Why?

Well, in the past (and if you get me drunk enough I’ll no doubt bore you with the same story – again) I’ve had great ideas, kept them to myself and years later they are realised by someone else, who’s presumably getting rich from it.

Two things I’ve claimed to have invented/thought of years before they appeared were the rear parking sensor in cars. This stems from my childhood in around 1984 ish, when my younger brother had  Starbird and Intruder toys which had a simple proximity detector on it that made noises when you fired its lasers and they hit something. Back then I though why couldn’t you put them on the back of a car to warn you if you were going to hit something. A few years later, BMW (or whoever) came to the same conclusion.

My other (which hasn’t caught on so much) is the multimedia headstone. Again a few years back, I was musing how I’d quite like a modern, perspex headstone with an LCD screen connected to a web cam of me decomposing in my grave! A bit macabre, but educational, and the screen would also have my bio and photos from my life. It would all be solar powered. So I’m not sure about the perspex and web cam bit, but you can now get multimedia headstones, Vidstone.

I’ve two other great inventions in my head, one I’ve talked about to mates in the pub to solve the web micro payments problem, and the other about generating power by walking, which came from Trevor Baliss’ thoughts on the Electric Shoe. I’ve not told anyone about that, as it could actually make some money if I could ever get around to patenting it.

If other things crop up, I thought I share those here.

3 Replies to “Why?”

  1. Re: ‘Professor Brown’s World of Wonder’

    Dear Prof Brown,

    As you know, many (indeed – most) functions of the human body are completely automatic, and proceed in a way which requires no conscious effort from the person involved. At base level, one example might be the operation of the entire endocrine system; one might also remark that, say, the process of digestion proceeds completely automatically and autonomously. And, at (perhaps) a higher level, the beating of the human heart is also completely automatic.

    These processes are not merely automatic – no, the condition is stronger than that: these are processes which are _completely beyond_ the control of the human in which they are taking place. (No human is able to suspend the beating of his or her own heart, for example.)

    How strange, then, that the act of breathing – which is of course vital to life; and which is also, in the normal course of events, completely unconscious and automatic – _can_ be controlled. That’s to say: a human can consciously suspend his or her breathing, should he or she choose to.

    Why is this? And what might it tell us about the process of human evolution? Since the act is possible, there _must_ be some evolutionary imperative which has the allowed the possibility.

    If I may venture a theory, it seems to me that, since the only requirement for the suspension of automatic breathing is the ability to survive (if only briefly) whilst submerged in an aquatic environment, this must ‘prove’ in some way that the human species is ultimately evolved from lifeforms which lived in such an environment. That’s to say: humans musy have evolved from creatures which lived either in the sea, or on fresh water.

    But what is your view?

    Yours in wonderment,
    Mickey

    1. Though you make a lot of sense Mr Mouse, I prefer my own personal theory that it we were brought here by an alien race, purely for their entertainment. We were pitted against other alien races, and these preditors (though blind) could hear their prey breathing, and so as a defense mechanism, we developed the ability to hold our breath. I think this is far more likely.

      Yours Prof Brown

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