Things the City of Toronto Should Invent: natural gardens as of right

When I read this recent story about how the City of Toronto doesn't allow lawns made of artificial turf, my first thought was to wonder if there are City by-laws unintentionally incentivizing artificial turf, perhaps by having strict aesthetic standards for lawns.

So I went a-googling, and discovered that if you want to have a natural garden (as opposed to a lawn), you have to apply for an exemption.

I think that's bass-ackwards.

In addition to the drainage issues that the ban on artificial turf is trying to address, a natural garden would help with pollinators, native species, and biodiversity. Growing food in residential yards would also boost the city's food sovereignty and sustainability (as well as urban biodiversity, and probably pollinators too.)

In contrast, a lawn is...green and flat.  And that's about it.

It's monoculture, it doesn't contribute to biodiversity or pollination, I think it might even be an invasive species. 

If the City's priority is green and flat, they should allow artificial turf.

If the City's priorities are environmental, they should allow natural gardens as of right, so people don't have to apply for an exemption, they can just go ahead and have a natural garden - including by neglecting their lawn and letting it revert to nature in its own time.

But let's be brave and bold and take this a step further: what if we make natural gardens the default, and require an exemption for lawns?

"But lawns are important!"

Then it shouldn't be too difficult to get an exemption - just apply for an exemption telling them about why it's so important.

"How do you propose we transition existing lawns to natural gardens?"

I'm a huge fan of benign neglect myself. But when it comes to designing actual policy, a good starting point would be to look at how transitions are normally handled when there's a change in property standards, identify weaknesses in past transitions, and adjust to eliminate those weaknesses.

Things CRA Should Invent: automated phone system tells you whether they've actually called you

I recently had to call CRA to deal with some boring grownup stuff.

Everyone I talked to was awesome and helpful and extremely patient with my ignorance, the boring grownup stuff got dealt with, but before that could happen I had to wait half an hour on hold for someone to help me.

This is a problem in light of the ongoing telephone scam where they call you and impersonate CRA.

CRA encourages you to call their 800 number if you're unsure about the legitimacy of a call you received, but that's a problem when the hold times are so long - especially since they're only open 9-5 Monday to Friday.  Someone who also works 9-5 Monday to Friday, only gets half an hour for lunch and isn't at liberty to make phone calls while working might not ever be able to get through!

I propose a solution: CRA should have an option to automatically detect your phone number and have the automatic system tell you whether they're trying to get in touch with you.

For example, "If you've received a call claiming to be from CRA and would like to confirm whether CRA is trying to get in touch with you, press 3."

I believe this is technologically possible.  When you call Rogers, their system says something like "I notice you are calling from a phone number ending in ####. To talk about the account associated with this number, press 1."  This means an automated system can compare the number you're calling from with numbers in a database, and route your call accordingly.

CRA could maintain a database of "numbers we have called and left messages with", and have an option in their automated system to compare callers' numbers with this database.  That way, callers who are trying to check whether the CRA call they received was a scam can get a quick, automatic message saying "We have not made any attempt to contact you by phone, no action is required on your part."

In fact, since this could be done automatically, it wouldn't even have to be done during business hours!  You call whenever, press 3, and you get a message saying either "We have not made any attempt to contact you by phone, no action is required on your part" or "We have been attempting to contact you by phone, please call us back during business hours."

This way there are far fewer barriers to avoiding scams, and human telephone representatives could be freed up for work that actually requires humans.

Other organizations that are frequently impersonated by scam callers (banks, utilities, etc.) could also use this system. I just think it's particularly important for CRA given their limited business hours and long hold times.

Things They Should Invent: vastly different-sounding words for "credit" and "debit"

Many cash registers require the cashier to push one button if you're paying by credit card and another button if you're paying by debit card.

Problem: the words sound very similar, so there's a high likelihood that the cashier will mishear you when you tell them how you're paying. Then they'll have to re-input the transaction, wasting everyone's time and messing up their numbers.

Solution: words for "credit" and "debit" that are completely different.  Like one is "plop" and the other is "oogly-boogly".

I suppose, on an individual level, we could state the name of the credit card (e.g. "Mastercard"), but that always makes me feel like I'm in a commercial.

Things They Should Invent: "you guys" gender map

Some people perceive "you guys" as masculine, even in the vocative case.

Others, such as myself, perceive it as having no element of gender.  "You guys" is a casual, inclusive vocative plural, completely unrelated to the masculine nominative singular "guy".

But I'm not here to convince you that I'm right.

I'm here to convince someone to map it.

One of the great moments of internet sociolinguistics is the Pop vs. Soda map, which shows the geographical patterns of American soft drink nomenclature.

Someone should do the same for whether "you guys" is masculine or gender-inclusive!

Based on the way people on the internet talk about the "you guys" question, I strongly suspect there's some geographical element to how it's received.  A crowdsourced mapping project, like Pop vs. Soda, could answer this question.

The technology exists, as evidenced by Pop vs. Soda. The answer would be informative, and help people better tailor their communication to various audiences. Surely there must be someone out there looking for a linguistics research project idea!

Things They Should Invent: make it socially acceptable to put a blanket over your head in public

Apparently there was recently a story in the news where an airline requires passengers who are breastfeeding babies to cover their breasts and the babies. I didn't see the story myself, but I did see a bunch of people on Twitter reacting with stories about how their babies would not accept being covered while nursing.

A snarky comment came to mind: "Maybe the people who are offended by breastfeeding should put blankets over their heads!"

Then I realized: that idea is actually kind of appealing!

When I was a small child (older than breastfeeding age - I don't remember that far back), I would sometimes put a towel or a blanket over my head and just sit there enjoying my little cone of silence and privacy. I was in a room full of people, but I couldn't see them and they couldn't see my face.

I've seen other small children do that too, so I think it isn't that uncommon.

I don't feel the temptation to put a blanket over my head as an adult, but that's because I have privacy most of the time. If I don't want look at people or have them look at me, I can go home and lock the door.

But you can't do that on an airplane. You're stuck in this little metal tube in close quarters with dozens (hundreds?) of other people for several hours.

Wouldn't it be awesome to be able to hide?

But the problem is we live in a society that is particularly wary of behaviour that is perceived to be irregular on an airplane. So even those of us who find the idea of hiding under a blanket appealing would be reluctant to do so for fear that someone will overreact and alert the authorities and the plane will be redirected to the nearest airport and surrounded by armed law enforcement and we'll be disappeared into some prison hellscape for the rest of eternity.

Solution: we as a society should unanimously declare it socially acceptable to put a blanket over your head whenever you need a moment's privacy. It's not feasible in every circumstance, of course - you couldn't do it while walking down the street - but there's no reason why you couldn't have a blanket over your head while sitting on an airplane or a train or a park bench. Even in an open-concept office, there's no reason why you couldn't put a blanket over your head and your monitor for some psychological privacy, if we would only deem it socially acceptable.

Even if you yourself can't imagine wanting to put a blanket over your head, wouldn't it be convenient if the other people around you - the ones who might complain that you're nursing your baby or staring at your phone too much or chewing in a way they find unattractive - felt free to do so?

In this modern world, we find ourselves increasingly forced into close quarters with other people, and tensions rise because of lack of privacy. But the only thing that's preventing us from taking a modicum of psychological privacy is that we've arbitrarily deemed it socially unacceptable.  Let's undo that.

Things Twitter Should Invent: retain hashtag capitalization

When you search for or click on a hashtag in Twitter, it shows you a feed of all tweets with that hashtag.  Useful!

If you then click on the "Tweet" button while this hashtag feed is open, it populates the tweet composition box with the hashtag in question, on the assumption that you're going to tweet using the hashtag in question. Useful!

Problem: Sometimes the hashtag that populates the tweet composition box is written in all lowercase, even if the hashtag you originally searched on or clicked on was written in a combination of capital and lowercase.

This is an issue because screen readers use the capitalization in hashtags to determine when a new word starts, and writing hashtags in all lowercase makes the screen reader attempt to pronounce the hashtag as all one word. And, aside from that, #CapitalizingEachWordLikeThis is easier to read than #writingthewholethinginlowercase.

What Twitter should do: make sure that any capitalization in the hashtag clicked on or searched for is retained when populating the tweet composition box. This means people who have already made the effort to make their hashtags accessible don't have to repeat that effort every time they tweet.

While writing this blog post, I tried to determine the specific conditions under which Twitter retains the capitalization of the hashtag versus when it changes it to all lowercase, and I wasn't able to pinpoint it with any consistency. All I can tell you is sometimes it retains capitalization, and sometimes it goes all lowercase.

However, the fact that it sometimes retains capitalization means that retaining capitalization is technologically possible, so Twitter should make that happen all the time.

Things the City of Toronto Should Invent: monthly property tax bills

I knew that when I switched from renting to owning that I would have to pay property taxes separately (rather than property taxes being included in my rent).

What I didn't know was how weird the City of Toronto's billing schedule would be.

I have six scheduled property tax payments a year. Any sensible person would conclude "Okay, so one payment every two months," but it doesn't work that way - they're unevenly spaced!  My six payments a year are due in March, April, May, July, August and September.

This spacing means that the payments always feel like a burden. Because I get five months in a row without a payment, it doesn't feel like the kind of regular recurring expense I would mentally take into consideration in my budget.  But, at the same time, the fact that it happens multiple months in a row doesn't make it feel like a one-off expense that hurts a bit in the month where it occurs but ultimately my bank account reachieves equilibrium. This arrangement is the worst of both worlds.

Solution: 12 monthly property tax payments

People are accustomed to sizeable monthly payments being due on the first of the month - after all, that's how rent works!  So not only would monthly payments make each cheque smaller, but, by fitting into the pattern to which we're accustomed, it would make it more painless.

I previously came up with a conspiracy theory that sales tax isn't included in sticker price to stoke anti-tax sentiment, by making it an unpleasant surprise at the cash register. 

I wonder if that's also the intention behind this erratic property tax schedule?

Things the LCBO Should Invent (or, rather, re-implement)

1. Indicate on your Favourite Products list whether each product is available in your preferred store.

2. Indicate on your Favourite Products list which products are on sale.

Both of these functions were available in the previous version of their website, but were eliminated in their last website update, and it really cramps my style!

I was thrilled when the Favourite Products list was introduced, because it made the way I shop so much easier!  Whenever I particularly enjoy a product, or hear about a new product that sounds interesting, I add it to my list.  Then, next time I'm going to buy a bottle, I simply scroll through my list, see at a glance what's both on sale and in stock at my local store, and buy whichever of those items best meets my current needs.

But since they changed their website, I now have to click through to each item to see if it's on sale, and to see if it's in stock.

The new website design seems more focused on trying to get you to order online, but that also cramps my style.

Online orders take multiple days to ship, and even ordering online and picking up in store takes multiple hours. In contrast, my local LCBO store is literally across the street, so I can go buy a bottle and be back home in under 10 minutes if the lines aren't too long.

Also, the LCBO website has a minimum order of $50, whereas I tend to buy only one (cheap) bottle at a time for personal use.

(Given the LCBO's mandate, perhaps they shouldn't be incentivizing buying larger quantities all at once?  I've heard that alcoholics will drink all available alcohol, so if anything the LCBO should be incentivizing buying only one bottle at a time!)

They had a fantastic feature that met my needs perfectly, and then changed it for no apparent reason!  I wish I knew how to convince them to bring it back!

Things They Should Invent: people who returned X kept Y

Retailers keep track of returns - you almost always have to give your name and contact information when you return something.

Retailers also frequently keep track of purchases, using loyalty cards and customer accounts and such.

Therefore, records must exist about about what customers tend to buy and keep after returning a given item.

They should use this data to make things easier for customers!

For example, if a lot of people exchange a given garment for a larger size, that's a sign that the garment runs small.  If a lot of people return Brand X and then buy Brand Y, that's a sign Brand Y might meet your needs if Brand X doesn't.

I've previous advocated for a universal clothing sizing wiki, so you can find what else fits people who fit the same clothes as you. Analyzing clothing return data may well serve a good part of this function, without requiring diligence from a large number of individuals.

At an absolute minimum, I'm sure Amazon already has this data somewhere in their massive stores of data they collect on everyone.  They already have a "people who bought X also bought Y" algorithm, so perhaps when they see you returning something, they could also add a "people who returned X kept Y" feature.

Things Roger Should Invent: check for signal issues before dispatching a tech

Since I moved into this apartment just over two years ago (!), I've had the same problem occur with my Rogers cable several times:

I get problems with video and/or audio quality on a seemingly random selection of TV channels.  I power cycle and/or reauthorize my cable box several times, and it doesn't resolve the problem.  I call Rogers, who check various things on their end then dispatch a technician.

The technician arrives, presses a mysterious combination of buttons that causes a bunch of mysterious numbers to appear on screen, and discovers there's a problem with one of the mysterious numbers.  (It might have something to do with frequency or signal - unfortunately, it didn't occur to me until I started writing this blog post to take notes.)  This problem has to be resolved centrally, so the tech puts in a report and tells me it will be fixed within a couple of days.

And then it's fixed within a couple of days.

It seems to me that they should be able to either check these mysterious numbers remotely, or have the tech on the phone walk me through the mysterious combination of buttons needed to produce the mysterious numbers and read them aloud over the phone, so they can confirm whether there are any signal issues that need to be fixed remotely before wasting my and a tech's time dispatching a tech to read numbers off a screen.  If there aren't clear signal issues, then they can dispatch a tech to see what's happening on-site.

Advanced option, since we do live in the future: when they detect that a customer is resetting their box (which my conversations with phone techs lead me to believe they can do remotely), Rogers computers remotely check that customer's signals, and if there's anything outside the norm they flag it for a human to look at.  Then, if multiple customers in the same area have signal levels outside the norm (which, as I understand it, has been what was happening in these past signal issues), they can detect it and do their remote fix before anyone needs to go to the trouble of calling tech support

Things They Should Invent: teach students how school norms differ from workplace/adult life norms

I've been thinking lately about how school instills a set of norms that's different from workplace norms, and a recent Ask A Manager gave a perfect example:

2. Does “let me check” make me look incompetent?

I am a new grad and recently got a job interning in a teapot development company. I work closely with my boss since we’re a two-person team, and I do a pretty good job (my boss has given me positive feedback), but there is one thing that I sometimes stumble upon. When my boss asks a question that I’m like 70% sure of, which is often, is it better to say “I think it’s ____, but let me check,” or say whatever I think the answer is confidently and then maybe check later and revise if I’m wrong? I usually go the “Let me check” route, but I feel like it might be making me look incompetent. Am I overthinking this?

As Alison makes quite clear in her response, saying "let me check" and then checking is the good and correct and responsible thing to do, and actually makes the employee come across as more reliable.

And it's also the complete opposite of the norms instilled in school.

In school, if you are asked a question, you are expected to know the answer.   If you don't know the answer, you don't get the mark.  And looking up the answer is cheating.

But no one ever actually tells you that this change is a thing that happens, so many young people do foolish things in their first few years in the workforce.

There are other examples too.  As a kid, you're told "Don't talk back!"  But in the workplace, you're supposed to speak up if you see someone making a mistake, so the mistake doesn't reach the client.

When you're in school, your tests and assignment are specifically designed to be doable based on the information you've been taught in class.  In the real world, there's nothing guaranteeing that the specific task you're called upon to do will be feasible, or that you will succeed at it.  Your restaurant might get a rush that overwhelms the kitchen.  Someone might call you tech support line with a problem no one has ever heard of.  The text sent for translation might be illegible or nonsensical.

But, at the same time, in the real world you can sometimes say to your boss "It is literally impossible for me to do this task by this deadline in addition to all the other tasks.  What's my priority?"  And something might get taken off your plate or reschedule.  In comparison, in school you're expected to do all your work from all your classes even if they conflict.

At this point, you might be thinking "But the nature of a classroom is different! It's only natural for expectations to be different!"

And that is true.

The problem is that when you're a kid just beginning to enter the workforce after a lifetime in the classroom, no one tells you that expectations are different, so you end up like the Ask A Manager LW, genuinely uncertain if it's professional to verify before making declarative statements.

So they should tell students this at some point in high school, probably earlier rather than later, so as to reach students before they start getting part-time/summer jobs.  Talk about ways the classroom doesn't reflect the expectations and realities of adult life, and the reasons why the nature of the classroom makes this necessary. If possible, create some "classroom norms don't apply, adult norms apply" environments within the school experience to give students some practice.

The challenge here is that it has to be done well.  We've all our teachers tell us "This will be really important in high school/university/the work world" when it ended up being irrelevant.  And it would be a particular disservice to give students information about the adult world that ends up being outright incorrect.

But if it can be done well, it would be doing an enormous service to young people, those who will one day work with them, and those who will one day rely on their work.

Things They Should Invent: early releases in palliative care

In the world of publishing, there's something called an Advance Reader Copy (ARC), which is a very limited edition of a book that comes out before the official publication dates.  Sometimes they have contests where you can win one, although I suspect they also have some other function.

For movies and TV shows, there are advance screeners that sometimes get sent to critics and people who vote on awards, so the production can get good publicity.

These things should be made available to palliative care patients.

Some titles are highly anticipated, including beloved series where people want to know how they end.  And, when the patient's death is imminent, there's a high likelihood that they may never find out how it ends.

Which is especially tragic if the work is complete, or close enough to finalized for the reader/viewer to get the story!

I know it can be done - it has been done in the past for young Harry Potter fans with terminal illnesses.

We just need a system to make all stories in all media available to everyone who is terminally ill as soon as humanly possible.

Things They Should UNinvent: italics as default blockquote style

Many advice columns put reader letters in italics. This is a problem, since advice column letters are often multiple paragraphs long, and italics are more difficult to read than regular text.

Since my head injury, I've been finding paragraphs of italics so difficult that I need to switch Firefox into Reader View or turn on OpenDyslexic. (Or I just go "Ugh, blah blah whatever" and skip that column.)

Most often, the letters are in italics because that's what the style sheet does with blockquote.  Unfortunately, that makes the quoted matter difficult to read when there are multiple paragraphs of it.

I would recommend that style sheet designers instead have blockquote differentiate quoted matter with some combination of indentation, design elements adjacent to the quoted matter (I've seen large quotation marks or vertical bars used to good effect), or different font colour (while taking care to choose a colour that is also easy to read).

If there are special circumstances where certain devices can't render these effects, then those devices can come up with their own suitable way to render the blockquote tag.  But the default should be easily readable, and style sheet designers should be mindful of the fact that italics are not easily readable for all, especially when there are multiple long paragraphs.

Things They Should Invent: notwithstanding clause penalty box

The notwithstanding clause enables provincial and territorial legislatures to override Canadians' Charter rights and freedoms.

This is a big deal, so there should be some kind of dissuasive measure to counterbalance it. Improper use of the notwithstanding clause can be an abuse of power - placing the rights and freedoms of Canadians at the mercy of the whims of those in power - so the dissuasive measure should require those who invoke the clause to place their power at the mercy of the whims of the people whose rights and freedoms they are overriding.

A couple of preliminary ideas, to inspire further brainstorming:

- When the notwithstanding clause is used, an election must be called within a fairly brief period of time.  (Three months? Six months? One year?)
-MPPs who vote to use the notwithstanding clause are not permitted to run in the next election (at any level of government). They can run in the one after that.

The flaw of both these ideas is they suggest rights are subject to majority rule - they only incentivize politicians to make sure the majority agrees with them, which could still create a situation where the majority cheers for infringing upon the rights of the minority.

So feel free to use this as a starting point and improve upon this, to come up with something that disincentivizes use of the notwithstanding clause when it's not in the people's best interest, while incentivizing its use when it is in the people's best interest.

Things They Should Invent: clothing characteristic search engine

Clothing geeks have a lot of nuanced opinions about which design features you should look for in clothing.  They'll mention things like woven vs. knit fabrics, bias cut, darts, and other fabric, pattern and construction features that I don't even understand.

The problem is it's difficult to look for clothing with these features. Even if you understand them, you can't reliably search an online clothing store for bias cut dresses, or efficiently look through a bricks-and-mortar store for bias cut apart from scrutinizing the fabric of every single garment.

Even those of us who aren't clothing geeks develop an idea over time about which design features work best on our bodies.  For example, I have learned from experience that I love modal sundresses. But typing modal into a website search bar is hit and miss (does zero results mean they have nothing in modal, or that you can't reliably search by fabric?  Or does it mean the modal sundress is labelled under the broader category of "rayon"?)  And to search for it in a real-life store, I'd have to read every single label.

Solution: a single, comprehensive search engine that does a fine, granular search of every single clothing store by clothing characteristic.

You can search for red and v-neck.  You can search for princess seams. You can search for Irish linen.  You can search by measurement, to screen out all the pants that you can't even pull up over your hips.  And it will give you the results for all the stores, or for all the stores with physical locations in your city, or all the online stores that ship to your city, or all the online stores that ship to your city with free returns.

Clothing stores' incentive to participate (and stores' and manufacturers' incentive to provide detailed information) is that this will tell potential customers that the store has the thing the customer is looking for. There are hundreds (thousands?) of clothing stores - dozens in my neighbourhood alone - and the very red v-neck or modal sundress I'm looking for could be right there in one of them, hanging in a place where passers-by can't see it.

Google Shopping could do it, I'm sure.  Currently it only seems to cover some stores, all of which appear to be major chains.  But if they could use their power and influence as the search engine of record to tell literally every store "Give us your clothing specs in granular detail, and the customers looking for what you're selling will find you".  (I'd also be thrilled to see someone non-Google do it, but Google more likely has the influence to get all the stores to participate.)

Civic Holiday should be Emancipation Day

I'm 37 years old, I've lived in Ontario my entire life, and it's only this year that I learned a) August 1 is Emancipation Day, b) Caribana is a celebration of emancipation, and c) John Graves Simcoe, after whom Simcoe Day is named (Civic Holiday technically being called Simcoe Day), was instrumental in abolishing slavery in Canada.

This information has always been available, it just never reached me.  In my life some people have been pedantic about calling Civic Holiday "Simcoe Day", but I was like "Yeah, yeah, yeah, another politician from history, whatever", and didn't bother to actually look at his legacy.  And with Caribana, I was like "Yeah, yeah, yeah, cultural tradition, whatever", without bothering to look into its origin and meaning because it isn't for or about me.  I never even realized that they're related and that the backstory is of interest!

This needs to be made more glaringly obvious.  Because the end of slavery is definitely worth celebrating and being celebrated by everyone, and not everyone knows that this is what is being celebrated.

Solution: rather than calling the Civic Holiday "Simcoe Day", we should name it "Emancipation Day".  It can either be celebrated in August 1 or on the first Monday of the month - people more knowledgeable of the nuances can make this decision.

But they should put Emancipation Day right out front, printed on our calendars on the day people get off work, so even clueless idiots like me will notice what it's marking!

Things They Should Invent: legally binding #StealThisIdea

TV writers on Twitter keep telling people not to tweet show ideas at them.  Apparently if you tweet an idea at them, they're not allowed to use it for legal reasons, and that could mess things up if they already have an episode using that idea in the pipeline.

As a person who has a lot of ideas but isn't equipped to actually execute them, I find that disheartening. I would be thrilled and delighted to see any of my ideas (for television episodes or otherwise) actually brought to life.

They should invent some legally-binding way of marking ideas you post on the internet as being freely stealable, so the people who can make them happen can make them happen. (BTW, that is the intention behind my Things They Should Invent, Free Ideas, and Research Ideas blog categories. Take it, implement it, and I'll be thrilled)

And, of course, if you don't want people stealing your ideas, you can just not mark them as such.

The #StealThisIdea hashtag seems to exist, and would do the job nicely.

Unfortunately, like all my ideas, I have no idea who can actually make this happen. But if they do stumble upon this post, I hereby formally authorize them to steal this idea.

Things They Should Invent: replace emergency room waiting rooms with beds

I previously came up with the idea that emergency room waiting rooms should be sleepable.

After having been to the emergency room myself recently, I have a better idea: there should be no waiting room whatsoever, and patients should do all their waiting in beds.

You show up at the emergency room, get triaged, and then are put directly in a bed.  Not necessarily admitted to the hospital (in the sense of expected to stay overnight), but, unless medically contraindicated, every patient goes straight into a bed.

Ideally each bed should be in a private room, but that would require extensive renovations, so in the interim wards are fine. At a minimum, each bed should have privacy curtains around it, a chair for a support person, and somewhere for patients to put their shoes, coat and purse once they get into bed. It should be dark behind the curtains by default, but there should be a light the patient can turn on.

Patients wait for medical treatment in this bed.  Whenever possible, the medical professionals come to the patient and do stuff like physical exams and taking blood at the patient's bed, although the patient may be taken elsewhere if particular non-portable equipment is needed.

This way, patients can sleep if they are capable of doing so, and rest comfortably in any number of seated or recumbent positions or anything in between. Patients also have privacy from other patients, and probably less exposure to other patients' germs.

Being in a hospital bed would also make the patients more, well, patient (sorry!) with the situation, because they'd feel more like they're getting care. If you're admitted to a hospital, you're put in a bed and lie there resting, with medical professionals occasionally coming in to check on you.  Waiting in a bed would feel exactly like that, whereas waiting in a chair just feels like waiting.

If I had been put in a bed when I went to the hospital with my head injury, I would have spent those six hours lying in the dark with my eyes closed - as is recommended for concussion patients! Children with fevers or flu symptoms could sleep if they are able while their worried parents wait for them to get checked out. And all manner of patients whose symptoms come on at night wouldn't have to choose between seeking medical care and getting a full night's sleep.

Q: What about patients for whom sleeping or lying down is medically contraindicated?
A: They could continue to do whatever it is they do now. But that's no reason not to make things better for the many patients for whom sleeping or lying down is neutral or beneficial.

Q: Wouldn't this cost money?
A: Probably. And it would make things better. That's what money is for.

Things They Should Invent: paper shredders with multiple plastic bags

Some recycling providers want you to put shredded paper in plastic bags.

Special plastic bags are in fact manufactured for this purpose, designed to fit neatly into the bin of a paper shredder.

But this is a security problem.  If you shred a document into a plastic bag, all the pieces of that document are conveniently grouped together in the same bag, whereas if you dump loose shredded paper into the recycle bin the pieces all intermingle with the other recycling (including other shredded paper).  If someone wanted to reassemble the shredded document, surely it would be far easier if all the pieces were in the same bag!

But what if there were multiple bags in the same shredder? For the sake of argument, let's say there's three bags.  The left side of the document goes into one bag, the middle of the document goes into the second bag, and the right side of the document goes into the third bag.

At first glance, this sounds even worse for security - now you have an approximate idea of where on the page the various pieces belong!

But I think it would improve security in a building with multiple shredder.

For example, let's suppose we have an office building with 10 offices, each of which has one shredder, each of which produces one shredder bin of shredded paper per recycling pick-up period.

With one bag in each shredder, you have 10 bags of shredded paper in the building's recycling bin.  If you can locate the bag containing the document you're looking for, all the parts of that document are there. If you're looking for all shredded paper from a specific office, you find one bag and you've got it all.

But what if each of those shredders had 3 bags in it?

Now there are 30 (smaller) bags of shredded paper in the building's recycling bin.  If you can locate a bag containing part of the document you're looking for, you have to find the correct two of the remaining 29 bags to reassemble the document. If you're looking for all the shredded paper from a specific office, you have to find three of the 30 bags.

Even if you steal all the bags and start going through them, it's more time consuming to find the correct three of 30 bags than to find the one correct bag and disregard the rest.

I still think throwing loose shredded paper into the general recycling bin is best for security, specifically because it makes a mess and gets everywhere.  But if it is necessary to contain shredded paper in plastic bags, a system of multiple bags per shredder would increase security in all instances except where the bad guy is standing right there watching the shredded paper be thrown away.

Things They Should Invent: customize the user-facing appearance of Word without changing documents' appearance

As I'm dealing with vision issues resulting from my head injury, I've been contemplating whether changes to the appearance of my computer interface would make things easier for me. Perhaps a light grey or beige background rather than stark white? Perhaps a different font might be easier to read?

The problem is that, as a translator, I'm expected to deliver my translations with the same formatting and appearance as the client-provided source text.  So if I were to change the background colour or the font, I'd have to change it back before delivering the text. Since some texts have specific and complex client-provided formatting, changing it back would be time-consuming and increase the likelihood of introducing errors that would make the client unhappy.

I would really like to be able to change the appearance on my screen without changing the underlying formatting - like imposing my own style sheet upon what I see.  Web browsers have accessibility options that let you override a webpage's formatting - I'd also like to be able to do this in a Word document.

Early versions of Word (circa 1993) had the option of making the interface look like WordPerfect 5.1, which many users at the time would have been accustomed to. However, the final document wasn't grey text in whatever font that is on a blue background - the final document was text in the colour selected by the user, in the font selected by the user, on the background selected by the user.

Word could do this in 1993. So why not also do it now, so people with visual issues can work on an eye-friendly interface while creating a document that meets the graphic and/or layout standards of their employer or their client?