Friday, March 02, 2012

(Hopefully) coming to a classroom near me

God Bless the Japanese. Since the end of World War II, they have come out with many electronic gizmos, but this one takes the cake! Here is the headline and synopsis from a Fox News article:
JAPAN INVENTS SPEECH-JAMMING GUN THAT SILENCES PEOPLE MID-SENTENCE

Japanese researchers have invented a speech-jamming gadget that painlessly forces people into silence.
Kazutaka Kurihara of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Koji Tsukada of Ochanomizu University, developed a portable "SpeechJammer" gun that can silence people more than 30 meters away.
The device works by recording its target's speech then firing their words back at them with a 0.2-second delay, which affects the brain's cognitive processes and causes speakers to stutter before silencing them completely....
You know how teachers are always complaining about having to pay for classroom supplies out of their own pocket? In this case I would gladly dig deep in order to get my hands on one of these devices! I would get one for my wife, too. She teaches a bunch of inner-city first graders who are even more verbose and disruptive than the middle schoolers with whom I deal every day.

Yeah, yeah - so the device is a little Orwellian. C'est la vie.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

5 comments:

Larry Sheldon said...

So many applications.

Marj said...

Ah... But it can be overcome. Ask any stadium announcer.

Darren said...

It's very Orwellian if, instead of joking about how every teacher would want one, you imagine govt using it at rallies....

W.R. Chandler said...

Just trying to find some good out of a bad situation.

Darren said...

I still want one.