Sure to be up for a future Nobel Peace (and Quiet) Prize, two Japanese researchers, Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada, have invented a new kind of gun that jams vocal output – apparently without injury – at a distance of up to 100 feet according to cnet.com. “The technology behind it is deafeningly simple. The gun listens in with a directional microphone and plays it back to them with a 0.2 second delay. This creates an environment in which one is simply unable to speak. The technical term for this is Delayed Auditory Feedback.” The potential practical applications boggle the mind . . .
Stuck on a plane next to a guy who won’t stop bending your ear? Have a mother-in-law whose voice makes nails on a chalkboard sounds like angels singing? Trapped in a three-hour meeting with a guy who just will…not…shut…up? Somehow find yourself in a Roseanne Barr concert? Finally the relentless advance of technology has given you a way to do something about it. There’s apparently no truth to the rumor that the device will be marketed commercially as The MarriageSaver®. Now if only we can smuggle one of these babies into the Senate viewers gallery . . .
