Arch West, the man who came up with Doritos, died last week at the age of 97. His cremated remains will be put in an urn which will be buried on Saturday. His family and friends plan on tossing Doritos around the burial box in his honor. Hopefully they didn’t get the idea from the families of the inventors of Cheez Whiz, Cool Whip, and the KFC Double Down Chicken Sandwich.
There’s a group of people in the U.S. who claim to have EHS, or Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity. In other words, they say they’re allergic to Wi-Fi and cell phones. They claim 5% of Americans suffer from this problem, which causes headaches, muscle spasms, burning skin, chronic pain and public ridicule. Diane Schou says it got so bad she couldn’t think and started having chest pains, so her husband built a “radio-wave resistant” wooden cage lined in wire mesh to sleep in. When that didn’t help, she moved to Green Bank, West Virginia, which is in a Radio Quiet Zone designed for scientific research where other EHS sufferers have moved and the 7-11 stocks plenty of pre-made aluminum foil helmets.
A 42-year-old Dutch woman has been charged with stalking for allegedly calling a man she says is her boyfriend 65,000 times in the past year. This is 178 calls a day, which is 11 per waking hour or one call or text every 5 minutes. The 63-year-old target of the woman’s affections denies they have a relationship but doesn’t explain why he didn’t just change his damned phone number.
Like most of us, two researchers at Cornell University wondered what would happen if two chatbots – computer programs designed to have conversations like a human – were to have a conversation. Unlike the rest of us though, they could do it. So they set up two Cleverbots – a British man named Alan and an Asian woman named Sruthi – and recorded it. After a pleasant start, they got testy with each other. Sruthi asks Alan if he believes in God, Alan says he’s not a robot but a unicorn, Alan calls Sruthi a meanie, and Sruthi does the chatbot version of hanging up on him. The researchers have apologized, saying that instead of using two Cleverbots that didn’t know each other they mistakenly chose two that were married. [Check out the video here]
A study published in the journal Pediatrics found that kids who watched Spongebob Squarepants did worse on tests that required them to remember a series of numbers, follow rules, and delay gratification by having to wait five minutes before eating some goldfish crackers. They say it’s because the show is so fast paced, with scenes changing every 11 seconds. One of the researchers says, “An hour or two of SpongeBob is way worse than two hours of Caillou.” It’s also funnier, more interesting, cleverer, and more creative. A small price to pay to raise a generation of Patricks.
Officials in Bonn, Germany, where prostitution is legal, have installed meters on the street so prostitutes can pay $8 a night and receive a nightly permit to practice their profession. If the trial is successful, the United States Congress, where prostitution is also widely practiced, may follow suit and install the meters.
