KITE POWER!

The Italian firm KiteGen Research is developing a generator that harnesses the wind through kites. As a kite flies into the air, it unspools a cord that cranks the turbine. Carina Storrs writes in Popular Science:
The company developed a prototype that flies 200-square-foot kites to altitudes of 2,600 feet, where wind streams are four [...]

Another Awesome Dyson Vision

He pioneered the bagless vacuum cleaner and more recently has transformed the UK’s public toilets with his revolutionary hand-dryer. Yesterday the billionaire businessman and inventor Sir James Dyson unveiled his latest product – a desk fan that he hopes will provide a greener alternative to office air conditioning and a safer and [...]

An ATM of a different kind.

Recycling your old mobile phone, compact camera, MP3 player or even external storage device could soon become much easier – and more rewarding – following the installation of a gadget-recycling ATM in North America.
The first Eco ATM was installed in a furniture store in Nebraska late last month and, although [...]

NASA is planning to drop a spent rocket motor into the Cabeus crater on the moon Friday morning as part of the search to find lunar water. The motor is a leftover piece of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite that includes a “shepherding spacecraft” that will follow behind the rocket motor before it [...]

Engineeer and cartoonist Tim Hunkin created an arcade game that at first appears to be an ATM or banking kiosk. When coins are inserted, the banking poster drops and reveals Wack-A-Banker, giving you an opportunity to take your aggressions out on a group of financially oppressive stereotypes.

A new study finds high rates of childhood exposure to violence and abuse in United States.
A new study from the University of New Hampshire finds that U.S. children are routinely exposed to even more violence and abuse than has been previously recognized, with nearly half experiencing a physical assault in the study year.

 Breathe, Wheeze and Measure.

An asthma sufferer myself, I’ve long known the ghostly sensation of an invisible hand reaching through my breastplate to ethereally squeeze my lungs until I turn into a purple faced goblin. In the manner of many asthma sufferers, I like bragging about my attacks, and comparing them to the supposed attacks of [...]

Windmills have opened many doors for William!

William Kamkwamba, a teenage boy in Malawi, saw a photo of a windmill in a textbook at the library and decided that if he could build one it would be useful to his village.

Mr Kamkwamba, who is now 22 years old, knocked together a turbine from spare bicycle parts, [...]

GOOD’s executive compensation infographic shows the compensation levels of the business world’s top execs, with the number of minimum wage earners each super-suit’s take-home pay would support. Wow that is a lot of capitalistic greed!

Children who eat sweets and chocolate every day are more likely to be violent as adults, according to new research.
Children who eat sweets and chocolate every day are more likely to be violent as adults, according to new research.

Mothers who smoke during pregnancy put their children at greater risk of developing psychotic symptoms in their teenage years.
Mothers who smoke during pregnancy put their children at greater risk of developing psychotic symptoms in their teenage years.

Lightning Packs is a company that is developing backpacks that generate electricity with the motion of their users. As the user walks, the spring-mounted backback bounces slightly, turning a gear on a generator. It is the brainchild of Lawrence C. Rome of the University of Pennsylvania, who hopes to market his idea to the U.S. [...]

A new study estimates that people with a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.
In a first-of its-kind study, epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that, on average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in [...]

Little People With a Great Big Idea!
A community of dwarves has set up its own village to escape discrimination from normal sized people.
Everyone in the mountain commune in Kunming, southern China, must be under 4ft 3ins tall and they run their own police force and fire brigade from their 120 residents.

Behold the incredible inspiring carvings of Takashi Itoh.

Anybody can carve a pumpkin. In fact a couple companies have devolved templates and tools for the carver handicapped among to produce astounding results. However Takashi Itoh’s original watermelon carvings put most of them to shame!  Takashi says it only took him three weeks to become skilled at it, but he has been [...]

Overstressing the ultra ultra conservative moral fiber
of an overly conservative society?

A leading Egyptian scholar has demanded that people caught importing a female virginity-faking device into the country should face the death penalty.
Abdul Mouti Bayoumi said supplying the item was akin to spreading vice in society, a crime punishable by death in Islamic Sharia law.
The device is [...]

Each inmate costs US taxpayers more than $22,000 a year
From the death penalty to “three strikes” laws, Americans love tough responses to crime—but not necessarily smart ones. Nils Christie has a better idea: Stop treating lawbreakers like criminals.
“I don’t like the term crime—it’s such a big, fat, imprecise word,” says the renowned University of Oslo [...]

“We’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore”
7-Eleven Inc. said Thursday that its franchisees and store operators have collected 1.6 million signatures nationwide in its petition drive against what it calls unfair credit card fees.
The Dallas-based convenience store chain held the signature drive from June 22 through Aug. 10 at store counters [...]

The tiny Pacific nation of Palau is creating the world’s first shark sanctuary, a biological hotspot to protect great hammerheads, leopard sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks and more than 130 other species fighting extinction in the Pacific Ocean. But with only one boat to patrol 240,000 square miles (621,600 square kilometers) of Palau’s newly protected waters [...]

scientists have developed a pair of glasses that receive visual data from a camera mounted on a them and send the images to a chip attatched on the side of the eyeball.

Inspired by the success of cochlear implants that can restore hearing to some deaf people, researchers at MIT are working on a retinal implant [...]

A Handy and Unique Way To Score A Booze Buzz

Inmates have been drinking the liquid soap placed on their wing after realising it contained alcohol. The detergent was meant to beat off the threat of swine flu in the Verne Prison on Portland, Dorset.
However, instead of rubbing it into their hands, inmates at the category C [...]

A lamp that works bloody well!

Mike Thompson’s “Blood Lamp” is a single-use lantern that draws its energy from a drop of your blood, making you consider the cost of energy in a uniquely personal way.
For the lamp to work one must…

[process2a: Dodecahedron]
The folks over at Vague Terrain have spent some time reprocessing  the power of  Platonic Solids.
“In this project we explore three-dimensional subdivision algorithms. These have traditionally been used in computer graphics to produce smooth, rounded forms from coarse polygons. By modifying and expanding these established algorithms to include additional weights, one can generate forms with [...]

You too can become a citizen of a virtual country
Wirtland, world’s first sovereign internet-based country, revealed the design of plastic identity card. Every citizen of Wirtland, who has submitted the Citizenship Application Form and scans of photograph and signature, is eligible for receiving the personal ID card. New applications for residence permit and ID card [...]

Job Voyager is a set of interactive charts showing changing occupations reported to the US Census Bureau from 1850-2000. It was made by Jeffrey Heer of the University of California at Berkeley from data collected by the University of Minnesota’s Population Center using the visualization software Flare. You can use the feature to examine the [...]