I hope this ride comes to life

First things first, I need to tell a little story about my childhood. When I was little, the best thing about Spring wasn't the weather or the flowers. Hands down, the best thing about Spring was this carnival that used to come in right down the road from me. To this day I still think about it every time the season comes around. There were five great things about this carnival.

1. The funnel cakes

2. The Gravitron Ride

3. The pictures of really sexy woman I would win from that game where you pop the balloons with darts

4. The fact that I knew the owner of the carnival so whenever I wasted money on games I would just talk to him and he'd give me the prize anyway.

Lastly, the BEST thing about this carnival was the fact that I had a best friend named Kyle with severe motion sickness. Kyle would throw up on the Spinning Swings, The Scrambler, The Gravitron, and basically any ride that spun at a decent speed. The fact that he would be consistently peer pressured (by me) into getting on these rides every year is actually still pretty fricken hilarious now. 

What makes Kyle so important to this post, is this video of concept carnival ride I came across. The video is the a model of a ride invented by Thomas Casey. The video calls it "The Rings of Saturn" I call it, "Kyle's worst nightmare."It's basically two Ferris Wheels that spin in all directions and allows the seats to spin. Every year there is some sweet new ride at some amusement park that is the new" Tallest" or "Fastest" ride. Six Flags and Disney World can have all those roller coasters. I just pray, for the sake of seeing Kyle on it, that this ride gets picked up and dropped off at the carnival near my house.

New Age Beer

The next time you visit a major sporting event, you could witness the magic of your beer filling up through the bottom of the cup. This new dispenser works with magnets allow the beer to flow up through the bottom. The new dispenser will surely lower the rates of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in vendors across America. I'm not quite sure of any other benefits that the dispenser has, but doesn't it look really cool? Hopefully this can cut down on the lines that grow heavily during the seventh inning stretch of baseball games. In a few years or so, this might be how you fill up your Diet Coke at McDonalds. This may or may not catch on, but it sure makes you wonder what other possibilities it may be used for.

Future of Cars?

On Saturday, Catharine Smith published an article for The Huffington Post about a new car system that would make driving easier, safer, and more efficient. The system works like a train of automobiles  on the highway. It's like train-cars that move in an out of the wireless system when ready. The train cars are have one professional driver in the front that controls all of the cars. This allows for all the other drivers to do basically whatever they want. You can sleep, eat, read, etc. on the way to your destination. The smarter we get, the lazier we get, but if it is safer, more efficient, and saves on resources who can complain? Stay tuned in the years to come. Sartre and Volvo are testing the system now in Europe. They are predicting it could take over ten years to get this wireless car system to run full steam.

Super Computer to Compete on Jeopardy!

On February 14th, the world will be able to witness something really magnificent. IBM has built a computer with a seemingly unlimited potential for knowledge. What is more impressive is that the computer named Watson is able to display its knowledge in the form of answers to Jeopardy! questions.

Watson will compete in a traditional game of Jeopardy! against champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Watson's  opponents are not normal champions, they are two of the top game show money earners of all time. Each has earned millions of dollars through the game of Jeopardy! Jennings won over 70 straight games of Jeopardy! to earn the bulk of his winnings.

Next month the showdown will commence. It's kinda scary how powerful technology is getting. Hopefully Watson isn't the next Skynet. I personally don't think the humans have a shot, simply because I think the computer can hit the buzzer faster than them but who knows. What do you think?

Is Cash A Thing of the Past?

Starbucks likes the reputation of being modern and customer friendly. They have free wifi, their drinks have fancy Italian names, and they position their coffee shops in classy places like Barnes and Nobles. They may have outdone themselves with their latest idea though.  Starbucks has announced that you will now be able to pay for your orders in many of their stores with a bar code straight off your smart-phones. They hope this will make those purchases a lot quicker.

Now people can buy those new 31 oz Super Coffees and get cracked out on caffeine in record time. All jokes aside, this really is some interesting technology. An innovative move such as this begs the question, what is next? Will all chains start using technology like this? Soon we may not need wallets or credit cards. Do you think this is for better or worse? Will you be using the Starbucks App?