Larry Baum's ideas: (click suns to rate or comment on ideas)

1		Governments should run shelters for all street children and supply basic food, clothing, health care, and education.	E-mail
2		Since corruption and poverty can cause each other, it's hard for poor countries to climb out of poverty. To fight corruption, a country could volunteer to accept an outside (UN) commission and court to investigate and prosecute corruption.	E-mail
3		Hand Me Downs: a service pairing rich families with poor families so that instead of discarding used stuff, the rich can give it to the poor, like many extended families and close friends do with their old cell phones, toys, clothes, etc.	E-mail
4		Divert carbon dioxide from power plants or other sources to greenhouses or fields to increase crop yields. Legumes may benefit most.	E-mail
5		To better predict the magnitude of technological improvement, such as increases in oil reserves, use a top-down approach (extrapolating overall statistics), rather than bottom-up (trying to predict technology). Moore's Law is an example.	E-mail
6		Divide problems into parts: behavior, knowledge, or money (there's often overlap). Then it would be easier to focus on the most efficient solutions. AIDS as example: b. to use condoms, k. to make a vaccine, m. to pay for drugs.	E-mail
7		Bananasicle: Freeze a banana to eat like a popsicle, but much richer, tastier, and healthier.	E-mail
8		To prevent financial tsunamis, countries or UN should define companies that are "too big to fail" and assign a regulator to declare others that fall outside the definition, then put a public official on their boards and limit their leverage and risk.	E-mail
9		A spiral slide as a fire escape from tall buildings. It has a cover and may use seats (& seatbelts) on gears (to regulate speed). It goes 10 floors at a time. Access via metal, locked doors, opened only in an emergency. Faster than stairs.	E-mail
10		Banks that are "too big to fail" threaten the world economy if they do fail. To prevent banks from getting so big, government should force breakups or block mergers of banks/companies with assets or liabilities > 1 day of world GDP (0.3% of annual GDP).	E-mail
11		Some governments give poor people cheap public housing, but they need to wait a long time to get it, they must live in a certain place, and people fake poverty to qualify. Instead, raise taxes to pay everyone cash, and let people rent wherever they want.	E-mail
12		Pet rental: service to rent dogs, cats, and other pets to people for an hour, a day, a week, or longer. This would let people decide whether they like and can handle pet care and would reduce abandonment.	E-mail
13		Teach kids reading with their bedtime storybook. Start by teaching 1-letter words, then 2-letter words, just one each night. If he can't remember a word, then tell him, and read the previous sentence again and ask him the word again. Use praise.	E-mail
14		Companies charge huge fees to workers who migrate abroad for long-term contract jobs (as maids, construction workers, etc.). Instead, governments should arrange migration and contracts at low cost to let workers keep more of their meager incomes.	E-mail
15		For children to wash their hands, one sink in every public restroom should be placed low, with the faucet closer to the front edge. Now I always need to pick up my child awkwardly, as if giving him an "airplane ride", to let him wash his hands.	E-mail
16		When you buy food (like nuts or berries) that comes in a ziploc bag, after using up the contents save the empty bag to dispose of food waste for a day or two, resealing it to prevent odor. This really reduces bad smells and bugs.	E-mail
17		Use an outer layer of tear-proof paper and an inner layer of inflatable bubble-wrap to make warm, durable camping tents or emergency shelters for refugees.	E-mail
18		Governments should pay for removal of discarded fishing nets snagged underwater. These nets last centuries, killing huge numbers of fish and mammals.	E-mail
19		To improve railway safety, install GPS devices and radio transmitters on all train locomotives. A computer at a control center would monitor all train locations and alert any trains headed for a crash, based on position and velocity estimates.	E-mail
20		Air inside city buses can be more polluted than outside. Buses should completely flush their air when at clean portions of their routes, or should store clean air in a tank to release it gradually into the interior during the day.	E-mail
21		To reduce plastic waste, charge, worldwide, a tax on plastic production at source (ethylene cracking?). Reducing, reusing, recycling, and replacing would then become cheaper than making new plastic.	E-mail
22		To fight brain drain (poor countries losing precious funds teaching doctors, who then leave for more pay in rich countries), use education loans, to be forgiven by working in home country or repaid in cash earned from rich country.	E-mail
23		States or provinces tend to spend all their income when the economy grows, then need to cut spending in a recession, just when more spending is needed. Countries should tax states in expansions and pay them in recessions in order to create balance.	E-mail
24		Meta behaviors: some personality characteristics affect whole classes of behavior. For example, some people are more flexible in changing their behavior to get along with people; some are more sensitive to sensory input in general; etc.	E-mail
25		2 satellites collided, spewing debris that threaten other satellites. To prevent crashes, a UN agency should track all orbiting objects and program a computer to predict their orbits and potential collisions. Satellites could then maneuver out of danger.	E-mail
26		Government in many countries alternates between two options: dogma (theocracy) or dictatorship (or military rule). The third D, democracy, tends to lose as it lacks the intense personal reward of heaven (dogma) or wealth (corruption in dictatorship).	E-mail
27		Color-blindness in relationships: People are different and will feel some things that their partners don't, as if one is color blind to a feeling the partner sees as glorious, leading to confusion, frustration, and pain. Explain, understand, manage.	E-mail
28		Before starting to date, everyone should find and interview 10 married and 10 divorced people to learn how to avoid their mistakes and do what worked well. This is difficult for kids, thus high schools should arrange this as part of sex education.	E-mail
29		Send tsunami and other disaster warnings by SMS (short message service) so that people who don't happen to be watching TV or listening to radio at the moment can be alerted and can evacuate. (tornado, typhoon, cyclone, hurricane)	E-mail
30		Emotion and logic are both needed for action. Logic alone can show something is true, but so what? Logic gives no motivation to act on truth unless there's a principle to motivate action: an "e-motion".	E-mail
31		Just as some people are hyperactive, some people are hypoactive. They're just not noticed because they are quiet. However, it may cause problems: aversion to exercise may harm health, and aversion to interaction may cause problems in marriage and work..	E-mail
32		Why do people marry prisoners? Not for interaction. But they may seek a sense of ownership of a person. Like locking jewelry in a safe deposit box, jail is a secure way to keep a spouse. Ownership may also be one motivation for marriage in general.	E-mail
33		Internet dating sites tend toward either many people but no help in selecting compatibility, or the opposite. Solve the problem with a hybrid, letting users change between few, some, or many criteria to either widen or focus their search.	E-mail
34		Hunger Helper. Alerts to avoid foods in shortage. When a crisis (drought or war) spikes the price of a food like rice that poor people need, issue alert to avoid that food. Volunteers avoiding that food reduce demand and price, helping poor avoid hunger.	E-mail
35		Olds: a service to report news on old events. News often ignores items after a crisis ends. But people may still wonder what happened weeks, months, years, or decades later. Olds would follow up items that were in the news but now are ignored.	E-mail
36		Permanent UN fund for disaster relief so that emergency aid can be spent quickly when needed, instead of begging and waiting for donations while people die. Fund it with regular dues or taxes. Now it's been created: CERF.	E-mail
37		Create a website with interviews of people who tried to enter various careers and failed or succeeded, with statistics on % who quit that track or got a job. Are they happy? Provide the site for all high school career guidance counselors worldwide.	E-mail
38		To replace time-consuming and rigid grant applications, pay scientists a fixed salary, from which they need to pay all their research expenses, including supplies, equipment, and staff, encouraging efficient use of money to produce the best results.	E-mail
39		Biplane wingsuit or hang glider or jet suit. Fold out from elbow-like joint at hands to double the wingspan. Wear on arms and backpack to have two wings for double the lift. Propel from small jets on back.	E-mail
40		To protect against loss of power to a nuclear power plant, use a water tower. Gravity can force cool water through the reactor until power is restored.	E-mail
41		Develop a sport using an atlatl (spear-throwing lever) to throw a ball. The distances achieved would be impressive.	E-mail
42		Applicants to universities should submit a business plan for their chosen career, showing their research into job prospects for their field. This may prevent some painful surprises on graduation and may steer people to better paths before it's too late.	E-mail
43		Nanophone: a microphone to hear sounds at a microscopic scale, including cells moving and organelles moving. Maybe it could detect things that microscopes can't see.	E-mail
44		Most people are not all good or bad. We are not white hats or black hats, or even gray hats. We are multiple shades and colors, which change with the light and angle from which we are viewed, and they change with time, and with the eye of the beholder.	E-mail
45		I heard this: "I'm a historian, not a futurist." That's like a scientist saying, "I collect data. I don't make theories." The purpose of gathering data is to make theories to predict what will happen and improve the course of events. History should, too.	E-mail
46		People tend to call other people "bad" if they disagree with their values and thus act in ways they dislike. This is the source of much misunderstanding and conflict in love and war. We should avoid calling people "bad" and instead think "different".	E-mail
47		Murphy Analysis: Murphy's Law says whatever can go wrong will go wrong. When seeing whether some data fit your theory, erase your assumptions and brainstorm alternative theories the data could fit. Often one of those is right and your theory is wrong.	E-mail
48		IPO auctions: companies lose money when their stock prices rise just after their initial public offerings. Companies should auction their shares to the highest bidders instead of the current practice of fixing a price and choosing buyers by lottery.	E-mail
49		Save life by donating a kidney to a stranger. You may trigger a "domino transplant", in which several donors who were willing to give a kidney to a relative, but were immunologically incompatible, give instead to a stranger. Thus, many lives are saved.	E-mail
50		Make an online activity for each citizen to assign spending and taxation categories of his national government. Experiencing the compromises needed to balance the budget will make people more realistic and will transmit that realism to their government.	E-mail