Although the deadline for submission is next Monday, your ability to participate in selecting the best ideas will continue:
Since Sliced Bread is so serious about finding and rewarding good ideas a panel of respected thinkers and community leaders will choose 21 finalists and public voting will determine the top three ideas. The winner receives a grand prize of $100,000 and our commitment to work to make the idea a reality. The two runners-up take home $50,000. All 21 ideas will be featured in a book to be published in 2006.As the LA Times story points out some of the 16,399 (as of this posting) ideas submitted are "wacky," but the simple act of asking is a good example of common sense itself. Clearly the outpouring of response says something about the pent up demand for real solutions to problems -- as opposed to partisan rhetoric designed to inflame and secure support within one's own base, (regardless of whether that base sits on the right or left of the political map) offered under the guise of being a solution.
If the contest happens to promote the SEIU as smart thinking and creative, they have earned it, at least for this project.
A hat tip to Workplace Issues Today, from the good folks at Cornell who every day keep me informed of things, like this, that I have missed elsewhere.