Muller Alcohol Corner

Muller corner yoghurts are revolutionary. They give you complete flexibility in designing your own flavour.

If you are not familiar with them, the packaging separates the natural yoghurt from the fruit flavour. You can add as much or as little of the fruit to the yoghurt.

This amazing technique has many applications.

I would recommend a Muller Alcohol Corner. On one side is a Beer/Whisky flavoured non-alcoholic fluid. In the other side is pure high concentrated alcohol.

You can add the meths to create a drink that matches your mood (or just drink it neat).

Benefits: People with different tolerances of beer can get drunk together, at the same speed; A single product meets the specification of teetotallers to hell-raisers.

200 Cocktails

Tankard

Yoghurt Maker

Respect Countries Names

There are currently 196 countries in the world, but they have more than 196 names.

Different languages may have different names for the country. For example, England is called England in England, but is Angleterre in French, Inglatierra in Spanish, Anglicko in Hungarian, Tinglizt in Swahili, Lloegr in Welsh, Sasana in Irish and Whinging-Pom-land in Australian.

You would not do this to a person. If a bloke is called Rodney, you don't call him Dave.

The inhabitants of each country should decide on what they want the name of their country (and capital city) to be, and the rest of the world should respect this.

Benefits: More respect between countries – some current names are insulting to the country's citizens; less confusion in international business; no need to learn different names to describe where you come from when you travel.

Related Links:

http://geographybook.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/vratoyn/

World Map

Mother Tongue

Kill All Pandas

Pandas want to die. Perhaps its their Emo black mascara look.

They don't reproduce easily, they only eat a very special kind of bamboo, they are very sensitive to the environment they want to live in.

They must be very frustrated with the huge efforts we make to prevent their death wish.

There are around 2000 pandas left, if we charge $1 million each to hunt them, that would produce $2 billion.

This money could be used to protect endangered species with a bit more fighting spirit.

Panda Facts

Emo T-shirt

Banksy Panda

Death Penalty for Downloading

Why do some countries have the death penalty, it is a combination of deterrent and ultimate vengeance.

Sadly the sort of crimes that carry capital punishment are not the crimes that carried out based on rational considered decisions. They are either crimes of passion carried out by rational people, or based on the warped perspective of irrational people.

The threat of facing a death penalty does not worry these people's mind when they commit the crime.

If a death penalty is to be used as purely a deterrent it should apply to crimes where the criminal has weighed up the pros and cons before deciding to do it.

Illegal downloading of movies, software, music is one such example of this. The downloader acknowledges that it is a naughty, but balances the reward of getting the item for free against the small chance of getting caught, and the likely small punishment – a written warning.

If a government introduced the death penalty for downloading it would stop it overnight.

Don't worry, no one would actually get the lethal injection for this.

Even the biggest multimedia corporations most affected by piracy would never want to see it carried out, but just the threat of it would put off most people.

The benefits of this in relation to the film industry would be that big budget movies would get their deserved income, while low-budget movie makers would be a bit more open-minded and offer their films for free online.

Effects – more people employed in film industry / cinemas; Studios get feedback on what films people really want to be made and can channel resources into this; independents can compete against the big studios.

Related Links:

Irresistable forces


Copyright and Piracy


Debating the death penalty

Practical Jewellery

In some some animal species it is the male that fusses over its appearance. This is not true of us generally, where women enhance their beauty by eating right, wearing make-up, not farting in lifts.

If this was not the case, and men had needed to accessorise, I bet the jewellery would combine decoration with utilisation.

Men would wear the earrings, but there would be a phillips screwdriver dangling off the left ear and a selection of allen keys plated in white gold around their ankles.

Two of their bangles could be stuck against each other to quicklight a fire, and every broach would have a compass woven into it's design.

Pashminas would contain a secret pouch of stones, for an impromptu David sling.

Age-defying skin cream would any be available in a warpaint edition.

If these products existed today, men could tidy their look up a bit, but have the backup defence that they were approved by Bear Grylls.

Related Links:

Living Wild

Fire Steel

The Arranged Marriage Dating Agency

One of the main reasons that people use dating services is to get married, or at least to make it a possibility. According to a Match.com survey, nearly 18% of people using dating websites married someone they met there.

How could this figure be increased? By forcing 'em!

If there was an arranged marriage service, you could bypass the cinema visits, the flowers, the clever texts, the uncertainty and skip straight to the big day.

Here's how it would work: Users would stipulate who they would NOT marry, maybe by location or personality type / star sign / favourite colour.

The service then matches a suitable suitor and that's it. Users would be legally obliged to marry that person.

I'm guessing that this would be one dating website that had more women members than men.


Understanding women


All the rules


All the rules

2 Star Rating

Review systems in critical magazines come in many different sizes. Marks out of 5, a score out of 10, a percentage.

Is this really insightful? Is a 3DS zombie game that gets 87% better than an art film that gets 4 out of 5?

A reader only wants to know: should I buy this?

All ratings systems should therefore be out of 2. 1 star means do not watch this movie / drive this car / eat at this restaurant. 2 stars means please do play this game / hire this man / sleep on this pillow.

Stu's 2 star recommended products:


Music Box with your own tunes


iPod in the Bath


Penny Pusher

The Billion Pound Lottery

The current situation of the lottery is that generally jackpots are around 2 million pounds per winner (as per http://plus.maths.org/content/uk-national-lottery-guide-beginners ). So every year on average 52 people get a £2 million windfall.

How does this benefit society? These winners are likely to buy a nice house and a nice car. (http://www.uklotterydraw.com/lottery-winners/how-do-lottery-winners-spend-their-money )

This rewards estate agents and car dealers, two of the most hated professions in the UK.

Instead, what if the European / US lottery worked like a giant raffle. Tickets are issued until there is a prize fund of £1 billion. This then goes to one ticket holder.

The winner would of course buy a very nice house, an awesome car, and maybe a yacht.

They would then probably have 990 million left. This is where it gets interesting. This is such a huge weight of money that gilt guilt would get the better of them.

They would naturally think about what that money could buy. You could personally pay up the international debt of Belize or Eritrea. You could force-buy every illegal handgun in America and turn them into a peace-loving Eiffel tower replica. You could donate 7900 Lamborghinis to the post office so they can deliver junk mail in style.

Whatever they choose, it is likely to be more beneficial to society to give one random person a massive amount of money than for thousands to have just a huge amount of money.

Related Links:

How to win the Lottery

A Decade of Debt

A Lamborghini

No TV For Jobseekers

When I was unemployed I really really wanted a job. I applied for every relevant position, but in hindsight I could have done more. What stopped me? Daytime TV. I would sit there for hours watching the same shows: Judge Judy, Jeremy Kyle, Jerry Springer (the 3 Js).

So, the new rule is no TV for jobseekers. This would remove the great square timekiller, and give people the time to apply for jobs / start their own business. It would also be a great incentive to get an official job – they get to watch all those great shows again.

But what about the internet – peoiple could just download the shows they want to watch.

This is true, but it would remove the sitting down on the sofa, watching whatever comes your way. You would choose the shows you wanted to watch – and while you waited for it to download you might apply online for a few jobs.

And anyway, an upcoming post will address this illegal downloading of TV shows.

For jobseekers, I found that the book “What colour is your parachute” was instrumental in getting re-employed. It lets you find what job would be perfect for you and reveals some shocking truths about jobhunting.

Related Links:

What Color is your Parachute

Jeremy Kyle

Judge Judy

Introduction

Influenced greatly by the excellent books by Tim Harford, this blog will suggest ideas that will change the world.

Using incentives or punishments to change peoples behaviour, it is possible to create a better or worse (but certainly more interesting) world.

For example, different countries have different laws, which over time change the whole character of their citizens.

Certain jobs, through bonuses or codes of conduct, can encourage their staff to be pushy-pushy salesmen or touchy-feely customer service advisers.

If you head up a national government, or chair an organasation, please feel free to implement these ideas. It is probably best if you do a small test first!

And feel free to suggest your own ideas or reactions on the comments.


In each post there will be related links to related items. These are Amazon associate links, so if you buy these products I get some lovely money, at no extra cost to you.




Related Items:

The Undercover Economist


The Logic of Life


Pavlov