Jason’s Fresh Produce

I think “life without possibility of parole” is a stupid prison sentence. In fact, I think any sentence without parole is stupid. It removes most of the incentive for rehabilitation. It sends the signal “there is no value for you behaving better than neutral.”
So prison becomes a double cost to the economy–we must pay to house a criminal, and also lose his productive value. Why not instead incentivize the criminal to be more productive? Particularly if he can somehow compensate those he wronged?
The current prison system is a lose-lose, but it could be a win-win.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that there is a magic formula/treatment/elixir/whatever for life extension. This formula will cost money. The amount of this cost will create some interesting class divisions:

1) Those who cannot afford the life extension will be an underclass.
2) Those who can briefly afford the life extension will funnel their money into the economy
3) Those who can easily afford life extension–the rich-enough– will use their extended life spans to become even richer (and older). It is hard to imagine that this group will not become a super-class, using their experience and wealth to exercise significant control over society.

I think the biggest economic impact to this country since the computer will be the self-driving car.
Given that nearly every working American commutes, I believe the self-driving car will add hundreds of hours/year to the average life, and these hours will be split between work (increasing productivity) and recreation (increasing spending).

Color the last foot or so of dental floss red. That way, I know when I’m running out, and I don’t get stuck with the 2inch piece at the end.

When I was young, I dreamed of publishing a book of poetry. I wrote many poems. Some were ok.

I will probably never publish that book, but I came up with the perfect title, so I’m claiming it here, in front of god and FSM and everyone:

“Deaf Mym Lines”

It anagrams to “Me, myself, and I”

Here are 2 things I want to exist:

1) I have come to rely on gmail to save every textualized instance of my life. Ironically, text messages do not fall under that umbrella. So, iPhone people, go talk to the google people and make me happy.

2) I have been thinking about taking a music appreciation class. What would be even cooler, however, is *playing* a music appreciation *game*! Where is my “Rock Band: Music Appreciation” version where I play through decades (centuries?) of musical stylings with narration on the evolution of technique and feel?

Back in the olden days, there was a device known as a modulator/demodulator. MoDem for short. This magical device would allow data to be transmitted over phone lines with simple tones!
Skip ahead 30 years. An iPhone app called “Shazam” will recognize songs being played on the radio and tell you what the song is. Handy for IDing that earworm without waiting for the DJ to come on.

I propose an “audio barcode” that combines these two ideas. Radio commercials could play a short tone at the end of a message that, if picked up by a modem app on your phone, could be translated into the name of a website.
Now, while driving, my phone could automatically surf me to sites where I could get more information, make a purchase, or sign up for a contest.

A friend of mine pointed out my “produce” wasn’t very fresh–I’ve been consumed by a business school project and an upcoming Kickstarter project launch–but I thought I’d post a couple of bad ideas here in the absence of any good ones. (There is, I feel, a lot of value in sharing bad ideas; namely, the possibility that one of you might be inspired to a better idea.)

1) Rent-to-own pet store

Some pets, particularly exotic pets, are a large in expense in both initial cost and the time and energy of care requirements. Why not have a pet store that uses a “rent to own” business model for the pet and all of its accoutrement: feeding dish, grooming tools, etc. I’m not a pet owner, but I’d appreciate a “trial run” at this sort of thing without the terrible guilt that would come from abandoning an unwanted pet.

(oops, exists: http://inventorspot.com/articles/tokyo_pet_store_succeeds_rent_own_policy_39291)

2) E-book club

I’ve noticed that my kindle app has a wonderful feature: you can highlight passages. If enough readers highlight a particular passage, it shows up in my e-copy as highlighted (this optional feature can be turned off, of course). It’s neat because it lets me see what others consider important.

My idea is a simple twist on this. The kindle app could allow you to designate a specific circle of friends (or an electronic book club) to specifically trigger this highlighting feature. You could also, as my wife pointed out, tie this feature to a particular class in school, so you could see what your classmates found important in the text. Authors could even use this information to see what readers like about their writing.

Human brains are designed to seek causal agents. We are pattern recognizers with a bias towards seeing patterns even where none exist.

The cost of this (myths, religions, superstition) is apparently swamped by the benefits (functional science, predictive power, learning).

Interestingly, I think this bias can be undermining our self-esteem. Our narratives–both written and unwritten–tend to suffer from what psychologists call the “fundamental attribution error.” When viewing external events, we probably assign too much weight to the decisions of people, and too little weight to environmental factors. When examining individual decisions, we probably assign too much weight to “conscience” or “free will” (he is a bad man) and too little weight to circumstance. (good day? bad day? overtired? etc) (As a side note, when considering our own actions and outcomes, we tend to take too much credit for good outcomes, and assign too much blame to fate in the case of bad outcomes).

When searching for role models, however, I suspect we are setting ourselves up for impossible comparisons. I’m fairly sure that no great person ever achieved greatness without a) a fair amount of luck and b) a strong network of people. But when we read the biographies or stories, the shining star stands out as the sole master of his/her fate. It would be impossible, in fact, to relate every factor involved in the life of an individual.
Thus, we are doomed to always misunderstanding our own place in the world.

Today I was watching the footage from Michael Vick’s helmet cam: http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-pro-bowl/09000d5d81df34f8/Eagle-eye-Vick-helmet-cam

It does not reproduce the feel of seeing out of someone else’s eyes at all. It’s too shaky, has a static focal distance, etc.

However, it should be possible to build a true “remote eye.” In addition to a normal “helmet cam,” you need some eye-tracking technology and some software. All of the necessary tech exists.
So, in addition to an outward pointing camera, you have one trained on the wearer’s eyeball. You finely track eyeball motion, focal depth, and iris contraction.
You would have to motorize the outbound camera to track in conjunction with the eyeball. Now you not only reproduce the head pointing direction, but the eyeball pointing direction. This would also allow you to stabilize the image, since we humans tend to cancel our head motions with eyeball motions.

Don’t think a motor could move fast enough to track eyeball changes?

http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/01/23/2034212/Artificial-Retinas-Can-Balance-a-Pencil-On-Its-End?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29