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Spidey Sense Gets Real
Among the breakthroughs demonstrated by the computer chip company Intel’s RealSense system is a cocktail dress from Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht that not only senses the wearer’s “mood,” but also acts to repel (or encourage) strangers who might approach the wearer. Sensors (including small LED monitors) measure respiration and 11 other profiles, and if the wearer is “stressed,” artistic spider-leg epaulets extend menacingly from the shoulder to suggest that “intruders” keep their distance (in which case the dress resembles something from the movie Aliens)—or, if the wearer feels relaxed, the legs wave invitingly. The experimental “spider dress” was showcased at January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Government in Action
■ Because Congress and presidents often change their minds, NASA recently continued to build on a $349 million rocket-testing tower in Mississippi for a “moon” project that had been canceled back in 2010. The now-idle tower sits down the road from a second rocket-testing tower being built for another mission—an “asteroid” project. Critics, according to a December Washington Post examination, blame senators who believe it smarter to keep contractors at work (even though useless) because, Congress and the president might change their minds yet again. Said a high-profile critic, “We have to decide…whether we want a jobs program or a space program.” NASA’s inspector general in 2013 identified six similar “mothballed” projects that taxpayers continue to maintain.
■ DIY Policing in Seattle: A Seattle Times columnist suffered a “smash-and-grab” break-in of his car in October, but was brushed off by the Seattle Police Department and told simply to go file an insurance claim. However, he and his energetic 14-year-old daughter located the perpetrators themselves by GPS and called for police help, only to be chastised by the dispatcher, warning that they could get hurt. Only when a local crime-fighting TV show adopted the case, along with the suburban Sammamish, Wash., police department, was the gang of thieves finally pursued and apprehended (resulting in charges for “hundreds” of smash-and-grab thefts). (Bonus: One alleged perpetrator was quoted as saying the thefts were undertaken “because we knew the police wouldn't do anything.”)
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Wait, What?
When someone swiped the iPhone of Adam Wisneski, 31, on Jan. 2, he rode his bicycle to Chicago’s Shakespeare District police station to file a stolen-property report. He parked the bike inside the door, filled out the form, prepared to leave—and noticed the bike was missing. He told an amused officer he needed another form. (Officers on duty said perhaps a homeless man who was in the station took it, and are “making an effort,” said Wisneski, to find it.)
What Researchers Do
The natural enemy of the “hawkmoth” (for 65 million years) is the bat, but thanks to a recent study by biologists at Boise State University and the University of Florida, we know the reason why so many hawkmoths are able to avoid their predator: They signal each other by rubbing their genitals on their abdomens, which somehow mimics bats’ own high-frequency sounds, thus jamming the bats’ aural ability to detect the hawkmoths’ locations. Professors Jesse Barber and Akito Kawahara, working in Malaysia, tethered a hawkmoth to a wire and then tracked a bat, using slow-motion cameras and high-definition microphones, painstakingly examining the results for a 2014 journal article.
Least Competent Criminals
Not Nearly Ready for Prime Time: (1) A potential robber was turned away from a store on East Harry Street in Wichita, Kan., on Dec. 11 after he demanded cash, explaining to the clerk that he “had six children and needed the money.” The clerk told the man he had too many kids. The man, apparently chastened, fled the store empty handed. (2) A masked man approached a clerk at Sam’s Mart in New Haven, Conn., on Nov. 29 and passed a note demanding money while pointing his finger at the clerk (perhaps an inept attempt to feign having a gun in his pocket). According to police, the clerk grabbed the finger and threatened to break it, sending the man fleeing into the night.
© 2014 CHUCK SHEPHERD
