Look familiar? Probably because that was your aisle-mate on the last time you flew on an airplane. Well, some countries’ airlines have finally realized that more than any other aspect of air travel, your seat-neighbors are the things that can make or break your experience.
Whether it’s a screaming or hyper-active child, a smelly unwashed person, a smelly heavily-perfumed person (did you know Brylcreem and Aqua Velva are still manufactured? And USED? By living, breathing humans in the 21st century? True story), or somebody that will just not shut the f@#k up while you’re trying to pound mini-bottles of booze to assist you in passing out and sleeping through harrowing turbulence (truly, the only way to fly), cramped seats, minimal legroom, shitty in-flight entertainment & food, or surly flight attendants have NOTHING on the annoying aisle-mate.
Fear not, though, my jet-setting friends! According to this article at Springwise.com, Malaysia Airlines and KLM Airlines are on the cutting-edge of using social media networks for something other than updates about what you’re watching on TV at any given moment (full disclosure: I fully enjoyed back-to-back viewings of Leprechaun V: Leprechaun In the ‘Hood and Leprechaun VI: Back 2 da ‘Hood on BET Friday night — and posted that shizz all over my Wall!)
Malaysia Air’s MHBuddy Facebook app allows passengers to see the profiles of friends (and likely friends of friends with public Wall’s) to coordinate travel dates with friends who are heading to the same destination within that time-frame, and to even elect to sit next to or near one another during the flight. KLM’s Meet & Seat service is even more interesting because it incorporates both Facebook and LinkedIn. This means that even if no direct friends are on that flight, you can still peruse the LinkedIn profiles of fellow passengers and choose seating based on those in similar industries or with similar interests. As Bob says, baby steps. There are still no guarantees that your seat-neighbor is a big fan of personal hygiene — but at least the conversation is interesting.
Remember a couple months ago when I was all excited about the advent of 3D printing, aka Star Trek replicator technology? Well, my past and our future have collided into this present happening, and it freaks me out!
Some smart cookies have already decided to monetize this amazing future-tech in the coolest way possible: by building and selling customized robots!
My Robot Nation gives robot enthusiasts the chance to design unique robot figures online and then uses a 3D printer to fabricate them to your specifications. The do a pretty good job of explaining the process here, as well as showing some of it here:
This is Jukusui-Kun, a new robotic pillow combo in the form of two polar bears designed in Japan as a sleep aid to combat snoring. Yes, seriously.
How is this miracle of science achieved? Well, the smaller bear-pillow contains a small sensor which attaches to the afflicted sleeper’s hand. This sensor monitors oxygen levels in the blood, which a microphone embedded in the larger bear-pillow records noise levels.
Both pillows feed this data wirelessly into a THIRD unit, a terminal that compiles and analyzes the data. When blood oxygen levels dip and noise levels increase at the same time, the “mama” bear is triggered by the terminal and gently brushes its paw across the sleeper’s face in order to induce them to roll over without waking them up (sleeping on one’s side instead of the back is believed to alleviate the snoring).
Interested? Well, too bad — the researchers who designed this not-at-all ostentatious device that nobody asked for will not be producing it commercially.
So Japan spent an obscene amount of money to design a robotic anti-snoring pillow device and fabricated it in the form of an adult and an infant polar bear (complete with baby bottle) that essentially does what my wife’s elbow does for free after I pass out drunk. With no plans to recoup the R&D budget by mass-producing it.
No, don’t get up, Japan — we’ll lick this climate change/famine/poverty/overpopulation/war/pollution thing in a jiff.
I’m not sure how I missed this, but apparently an insane person broke into the facility housing the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland back in April of 2010.
Let me break it down for you: this kid with zero security clearance was found inside the facility wearing “weird” clothes (I wear tweed sport coats all the time—I’m not weird, I just went through a very serious Belle & Sebastian phase in the late 90s) and rummaging around in some trashcans and was immediately arrested. During questioning, he claimed his name was Eloi Cole and that he was searching for fuel for his “time machine power unit” (police reports indicated this device looked a lot like a kitchen blender) when he was discovered. He also revealed that he had traveled back in time to sabotage the Collider:
“Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I’m here to stop it ever happening.”
Kids these days!
Seriously, how stupid are the Swiss & French police to be so confused by this? Weird clothes + garbage-fueled time machine that looks like something made by Cuisinart = an idiot who’s basically a real-life Cable Guy because his parents let him watch the Back to the Future trilogy way too much as a kid:
“Yes, Marty. You two do become assholes in the future!”
While I fully agree with Eloi that Kit-Kats are Satan’s candy, eating them seems like an alright trade-off for limitless energy and the elimination of poverty. Maybe he’s a big Ayn Rand fan.
But the most distressing aspect of this whole story is that security at the Collider is so lax that this nut-job was able to waltz right in, and that the police were CLEARLY not concerned about it, or the fact that he then escaped from the mental hospital they took him to post-questioning:
Mr. Cole was taken to a secure mental health facility in Geneva but later disappeared from his cell. Police are baffled, but not that bothered.
Switzerland, just because you’re neutral about everything doesn’t mean you get to be lazy, too.
Your tax dollars (disguised as grant money) at work:
According to Time Magazine, some brilliant psychologists in England requiring one more flimsy published study to secure tenure have concluded that some wine drinkers may perceive whatever they’re drinking as better or worse depending on what music is playing while they’re doing so.
So if you hate the band Disturbed (warning: not suitable for listening to. Ever.) and that friend of yours throws them on as part of their dinner party soundtrack in an attempt to be ironic, you may find the wine less tasty than if there was something more appropriately-ignore-able (think “sad Starbucks compilation CD”) playing in the background.
Of course, that sour taste in your mouth (TWSS?) could be because even the finest wine ever fermented tastes like shit when you’re chugging it in an effort to flee said dinner party and forget that you ever knew the host(s).
Thanks, Science. Now where’s my f@#king hoverboard?!!
It’s been a while (well, a few weeks) since Japan teamed up with Science to give me nightmares—guess they wanted to give the first few episodes of season two of The Walking Dead a few at-bats in my mindscape—but they are back on the job and better (worse?) than ever:
Basically, these are what will be applauding the zombie herds from the sidelines as they chase me through the southeast in my dreams. Because relentless undead hordes need a cheering section.
OK, the title is a bit misleading, in that I (and I imagine a lot of us) already think of our iPhones as robots. And with the release of the iPhone 4S and its introduction of Siri, the already-amazing devices certainly became much more robotic. But they still count on you for gettin’ around.
Peter, Phu and Keller at Romotive would like to put a stop to that. They’ve developed Romo, a mobile platform and app network that turn your iPhone into a moving, talking robot. For funding, they launched a Kickstarter page, and based on the response so far, it looks like they should be able to expand Romo’s capabilities a lot in the coming months—their goal deadline is Nov. 21st and they’ve already more than doubled it. This is good news, because in theory, the more money they receive, the more command apps they’ll be able to develop, as well as new hardware modules to attach to the basic base to enlarge Romo and (ideally) increase its functionality.
See, Japan? Not every robot has to be man-sized and terrifying. Ease us into the future…baby-steps!
My wife hates when I go off-topic and ramble in these posts, but a quick thought before the cuteness: sometimes, sticking to a pretty consistent blog schedule sucks—not everything I find interesting/funny/awesome fits the mold.
I know the last few months have seen a few holes pop up each week with nonexistent posts on various days, but Mystery Monday, Top Ten/Title This Tuesday, WTF Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday and Fuzzy Friday helps me focus on stuff that 1) interests me, 2) interests you (hopefully), 3) is (relatively) easily digested and quick to find and/or report on, and 4) provides the illusion of consistency when I’m out there in the wild trying to grow Ex-Boyfriend and am too busy to post every single day, or am out there in the wild trying to recover and recharge from doing exactly that.
The unofficial fifth benefit of the schedule is that when scary, tragic, horrible shit happens, it prevents me from going nuts and saying rash things on the internet (aka Eternity’s Big Book of Evidence and Embarrassment).
This is me taking a very long time to say I’m glad that what happened in Zanesville, Ohio earlier this week didn’t happen last night, or this post would probably be text-only, with “F@#K HUMANS!” in super-huge type. Jurassic Park was fun, guys, but a cloned tiger born and bred in a lab is not the same as one from the jungle—not even Science is that smart.
Once they’re gone, they’re gone.
(Photo courtesy of Marwell Wildlife Park and ZooBorns.com)
Can’t you just take ONE WEEK OFF from fomenting NIGHTMARES in my mind-grapes?! Do you know what kind of person sits around and thinks “Hey, what if we INGEST our perfumes instead of spraying it on topically? That’s TOTALLY something EVERYBODY’S been waiting for us to develop.”?
A CRAZY person. And, god bless him, let’s not forget what happened when Mr. Wonka tried to develop similar technology:
In FORTY YEARS the most we’ve been able to advance is going from anthropomorphic blueberries to weird, moist Edward Cullen lookalikes. Does this look like progress to you?!
As we’ve already discovered ad nauseum (literally), Japan loves re-purposing poop. So it comes as absolutely no surprise that TOTO, Japan’s version of American Standard, is promoting it’s new eco-friendly image with an upcoming 500-mile jaunt from Kyushu to Tokyo on its prototype Toilet Bike Neo.
What makes Neo a “toilet bike”, you ask? Well… it’s “powered entirely by the on-board biogas digester. Biogas systems use an anaerobic bacteria system to convert dead organic matter into a usable fuel primarily made of methane.” Theoretically, this hog could run forever, provided the driver’s nice an’ regular. Oh, and if pooping out in the open into your vehicle is not embarrassing enough for you, Neo also talks as part of this campaign. Because nothing makes you less self-conscious while pooping in public than the robot you’re sitting on shooting the breeze with you. Still—pooh-derived energy certainly beats nuclear meltdowns. Right?
our customers
