AN American inventor wants to patent a way of sending a message from beyond the grave — a video-screen tombstone.
The device is the brainchild of Robert Barrow of Burlingame, California, the British weekly New Scientist reports in Saturday’s issue.
The hollow headstone houses a computer with a hard disc or memory chip that allows the deceased to relay a video message via a flat LCD touch screen.
“They might relate their life stories… or worse: they could confess to lurid indiscretions,” the British weekly says.
The tombstone would draw its electrical supply from the cemetery’s lighting system, and to avoid disturbing other visitors, people can listen to the message through wireless headphones.
Electronically-enhanced tombstones are not new, however.
Other inventions include a gravestone that displays a collection of the deceased’s photographs, alongside tributes from that person’s friends.
By: Moggy C - 2nd December 2015 at 23:17
Yes, looks like America is going to need even more guns.
Moggy
By: trekbuster - 2nd December 2015 at 21:03
Oh no, not again. This looks awful.
By: John Green - 16th November 2015 at 11:54
Re 262
JB
More research needed – you’re very wide of the mark ! Yes, we are fortunate that you entered WW2 when you did, in response to a declaration by Germany and a first strike by Japan. Otherwise we might not have had the benefit of your expertise until perhaps 1944 – shades of the 14-18 conflict !
Orders and purchases of war material kick started an American economy that was severely in the doldrums – Roosevelts New Deal apart. Before the US sold a single round of ammunition to this country we had to pay – up front. The Us Govt. sent a warship to Capetown to remove some of our gold reserves as payment for goods.
Britain was the biggest foreign investor in the US prior to WW2. You distrained on those assets. Just a few years ago, we paid you the last of the ‘pounds of flesh’ in final settlement of our war debt.
Yes, you’re some ally.
By: charliehunt - 16th November 2015 at 07:14
As a bemused onlooker I would say the anti-UK/anti-US living-in-the-past contributions are about evenly matched!!:(
By: paul178 - 16th November 2015 at 06:57
You love making friends don’t you?
By: J Boyle - 16th November 2015 at 03:26
The world was a deal more pacific under Pax Britannica rather than Pax Americana.
If that were the case, you’d still have an empire instead of being kicked out of most the the countries you once ruled. 🙂 🙂
BTW: Pax Britannica wasn’t working so well by 1917…or in the first years of WWII. 🙂
There was a lot of isolationist sentiment in America, much of it having to do with WWI. American moms weren’t keen on sending their sons to Europe, for the second time in about 20 years, to fight another of the countless European wars that had been going on for centuries.
(Isn’t there some of that sentiment…”It’s not our fight” in the UK now about the mid-east? Same principal at work. Recent events may change some minds about that, as terrorism spreads. But in the US in 1940, Germany nor Japan were seen as a huge direct threat. If the English felt protected by the Channel, imagine how many Americans felt with the Atlantic and Pacific to shield them. The aircraft carrier battles and the V-2 lay in the future, and seemed the stuff of Jules Verne. Think of how Americans felt about defense given 1930s technologies of our potential enemies).
The fact is, the UK rashly declared war on Germany…a war it wasn’t prepared for. I think the history of the BEF and French show that.
The UK needed US material from well before 1940…then it needed US manpower…and food and fuel and arms.
You even got the American taxpayers to pay for a great deal of it. Yes, America made money on prewar arms shipments, but I doubt those paid for the tens of thousands of aircraft, ships and vehicles eventually given to the UK.
Churchill wrote in his memoirs the night of Dec 7 “…I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”
By: J Boyle - 16th November 2015 at 03:13
What a crass statement, seeing as the whole of Europe and a large part of the world are today remembering the fallen from those two conflicts, one of which you would not have took part in but for Japan.
Posters here keep saying America should mind its own business. We tried in both wars, but the UK wanted us in.
Make your mind up. 🙂
So, you’re against Americans having guns…except when you want them to fight for you. :):) 🙂
By: Snapper - 16th November 2015 at 03:07
There was an occasion I was handed an AK47. “It’s an AK47” I told the Police Sergeant Firearms Instructor.
“Yes” he said. “But which AK47?”
I looked at it baffled.
“Ummm…. No idea. They all look the same to me”
He smiled. “It’s Michael Ryan’s AK47”
I remember looking around for somewhere to safely lay it down and then instinctively wiped my hands on the fabric of the suit we wore on the range.
It’s only wood and metal, but I swear you can feel the evil.
Moggy
Some expert he was. It wasn’t an AK47 it was a Type 56-I which is a Chinese copy of the AKS.
Just being a pedant.
By: RpR - 9th November 2015 at 20:34
Shrinking level of Police intelligence more like in this case. BTW are the KKK still active in that area?
Never were up here, too many German and Scandinavian Lutherans and Catholics, the KKK broke from a different denomination.
By: paul178 - 9th November 2015 at 17:33
Shrinking level of Police intelligence more like in this case. BTW are the KKK still active in that area?
By: RpR - 9th November 2015 at 03:27
Fair enough, if that really is your stance on guns…..but here…
…(as I said in my post) you did seem to be blaming the problem on a political viewpoint, no?
The problem is as seemingly serious as some politicians think strictly because of politics and laws they passed.
This goes beyond firearms and homicides to the point of the shrinking level of intelligence shown by youths in the U.S. in many matters.
By: John Green - 8th November 2015 at 18:55
You mean like 1917 and 1941? 🙂
Aside from those two events…I’m not sure that is an argument an Englishman should make given the country’s colonial/imperialist history. 🙂
More than a bit late to the table ! England’s imperialist history ? A force for good. The world was a deal more pacific under Pax Britannica rather than Pax Americana.
By: Bruggen 130 - 8th November 2015 at 17:14
You mean like 1917 and 1941? 🙂
Aside from those two events…I’m not sure that is an argument an Englishman should make given the country’s colonial/imperialist history. 🙂
What a crass statement, seeing as the whole of Europe and a large part of the world are today remembering the fallen from those two conflicts, one of which you would not have took part in but for Japan.
By: Creaking Door - 8th November 2015 at 08:08
Fair enough, if that really is your stance on guns…..but here…
Perhaps putting the insane back into the asylums the liberal freed them from may help but then liberals control the press and Washington right now so that is not going to happen.
…(as I said in my post) you did seem to be blaming the problem on a political viewpoint, no?
By: RpR - 8th November 2015 at 05:53
I wish you advocates of a ‘well regulated militia’ would at least have the guts to just admit that you like guns, you want guns and you feel safer having them around…
Where did anyone say otherwise?
By: RpR - 8th November 2015 at 05:48
Yes, yes, yes, so you’ve said. Did you ignore the bit where I said about not a gun in every classroom, or is that your entire argument and answer to everything? Rather than re-educate Americans about guns you would rather surrender the initiative to the threat and even create opportunities within a place that should be a sanctuary from such things. (And you said moronic quip about my enquiry!)— OK, put up signs that say — guns are not allowed on these premises
Nice – blame the mentally ill for each massacre, but would taking them out of the equation actually have an effect? Why not ban the mentally ill from owning or having access to guns, or does that infringe on the rights of Americans to own guns?
Oh, but when was the last massacre actually caused by a truly mentally ill person – rather than by somebody with depression, or who felt the world owed them a life that they hadn’t had until now, or who wanted to get revenge on society for perceived injustices?
If you are in the mood for refusing a section of society their right to have a weapon (which, it seems, you are not) why not ban caucasian males? How many massacres have been carried out by African Americans, or females? —- The “experts” on the tele say they are mentally ill.
If you disagree write them a letter.Ok, if your sister (or brother, if you have one) carried out a mass killing that was reviled throughout the country would you want those weapons used to be returned to you, as a member of her family?
Would not really bother me as the weapon is a chunk of metal, nothing more.
By: J Boyle - 8th November 2015 at 04:22
Yes, thank goodness America never gets involved in other peoples’ business. Er…hang on a moment…
You mean like 1917 and 1941? 🙂
Aside from those two events…I’m not sure that is an argument an Englishman should make given the country’s colonial/imperialist history. 🙂
By: paul178 - 7th November 2015 at 21:38
Time for the whites to riot for a change!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34754889
Yes two(alleged) murdering black officers kill a young boy and shot his unarmed father!
By: Bruce - 7th November 2015 at 12:12
Good for you.
If you really care do something about it.
Quit your job, move to America, become a citizen and work to change things.
There, that solves it.Do that instead of being a bunch of blokes in another country who just p!ss and moan (and insult a nation most know nothing about other than what they’re told by others) about stuff they have no bearing on.
Look at it another way…how would you feel about some Yank (or Pole or Syrian) moaning about UK internal politics?
Hi John,
Don’t change the rules – you originally suggested I do something that made a change in my own country – I do, in a small way.
I have absolutely no issue with you or anyone else criticising how we live our lives here. By doing so, we can learn from one another. I certainly don’t believe we live in some sort of benign panacea where the sky is always blue and everything is wonderful. You might even find that I agreed with you!
As for p!ssing and moaning – Not guilty – I have an opinion on a subject that I feel strongly about. I take my information from your press, not ours. My viewpoint is humanitarian, and nothing else.
By: Moggy C - 7th November 2015 at 09:46
There was an occasion I was handed an AK47. “It’s an AK47” I told the Police Sergeant Firearms Instructor.
“Yes” he said. “But which AK47?”
I looked at it baffled.
“Ummm…. No idea. They all look the same to me”
He smiled. “It’s Michael Ryan’s AK47”
I remember looking around for somewhere to safely lay it down and then instinctively wiped my hands on the fabric of the suit we wore on the range.
It’s only wood and metal, but I swear you can feel the evil.
Moggy
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