Jonathan Brun

Finding breast tumours

Since I just wrote about my Boob Booth idea, i thought I would follow up with this interesting TED talk about breast tumours and better detection methods. Let’s just say it’s all about breast density.

Since I just wrote about my Boob Booth idea, i thought I would follow up with this interesting TED talk about breast tumours and better detection methods. Let’s just say it’s all about breast density.

Feeling your way to a breast cancer cure

Over 23 000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in Canada every year. While the survival rate is fairly high (87%), much pain could be avoided with early detection. In my continuing quest to help woman (see makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com), I have devised a simple fundraising and educational device: a breast cancer sensing and awareness booth. Particpants attempt to detect tumors in artificial breasts.

The booth, shaped with female curves, will attract onlookers from far. Arriving at the booth, they step up to it and insert a dollar – like a vending machine. The slots protecting access to the sleeves open. The participant inserts their arms and feels two artificial breasts with a series of fake tumours in each breast. After usage, the participant must indicate the number of tumours in each breast. A paper receipt with the results, useful information on breast cancer, and ways to donate or help is then printed.

1. The participant would insert 1$ into the booth. (A)
2. This would open the slots (B)
3. The participant would insert hands and arms into the sleeves. (C)
4. The participant would feel the two fake breasts, each one with a different number of imitation cancerous tissues. (D)
5. Participant withdraws hands from sleeves.
6. Participant indicates how many cancerous tissues are in each breast. (E)
7. Answers are revealed and receipt with web address and reminders is printed. (F)
8. Shorter participants can use step (G) to place arms in sleeves.

Resources required:

• CAD drawing of device (which should be open-sourced)
• Artificial breasts with tumours
• Electronic Payment and receipt system

Me, presenting the idea!

Make your Girlfriend Happy – my side project

Relationships are complicated. For one, they rely first and foremost on your understanding of yourself, your needs, priorities and desires. Second, they rely on your ability intimately understand another human being with equally complex emotions, history and feelings. If humanity were given a grade for its romantic relationships, we would fail. Over half of marriages end in divorce and the vast majority of less formal relationships don’t work. To paraphrase Anna Karenina, “Happy couples are all alike, each unhappy couple is unique”. With that in mind, it seems like a service which promotes the commonalities of happy couples might help pull us towards a passing grade.

For one reason or another, I have kept this little side project off my blog. But alas, it has engulfed much of my time and is now receiving thousands of visitors a day. As with all projects, the idea has been growing over time. The original idea was born out of a discussion with some friends in Paris and was centred around a reminder service and mailing list for men in relationships. The next addition to the site was a registry type service where women can indicate their sizes and preferred brands for shoes, clothes, jewelery and lingerie along with secret wishes. We have been adding videos, tips, and games to the site with some ambitious plans for the year ahead. With Valentine’s day in just a couple of days away, maybe take this opportunity to think about how you can make your girlfriend or wife happy. Visit Makeyourigirlfriendhappy.com to see what all the hubbub is about.

Feel free to send comments and suggestions to me jbrun@jonathanbrun.com or, cyrano@makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com.

We’re on twitter too, click here to follow us.

Heck, we’re even on Facebook too, click here for that!

And, here I am introducing the site!

How to end domain squatting

Domain squatting is a major problem. Companies go around picking up every imaginable domain name in the hopes of reselling it or placing ads that generate revenue. This land grab slows growth and drives people and businesses towards less intuitive names. Many registrars allow you to grab a trial period for a domain before purchasing it further increasing the incentive to bulk grab names to test traffic before splurging the 5$ on the actual purchase. To solve this issue, we could raise the cost of domain registration and renewal and remove the trial period. Nothing exorbitant, perhaps 50$ or 100$ per domain – the revenue from the increased price could be donated to charitable causes, schools, hospitals or some other worthy cause. The effect would be increased revenues for our struggling public services and a reduction in domain name squatting.