Using neutrinos to communicate through solid matter?

Would it be possible to communicate through the Earth using neutrinos? Neutrinos are able to pass through other matter as they are weakly interacting. The also travel at the speed of light (or faster according to some...).

Why would communicating through the Earth be beneficial? Such a communication medium would benefit from lower latency due to a lower distance travelled. This could be beneficial to algo-trading, particularly where it is reliant on information from the other side of the world (e.g. a different stock market).

Strobe alarm clock

Strobe lighting (or in fact any flashing or moving light) is good at keeping us awake (which is why TVs, with their flashing moving lights, are not good for the body clock). It should be possible to harness this effect to make an alarm clock that quickly wakes us up. It may not need to be a bright flashing light (which could be abrasive) in order to achieve the effect; a subtle flashing light may work to slowing bring people to a pleasant state of wakefulness.

Contrasting self-directed learning with being taught

One of the key advantages of being taught is that the teacher holds back the overwhelming weight of information, allowing through a only trickle that the student can usefully digest. A problem with students learning how to learn in a taught environment, is that the learning methods that they learn are oriented towards being taught, and hence they are ill-prepared for self-directed learning, with its inevitable interaction with overwhelming volume. The problem of volume can also be thought of a question hydra (of greek myth and legend). As a hydra sprouts two new heads for each cut off, a question sprouts two (or often more) question with every answer. Teachers act like Iolaus and his torch, closing down these questions with statements like "that's a good question, but we'll cover that next week" or "that's a good question, but you don't really need to understand that in order to understand this, so let's not get distracted". Another way of thinking about this problem is dependencies. Teachers help us start in a place with the fewest dependencies, and to build these up in a logical order.

Universal stuff carrier

Sometimes bags aren't big enough for a particular item you need to carry, not necessarily in terms of the volume of the bag, but in terms of one (or perhaps two) dimensions. What would be useful in such a circumstance would be a "bag" that despenses with the holding mechanism, relying purely on a strap to hold the object. No doubt such things have been used in the past and currently exist, but they do not seem to be sold in retail stores, despite their usefulness. Illustrations below.

A website for hosting Inducement Prize Contests

I propose a website to allow any organisation or individual to easily create and host Inducement Prize Contests. The website would follow similar lines are Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, but in reverse: rather than requesting funding, the individual would be offering it in the form of a contest.

There would be no de minimus limit, so any prize or prize-set could be offered. The ICP creator would need to stump up the cash up-front (which would then be help in trust by the website organistation, with interest accruing to the prize). A variety of rule types would need to be managed, e.g. fixed time limit vs open time limit, best entry wins vs winning only with a defined set of criteria.

If successful, the website in itself would provide significant free marketing to the contest, increasing the number of participants. It would also reduce barriers to entry, resulting in more contests in total.

Using Inducement Prize Contests to get disparate groups to work together

Inducement Prize Contests have a long history, and significant recent interest, largely driven by the X Prize and the DARPA Grand Challenge. The focus of most Inducement Prize Contests that I have read about is in pushing a particular area of technology beyond its current limits. It seems to me that another interesting way in which they could be used would be in pushing two disparate fields to work together.

Say for example subject matter Y people tend not to engage with subject matter Z people, but you hypothesise that subject matter Y's technology could solve subject matter Z's problems, then you pose an Inducement Prize Contest that will be won by the best use of subject matter Y's technology to solbe subject matter Z's problems. Obviously in order to win, subject matter Y people will need to engage with subject matter Z people in order to understand their problems, thus forcing the two groups together, which is likely to generate benefits that outlive the competition.

Qualification-only institutions

The internet and world wide web have made available significant amounts of academic material (in written, pictoral, audio and video formats) at no cost; forums, mailing lists and answer websites provide support, again at no cost; and dedicated educational websites provide the means to test your own knowledge via quizzes (often combined with the former two elements required for education).

The last piece of the above puzzle that is missing is an institution, with reputation, that will open up its assessment mechanisms and allow anyone to gain a qualification. It may be necessary for such an institution to charge in order to recover the administration and assessment costs (e.g. markers). But such a charge would typically be a small fraction of the current cost of education.

Such a shift could be revolutionary, as more people would be able to access qualifications that are currently the reserve of the rich, or those willing to brave significant debt. In widening the pool of candidates, the institutions could afford to make the assessment more taxing.