Breakthrough Thinking – Page 125

Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Culture, Current Events, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Latest News, People Making a Difference

WikiLeaks Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

February 2, 2011

Another boost for the controversial WikiLeaks

A member of the Parliament of Norway says he has nominatedWikiLeaks for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

Snorre Valen, a member of the Socialist Left party, announced his decision to nominate the whistle-blowing organization on his blog.

“WikiLeaks have contributed to the struggle for [human rights, democracy and freedom of speech] globally, by exposing (among many other things) corruption, war crimes and torture — some times even conducted by allies of Norway,” he wrote…

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Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Culture, Current Events, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior, Latest News

Maine to Legalize Switchblades for One-Armed People

February 2, 2011

May be legalized in Maine if you have only one arm.

A Maine legislator has introduced a bill to make it legal for people with one arm to own and carry a switchblade (because you need two hands to operate a regular clasp knife). I actually quite like this idea, but think it’s too narrow, I’d have worded it more like “lawful for people who, due to infirmity, disability or amputation find it difficult to operate a clasp-knife…” so people with arthritis, one-side paralysis, etc, could have and use that most useful of tools: a knife…

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bicycle, Breakthrough Thinking, Globalism, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Latest Trend

Are Cargo Bikes Going Mainstream?

February 2, 2011

Mainstreet Pedicab Cargo Bike
Will Cargo Bikes Become an International Craze?

As a student, I spent a year living in Copenhagen. And I was amazed by how many people used cargo bikes as their primary source of transportation. From carting kids to school, to hauling groceries, to giving drunk friends a ride from the bar—heavy-duty load-carrying bikes were just another form of transportation for the people of this beautiful city. Could it be that the rest of the world is finally catching on to the potential of cargo bikes too? (Pics)

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Breakthrough Thinking, Great New Product

SoundBite Hearing Aid Uses Teeth to Transmit Sound

February 1, 2011

A new way to hear.

A company called Sonitus Medical has developed a unique way of providing hearing for people who are deaf in one ear. The cleverly named SoundBite hearing system is composed of two electronic devices, the Behind The Ear(BTE) unit and the In The Mouth (ITM) unit. You’d have to be the dumbest person on Earth if you don’t know which device goes where by now. The BTE is used to detect and capture sound. It has a digital signal processor and a second microphone for noise cancellation. It also has a transmitter, which it uses to wirelessly send sound to the ITM..

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Breakthrough Thinking, Food, Health & Fitness, Hot Issues, Human Behavior, Latest News

Lower the Thermostat to Lower 60s, Lose Weight!

January 31, 2011

Crank it down and shrink your waist.

Super-sized meals and sedentary living don’t seem to be the only contributing fat-factors present in American and UK lifestyles. New research published in the journalObesity Reviews points to a link in increasing average indoor temperatures over the last several decades– and similarly rising rates of obesity. Frankly put by TIME:

“Keeping your house too balmy may be making you fat.”

Continue reading… “Lower the Thermostat to Lower 60s, Lose Weight!”

Breakthrough Thinking, Entertainment, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior, Internet, Latest News

HealCam: a ChatRoulette for Health

January 31, 2011

What’s your problem?

HealCam is a ChatRoulette variant that invites you to select a disease, medical condition, or health issue (Crohn’s, back pain, pregnancy, bipolar disorder, allergies, HIV, etc) and connects you with someone else who shares your problems, so you can share notes. Sounds like a helpful way to find tips and commiseration when you need it.

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Brain, Breakthrough Thinking, Health & Fitness, Human Behavior, New Viewpoints, People Making a Difference

Top 10 Tips and Tricks to Train, Exercise, and Better Your Brain

January 30, 2011

Keep your brain in shape!

While we’re always using our brains, we’re not necessarily doing much to keep them in good shape. Here are the top ten sites and tools to train your brain and exercise your mental muscles…

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Breakthrough Thinking, Great New Product, Green Friendly, Health & Fitness

Brush Your Teeth with THIS Stick

January 30, 2011

THIS is it for your teeth!

A miswak is a tooth cleaning stick made from the Salvadora persica tree. It’s traditionally used in Pakistan, India, and the Middle East in place of a modern plastic toothbrush. The bristles inside the plant, once exposed by cutting across the stem, are effective as a cleaning instrument. Leen Sadder, a design student, decided to make a modern version..

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Big Problems, Breakthrough Thinking, Current Events, Entertainment, facebook, Globalism, government, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Internet, Latest News, New Viewpoints

Egypt Turns Off Internet, Lieberman Wants Same Option For US

January 28, 2011

Should the government here have this kind of power?

On Thursday Jan 27th at 22:34 UTC the Egyptian Government effectively removed Egypt from the internet. Nearly all inbound and outbound connections to the web were shut down. The internet intelligence authority Renesys explains it here and confirms that “virtually all of Egypt’s Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.” This has never happened before in the entire history of the internet, with a nation of this size. A block of this scale is completely unheard of, and Senator Joe Lieberman wants to be able to do the same thing in the US…

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Big Problems, Breakthrough Thinking, Business, Corporate Manipulation, Culture, Current Events, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Internet, Latest News, Latest Trend

Google Engages in Subtle Form of Censorship

January 27, 2011

Google, the company that fought censorship in China and vowed not to censor even anti-Semitism, has begun a subtle censorship campaign of its own.

As of today, if a Google search user begins typing in a term such as “BitTorrent,” Google’s Auto Suggest feature stops listing possible terms as soon as he types the second “T” in the word. Likewise, it won’t auto-complete the pirate-familiar words “megaupload,” “utorrent” or “rapidshare.”

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Culture, Historical Perspectives, Latest Trend

Ending Left Turns

January 27, 2011

Left turns have their place, don’t they?

UPS saved a lot of money by eliminating left turns from its delivery routes. Would this practice be effective on a larger scale? At Smithsonian, Sarah Zielinski writes:

UPS minimizes left turns for its delivery trucks to save on fuel. (And it works, as the Mythbusters demonstrated last year.) In the 1960s, the state of Michigan designed an intersection known as the “Michigan left” that prevents people driving on side streets from making left turns onto a multi-laned divided road; if they wish to go left, they’ll first have to go right and then make a U-turn…

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Analysis, Big Problems, Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Current Events, Green Friendly, Hot Issues, Latest News, Latest Trend

Mexican Drug Smugglers Catapult Weed Over Border fence into US

January 27, 2011

LOOK! Up in the sky. It’s a bird? It’s a plane?
It’s my weed bags being flung over the border!

Marijuana smugglers apparently have a problem with the US border fence near Tucson, Arizona -and those pesky border patrols. So they’ve turned to ancient technology to deliver the goods -a catapult!

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