The title of an idea by goff made me realize that a syndicated newspaper column could be made from halfbakery ideas. It would be about the length of an Ann Landers (advice to the lovelorn, etc.) column, and might show up in the same part of the paper. It would take next to no effort for jutta to simply select one interesting idea per week (or even per day) and send it off to publishers, possibly along with one or two pithy or pertinent annotations, and the current fish/croissant count. Of course, the column would encourage readers to view the entire idea and others, and to submit their own, on the web site. This would generate a reasonable amount of income for jutta for very little work. And with judicious selection of the ideas, it could even improve the world a bit by causing people to think more creatively for a few minutes.

Problems:

1) The added publicity would likely swamp the web site, flooding it with inane ideas and requiring expensive server upgrades.

2) Scott Adams would come along and rip off the idea with a Dilbert version, which papers would all prefer because of the Dilbert brand.

3) There's still the copyright issue. You don't want to be making money for yourself by publishing other people's copyrighted material, now do you?

Oh, well, a nice dream while it lasted.
-- beauxeault, Jun 11 2001

Halfbakery on the Front Page http://www.halfbake...e_20Front_20Page_3f
goff's idea [beauxeault, Jun 11 2001, last modified Oct 06 2004]

Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn has been publishing an occasional feature he called the "Idea Oven" (this was before the halfbakery got started) where he deals with halfbakery-style input from readers.
-- jutta, Jun 11 2001


Solutions:

1) Never mention the web site, only briefly explain that the idea was sent in by somebody, and do not specify an adress to send ideas to, this way only the best 27% would reach the website - and around 18% would stay because at first they would think "Oh.. must not be here - this looks like something different" - and I think we can cope with that many if we choose our paper carefully enough...

2) Only so many of the ideas on here can be made into a cartoon - those that can have probably been done at some point anyway - the others can't be used by Scott Adams... (if he wrote them up in a book we could call him to account!)... I would prefere this to Dilbert anyday!!! (and I've got a couple of his books)

3) Technically - isn't this already a form of publishing?... In anycase the crem-da-la crem of half-bakers should recieve an e-mail from Jutta (just imagine seeing "Jutta" in your inbox... woah! Be like speaking to Moses, just better) asking them if they'd be okay with it?...
-- Ossalisc, Mar 25 2004


Daedalus already does a column of halfbaked ideas each issue of Nature. A fine way to while away a few hours is to grab a big stack of Nature and read the Daedalus out of thiem. It is amazing what this guy comes up with - and he has been doing it for decades.
-- bungston, Mar 25 2004


My dad (a retired nuclear physicist) has been collecting Daedalus columns for at least 14 years, and reprints them (just for family and friends.) Great stuff!

David Jones, the author, seems to have been churning out one plausible idea a week since 1964!

Jones also has a couple of books out that contain selected ideas.
-- csea, Mar 25 2004



random, halfbakery