h a l f b a k e r yNot so much a thought experiment as a single neuron misfire.
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Recently I have got into the habit of spending the first hour of the day sneezing. This is not through choice but more because there seems to be a lot of grass pollen about, and my natural reaction is to sneeze a lot or alternatively to do that very-nearly-sneezing -but-just-not-quite-ah-ah-ah -nope-there-was-no-sneeze-there
thing. After an hour or so, my thick head realises that it's hayfever, and takes a pill. This helps, sometimes. The itchy eyes and blotchy face goes on all day though.
Surely it is not too difficult to use present technology to link an alarm clock with a pollen counter, whether a rooftop device or just a data stream from the Met. Office. Perhaps the same system could be used to scan the room for other local airborne allergens such as a slight over-quantity of cat hairs, for example. It is the user's choice (or should I say the sneezer's choice) whether to take the preventative medicine, but at least they can be told at the first opportunity.
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It'll wake you up five minutes early to give you extra time
to take the medicine too. |
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Is this page displaying half off-screen for anybody else in Netscape? Maybe it's just my font and screen size choices... |
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The paragraph width is forced out because of [sappho]'s
over-enthusiastic use of non-breaking hyphens in the first
paragraph. |
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You might as well go the whole hog with this one, and have it tell you whether to wear warm/light clothes, whether to take an umbrella or sunglasses.
It could hook up to the traffic news and wake you up earlier when delays are likely. It could even bake you a nice warm croissant. |
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have put a couple of spaces in my overenthused hyphens. Sorry for inconvenience.
Oh stupop, I'm not that lazy - I can see what the weather is roughly like, and I always carry an umbrella. But pollen aren't exactly visible. |
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sappho, you might like to try a smear of vaseline under your nose. don't laugh like that, I am serious. It is supposed to trap the pollen. |
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Simpler solution: An anthihistamine with an enteric coating. This is a well proven technology; a tablet with timed-release (as opposed to time-release) characteristics.
The tablet is coated with a number of semi-resistant layers which disintegrate at a know n rate. Eventually, the core of the tablet is exposed, releasing the active ingredient.
Take a tablet with a 6-hour or 8-hour delay on retiring to bed. If you go to bed at midnight, the 6-hour unit will release its payload at about 0600. This gives the medication a good hour to enter your bloodstream before your alarm goes of at 0700.
Simple, requires no batteries, easy to implement. All you need is an alarm to remind you to take the dose when you go to bed. |
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That sounds good, but I don't like taking medication when it's not needed, and tomorrow's heat and wind conditions are not always evident at midnight, making estimate of antihistamine necessity near impossible. Wouldn't this enteric coated pill be more expensive too? |
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