Category Archives: Get-Poor-Quick Schemes

Fortune Cigarettes

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There’s a Santa Fe tradition called Zozobra, in which old man gloom is incinerated, along with all his negative baggage. There are many other similar traditions aound the world. But here’s a way to bring that idea into your everyday life. Wouldn’t it be cool if when you smoked a cigarette you were burning negaive thoughts at the same time? I don’t smoke, but it would almost be worth it to ritually burn the things that bother me.

Enter cigarettes with extra printing on them, negative things that you conquer by burning them. You can buy the regular pack with random messages or you can custom-order with your own personal nemeses. Sure the custom ones would cost a lot more, but that alone might provide incentive to cut back, while making the occasional smoke a poetic act. There must be a brand of cigarette that markets to the black-beret crowd that would make a killing off this.

Plus, it would be a kick to write the ill-fortunes.

Thanks!

Rent-a-Drunk

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fuego and I were sitting in a bar this afternoon, plotting our next step in World Domination (mwa-ha-ha-ha), when a drunk woman arrived at the bar and sat next to a guy. Eventually the guy scooted over to get away from her… and landed right next to a pretty woman. They struck up a conversation that went on for at least an hour, filled with smiles. All thanks to the drunk girl.

fuego thought about that for a bit and came up with “rent-a-drunk”. Need a little push to get you closer to that pretty girl? Call rent-a-drunk! It’s a special sort of wing-man who is never connected with you. I took the idea further; there are definite chivalry points to be scored. Want to meet that lovely woman? Rent-a-Drunk will send an asshole her way, and you can stand him down, perhaps at apparent personal risk. Can you say knight in shinig armor?

So now you have a chance to charm the woman of your desires. The thing is, if you use a plan like this, you’re probably a jerk, and if she finds that out you’re sunk. No problem. Any time the conversation gets uncomfortable, with a hand signal the drunk is back, and you can dominate him again.

If everything else fails, at least he can drive you home.

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Making Money Dishing Out Shame

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More about sports.

It occurs to me as I sit here that there is one side of me That Girl has not really met. That particular me is the one who likes to watch sports on TV. There are times it’s nice to sit and watch a game. This afternoon was one such time.

I don’t get much on my little TV at home, and although there were a couple of sports options, it was all motorsport. There are some activities that are by far more fun to do than watch, and driving is one of them. Oddly, golf is in that category as well. Happliy, the Budvar Bar Near Home has: 1) cheap beer, and 2) sports on TV.

The Budvar Bar Near Home had one major strike against it: It was closed. Hmm… As I mentioned my my previous episode, it is Sunday, and this is Strasnice.

I am now at U Slamu, until recently the home of breaded and fried pork stuffed with bacon and cheese. (That lament can wait for another day.) They still have beer, however, and they have sports on TV.

When one gets one’s tv sports fix this way, one can’t be too picky about what one gets. When I came in it was English Premier League Football. (Don’t be fooled by the name: it’s soccer.) When I first arrived there was some controversy going on, and then they showed a replay, and a new drinking game came to me.

Depending on the match, there are five to twenty cases of someone falling down at the slightest contact (or no contact at all) and feigning terrible injury. It is, I’m told, part of the game. That may be true, but it’s a part of the game that sucks. For a well-covered match, the “contact” is shown many times from many angles, and the game I propose is this: create a dvd of these terrible, life-threatening injuries, and freeze them at the moment the player is just starting to throw himself to the turf, his eyes bugging out and his mouth wide open. Stop the action right there and have everyone guess: What body part is he going to hold as he rolls on the ground in agony? One point for a correctly predicted ankle, maybe two for a thigh, but the gambling types might want to try to score the big money with a shoulder.

For the sake of propriety, no players would be shown who actually left the game. But there would be slow-motion appreciation of the acting skills of the rest.

What’s great about this game is that it can be a subscription service. People will want to download the latest week’s floppers and crybabies to play the game over and over. Certain players would, no doubt, earn a cult following among players. “All right! It’s Jones again! He’s down! Oh, the agony! This time it must be serious. Just look at his face!” As a special bonus, maybe some of the players who showed up regularly would discover a little pride and play the game on their feet rather than on their backs.

A chance to make some money and shame some of the world’s best-paid babies at the same time? Sign me up!

Thanks!

On Radiators

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So, I’ve been thinking a lot about radiators lately. When you’re driving in a very low car, sometimes all you see of the vehicle behind you is the big chrome grille designed to let air through to reach the radiator. Even cars with excellent aerodynamics are forced to have this component that, by its very nature, requires wind resistance to operate. There is even a fan to expend more energy to make sure that air is passing over the radiator at all times. If there was a way to get rid of the radiator, fuel efficiency in vehicles would be increased. Maybe not a lot, but a measurable amount that would certainly add up.

The only catch is that the radiator is really important. Owners of old air-cooled Volkswagens can testify to that; those engines had no radiators and were not terribly reliable — plus, they paid the same aerodynamic price to have the air pass through the engine compartment.

Internal combustion engines produce a lot of heat; in fact, thermodynamics says that the hotter they burn, the more efficient they are. My clever nephew Gerald, when presented with the Radiator Conundrum, realized immediately that one solution is simply to embrace the heat rather than get rid of it. If one builds the engine out of materials that can withstand much higher heat than modern engines, then you can let that sucker get really, really hot and actually burn more efficiently at the same time. It’s win-win! I know that there are experimental ceramic engines built around this principle, and it’s about time to get them into production vehicles.

Superhot engines may be good, but superhot engine compartments are not. There’s still going to be some waste heat to manage, if only for safety. My thoughts turned to ways to take at least some of the waste heat and make use of it. By converting the heat energy into some other form of energy, say, electricity, we can simultaneously cool the engine and reclaim some of the waste. Perhaps we could even do away with the alternator, which costs a typical car a couple of horsepower. By reducing the load on the engine once again we can increase efficiency.

Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done (or it would be done already). However, with a really hot ceramic engine, I think it would be possible to use the thermoelectric effect. All you need to do is embed series of different metals along the heat gradient within the engine to create thermopiles. (More modern thermopiles are used to power deep-space probes.) Thermopiles can supply large amounts of current, but only at low voltages. With enough of them, however, you would have a cooling system that simultaneously recharged the car’s battery. If the system worked really well, you could even use surplus current to power a small electric helper motor.

So, anyone up for investing in Jer’s Radiatorless Engine? If it works, we’d make a fortune!

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A New Application of Existing Technology

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Sometimes the road to instant poverty is not in inventing a new device but in recognizing a new market for an existing one. (Actually, since you eliminate much of the research and development costs, the chances of striking it poor are somewhat diminished, but let’s not think about that.

One bit of modern gee-whizzery of which I am fond are noise-canceling headphones. These babies actually pick up the ambient noise around you and generate their own sound waves that cancel the noise out in the location of your ear canal. Pretty dang slick. The most popular place for the technology is on airplanes; it’s amazing how much of the engine drone is cut out by a good pair of noise cancelers. With the background reduced, it’s also easier to hear the people around you.

Pilots use noise cancellers all the time these days, but if I owned an airline I’d outfit all the flight personnel with inside-the-ear noise cancellers. Not only would they be able to hear what is being said to them better, but their ears wold be protected. That constant assault on their ears can’t be good for them in the long term.

So, the technology is without a doubt useful. Yesterday it occurred to me that if you wired up the headphones with a specific signal to cancel, that you could have headphones that virtually eliminated a very specific sound while allowing others to pass. There is one industry in particular that would benefit from such a boon, a group of men and women subjected to the same sound over and over, day in and day out, until it must haunt their dreams. I expect insanity is common among these people.

You know who I’m talking about already, don’t you? That right, ice cream truck drivers. I bet they’d pay a bundle to MAKE THAT SONG STOP! As a bonus, they’d be able to hear traffic and the calls of little children more clearly.

Thanks!

The Upside of the Downhill

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I think about energy a lot. I’m not sure why this is, but often I see little places where energy is being squandered when it should be reclaimable. In general, any time you have something that’s hot, and you don’t want it to be hot, energy is being lost.

Some of this energy can be hard to spot. Take, for example, the fully-loaded truck at the brake-check pullout before going down a long hill. It’s not moving. Its fuel tanks could be almost empty. But it has energy. Lots of it. The driver is checking the truck’s brakes because the truck is about to turn all that energy into heat. If the driver is not careful, that heat could cause brake failure and a very dangerous situation. The driver will inch down the hill, allowing time for brakes to cool and to use the compression of the engine to slow downward progress as well (heating the exhaust).

All that energy, and we treat it like a bad thing. But energy is expensive, even now when we only pay a fraction of its true cost! What we need is a safe way to reclaim the potential energy of the truck, safely and in a useful form.

Introducing TruckGen. TruckGen is a system that uses the truck to turn a generator as it descends. The generator provides resistance to the truck, but rather than turning the energy into heat, turns at least some of it into electricity. (In fact, the generator would have to be able to provide huge resistance to the motion, but that’s OK — that’s where the electricity comes from.) The truck’s brakes are spared, saving wear and tear and making the descent safer, and as a bonus useful power is reclaimed.

I’ve considered several ideas for exactly how this would work; one of my favorites is a chair-lift-like affair with a cable that runs above the road. Descending trucks would attach to the cable with big clamps, and as they descended they would drive a capstan that turned a generator. The cable would have to be quite strong, of course, but if anything went wrong all the trucks would have nice fresh brakes.

An alternate would be to dispense with the generator and have the uphill trucks attached to the cable as well, and the descending trucks would give them a push. Cutting out the electrical generation makes this system quite efficient. (There would have to be something to prevent some uphill trucks from slacking and forcing other ascending trucks to haul them up as well while they save fuel.) In either case all trucks attached to the cable would move the same speed, improving traffic flow.

If cable strength is a problem (I’m not sure even where to start figuring that out), I imagine an alternate method with a vehicle that latches on to the front of the truck for the descent. It might look something like the tractors that push jets around at an airport, with big tires with good traction (or cogs on a rail?) which would turn a built-in generator. There would be an overhead power line, similar to the ones used to power trains, but in this case they would be receiving the power instead of providing it. The tractors would use some of that electricity to get back to the top of the hill, which cuts into the efficiency of that plan, but the descending trucks would still be a heck of a lot safer.

Next time you see a truck creeping up a steep hill, ask yourself, “what’s going to come of all that work?” With TruckGen, you have the answer.

Thanks!

Baby-Therm

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It’s been downright chilly here the past couple of days. I know when I hear the heater going in the morning despite the thermostat being set on the lower nighttime temperature, that winter is here. I was out and about yesterday and I saw a woman carrying an infant. Is that baby warm enough? I asked myself. It didn’t seem to me that the kid was bundled up enough.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? The amount the baby is bundled up is more based on how cold the mother is, not the comfort of the baby itself. The kid has no way of saying, “Geeze, mom, I’m boiling in here!” If the baby cries, it’s just as likely — perhaps more likely — to be rewarded with a bundleage adjustment in the wrong direction.

Fortunately, I’m here with a solution. You don’t have to thank me; it’s what I do.

What is needed is a way to know what the skin temperature of the baby is. A little research should easily yield a comfort zone for healthy, happy babies. Then all that’s needed is a way for the parent to know what the skin temperature of their kid is. Introducing Baby-Therm clothing for infants. Each shirt has a small temperature sensor over the belly button and perhaps at the back of the neck, and each pair of pants measures temperatures at the thigh. The socks and little mittens each have sensors as well, although for extremities the range of allowable temperatures would be much broader.

The flagship article is of course the Baby-Therm hat, which not only measures scalp temperature, but also has a set of LED’s showing the temperature status of the baby’s various parts. Green, all is well. Red, too hot. Blue, too cold. With no guesswork at all, the baby is cozy and warm, without being overbaked. Plus, you can use the kid as a Christmas ornament!

There are a couple of details to work out, like how best to connect the sensors to the hat, but nothing insurmountable. And think of the market: nervous first-time parents would flock to the Baby-Therm store, ready to plunk down some serious cash if at least one bit of parental guesswork is reduced. I don’t have to tell most of you that people now expect baby products to be very expensive.

Then, of course, there’s Baby-Therm deluxe, which uses little heater elements to automatically keep the kid at the ideal temperature. Oh, yeah.

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The Art of Roving Mars

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I was poking around over on gizo’s blog this morning. It’s been a while since I dropped by over there, but every time I wander through there’s something interesting going on. This time it was a You-Tube clip he had posted that caught my imagination.

Before you go look, consider this: NASA has done a lot of work to design the best possible machine to wander the surface of mars (with the constraint that it must not weigh very much at all). They’ve done a pretty good job, judging from where I’m sitting; little six-wheeled buggies have managed to poke around the surface of the red planet and find some cool stuff.

The Mars rovers are solar powered. What about wind? There’s a lot of that stuff up there. What if you could make a large machine that could step over obstacles and was powered only by wind? How far could it go?

OK, now go look at gizo’s blog, and the video. [I was, in my minutes of research, unable to figure out how to link to a specific episode over there.] Imagine something like what you just saw in that video, but able to crawl over boulders and hunker down when the wind got too dangerous. Gnarly.

The current Mars rover design is encumbered by a mandate that is must be a scientific instrument. For the Mars Wind Walker ‘Amelia Earhart’, I say screw that. Build it as well as you possibly can, throw it up there, and turn it loose. The romantic in me says don’t even include a transmitter. It might be centuries before we find it again, if ever, but we’ll know it’s out there. For the colonists of Earth’s dusty brother, there will be a ghost story waiting for them when they arrive.

Note that in the time since I posted the link above it’s become rather not-helpful for finding the video. I searched and all I could find is this much less poetic look.

Thanks!

Free Electricity!

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Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to share with you the first whacked-out muddled invention of 2007.

My little apartment is heated with radiators; there is a unit hanging on the wall in the bathroom that heats water using natural gas, which it then circulates using an electric pump. The pump is starting to make a lot of noise; it’s only a matter of time before it gives out. While pondering the pump it occurred to me that it was too bad there was no way to use the pressure in the water main to circulate the hot water through the radiators.

In fact, it would be easy to do that, but you would wind up pouring a lot of water down the drain. I had just reinvented the water wheel.

But wait a minute, I thought as I stood in the shower, I already send a lot of water down the drain. Why can’t I make it do a little work for me first?

The easiest thing would be to put a little turbine and generator in the water main, so that it would turn every time I ran water. The downside is that the water pressure for the whole place would be reduced. But we don’t always need the water to be at full pressure — that’s why faucets have variable valves. So what if your faucet had a variable-resistance generator instead of a valve? You would adjust the rate of flow from the faucet by changing the resistance of the generator. You’d get the same control over water flow you do now, but you would be getting a little bit of electrical bonus every time you use water. Woo hoo!

My electro-faucet isn’t quite ready to market yet — I’m still working on the catchy name.

Thanks!

Announcing Muddled University

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Muddled University Banner Logo

On behalf of the board of directors, it gives me great pleasure to announce that Muddled University will be ready to welcome its first class in the spring of 2007. Muddled University will offer a wide range of graduate and post-graduate courses of study, but all will include that unique “Muddled Experience”, a combination of memorable cultural experiences and mood-affecting chemicals.

Located in Prague, the picturesque capital of the Czech Repblic, nestled in the heart of central Europe, Mud-U is within walking distance of museums, ancient architecture, and hundreds upon hundreds of bars. Not only is this environment enriching for students, the faculty will find the environment ideal for continuing research projects.

In addition, Muddled University will rapidly establish itself as a leading Internet presence, embracing and extending the technology of distance learning. Students will be able to receive an education every bit as rich and rewarding as one earned here at the Muddled Campus — from anywhere in the world!

FACULTY:
Although Mud-U has not finalized its staff for the upcoming academic year, be sure to check back often. The list could include the names of luminaries such as Stephen Hawking, Tony Hawk, Voltaire, Toulouse-Latrec, Geordi LaForge, Don LaFontaine, Aristotle, Jesus, and Oscar Mayer.

ACADEMIC LIFE AT MUD-U
At Muddled University, we have redefined the academic experience. Eschewing the traditional rigidly-defined requirements that lock students into narrow fields of focus, Mud-U instead encourages students to pursue an education as broad as life itself, and to bring all that life experience back to the university — for credit!

COURSES OF STUDY:
In order to expose students to a variety of topics as broad as life itself, the courses of study at Mud-U are likewise varied. From academic to athletics, from fine art to fine dining, (and everything in between!) Muddled University provides a richness of experience that no accredited university can match. Below are listed the primary fields of study, but never forget that “if it’s life, it’s educational.”

Television Sports:
While some universities have focussed on physical fitness and the performance of sports, and others have emphasized the broadcast of sports, only Muddled University has recognized the place where technology has had the greatest impact in both amateur and professional sports. Television has changed the consumption of sports forever. The Bachelor’s degree in Televion Sports meets this growing need head-on. Channels are proliferating and ever bar has a plasma TV. TiVo makes it easier to skip the commercials. This course will leave the student well-prepared to succeed in the world of watching the big game on TV.

Masters of Fine Arts in Literature: Haiku
The Japanese are forever frustrated that westerners think Haiku is just about counting syllables. Most Japanese probably won’t like this class either, but let’s face it, when you get to a certain point you just have to accept that 5-7-5 is haiku and that’s that. In this course of study the student will explore 5, 7, and perhaps some other prime numbers as well. Areas beyond merely composing and performing haiku will be explored, such as how to create a properly-formatted .png graphic to publish a haiku on the Web, the best fonts to use, and so forth. Students will also have a chance to evaluate the work of others, and turn them into .png’s as well.

MoFA in Literature: Blog Comments
Courses include: “Typos and unnuendo: Did that mean what I think it did?” and “Inside Jokes.” At the end of this course of study, students will be able to dazzle and baffle other members of online communities with non-sequitur statements harkening back to other comments made years ago that leave their peers reeling in admiration.

BoFA and MoFA in Graphic Design
Truly a recursive course of study, students will even have the opportunity to design their own diplomas! Also included is repairing annoying errors on Web sites and complaining about Internet Explorer (bachelors degree) or to use of subtle hints that whatever you’re using as an alternate is the best thing out there (master’s). (Please note that there will be no diplomas for any degree program until the Graphic design department comes through.)

MoFA in Fine Art
Can you draw this? Send in your rendition of this image to our professional evaluators and we will tell you if you qualify!

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MuD in Squirrel Behavioral Studies
Mud-U is so far ahead of all other institutions (civilian and military) on the subject of squirrel behavior that a simple PhD was deemed by the board to be inadequate. For this and perhaps other subjects to be offered in the future, the degree of MuD will be awarded. Watch all those other “scientists” turn green when you whip out your (to be designed) diploma and laugh in their pathetic little scientist faces. “You think you know squirrels? Do ya? Buddy, I’ve made up more than you’ll ever know about squirrels!” At Muddled U, our team of crack scientists delves where none has dared go before into the dark, mysterious world of the squirrel. In addition, Mud-U safeguards the public trust by maintaining the Suicide Squirrel Alert System. Do you have what it takes to join this elite team as it protects the world?

Bachelor’s of Arts in Supermodeling
Looking great on the runway isn’t all there is to succeeding in this highly competitive field. In this intensive course of study you will learn how to stand out from the crowd. Lear how to make the Paparazzi work for you — hooking up with that married movie star isn’t going to do you any good if no one sees it. Also learn how to make the casting couch your best friend, and when it’s time to switch sugar daddies. (Applicants please include portfolio of lingerie shots.)

Please note that more degree courses will be added to to the above list as we bring on more faculty. As a student, you are welcome to custom-tailor your education to your own needs and interests. Tell us what you want a degree in, and we’ll make sure you get it!

TUITION AND FEES
At last, for a fraction of the cost of a Harvard Diploma, you can have an educational experience as broad as life itself. Work-study programs are available as well. Now you can earn a respected degree and help keep Mud-U running at the same time.

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Muddled University intends to draw together the finest minds on the planet, to create a center of innovation and education unprecedented in history. We recognize that people like that will not be motivated by simple money, so here at Mud-U we have concentrated our benefits package on the “intangibles” — a great working environment, constant intellectual stimulation (other sorts of stimulation optional — see supermodel degree above), and the chance to be part of the team that changes humanity as we know it.

Do you know something that someone else doesn’t know? You can be a teacher! Now accepting applications.

Work-study programs in Janitorial Science are still available — start earning your degree today!

Thanks!

Focussed Marketing

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Tonight I was watching the Finns skate against the Czechs. It was a decent contest, but Finns had my boys pretty much outclassed. My Bili Tigri goaltender gave up three, but that doesn’t reflect the chances the Finns had. None of that matters.

I have noticed in a few international matches that Garnier Fructis, the shampoo, is a major sponsor. At first this struck me as odd. In general, hockey fans are not the crowd I’d be selling fancy shampoo to.

Unless…

Fructis Mullet formula.

Pay dirt, baby.

Thanks!

Team Bowling

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Tonight I was recalling speed bowling. When you rent a lane by the hour and the hour is running out, the nature of bowling changes. The ideal is to have the ball on the way down the lane before the sweeper lifts. Speed bowling requires timing and finesse. You must know your alley. Every once in a while, not often, mind, the sweeper would not lift as quickly as it should have. Then you have to throw extra balls down the alley to knock the rejected ball down into the return mechanism, hoping all the while that the management is not watching.

But all that’s old hat. Tonight I was pondering how to make bowling a team game, and I harkened back to the speed-bowling days, and the accompanying hijinks, and I remembered other sweeper-damaging games. One of them is the foundation for team bowling.

As we all know, there are already bowling teams, but they don’t work as a team. It’s just a bunch of individual bowlers combining their stores. Not in my game. In my game team members must work together, and all that putting-a-spin-on-the-ball-so-it-hits-the-pocket-at-the-best-angle crap is out the window. The concept is simple. The team bowls. At the same time.

You could get pretty fancy with this. You could have one person lead with a lighter ball on one side of the pocket, so the ball deflects and reliably takes out one side of the rack, while another, hotter ball comes in on the other side, to bring kinetic energy and the resulting mayhem. Sweeper balls down the right and left to pick up the rabbit ears and you’re golden.

Of course, once one ball goes through, the sweeper drops. Here we bring in the artistry, the ballet that is team bowling. All the balls have to arrive down there within two seconds or so. Any ball hitting the sweeper is a scratch. So you have four bowlers, all trying to bowl on the same lane at the same time. This is where the teamwork comes in. Left-handed bowlers will be tremendously valuable – every team will want one, and would prefer to have two.

I picture the four gathered at the top of the alley. the first releases a slow but dead-on granny shot which slowly trundles down the lane. The rest of the team sets up, and when the ball reaches a certain point the crasher releases his ball, to be followed moments later by the cleanup team, who are just sending in some extra kinetic energy to make sure that anything that might fall down, will fall down.

The way I see it, a strike is one point. Knocking down all but the head pin is two points. Knocking down all but the five pin, buried in the center of the mayhem, is five points.

May the best team win.

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Thanks!

Screen Gogs

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Prague, in the summer, is a beer-drinkers paradise. Beer gardens dot the city, the people watching is unparalleled, and the long, warm days make it wonderful to sit inthe shade of an old tree and sip a fine Czech pivo while writing.

Unfortunately, that same pleasant sun makes it nearly impossible to see the screen of a typical laptop. Even in the shade it’s just too bright out there. I had been designing in my head a special “writing outdoors” laptop with an ultra-bright screen. They have them, but they are power hogs, so the rest of the computer would be taken up completely by batteries. There would be no optical drive and maybe even no hard drive, just enough flash RAM to hold the OS and Jer’s Novel Writer, and a USB port to use for file transfer.

But then I noticed something. I can hardly see my phone screen at all when I’m wearing my shades, but if I turn it 90 degrees, there it is. The light is polarized. And there lies the key to outdoor laptop use. Construct the screen so that the light is polarized in a particular direction. Create glasses that are extremely dark except for light polarized in that one tiny notch. As Voltaire would say, “Voila!” The relative brightness of the screen would be increased without burning through batteries.

I don’t know what it would take to make lenses that were that specific to a particular polarization angle and very dark in all others, but I bet it could be done.

Best of all, Geeks would finally be able to get some fresh air and sunshine.

Thanks!

The Toasty Tent

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This stretch of the planet is having a cold snap right now, sustaining temperatures well below freezing for days on end. Today Prague enjoyed a high temp of something like -4 C, or 269 K. (that’s about 25 F). Now before all you midwesterners (both of you) get all in a huff saying, “That’s not cold! Why I had to walk to school…” let me just say, Yes, it is cold. When you were tramping through the drifts with only wonder bread bags for shoes you were saying “Crap! This is cold! I can’t wait until I can buy an RV and take it down to Boca Raton in the winter!” Don’t deny it.

So where was I? Right, I hadn’t told you that yet. I’m at home. I’ve been on a trip and as a cheap bastard I had the heat turned way down while I was away. I came home to an apartment at a balmy 12.5 C, turned on the heat, and went out to dinner. When I got home more than two hours later the place was up to 14.5. It takes a long time for things to heat up here. So with my home at less than 60 F it was time to get creative. That’s when I invented the toasty tent. I am now sitting in one of my moderately uncomfortable comfy chairs right next to the radiator. I have a blanket draped over the radiator and over me, bringing a significant fraction of my home’s heating power to bear on only a few cubic feet, some of which contain my head and other favorite organs.

I am toasty.

I’m sure I’m not the first to put a blanket over the radiator to keep warm. It’s obvious, really. What sets my invention apart is the name. Toasty Tent. Come on, that’s golden!

Some engineering remains to perfect the toasty tent. The blanket is smaller than I would have at first thought ideal, but that keeps it from getting too stifling in here. If I move my hand toward the floor, there is a sudden drop in temperature at the bottom of the blanket. At first I was most concerned with the light level, but the smaller blanket lets in enough light I merely had to dim my laptop screen a bit. The main problem is the difficulty in keeping a beer within easy reach just outside the toasty tent. If I move around too much the blanket pulls off the radiator and I have to construct my haven all over again. With only a little engineering this problem can be overcome. All I have to do is make it so my head is not a significant part of the structure.

Apparently my radiator also has a “safety feature” called a “thermostat” that shut it down just as things were reaching their toastiest. The final version of Toasty Tent will have to be sure not to insluate the radiator, but merely to make sure its heat stays in the correct general area. A delicate balancing act for the world’s top scientists at Muddled Industries, Inc.

The Toasty Tent is just what this energy-starved world needs to keep going. By only heating the parts of a home where people are, a typical family can save a fortune, and help the environment at the same time. The Toasty Tent. It just might save humanity.

Thanks!

Human-Powered Mini-Blimp Races

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In this day and age of contrived sporting events (basketball games with style points?) it’s time we turned our attention back to day when sports were sporting and athletes were athletic. For that reason the time has come to launch HPMBRL, the Human-Powered Mini-Blimp Racing League. It would be like the Tour de France in 3-D, with elements of the America’s Cup thrown in.

Best of all, it would be very photogenic, and there would be lots of surface area for sponsor’s logos.

To get off the ground the league would need star power. Who better than retired world-class cyclists? Would people pay to see Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault (probably spelled that wrong) go head to head once more? You bet they would.

So who would the likely sponsors be? It would be fun to see Boeing sponsor a team, and maybe Rutan’s company—the crew that build SpaceShipOne. Bicycle companies would be naturals, as many of their components would be used in the blimps’ drive trains. Fuji already has a blimp presence, and a photogenic sport would be a natural for a photography company. I could imagine GM or Ford sponsoring a team.

I haven’t figured out the actual rules for the race, but I can imagine a series of great big hoops suspended at various heights above the ground that the fliers must pass through, or perhaps simpler would be a simple requirement that they pass over a certain sopt on the ground. In the hoop scenario, there would be a great deal of emphasis on positioning and tactics as the flyers approached the hoop.

Wind, of course, would be a major factor. Courses would be designed with the prevailing wind of the area in mind. There would be legs of the race that featured long, hard climbs into the wind, and others that would allow the blimps to sweep down to where they are practically skimming the Earth as they are swept along with a tailwind, knocking the hats off the awe-struck spectators.

So there you have it. HPMBRL (probably need a better acronym) extends the careers of great athletes, pushes technology, looks cool, and would be a sponsor magnet. What could possibly go wrong?

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Thanks!