For anyone who hasn’t seen or heard it, Genius is a BBC Radio 4 show, which recently also aired on TV (BBC 2). The premise of the program is to get members of the public to submit their ideas, after which host Dave Gorman and a guest celebrity “genius” will analyse the idea to determine the intelligence of the submitter. However, these ideas aren’t always the most standard of thoughts or inventions. Ideas such as the Democrabus; a bus where all passengers have their own steering wheel and the bus goes the way of the majority, the Torture Box; a box into which inanimate objects which have in some way wronged you are placed in order to punish them, and Cat Bars; clubs where women sit at a table having a few drinks whilst enjoying the delights of having a cat wander over to their table to be stroked for their pleasure, are just a few examples of the sorts of thing which can be expected. To see some of the televised episodes, look here: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bbc+genius+gorman&search_type=&aq=f.
So, introductions over, what’s this post about. Well, I’ve been busy submitting my own ideas for Genius; though so far have heard no word of a new series. So, in absence of further knowledge, I’ve decided to pop up a post of these ideas for all to enjoy. I hope you do.
The Hover Lawnmower
A device with spinning rotors on the bottom; two things spring immediately to mind. So why not combine these to reuse the rotation, and lose the wheels. This would allow an all-terrain lawnmower, able to cut grass on land or water. Adjusting the shape of the blades to a simple propeller design, and putting a skirt around the edge to focus the flow and reduce grass-throw would make this the perfect pitch preserving device.
Left Hand Man
Like a right hand man, but more creative. Your right hand man is someone who helps take care of all of the tasks you need to do and issues you need to resolve. Your left hand man helps you resolve some of the more design oriented problems, such as choosing the right shade of almost-white to paint the walls, choosing which songs to put on your iPod before jogging, and selecting spices to liven up your chicken pie.
Also available in this range are the right and left hand women (useful if you need to work on several things at once), and the foot range, popular with the upper classes.
The Jigsaw Shredder
Worried about identity theft? Then you need the Jigsaw shredder. This cunning device takes your sensitive documents and turns them into 1000 pieces of criminal entertainment. By moving from strips of paper to puzzle pieces, the task of reassembling the document becomes far more enjoyable. This, you think, may be counter-productive; however it’s actually counter-intuitive. By making the task more enjoyable, you’re encouraging the criminal to take up a new interest, helping to replace their bad habits with wholesome hobbies. Now, I know what you’re thinking. . . what about the edge pieces. If they can get the edge of the document together, they can reassemble my document in no time, making it far too easy to reassemble, thus completed too quickly for the seed of a hobby to be planted. Well, that’s the genius bit. Once a jigsaw shredding has been made, the edge pieces are removed and burnt. This burning of pieces produces enough energy to power the machine (whereas burning all the pieces wouldn’t be environmentally friendly).
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