otherwise without merit. Unfortunately, currently there is no way to express that displeasure in an actionable form. Proposal: Art museums should sell two categories of ticket: a regular-priced general admission ticket (Figure 1), and a…
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Background: In the United States, an employed person has two conflicting goals: To commute to their job as fast as possible (ideally by “hyperloop” or helicopter), …and to live as far away from their workplace as possible. To these ends, thousands of man-hours have gone into new legislation preventing residences near places of employment (zoning…
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