Ideas thread

[Nordic]

Soy products cause cancer, depression and hormonal imbalances.

Plus almost all of them are Frankenfood courtesy of Monsanto.

[Stephen Morgan]

And of course they get put into all manner of processed food, although nothing is advertised "with added Soy". As to the effects of fermentation, of this process I am ignorant.

[Nordic]

If you want to eat soy, the only way to go is organic. Otherwise it's Monsanto it seems. Probably about 90% chance it's Monsanto.

[crikkett]

Landscape a neighborhood (or housing complex) entirely with edible trees, bushes and flowers of various sorts, that span the entire growing season. Order landscapers to desist from pesticides and introduce beneficial insects, and to manage a compost heap.

Then have occasional block parties to pick and share the produce.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Nice one.

[Nordic]

I had an idea for a near perpetual motion machine involving a large series of magnets. I discussed it with my former-weapons-developer father and he mentioned that this had already been tried, to make (he insinuated) guns. He said you could get a lot of thrust out of such a device, but it wasn't true perpetual motion because the magnets do become demagnitized with use.

I've imagined several basic ways you could store solar power for the night, primitive devices really, that store power the way cuckoo clocks do, by basically using excess daylight during the day to lift weights high into the air, and then after the sun goes down they would be dropped, slowly, on their chain, to run a flywheel that would power a generator.

You could do the same thing with water, obviously.

Tall towers would be needed.

Mechanical power is probably the easiest kind to store.

[crikkett]

I've imagined several basic ways you could store solar power for the night, primitive devices really, that store power the way cuckoo clocks do, by basically using excess daylight during the day to lift weights high into the air, and then after the sun goes down they would be dropped, slowly, on their chain, to run a flywheel that would power a generator.

You could run that up a redwood tree.

[The Consul]

Develop a high fiber diatery supplement that makes your shit stick together and eliminate 79% of the use of toilet paper in US and fine people who do it just cause they're bored.

[Project Willow]

^You may need to combo it with training women to pee standing up to get that percentage.

[The Consul]

Wow....talk about a defective research department! You're hired!

[Stephen Morgan]

Landscape a neighborhood (or housing complex) entirely with edible trees, bushes and flowers of various sorts, that span the entire growing season. Order landscapers to desist from pesticides and introduce beneficial insects, and to manage a compost heap.

Then have occasional block parties to pick and share the produce.

Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier, while advocating the spread of council estates also advocates more allotments and bigger gardens. Happened for a while, too. I seem to remember a council using a council estate, I think it was in Hampstead, to demonstrate how much energy usage could be cut, by introducing heavy duty insulation, CHP, solar panels and so forth.

I had an idea for a near perpetual motion machine involving a large series of magnets. I discussed it with my former-weapons-developer father and he mentioned that this had already been tried, to make (he insinuated) guns. He said you could get a lot of thrust out of such a device, but it wasn't true perpetual motion because the magnets do become demagnitized with use.

Ought to be simply to build a perpetual motion machine based on the casimir force. Won't produce much energy, of course. Doesn't violate the conservation of thingy doo-dah because the power is merely collected from the environment.

I've imagined several basic ways you could store solar power for the night, primitive devices really, that store power the way cuckoo clocks do, by basically using excess daylight during the day to lift weights high into the air, and then after the sun goes down they would be dropped, slowly, on their chain, to run a flywheel that would power a generator.

All power, with the possible exception of nuclear fission, is ultimately solar power stored up, embodied in fossilised plant life, or living plant life, or the falling of water which has been caused to evaporate by the actions of the sun, or the movement of the atmosphere or whatever else. Possibly geothermal may owe more to the tidal forces caused by the gravitational attraction of the moon.

You could do the same thing with water, obviously.

That's rain, dear. That's how factories worked before the advent of the steam engine, mill lades originally used to mill grain and then to power dark satanic mills. Supposedly if we were to reactivate those abandoned due to more modern generative methods it would produce 40% of the nations needed electricity. Obviously that wouldn't include potential production in areas like the highlands which were never heavily industrialised.

Tall towers would be needed.

Mechanical power is probably the easiest kind to store.

Heat, probably. Like how heat exchange ground pumps work, I don't know if those would produce enough heat to run a sterling generator.

^You may need to combo it with training women to pee standing up to get that percentage.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/rea ... -restrooms

[crikkett]

How about a radio station that plays audiobooks?

[Luther Blissett]

I'd like to just try some simple cold fusion experiments to see what kind of practical purpose it might serve.

[Stephen Morgan]

How about a radio station that plays audiobooks?

Well, BBC Radios 4 and 7 play a fair amount of that. Four has two books serialised over the course of each week, the book of the week and the book at bedtime. And the classic serial, of course. And radio 7 has even more. Of course they also do comedy and news (on 4 at least) and so forth, too.

[The Consul]

How about a radio station that plays audiobooks?

http://www.audiobookradio.net/internetradio/ Free is a relative term.