Misc. Ramblings

Ahh, this is the life. The wind in your hair, the bugs in your teeth. Yes, the life of a dog with his/her head out the car window. But as any well dressed dog knows, you have to have the shades. Indeed, no fashion forward dog would be caught without them. In this case, they are called Doggles (see their site here).

Not only do they look cool, but they were used post September 11th to protect the eyes of search dogs from dust and debris. The site says the lenses are anti-UV coated, made of tough polycarbonate so they are shatter resistant, anti-fog, and foam padded to provide a good fit.

Speaking of Cool. Foreign Policy has an article (see it here) about "Japan's Gross National Cool." The main point is that Japan is in the process of reinventing itself. By moving from the economic powerhouse of the 1980s, that everyone was trying to emulate, to the globalization of its "pop music to consumer electronics, architecture to fashion, and food to art, Japan has far greater cultural influence now than it did in the 1980s, when it was an economic superpower."

Whether this is a Good Thing I can't say...Thanks to Joi Ito for the link.

Turn Your Head and Cough Robo Doc has come to town, or at least to Johns Hopkins Hospital (see the story here).

Billed as the world's first remote-presence robot by its manufacturer, InTouch Health Inc, the robotic system works something like an ultrarealistic video game, complete with a joystick for moving it about. Looking at a computer terminal, the doctor directing the robot sees what the robot sees and hears what the robot hears. At the other end, patients can see and talk to the doctor's face displayed on a flat screen that sits on the robot's "shoulders." All of this is connected to the Internet via broadband and a wireless network. "Many health care facilities and long-term care communities lack the resources to maintain a staff of all the medial specialists needed," says Kavoussi. "The robot has the potential to fill this vacuum by enabling remote medical experts to ‘virtually' consult with caregivers, patients, residents and family members at the point of care, whenever and wherever they are needed."

Somehow, I don't thing the developers of tele-medicine had this in mind...Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

Aloha!