Steal My Ideas, Please

I have a dream. I go to schools, conduct creativity workshops. Help kids learn to invent. As individuals, or as a group, they keep all the rights. And hopes. Wouldn’t it be great, as part of this dream, if poor kids could get patents for free? America’s slipping, some say. People worry about future generations, […]

New line item on federal income-tax returns: Number of $1 chances you’d like to buy to have all of your income taxes refunded. Bet 50 million people would buy at least a single chance. You’d keep drawing tickets till half the pot is awarded. Profit for feds: $25 million or more. Earmark for a worthy […]

Gotta love Peeps, those marshmallow chicks and bunnies from Just Born. Assorted permutations appear for various holidays: ghosts, pumpkins, hearts, snowmen and Christmas trees. But departing from the holiday idea, how about this: Hot chocolate duckies! Instead of regular marshmallows, you float cute little creatures. Ducks are archetypal floaters, but swans and whales and octopi […]

Hot grapes, mmm. Try it.

Elementary schools don’t really teach science, which is a system of thinking, not a set of facts. Suppose, for example, in kindergarten, a running endeavor is to list observations about water: It’s wet. It’s sticky. It freezes. It flows. Ice floats. Snow has little crystals. Steam is hot. It forms drops. It splashes. Fog is […]

Gasp. I can’t believe I’m posting this idea, since it could encourage smoking. But (a) I’d be surprised if it hasn’t been thought of already, and (b) if not, it might actually reduce smoking or some of the risks. Simple thought: Instead of cancer sticks as long as a pack’s longest dimension, make them only […]

Could charities parlay tax breaks into bigger donations? Scenario: Generous Jill is in a 15 percent tax bracket. If she donates $1,000 directly to her favorite charity, she saves $150 on her taxes, right? But say the charity is also supported by Benefactor Bob, who is in a 30 percent bracket. He could give the […]

Imagine if our currency had a little “Brought to you by” section. Sell enough sponsorships, and voila, free money! Blasphemous! Sacrilegous! Tacky! you say. But this could be an ideal form of welfare. Free money for the poor, at no cost to taxpayers. Couldn’t possibly raise a dollar per dollar-bill? OK, how ads on coins. […]

Present a weekly whirlwind tour of all sorts of newspaper cartoons, from both comics and editorial pages. Shows inspired by a single strip pull a narrow audience. But delivering a variety of toons at a rapid-fire rate could appeal to almost everybody, young and old alike, in an easy, breezy, short-attention-span kind of way. DO […]

Junk mail drives me crazy! Don’t you wish there was a way to stop it from coming? Best would be a National Do Not Send Unsolicited Mail List. But, failing that, how about a Return to Sender Stamp? You slap one on an unwanted envelope not only to have it sent back, but to deliver […]

Going to have to post a drawing soon, but until then a description will have to do. Imagine a dome made of a clear semi-flexible plastic. Now curl the bottom edges inside to create an inner trough. If you floated this plastic hemi-bubble on a body of water out in the sun, evaporation and condensation […]

Hic. How wry I am. Anybody could brew a batch of wild possibilities. In fact, each episode could be a takeoff on some other reality show. Extreme Makeover: Beer Edition. Survivor: Beer Island. Beer Apprentice. Beer Swap. Weakest Clink. Who Wants to Chug Like a Millionaire. America’s Top Beer-Ad Model. Or maybe this whole premise […]

In the movie Armageddon, Bruce Willis saves the world by planting a nuke on an Earthbound asteroid. Such a strategy is unlikely to work, however, because asteroids are aggregates of rubble whose bits would absorb the blast, a report concluded a few years ago. Hmm. How about this idea: Don’t wait until it’s almost too […]

We’ve all seen wraps, those round tortilla-like flatbreads handy for holding all sorts of tasty ingredients. But they’re often so oversized, the carbs and calories add up. Got me to thinking: How about making them smaller, just big enough to fold over a veggie burger, or sideways over a hot dog? Call ‘em Flaps instead […]

Saw another case where a baby supposedly died from being shaken. Maybe it would save lives to do public-service ads on TV and radio stating what seems so obvious: Hey, never shake a baby, because you could kill it. But the obvious often fails to register. Witness Britney Spears driving with her baby in her […]