Digital Ice Cubes Warn You Before Blacking Out

EliteDaily: Last fall, MIT graduate student Dhairya Dand had too much to drink at a campus party, and woke up in the emergency room seven hours later after blacking out. Rather than slowing down, he decided to create a digital ice cube that warns people before they black out. The 23-year-old studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented the digital ice cubes to measure how drunk he is to avoid a similar situation in the future. The cubes are made from gelatin and implanted with infrared transmitters, accelerometers and LED lights that change color from green to yellow to red, depending on how quickly he’s imbibing booze and how much he’s had. The accelerometers measure the number of sips one is taking, giving an estimate of the user’s blood alcohol content, which is said to be about 80 percent accurate. If the user continues to drink despite the red light, the digital ice cube will send a text message to his friends saying that he should be taken home. The idea came to him, he said, after he was ordered to write a 20 page research paper about the dangers of binge drinking after he got into trouble with the university administration for his drunken night.

Yea great idea Dhairya, ya fuckin’ cock block. Just cause you pissed your pants in a hospital bed one night doesn’t mean you have to ruin it for the rest of us. Now not only do I get to look forward to a red light going off in a hot mess’s drink, but I get to deal with her BFFE showing up asking me why I’m dragging her lifeless friend out of the bar by her foot. Let’s not forget that some of us drink to forget on purpose. As my one friend said, at least we still have Molly!