Department of Good Ideas

My wife complains frequently that some unnamed person in our household leaves tissues in their pocket that implode in the washer, the electro-plaster everything in the dryer (the inconsiderate cad!).

The obvious dawns on me - why not make a Kleenex that is washer-proof.   A better material?  Different weave (does Kleenex have weave?).   Maybe it breaks cleanly into a few large pieces?  Maybe it dissolves to nothing in hot water or air?   How many domestic engineers would stock a better Kleenex to avoid the mess?

Our nation is covered with blacktop. How much is hard to determine but the southern states bath these black strips in sunlight for 12+ hours a day. Why dont we tap this infrastructure for power?

Surely you chemists can come up with an additive to our asphalt that let’s it do some double duty for power generation. It might not be easy to figure out but a nice patent in this area could be worth zillions to the world wide energy and construction companies.

What’s up with dust on cars?  Why does it stick so well.   I have an old Porsche and after a few days in the garage it’s dusty.   Why doesn’t it just blow off when I tear down the street?

I did a little digging on dirt and didn’t find a satisfactory answer except its a bit sticky.  So what?   We have great slippery surfaces like Teflon and better.  These compounds are in car products so what else is the problem?  Electro-magnetic attraction?  That’s my best guess but this would be pretty easy to solve too with some conductance added to paint and a slight opposite charge applied.

Hey,  I know I can get my duster or hose out but seems this would be a huge selling point for a car - the dust blow right off.

What’s the deal here?

So the cool Blackberry Curve with Wi-Fi is out from T-Mobile. I ordered one and it arrived. Yeah!

Oops, spoke too soon. Someone opened the box and took the phone!

Darn, I know it’s a cool phone but I didn’t think it would get lifted in the mail!

What’s the world coming to?