We’ve all been there. A big storm hits, and the power goes out. Best-case scenario is it comes back on in a few minutes; worst-case scenario, the power stays out for a day or more. When the latter is the case, it is miserable. A lucky few may have generators, but even then you need to make sure you have gas at the ready to power the generator. With electric and fuel cell cars on the rise, a lot of homes will have a car in their garage that will be acting like a giant battery. Thanks to some innovation coming from the people at Toyota, we might soon be able utilize that car’s stored power to run our houses during an emergency. People at Toyota are working on an adaptor that would allow the car to be plugged into your home’s power grid. They say the car would be able to supply enough power to run a house for a week in an emergency. If you needed any more incentive to buy an electric or fuel cell car, this is one heck of a benefit to having one in your garage.
One of the most frustrating games in the world is one of those claw grab-machines you find at bowling alleys and arcades (are those still a thing?!). You know the one, you put in fifty cents, position a metal claw on a crane and lower it over the prize you hope to pluck out. Some people at a Nebraska bowling alley were trying their luck on just such a game when they spotted the grand prize, a real-life, living, breathing child sitting in the machine with the stuffed animals. The company supplying the machine was called and promptly let the kid out of the machine. The police were also called. They had just received a call from the mother saying her child was missing. The mother and child were reunited, and this marks the first time in the history of claw machines that someone got what they wanted out of it.
“I sent you an email, you didn’t get it?” Have you heard this before? Or maybe you’ve uttered it yourself. If you’ve ever sent mail via the post office, I’m sure you are familiar with a letter getting lost here and there. Regardless of your communication method, sometimes those messages get lost, never to be seen again. When Richard Plat wrote a message, stuffed it into a bottle, and tossed it into the Baltic Sea over 100 years ago, I’m sure he assumed it would also be lost forever. Now in 2014, that message in a bottle from 1913 was found. What are the odds of that?!? Furthermore, a museum in Germany helped to track the origins of the letter. They were able to track down the granddaughter of the message writer. She is 65 years old and was blown away to see this message penned by her grandfather over 100 years prior. The message was simple, it just asked that whoever found the letter respond, and it gave his address. With all the hiccups and glitches in modern technology, it’s funny to see something as simple as a piece of paper stuffed into a bottle, survive for a century in the ocean. Maybe sometimes the old method is better…unless it’s time sensitive, then you may want to stick with email.
Ugh, backing up a vehicle is such a drag! You either have to try and reverse your brain while you look through your mirrors, or you have to contort yourself into a twizzler-like twist to see straight out your back window. Now, some of you may be lucky enough to afford a car with a backup camera on it. If you are, you know how quickly you become reliant on the thing. It makes parallel parking a cinch, and forget about ever wondering where the family pet is before backing out of the driveway. Backup cameras make those situations an anxiety of the past. There’s good news for people like me who have only had the privilege of using a backup camera in cars I've rented or borrowed. The NTSB has ruled that in four years, by 2018, all new cars must come equipped with backup cameras. I'm all for it, these cameras save lives and make reversing a million times easier. We do, however, need to get this whole selfie craze under control before we haphazardly give another camera to most of America's teenagers. That aside, bring it on!
Jurassic Park is an awesome movie. That is a fact for a number of reasons, but mainly because dinosaurs walk the earth again. It would be so awesome to have dinosaurs walking the earth again…well, actually, maybe not. They would end up eating us, and that wouldn’t be fun. A wooly mammoth, on the other hand, would be cool. A giant, furry elephant?! Yes please! If you agree with me on that, you’ll be happy to hear that a group of scientists just preformed a necropsy (an autopsy on an animal) on a preserved wooly mammoth. During the procedure, they found blood and tissue samples like none ever found before. Thanks to the amazing preservation of the mammoth, for the first time scientists have the resources to not only learn more than ever before about this species, but in the future they could possibly clone one!!! Ok, I may be getting ahead of myself; there is a lot of scientific witchcraft and wizardry that needs to happen first. Not to mention a lot of ethical and scientific questions to answer as well. Putting all that aside though, seeing a wooly mammoth would be pretty cool I think.
