A Humanitarian Engineering Problem

zrosener asks: "A have a friend who has ALS (Stephen Hawking's ailment), a particularly nasty disease in which her motor neurons deteriorate over time, slowly waylaying her. She is in pretty bad shape now, and her movement is restricted to moving her eyes, and very limited (1 inch in each direction) hand movement. She has very light bell that she uses to wake up her husband when she needs assistance, but as her strength wanes it is becoming less and less effective. She is afraid at night now that if something were to go wrong she would not be able to rouse her husband. My challenge to you is to design a noise-making-husband-alerting device cheaply and quickly assembled from strip mall parts (Radioshack, Walmart, etc.) that she could use with her extremely restricted movement. Buttons are out of the questions, as are anything that requires gripping. Analog answers are encouraged too! Please email all suggestions or post them."

Comments

Telepathy out of the question?

[JoshWurzel]

Dude, she's married. Her husband would be expected to be telepathic even if she could talk.

I have the answer!

[marcushnk]

My challenge to you is to design a noise-making-husband-alerting device cheaply and quickly assembled from strip mall parts

a two week old child!!

They're almost as acurate as clockwork!

Re:Well...

[inertia187]

Yes, I'm sure that this woman wants nothing more than to be felt sorry for. Lighten up. As sick as the Onion gets, it's not as bad as the people who's brains are so diseased that they can't t even ake a joke.

Hawking has already received the International Science League award for his invention, as well as a prestigious chair at the Helsinki Cybernetics Institute. He is also widely regarded as the favorite to win this year's Nobel Prize For Physics, and he recently received an honorary key to New York from Mayor Rudolph Giuliani after saving the city from the Galactons.

I'm surprised the AC didn't mention 9/11.