Tuesday, November 29, 2005
- Time to bone up on your Greek alphabet, kids...tropical storm Epsilon (that's ε for us ancient geeks) is cooking in the Atlantic. The good news is, we're still about 20 storms away from Hurricane Ω. Just wait 'til next year...
- A UK inventor has developed a sonic device called Mosquito™, which emits a high-pitched whine that reportedly discourages teenage loitering:
Howard Stapleton's device, which emits ultrasonic sound waves that can normally be heard only by people aged under 25, has captured the public imagination at a time when confronting yob culture is one of the contentious political issues. In the course of a week, he has appeared on national breakfast television and been profiled in newspapers, and is now in the final stages of negotiating a major order with a chain of convenience stores.
Interesting. When I was quite young (under 10 or so) I remember hearing high-pitched whines around department store jewelry counters and inside certain banks. My parents thought I was nuts because they couldn't hear the sound, but later I discovered that many stores used ultrasonic alarms that emit sound at about 25,000-30,000 kHz - too high for adults to hear, but still within the range of young kids' hearing. Ah, those were the days...
He claims the device, named the Mosquito after the flying insect's notorious whine, does not cause pain but is so irritating that young people will not linger in an area where they can hear it. Explaining the rush of interest in his product, Mr. Stapleton said, 'With this trouble in France, it looks like we are descending into gradual anarchy. They have picked up on a novel idea that's really needed.' [icWales.com]
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