The Positive Police
They give out tickets — lottery tickets? — for good deeds.
Author: Peter Mucha
Lighter-Than-Air Snacks
Ever notice how bags of chips or popcorn or cheese curls resemble puffy balloons and weigh almost nothing? Why not take that concept a step or two further? Fill bags with helium for a truly “light” snack. Better yet, figure out how to make snacks that float in mid-air. Maybe whip helium into the mix Read More …
Comic Strips: The TV Show
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 Read More …
Return to Sender Stamps: No More Junk Mail!
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 Read More …
Drawstring Desalinization Devices
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 Read More …
Double Google, or Yahoo Times Two
Dear Yahoogle: I wish I could search for two things at once, so I could see at a glance which term shows up more often. Or just find something faster. Say I’m not sure if the country is Furkino Baso or Burkina Faso. I plug one into Google A, the other into Google B. Boom, Read More …
Negatrends: Reasons to Fear for the Future
OK, this is basically a packaging concept based on a pun. Megatrends was a fascinating bestseller that forecast the future and spawned a set of sequels. Being more of a pessimist than is healthy (and always a prankster), I thought: Why not Negatrends, a gathering of gloom-and-doom scenarios into one book? Global warming. Emergent diseases. Read More …
Radically Rethinking the Golf Course
Par 3. Par 4. Par 5. Hmm. There are other options. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a golf course where you tee off from a mountain and watch the ball soar and bounce and bounce toward the hole a mile away? You hop in your Jeep and zoom after it. Maybe the hole’s par Read More …
Novel Thoughts About Calling ‘Dibs’
Are some ideas ruined by being publicized? That’s a worry of mine. Take ideas for novels or movies. Here’s one idea: a futuristic geo-political legal thriller in which the world sues America for — take your pick — military adventures, resource monopolizing, global warming, bad taste, government destabilization, dastardly business practices, or all of the Read More …
Reality Show Idea: ‘Beer Factor’
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 Read More …
The Big Toe-Tappable Computer Keyboard
Remember the movie Big starring Tom Hanks? In it, he hops on a giant musical keyboard, stomping out a tune. Typing on a regular keyboard may exercise the brain, but it can almost atrophy the body. So why not have a workout workstation, where the keys are clicked with your feet? Depending on the design, Read More …
Fight Asteroid With Asteroid
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 Read More …
Mobile ‘Millionaire’
Back when the ratings of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? were falling, I offered an explanation and a solution in a newspaper article. Diagnosis (besides overexposure and foolishly butting heads with other strong shows): Viewers like to think they could win. Questions seemed fairly easy (making it fun to watch with your kids), and Read More …
Flaps: Handier Than Wraps
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 Read More …
Don’t-Shake-a-Baby PSAs
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 Read More …