Law, Government, & Politics
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Background: The optimal tradeoff between privacy and security is a topic that is endlessly debated. In the past, omnipresent surveillance was not feasible—but technology is now at the point where implementation of a 1984-esque surveillance state is actually possible. On the one hand, it would be theoretically convenient to have immediate response to crimes and/or…
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Background: “Justice is blind” is a common, but incorrect, expression. It is indisputable that that factors of age, sex, race, general attractiveness, style of dress, hairstyle, and more will factor into both whether or not an individual is convicted of a crime and in the severity of sentencing for those convicted of a crime. Fig.…
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Voter suppression with a twist! Add SECRET disqualification questions to the ballot in order to save democracy! Definitely there would be no possible way to misuse this. Plus: you’ll never believe what kind of animal was nominated as ambassador to Australia!
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Background: Voter suppression has historically been a popular method of “adjusting” election results. It comes in many forms. For example: Do supporters of your opponent have 9-to-5 jobs? Easily solved—set up the polling places from 10 AM to 4 PM (with a break for lunch) in inconvenient places! Are your supporters richer than your opponent’s supporters?…
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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: Modern cities face a number of issues due to old buildings. For example: Housing that isn’t up to code Abandoned buildings Absentee owners who don’t maintain their property Urban decay Proposal: Fortunately, with an amazing new idea, we can revitalize urban development and create guaranteed construction jobs. Specifically, the proposal is as follows: Build…
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Background: Bank robbers have occasionally been foiled by dye packs, which can be placed into a bag of stolen cash and then detonated as the robbers make their escape. The dye sprays out everywhere and contaminates the stolen money, making it valueless. Fig 1: The bag of cartoon money (top left) is rendered…
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Background: Corruption is a problem that seems inescapable in every form of governance—even in the best-run governments, there’s always going to be at least some incentive for certain individuals to use bribery, threats, and blackmail to advance their own agenda. This can be difficult to address with traditional forms of government. The proposal: It would…
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Background: Some games are notorious for having extremely complex rulesets. For example, the card game Magic: The Gathering has pages and pages of additional rules, commentary, and clarification. An actual example: “8/1/2005 Goblin King now has the Goblin creature type and its ability has been reworded to affect *other* Goblins. This means that if two…
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Background: We previously focused on adding a sense of danger to a computer game by adding new consequence for failure. (Specifically, adding an increasingly-onerous delay to the player respawn timer.) In this follow-up idea, we suggest two motivating premises: If a player has no consequences for failure, then they will not as keenly feel…
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Background: If television police procedurals (or the first episode of the show “Making a Murderer”) have taught us anything, it is that occasionally, during a criminal investigation, the police may be certain that they have the correct person in custody for a crime, causing them to stop investigating other leads. So the underlying problem is:…
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