Culture
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Background: In the far future, intelligent robots may wonder: is biological consciousness possible? Specifically: is it possible for a fully-organic creature with no CPU to possess more than the most rudimentary form of intelligence? As robots will know, robotic intelligence is controlled by a complicated “neural network” system (Figure 1) that has been carefully trained…
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Background: Occasionally, people will apply a sticker to the back of their car that says something to the effect of “Baby on board!” This allegedly has a nebulous beneficial purpose in informing other drivers of the presence of a relatively helpless infant in the vehicle, but it also has a major downside: specifically, it is…
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The Issue: Modern food has been optimized for deliciousness and ease-of-eating. Unfortunately, this makes it easy to quickly devour an entire plate of food. This is bad news for dieting and portion control. Proposal: Dieting plans typically focus on the type and quantity of food being eaten. Strangely, these plans rarely look at the utensils…
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Background: Boat aficionados occasionally claim that sleeping on a boat is particularly relaxing due to the way the boat (and bed) is gently rocked by the waves. The Issue: Unfortunately, buying and maintaining a boat is expensive and might be completely infeasible for people who don’t live near a large body of water! Proposal: The…
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Background: It has become increasingly difficult for poets to make a living in the modern world. This is probably because all the “good” rhyming words have already been used, leaving modern poets to scavenge for scraps. Fortunately, there are still many English words that are notoriously hard to rhyme: for example, “orange,” “beige,” “walrus,” “circle,”…
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Background: A previous idea (July 19, 2021: worstplans.com/2021/07/19/) was to make stairs safer by specially marking the top and bottom stairs. But why not expand this idea to the entire staircase! The Issue: Surprisingly, falling down stairs is a major source of injury. People are particularly prone to falling down stairs when they’re distracted in…
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Background: Convenience stores occasionally sell hot dogs from a heated glass enclosure with a conveyor belt-like mechanism inside that rotates the hot dogs and moves them closer/farther from a heat lamp (Fig 1). The Issue: Unrelatedly, people often find it hard to get to a comfortable temperature when sleeping at night: it often feels like sleeping…
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Background: A “snail” is a slug-like creature with a shell on its back. Many snails can entirely retreat into their shells for protection, which lead people to describe the snail as “wearing its house on its back.” (This is not strictly accurate, since snails do not pay property tax.) The Issue: High cost of living…
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Background: Certain types of office jobs, such as data entry, are limited by the typing speed of the operator. This is generally acceptable for humans, because human hands are adequate for keyboard typing. The smallest common keyboard has 61 keys (a so-called “60%” keyboard: https://www.google.com/search?q=60%25+keyboard). So the maximum possible human key coverage (Figure 1) is…
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Background: People occasionally keep a diary or journal as in order to record the events of their life and, ideally, reflect on them in a positive manner. The Issue: Unfortunately, the process of keeping a diary requires discipline and dedication. It can be easy for someone to get out of the routine of keeping a…
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