A Few Ideas to Improve our Lives and Country

I fashion myself an idea guy. Translation: I can’t make anything meaningful myself. (See my blog from a few years ago where I explain that if the world was dependent on me for science, engineering, technology and the like that we would all be in some deep doo-doo. https://www.fromthelou.com/thank-god-for-people-a-lot-smarter-than-me/#page-content )

Like many folks, ideas flow periodically from my brain without the means to convert them into reality. Fortunately, though, I/we live in a world with some really smart people. I could have envisioned a world where people walked around with a portable phone that acts as a powerful computer but these folks have actually created this incredible device – indeed, one that has a million times more memory and is 120 Million times faster than the computers used by NASA to send men to the moon in Apollo 11!

So, for the scientists, engineers, technology gurus and the real-doers among us here are some suggested ideas/inventions on a wide variety of subjects for you to consider (though some require more political will than innovation):

1.The Personal Transportable Office.

During the pandemic the number of people working primarily from home tripled and many would like to keep it that way. A recent poll revealed that 83% of employees who have been working from home would like to continue to do so at least one day a week and 32% would like to work remotely full-time.

Many of our citizens not only prefer to work remotely but would like to do so outside and immersed in nature. So we need something to enable them to effectively perform their “office” duties in that environment. The “PTO” I envision would contain, at minimum, a small desk and a chair. It would also have temperature control on a battery or solar-powered device to provide heat in the winter and A/C or a fan in the summer. And it could be taken anywhere – the backyard, a park, near a lake, river or ocean, or even on a mountain top.

Naturally, the challenge is to make something that is strong and sturdy yet extremely lightweight so that you could carry it around – something like the plastic polymer recently discovered by MIT researchers that’s twice the strength of steel but only 1/6 of its density.

Perhaps it could even be configured into the shape of telephone booth with an opening for your head at the top so that you could just walk around with it (a real head-turner and interesting fashion statement).

2. The Alcohol Reverser. There are a lot of people out there who fail to put reasonable restraints on their alcohol consumption. You know them – the folks that are so out of control that they try to start fights at bars or in the street, charge football fields after a victory or even tragically fall from the upper deck of a stadium. Worse, some of these fools decide to get behind the wheel of a car despite their highly compromised mental state – a stunning 10,000 people die every year from a drunk driver, more than one per hour! Yet, there is currently is no easily available method to reverse the effects of alcohol intoxication. (I understand that dialysis would work but very few folks get drunk at hospitals or near dialysis clinics.)

There is a drug called naxalone (also more commonly known as narcan) that doctors administer when a patient experiences an overdose or bad reaction from narcotics. The effect is rather remarkable – a person who is higher than a kite and acting crazy or having a bad reaction instantly returns to their state of mind prior to having taken the narcotic. And it’s been around since 1971! Presumably the gifted scientific minds who came up with narcan (as well as an incredible vaccine for Covid in record time) could develop a similar drug to reverse the effects of alcohol.

Or perhaps there’s another way? A doctor from Canada (where drinking excessively is almost as revered as ice hockey) has recently developed a device that allows a drunk person to hyperventilate off the alcohol and become sober pretty quickly. The concern with a hyperventilation approach in the past was that it causes a sudden loss of carbon dioxide in the blood stream which in turn causes the inebriated person to pass out . This device, however, manages to return precisely the amount of carbon dioxide needed by the body to keep that from occurring. Unfortunately, it requires carrying around something the size of a briefcase – to fit a mask, tubes and a tank of compressed carbon dioxide. It’s hard to imagine persuading people to walk into bars or stadiums with a detox briefcase, although perhaps the proprietor could choose to stock them. So, clearly a reversal drug would be the preferable and more practical solution.

3. The Book Imbiber. Unlike alcohol consumption, there is no such thing in my mind of having too much knowledge, which is often gleaned from the neglected art of reading. The problem is that there are too many distractions these days to read lots of books- job, family, sports, avocations, our damn smart phones and easier but less comprehensive forms of knowledge acquisition like podcasts. And there are so many worthy books and far too little time to read them all.

Sure there’s CliffsNotes and book summaries available. But wouldn’t it be great if you could put a book up to a device attached or inserted into your brain that manages to download all the contents from that book into your head within a matter of minutes. You could suddenly be an expert on metallurgy, greek medieval history, chess strategy, and thousands of other important and esoteric topics.

I realize that this reeks of science fiction at the moment but I think that some day it may be possible, so let’s get to work on it – after all, my time is limited here! I also appreciate that there are many who relish the process of reading- curling up in a comfortable chair on a cold winter day next to a fire with your coffee and blanket and digesting a great novel slowly (as you eventually doze off). And that’s great. But some of us, at least at times, just want the information man and as quickly as we can get it.

4. The Death with Dignity Facility. I know I will lose some here talking about death and a controversial political topic. But we have a huge problem in this country that no one wants to address as a result of our expanded longevity as a species. People are living a lot longer than they used to- in 1900, the average life expectancy was only 50; today it’s in the low 80’s; and by 2070 it’s projected to exceed 90. At the same time many of these folks are living in a less than desirable state – they are either extremely ill and in severe pain or unable to function mentally. In short, unable to enjoy any semblance of a decent life.

Perhaps one day the great scientific minds out there will figure out how to prevent physical and mental decline to match our considerable advances in sheer duration. But until then, is there really a point to linger on for years if you are doing so in great discomfort or a quasi-vegetative state? I realize that there are some folks, especially the highly religious, who believe that a person should die only when it’s “their time” as “determined by God” regardless how much they are suffering or no longer wish to be alive. And that’s fine for those who believe that but what about the millions who don’t?

In a land where people scream personal liberty at every chance they get, why can’t people make their own choices about the most personal decision of their life, especially if it doesn’t harm others? And, more importantly, why can’t the process to end life be more compassionate and humane? Folks shouldn’t be required to jump off of a bridge or create a bloody mess by shooting themselves or gamble on the amount of drugs to take (a very small number actually succeed by that route). Surely, there’s a medication that could be developed that would do the trick more assuredly but also in a painless and peaceful manner.

And more than just developing a special drug for this purpose, why not have a special place where people can choose to go to die with respect, dignity and, dare I say, satisfaction? In the classic movie Soylent Green, old people who were ill or simply had accomplished all they felt they could with their lives and didn’t want to be a burden and placed into a nursing home went to a facility where they sat in a comfortable lounge chair and were shown a movie of their life and loved ones on a 360 surround sound screen. And then, with their favorite music playing along with vibrant pictures of nature and beautiful colors, they slowly drifted off to a peaceful end of life as the medication filtered in. (To be clear, I am not advocating the other part of that science fiction movie: that people’s remains serve as food for a starving world.)

Naturally, there have to be protections in place to ensure that folks are competent and making an informed decision and to guard against abuse and manipulation by greedy heirs. And perhaps there needs to be a waiting period – to protect against the prospect of those making the decision on a whim or a depression that can be treated.

But there’s no good reason why a competent person who sincerely wants to die shouldn’t be legally allowed to do so and to be helped in that endeavor. What is the rationale for forcing people to live in a state of perpetual anguish against their wishes? We put our beloved dogs and horses down to prevent further suffering, but somehow most of society apparently believes that our relatives and friends don’t deserve the same humane treatment? If you spend any meaningful time in an ICU unit or even a nursing home it’s hard to believe that many of these folks would choose that existence if there was a more pleasant and dignified alternative. The punishment we extol on many of our loved ones is often outright cruel and against their own wishes.

5. The Fan Strategic Challenge. On a much lighter subject, I have an idea for our beloved professional sports teams (and it doesn’t even require novel technology). Everyone I know who seriously follows a sport deems themselves to be an expert in that sport and can’t believe how stupid some managers or coaches are in their strategy, or lack thereof. Whether it’s a decision to forego a certain field goal with five seconds left in the half of a championship playoff game with your team already up by 14 points to gamble on one more touchdown instead (that’s you, Kansas City Chiefs’ coach Andy Reid) or to remove a starting pitcher from a World Series Game who has given up no runs and only two hits through 5 1/3 innings and is looking unhittable (I’m talking about you Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash), we fans are constantly questioning the decisions of the so-called experts paid millions to make them. But there’s really no way to prove that we/the fans were right and the manager was wrong- i.e. no alternative universe where our decisions could be tested and no control study.

So how about the various professional sports leagues let one fan each game (for each side) select a strategic decision that they can potentially change? (Perhaps the fan selected has to first demonstrate a high level of acumen in the sport and donate some meaningful money to a worthy charity in order to qualify.) In football, the challenge could be a play call, whether to go for it on 4th down, or even let an opposing player intentionally score near the end of the game to leave more time for a potent offense to mount a comeback. In baseball, the challenge might include whether to replace the pitcher or pinch hit (and with whom) or to have a player attempt to steal a base or execute a hit and run.

To make this work, the assigned Fan would be required to lock in their strategic challenge electronically before the play is executed and unbeknownst to the coaches or players. The play/strategic decision chosen by the coach/manager would then proceed as normal. After the play, however, the teams would be alerted to the fact that there was a fan challenge and they would then be required to do the play over, but this time based on the strategic decision chosen by the fan. In addition, neither the players or coaches on either team would know in advance which of the two scenarios actually counted (a computer would randomly select one of the decisions only after both scenarios had played out so that all participants would be incentivized to try their hardest on both occasions).

I think this would generate fan interest, make some interesting theatre and help answer the question of how often the expertise of the knowledgeable fan exceeds that of the coach. Players who executed a disastrous play would even be hoping that the designated fan had saved them from a bad outcome by issuing a challenge (though I suspect the egomaniac coaches might feel differently about it).

For those who think this idea is absurd a different version of this concept has actually been tried before -naturally by the greatest baseball innovator and marketer of all-time Bill Veeck. In 1951, during his ownership of the St.Louis Browns (now the Baltimore Orioles) Veeck held a promotion which he dubbed “Grandstand Manager’s Day.” On that day, 1000 fans decided the lineup by majority vote and then were given “yes” and “no” placards that told the Brown’s manager throughout the game whether the team should steal a base, bunt or change pitchers. The last-place Browns lost a whopping 102 games out of 154 games played that year, finishing 46 games behind the first-place New York Yankees! But the Browns won the only game managed by the fans, 5-3!

6. The Computerized Voting System. My final idea should be simple and a no-brainer but I suspect it will be the hardest to achieve. In a sophisticated world with incredible technology there is absolutely no reason to require people to stand in a long line and cast a ballot in person during the middle of a work day in order to exercise their right to vote. This is especially the case when we have an easier, more efficient and more reliable alternative. Those who oppose voting by computer pretend to complain that it would impair the integrity of the vote and increase the prospect of fraud. While these are legitimate concerns in theory, I am confident that sufficient protections can be implemented to ensure a fair and accurate result with the help of bright minds and great technology, if there is a will to make that happen.

After all, we rely on computers for our security as a nation, our health care and our entire financial system. Yet some would have you believe that we can’t trust these same computers when it comes to protecting the legitimacy of a citizen’s vote?

Indeed, everyone has unique fingerprints, unique irises in their eyes and unique DNA. Surely there’s a way to use these markers to guarantee that people voting are valid citizens and that they only vote once while also not disproportionately disenfranchising millions of people by making voting too onerous?

The problem here is not really a scientific or technological one. Rather, it’s that there are many folks in power who don’t really WANT every citizen to vote – especially one party that would like to discourage the impoverished from exercising this constitutional right. So they create obstacles to make it harder not easier for people to vote. The opposition to internet voting has nothing to do with alleged fraud and everything to do with winning elections even when the majority of folks don’t support you. Rather than advancing principles of democracy which our country was purportedly founded upon, the focus of these politicians is simply on preserving their own job and power. The computerized voting system would cure that problem and greatly increase our country’s woeful voting performance – and it’s long overdue.