Culture
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Background: Here’s a problem we’ve all faced: you are a member of a noble family, and so is your spouse: clearly, your child must inherit both of your venerable royal surnames, but how? One solution is to combine both names into a new hyphenated name. But this really just kicks the problem down the road—it’s…
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Background: Museums are often large and weirdly laid out, and it’s frequently impossible to see the high points of culture without major hassle. In contrast, amusement park rides are laid out with extreme care to provide an engaging experience the whole way through. Specifically relevant to this proposal are “narrative” rides where a user gets…
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Background: You’re probably familiar with web sites that have very particular password requirements: “Your password must contain a number, capital letter, and special character.” “Your password must contain the name of a Triple Crown-winning horse.” “Your password cannot contain your username.” The purpose of these requirements is usually to either: Require that the password not…
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The issue: Sometimes, when you’re eating an ice cream out of a cone, you will suffer the indignity of having the ice cream drip onto yourself and/or the ground (see Fig. 1). This is especially likely to occur if you are less than five years old. This can be avoided by diligently rotating the cone…
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The issue: Sometimes, you’re looking for a co-worker, and you’d like to know if they’ve gone out to lunch, left for the day already, or haven’t arrived yet. Normally, you’d have to actually send a text message to that person to ask. But that can be overly intrusive. Fig. 1: Your coworker’s chair is empty.…
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Podiatrists hate it! Throw away your obsolete footwear and prostrate yourself before the new ultimate invention, the “shruler.” You’ll never believe what happens in the last paragraph!
amazing idea, backup cell phone shoe, basically the shoe from Get Smart, bear repellant, emergency beacon, emergency beacon but like in a shoe man, footwear, functional footwear, inflatable shoe life vest, one weird tip to exploding battery footwear, podiatrists hate it, ruler, ruler shoe, ruloafer, shoe, shoe ruler, shruler, swiss army shoe
The issue: If you’re reading this, it is overwhelmingly likely that you own at least one pair of shoes. But your shoes are probably single-purpose products that have thus far been left out of the multi-purpose-product revolution. Your phone is also a camera, map, flashlight, web browser, and more—why are your shoes just shoes and…
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Background: Haircuts can be time-consuming and expensive. Somehow, even though modern robotics have resulted in quad-copters, robotic surgery, and an alarm clock with a hand that slaps you in the face, the dream of automated haircuts remains elusive. Proposal: Behold, our salvation from laborious non-automated haircuts: the mechanical “haircut helmet.” Fig 1: Functional AND fashionable, the…
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Background: Doorstops are pretty convenient for holding doors open. Fig. 1: A doorstop. Or a wedge of cheese. OR PERHAPS BOTH?? The issue: But sometimes, propping open a door is FORBIDDEN due to fire regulations—the door might need to be closed in order to slow the spread of fire (Fig. 2). Although there exist magnetic…
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Background: Some stories make amazing use of the end-of-chapter “cliffhanger” to keep readers turning pages. Even a mediocre work can be made compelling if there is a pressing need to resolve each chapter’s mystery before the reader can put the book down. The trick, of course, is to continually insert mysteries / dramatic cliffhangers throughout…
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