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Techno Bra will alert Authorities
Wonko42 writes "This is really strange. A British inventor has apparently created a bra that monitors its wearer's heart rate and can tell when she is in danger. Using its built-in wireless phone, the techno-bra calls the police (or the wearer's boyfriend) and, using the built-in GPS locator, it relates the exact position of the wearer. Um...interesting....and there's more in the article. "
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any pictures of it, but I wonder how stylish it may be.
10. It monitors your heartrate and if you get excited it phones your boyfriend.
9. If you havn't got a boyfriend it phones a muscular policeman.
8. If the police are busy servicing other girls it phones an escortcompany.
7. You can set the dialtone to vibration.
6. The gel-like substance is really nice for sensitive nipples.
5. You can post comments on slashdot like this on slashdot by just connecting to laptop and fiddling with your beasts.
4. Using the GPS and a log function you can backtrack and find all your clothes from last night.
3. If your boyfriend is a geek, maybe this techno-bra will cause him to play less with his computers and more with your tits.
2. Gives a new meaning to the term "silicon valley".
1. You can get it for free if you are a long legged 36DD blonde and agree to provide advertisment space.
you know, something like this could be potentially more useful for detecting heart problems like heart attacks. it's been well established that heart related problems in women tend to get overlooked by doctors.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
I recall seeing this in Wired and thinking that it's pretty ridiculous. The inventor is basically asking women to cede their right to protect themselves ('course, IIRC it's made in Britain; they've already ceded that right) and rely on a 'speedy' police response. Given that, at least in the US, the police do not have the responsibility to protect any one person (merely to do what they can, or something similar; this is a Good Thing(tm), since otherwise the families of murder victims could sue willy-nilly), this seems ill-founded at best and downright dangerous at worst.
Which would you rather have were you a woman (I imagine that a few of us on Slashdot are; maybe they could reply): a techno bra, with a 5-30 minute response time; a can of mace, which is often ineffective against a hopped-up attacker and is often used against the wielder (they are very close-range weapons, and are fairly easy to wrest from one's grasp; or a handgun, which is fairly effective (very rarely need to shoot; the gun itself is a deterrent) and not commonly used against the wielder (due to the long-range covering effect of a gun, an attacker has difficulty getting in close enough to take it)? Personally, I would prefer the gun. But then I wnjoy guns. I would think, though, that anyone would prefer the can of mace or pepper spray to the techno-bra. Even of they are not terribly effective (esp. in wind, such as is common here in Denver), they have to be more effective than an absent police officer.
I would guess, though, that the techno-bra has a single good purpose: it would still go off if the victim were surprised in some way (say a man approaches from behind and holds a knife--or a gun for that matter--to the throat or back). In that instance she cannot easily reach for a gun or can of spray. Even a personal alarm is not likely to be accessible. Still, the number of false alarms with this sort of thing would have to be tremendous.
In addition to that, it seems unlikely that a woman would want to wear one of these things every day. Who lives or works in that threatening of an environment? Maybe it's very common and I just don't know.
There is also the matter that it seems a bit old-fashioned and sexist: 'I'm just a poor helpless woman who cannot defend herself. Please save poor little ol' me you big strong policeman you!' I thought that we'd gotten past that as a society. Women are more than able enough to defend themselves; they don't need to rely on us men for that anymore. At least, not in cities and not with modern technology and versus crime.