Scientists have now created an Artificial Intelligence model that can detect alien life, according to a study published in the journal PNAS. No, really. The new algorithm can distinguish between samples of biological and nonbiological origin more than 90% of the time after being trained using living cells, fossils, meteorites and lab-made chemicals, according to Live Science magazine. “Put another way, the method should be able to detect alien biochemistries as well as Earth life,” says Robert Hazen, co-author of the study. “These results mean that we may be able to find a lifeform from another planet, another biosphere, even if it is very different from the life we know on Earth,” Hazen speculates. “And if we do find signs of life elsewhere, we can tell if life on Earth and other planets derived from a common or different origin.”
Big deal. Our Fairfield neighbor Gary Borse has lifeforms from another planet dropping in to his place for tea and squid almost every week. “They’re very friendly,” assures Borse. “Sometimes they stop at Uppercrust on the way over to get cannolis. Bill Killeen thinks we’re all high on primo weed over here, which may be true, but we can still tell an ET from some guy from Cleveland. There was once a time when nobody believed Godzilla existed either and look how that turned out.”
Before you scoff, you should know that Gary offers open invitations to doubters to show up at future Space Jams at his helipad far above Reddick. “You have to enter into this with an open mind,” he stresses. “If you’re determined you won’t see any ETs, you won’t. Like with Tinkerbell.” By the way, bring your own refreshments.
Mr. Roboto
The robot overlords aren’t here just yet but a new video from an AI robotics company illustrates they might be closer than you think. A bot called Figure 01, infused with a dose of OpenAI’s magic potion, gave the entity “a new level of visual reasoning and language understanding,” according to a post on X from founder Brett Adcock. In a demo, Figure 01 can be seen putting away dishes, cleaning up trash and picking the winner of the fourth race at Santa Anita. As the bot moves, it does so with smooth precision, which means better than all you septuagenarians. Alas, its speaking abilities aren’t perfect---there’s a slight delay between the prompt from a human and the response. However, there’s been a dramatic speed-up in a newer robot, which approaches human levels.
In October of 2023, Boston Dynamics programmed one of their robot dogs to talk using ChatGPT, then let one of them (“Spot,” of course) act as a tour guide at their facility. In a video, Spot can be seen responding to difficult prompts from different human users, tossing cornhole beanbags directly at the targets and giving strategically placed fire hydrants a wide berth as he passes by. When a human complains of being thirsty, Spot veers off course down a side corridor. “Well, here we are at the coffee machine and snack bar,” the faux dog advises. Sure it sounds good, but the dimwit still won’t chase a ball.
Walk Like An Egyptian
Walking is a valuable form of exercise but for many people we know it’s a challenge. Aging, illness, muscle weakness all take their toll, which is why the South Korean company WIRobotics created WIM, a robotic assist device a would-be walker can strap around his waist and legs. The new invention reduces the energy needed to walk by about 20%, potentially allowing walkers to go further and feel less tired. The AI technology analyzes gait and predicts your movements, becoming smarter over time and giving you feedback on your performance. Where other wearable robots are designed to meet industrial and medical needs, WIM was developed for the general public to use purely when walking for exercise. The entire device weighs a mere 3 pounds and folds up to the size of a clutch purse. WIM can also be used in an exercise mode, providing resistance similar to walking in water and targeting specific muscles.
While you’re ambulating over the hill, you may suddenly feel the need to pee. Or maybe you won’t. For the latter crowd, which includes people with spinal cord injuries or neurological conditions like multiple sclerosis, a brain-bladder disconnect can cause infections, incontinence and other unpleasant symptoms. Those busy South Koreans are at it again at MEDiThings, debuting a wearable that uses infrared technologies to see into the bladder and tell the user (hopefully via a cute little jingle like the one below) it’s time to urinate via phone alerts. This also works for incorrigible sots. Called MEDiLight, the device is worn as a patch on the lower abdomen. Clinical testing is ongoing, as they say in Scienceland. “Hey, Mr. Schwartz, it’s your bladder here---let’s pull the plug and dump all that beer.”
Are they still hiring at Burma-Shave?
Every Home Should Have One
Sure they’re in greatest demand in nervous Kharkiv, but now everyone can feel safer cruising their property on a spanking new Demining Tractor. Devised out of necessity by a farmer from Ukraine to frustrate the Kremlin military, this unique device comes complete with protective panels stripped from deserted Russian tanks. A remote control device controlled by the operator sitting nearby guides the armored tractor meter by meter, checking his fields for mines. The vehicle can withstand most explosions, or so the farmer expects. In short supply, so order soon for pre-Christmas delivery.
Maybe you need a Carniverous Domestic Entertainment Robot to combat infestations of vermin or insects. The CDER lures unwary critters onto its surface, which contains a trap door triggered by motion sensors. Rodent victims trapped by the device are chemically dismantled and fed to a microbial fuel cell. The Lampshade Robot lures flies and moths to their doom and provides relief from the vast hordes of attack mosquitoes left over from the last tropical storm.
Remember James Bond’s tricked out Aston Martin from Goldfinger? It had everything---hidden machine guns, pop-out razor rims to slice pursuers’ tires to shreds, even an ejection seat. It’s hard to come by most of these vehicle improvements but you can still get an electronic license-plate flipper. The $79 Vehicle Plate Flipper flips down at a 90-degree angle at the press of a button. If you like, plates with special messages for the driver behind you are a hot item. There’s even a special $75 model for motorcycles.
The weeds are taking over your crop fields and fencelines and you’re scared to death of Roundup. What to do? The Autonomous Weeder will solve all your problems. Capable of taking out 100,000 weeds per hour, the AW uses high-powered lasers to blast those pesky sprouts into oblivion. And because this critter uses thermal energy to do its dirty work, the soil below is undisturbed. “Our labor bill went from $700,000 down to $300,000 since purchasing the Autonomous Weeder,” says Jordan Hungenberg, co-owner of Hungenberg Produce. “We had reduced farm costs, no more herbicides and most importantly, healthier crops. Besides, it’s big fun to go around zapping stuff.”
Kenji Kawakami is a giant in the world of wacky inventions and the founder of the International Chindogu (Weird Tools) Society. Among his hundreds of bizarre inventions are the mini-umbrella for shoes, eyedrop funnels and Swiss Army Gloves. As famous as any is Kenji’s world famous Hayfever Hat, designed to dispense a continuous flow of paper to combat the incessant sneezing caused by bothersome seasonal ailments. Inelegant, perhaps, but inarguably utilitarian. It’s the Cat’s Meow, which, by the way is also a mechanical jewel made in Japan which meows ten times a minute while a cat’s eyes light up on the surface. In retrospect, it is not quite the cat’s meow after all since rats and mice have not been fooled one bit by the phony feline. On the other hand, it doesn’t rip your sofa to shreds or bring home small dead animals. Wonderful if you’re desperate for a gift for lower echelon personnel at the office Christmas party.
Just Do It.
Are you one of those damaged people who craves scary theme park rides like, say, the Tower of Terror II at Dreamworld in Australia, X-Scream at Stratosphere in Vegas or Kingda Ka at Six Flags in Jersey? Here’s some bad news; you missed out on visiting Action Park in Vernon, N.J.
Action Park, alternately known as “Accident Park,” “Traction Park,” and “Class-Action Park” because of the many mishaps and even deaths that occurred there was home to the legendary Cannonball Loop, a waterslide with loop so dangerous it was shut down almost immediately after it opened.
The place was owned by “Uncle Gene” Mulvihill, an entrepreneur who had purchased a small skiing hill in Vernon. Though the ski season was great, Gene didn’t like the financial slump the place suffered in the off-season so in 1978 he added a couple of water slides and a Go-Kart track. Mulvihill, alas, knew nothing about building an amusement park, he was just playing it by ear and coming up with ideas that sounded like fun. “Dad didn’t want to do the same old stuff,” said his son Andy. “He wanted to take the idea of skiing, which is very exhilarating because you control the action, and transfer it to an amusement park. There’s inherent risk in that but that’s what makes it fun.” Or so you’d hope. “Inherent Risk” could well have been the actual name of Gene’s amusement park.
Action Park was a very wild place. It eventually featured 75 rides, 35 of them motorized and 40 waterslides, many of them self-controlled. It also had a pair of diving cliffs that stood 18 and 23 feet above a 16-foot deep pool below. Now you might think that the area below would have a blocked-off section where swimmers would be verboten and the next diver wouldn’t jump in until the area was cleared, as in most water parks. Nope, not at Uncle Gene’s place. The dive area was a free-for-all scene where the swimmers and divers had to look out above and below to avoid potential 23-foot collisions. You were on your own at Action Park.
Uncle Gene’s idea men had the idea that a regular slide was insufficient fun---“not fast enough”---so they created the Aqua Skoot. It used rollers like you’d find on an assembly line at a factory or a TSA checkpoint conveyor to make it faster. The customer went down on a small sled, hoping nothing got stuck in the rollers on the way down. The sled went so fast that when it got to the bottom and hit the pool of water the sled stopped and the rider kept going forward, eventually flying face-first into the water.
The Kayak Experience was a whitewater simulator in which passengers would try to ride the rapids in a mere kayak, Most of them didn’t and had to be rescued by a corps of lifeguards when the kayaks flipped and trapped them. The hilarious Colorado River Ride was similar to a typical rapids ride where customers are put into a tube and it goes down the rapids. But nothing was so simple at Action Park, where the rides were not laid out by professionals. The tubes constantly slammed into one another and came to sudden stops.
Then there was the fearsome Alpine Slide. This thing was a slide which ran down the ski hill under the chair lift. Riders sped down a chute like a slide riding on a sled with a brake to control the speed. Great, except the brakes often didn’t work. Sometimes, one rider would go slow and the one behind him would race faster until the two collided at great speed. The chutes were made of cement, fiberglass and asbestos, which made for a dandy landing field in case of ejection.
For a time, there were small tanks built for combat on a tennis-court-sized course with a giant battle cage. The tanks could shoot tennis balls at each other, which sounds like fun until you hear that after hours park employees doused the balls in lighter fluid and shot flaming balls at one another. All this was in a time when regulation of such parks was very lax and accident attorneys weren’t flooding the airways begging for greedy customers. Most of the injuries never made the headlines. There were broken bones, cuts, scrapes, sprains and plenty of bloody noses but, hey, nobody died, right? Oops! Well, almost nobody.
The first death happened on the Alpine Slide, which had already caused 14 fractures and 26 serious head injuries. In 1980, 19-year-old George Larson Jr. died when his sled flew off the track and George hit his head on a rock. The next wipeout occurred in 1982 when Jeffrey Nathan flipped out of his boat on the Kayak Experience and stood on the unprotected electrical wires of one of the fan units. Zappo!---Jeff was electrocuted. Two years later, a man died of cardiac arrest on the Tarzan Swing, which could happen to anybody who jumped into 50-degree water naturally fed from the mountain. Three more deaths occurred in the Tidal Wave Pool, which used fresh water instead of sea water, which provides more buoyancy. About 30 people a day were rescued from this attraction. Scary to think about, but not nearly as scary as the legendary Cannonball Loop.
Any loop ride can be problematic, but the ones we see today are under control. On high-speed roller coasters, the rollers of the train keep it on the track and the centripetal force keeps it on the loop. Theoretically, if you’re going fast enough, you wouldn’t even need the train to be connected to the track, it could just glide on top with the force being strong enough to keep it from lifting up. But this is now and that was then. People who experienced the Cannonball Loop did not have the benefit of physics of clever engineers designing the ride. Uncle Gene brought a guy over from Switzerland on a 30-day visa to throw the thing together. Visitors said it looked like the Cannonball Loop was just tossed together with spare parts Gene had laying around, which is probably not much of a stretch.
To experience the CL, the riders would enter at the top and get hosed down to help them slide through the loop, then begin the 45% drop through the slide. After dropping 20 feet, they’d get violently thrown into the loop portion and then spit out into a pool of water at the bottom. As a safety measure, if you’ll pardon the expression, people wearing zippers or buttons weren’t allowed to ride since they might get caught on the many seams of the ride. The Loop was essentially just small sections of a drainage pipe bolted together with seams every few feet. When Gene had it checked out, he sent down a few test dummies which exited the loop minus heads and limbs. Then he offered $100 to any employee who’d go down the thing, handing out the big bills at the bottom to the bravest teenagers.
After a few trips, they learned a couple of things. First, they needed a pad at the top of the loop. The 20-foot drop didn’t give the riders enough centripetal force so rather than being stuck to the outside of the loop by gravity they just sort of shot straight to the top, banged against it and fell down the other side. Gene added the padding, but riders were still coming out with cuts and scratches because the padding was filled with the teeth of earlier riders, embedded in the pads. Mulvihill also figured out they needed to cut a hatch near the loop to rescue riders who didn’t weigh enough or have enough speed to get through it.
The exciting Cannonball Loop opened in 1985 and closed 30 days later. New Jersey’s Board on Carnival Amusement Ride Safety said uh-uh, you just can’t do this. Turns out some people who went down the loop were experiencing 9 Gs, or nine times the force of gravity. For context, the craziest rollercoaster at your local amusement facility probably pulls 4 or five Gs at most. 9 Gs is almost deadly. The Blue Angels Navy Flight Demonstration Team does incredible acrobatic moves which top out at 7 Gs. Uncle Gene Mulvihill reluctantly dismantled his apparatus, complaining all the while.
Recalling his experience, here’s what a rider said: “I vividly remember the sensation of my feet going up as I realized ‘here comes the loop!’ I remember being ecstatic when I had cleared the pinnacle of the loop, however the worst was yet to come. Apparently, my sub-100-pound body was not heavy enough for the ride and rather than sticking to the slide on the back end of the loop, I actually fell to the bottom of the loop. I smacked the back of my head on the slide and was nearly knocked unconscious. It was then I saw light as I sputtered out of the exit of the tube. I was able to orient myself enough to get to my feet and smile with pride as the stunned crowd cheered for the little kid who just went down the most dangerous waterslide of all time. It was closed again within minutes and although I went to the park a dozen times after that day I never saw that slide opened again.”
So no more whining about those awful Ferris wheels, Alice. There’s not a single recorded incident where a Ferris wheel knocked out somebody’s teeth.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
