Here’s a great segment from 60 minutes on the ray gun I reported earlier.
If embeded player does not display try this: CBS NEWS VIDEO
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Category: Technology
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Getting Things Done
As I’ve learned I may have been practicing this new productivity method with this blog. I started this blog to make a note of one interesting thing or discovery a day. And maybe spread some of that information to others who may have similar interests as mine. I haven’t been very succesful in updating it everyday, in fact as you can see from the calendar on the side bar, I’ve left big gaps with no posts. But I’ve realized that I’ve also created a little depository of interesting things I’ve gleaned that I can go back to later. I will investigate this method better.
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Good use for annoying CAPTCHAS
I never knew it had a name but those annoying requirments to enter distorted characters to prove I’m a human are called CAPTCHAS.
“CAPTCHA” is a contrived acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” wikipedia
Now one of the computer scientists credited with the development of these want to do something constructive with all that wasted time entering useless words and characters.
This led me to think about other uses for wasted energy. Think of all that energy created at health clubs across America. Stair Masters, stationary bikes, weight machines… that energy should be captured and turned into electricity! I believe a popular fitness club could produce enough energy to power itself!
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US Military’s Ray Gun
Raytheon has created a “ray gun” type weapon called Silent Guardian for the US military. It emits an invisible beam of high-energy radio frequency. The non-lethal beam heats up the moisture on the skin inflicting pain.
I was unable to find any video of the weapon being demonstrated on anyone, but here’s a radio story of the demo for reporters and a video from Raytheon’s web site of the equipment.
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Google Ad triggers
I always find it incredibly interesting what verbiage in my post trigger the relevant Google ads on the right. Of course they are trying to sell you something, but it’s always interesting how it picks up on the words or phrases it thinks it can monetize. For instance, overnight ALL my ads turned into “diet” ads the moment I posted the word “diet” in a previous post. It will be interesting if a STRONGER word or phrase will break that hold that the word diet now has on the ad producer.
Company produces GPS triggered audio tours. Finally, a innovative use for all those GPS receivers out there.
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62 mile log flume
The longest log flume ever built extended over 62 miles running in the high elevations of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range of California. Built by the Kings River Lumber Company in 1890 to harvest the giant redwoods. Regrettably,
…the operation felled over 8,000 giant redwood trees, all over 2,000 years old. Of those trees felled, only 23% made it to the mill. The sheer weight of the giant trees caused them to shatter into millions of unusable pieces while the portions that were too large were blasted with black powder, but this method also proved unsatisfactory.
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New technology – Highly focused sound
In New York City a billboard emits highly focused sound that resonates within the skulls of passersby.
According to Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media ecology at New York University, the original revelation of subliminal advertising effects was a hoax.
In 1957, an enterprising marketing researcher named James Vicary announced to a breathless world that he had conducted an experiment in a movie theater in Fort Lee, New Jersey during screenings of the William Holden picture, Picnic. Vicary claimed that what he had done was to flash subliminal inducements during the screening of the film telling people to drink Coca Cola or to eat popcorn. His claim was that those subliminal flashes had actually increased sales of those items at the concession stand in the theater by some 38 percent.
This announcement took the country by [LAUGHING] storm. People basically freaked out over it. The networks swore they would never engage in practices like this. The New York State Senate passed a law against this kind of thing. Aldous Huxley appeared on The Mike Wallace Show [LAUGHS] and referred to it as something far worse than anything he’d imagined in Brave New World. It was quite a to do.
And the irony is that it turned out that Vicary had made the whole thing up.
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If only I had time
These guys make some incredible projects, if only I had time to try some of them! But it’s not just all electronics and gadgets they also do crazy stuff like zombie makeup, vampire teeth and origami. I just may have to make some time to try the foxhole radio project.