Stuff that sparks ideas or imagination for me.
According to a study by MIT students, tinfoil hats actually enhance (rather than scramble) invasive radio signals.
Darn, I guess I’ll have to start making tinfoil origami animals with all that extra Reynolds Wrap I have laying around.
Telstar posts a photo of some electronic gadget purchased at a flea Market, and asks “What is it?” Madness ensues.
I actually have a what is it pic I need to post on Flickr sometime, when we get back from New York. If I remember to.
I ran across this product on a design site I read regularly, because it get’s good reviews for usability. It’s a compost machine that you keep in the kitchen next to your trashcan.
Since Stephanie and I have been dating, I’ve moved toward recycling almost everything: aluminum cans go to a scrap metal place where we get money for them; glass, plastic and tin cans go the the recycling near the grocery store; and all paper products, including cardboard, cardstock, magazines, newspapers and office paper go to the drop-off on south West street. Per week, I’m down to a single kitchen-sized garbage bag and cat litter waste that goes to the dump. If I could compost my food waste, I’d be reducing even further, plus creating mulch for my flower beds.
Currently, my recycling is in the extra room downstairs near the back door, but when I get to finally have the kitchen I want, a recycling closet/pantry in the kitchen is a must-have item.
Via wikipedia:
Biomimicry or biomimetics is the examination of nature, its models, systems, processes, and elements to emulate or take inspiration from in order to solve human problems. The term biomimicry and biomimetics come from the Greek words bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate. Similar terms include bionics.
Law of unintended consequences
In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes that are not the ones intended by a purposeful action. The concept has long existed but was named and popularised in the 20th century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton. Unintended consequences can be roughly grouped into three types:
- A positive, unexpected benefit (usually referred to as luck, serendipity or a windfall).
- A negative, unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy (e.g., while irrigation schemes provide people with water for agriculture, they can increase waterborne diseases that have devastating health effects, such as schistosomiasis).
- A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution makes a problem worse)
Chinese water torture is a process in which water is slowly dripped onto a person’s forehead, allegedly driving the restrained victim insane. This form of torture was first described under a different name by Hippolytus de Marsiliis in Italy in the 15th or 16th century.
The term “Chinese water torture” may have arisen from Chinese Water Torture Cell (a feat of escapology introduced in Berlin at Circus Busch September 13, 1910; the escape entailed Houdini being bound and suspended upside-down in a locked glass and steel cabinet full to overflowing with water, from which he escaped), together with the Fu Manchu stories of Sax Rohmer that were popular in the 1930s (in which Fu Manchu subjected his victims to various ingenious tortures, such as the wired jacket). Hippolytus de Marsiliis is credited with the invention of a form of water torture. Having observed how drops of water falling one by one on a stone gradually created a hollow, he applied the method to the human body. Other suggestions say that the term “Chinese water torture” was invented merely to grant the method a sense of ominous mystery.
I stumbled across Beth Doherty’s amazing crochet creations on Flickr and from there discovered that she sells these adorable creations at an online shopping service called “Etsy” that works very similarly to eBay, only for handmade creations. Very cool animals, and the shop is a very cool idea, too.
This guy compiles and compares the weather icons used by all the major news reporting sites.
A scouting troop reference guide to tying “popular” knots. I guess the unpopular knots don’t get asked to prom.
Stephanie and I were trying to tie down stuff to my truck the other day, and I was very frustrated because I couldn’t figure out how my dad ties knots; he has some sort of slipknot that he ties that is secure, but you pull one end and it comes undone easily. I’ve been meaning to figure out how to do that.
oh, here’s a site that has animated knot instructions.
Coinstar now has a deal with Amazon and some other online commerce sites in which they will return a gift certificate to that site– and here’s the fun part — without the 8.9% fee they charge for sorting.
Woo hoo! I’m taking my pennies in. I’ve never felt like I wanted to pay the fee, but I also don’t want to sit around counting and rolling coins when I could be doing something more productive.
What’s interesting is that if you wanted to go completely off the grid, you could use your Amazon gift card to set up an Amazon account and pay, without ever entering personally identifying information, AND coinstar will accept paper money and convert it to the Amazon card. So if you were on the run from the law, and you wanted to send someone a gift from Amazon and have it shipped to them, you could put your cash into a coinstar machine, get a gift certificate, set up an anonymous Amazon account, and make purchases.
PledgeBank is a site where you can sign up to pledge to do something — but only if other people will do it. You can either make your own pledge, or find a pledge that someone else has proposed and add yourself to their list, thust providing support for each other.