This installation enables a live plant to control a machete. plant machete has a control system that reads and utilizes the electrical noises found in a live philodendron. The system uses an open source micro-controller connected to the plant to read varying resistance signals across the plant’s leaves. Using custom software, these signals are mapped in real-time to the movements of the joints of the industrial robot holding a machete.
Joshua Allen Stivers of Puyallup, WA recently received a patent for a "breakaway stethoscope." It works like a normal stethoscope, but breaks apart if someone tries to use it as a garrote to strangle a person:
Medical staff, such as doctors, nurses and technicians, are often required to deal with unruly and/or aggressive patients that may become violent and cause injury to themselves or others. Medical staff also often carry and wear a stethoscope while working and tend to rest the stethoscope around the neck and on the shoulders when not in use. Unfortunately, violent patients may see that as an opportunity to harm the doctor, nurse or technician by grabbing the stethoscope that is resting on the wearer's neck and strangle or injure the wearer and in some cases cause death. Thus, there is a need for a breakaway stethoscope that will separate into two or more pieces when forcefully pulled on or forcefully wrapped around a doctor's, nurse's, or technician's throat to prevent injury or death to the doctor, nurse or technician.
A quick google search reveals that stethoscopes become weapons disturbingly often. So it's kind of surprising that breakaway ones aren't already standard issue.
1915: Inventor Percy Terry of Los Angeles believed that he had perfected an ointment that would toughen the skin so much that it would become bulletproof. He envisioned "an army of bulletproof men who could advance with immunity against anything less than cannon."
He decided to test the ointment on himself. After rubbing it into his skin for several weeks, he shot himself in the face. Turned out, he wasn't bulletproof. He died at the County Hospital.
1961: Artist Niki de Saint-Phalle attached bags of paint to her paintings and then shot at them with a .22 caliber rifle, causing the bags to burst and the paint to ooze down the canvas. She called these her "shooting paintings."
She explained:
I shot because it was fun and made me feel great. I shot because I was fascinated watching the painting bleed and die. I shot for that moment of magic. . . Red, yellow, blue — the painting is crying the painting is dead. I have killed the painting. It is reborn.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.