Category: Historical Perspectives

Impact Lab > Historical Perspectives
Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Food, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives

Police start giving angry drunk people lollipops to calm them down

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The power of a lollipop!

The city of Victoria, British Columbia, is taking a new approach to handling drunken, out-of-control revelers causing trouble in public places. The police hand such people lollipops. Councillor Charlayne Thornton-Joe explained why it works:

Ms. Thornton-Joe said after the men popped a lolly in their mouths, their nasty energy all but dissolved. “They got calmer after taking the lollipops,” she said. “It had an immediate effect.” […]

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Historical Perspectives, Photo Perspectives, top 10

Top 10 most powerful photos in the world

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Agim Shala, a two-year-old boy, is passed through a fence made with barbed wire to his family.

It is often said a picture is worth a thousand words.  But there only a few rare photos that tell more than a thousand words. Those pictures tell a powerful story, a story poignant enough to change the world and galvanize each of us. Over and over again…

 

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Entertainment, Green Friendly, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives

Portable composting toilets for festivals, homes and more

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Festivals will be so much better with composting toilets.

As festival season rolls on, many party goers will have been putting up with the ordeal of smelly, chemical-laden and often disgustingly soiled portable toilets. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Roskilde’s p-trees have already tackled public urination, and I’ve written before about how the green-minded and ultra-friendly UK Shambala Festival has embraced some delightfully airy and well-maintained composting loos. But it’s worth giving a shout out to the folks behind those loos—and noting that they are available for purchase for private homes, camp sites, and just about anywhere where pooping takes place…

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Historical Perspectives, New Discoveries

Punching a hole in time

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Researchers are working on a ‘time cloak.’

Ocean’s Eleven has nothing on this. A robber breaks into a bank safe and returns home, where he activates a device that conceals his earlier burglary, making it look like he never entered the bank in the first place. Such a “time cloak” is still a long way from reality, but researchers have now made an important first step, demonstrating a cloaking device that can hide for a fraction of a second an event that occurs at a specific point in time…

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Culture, Education, Entertainment, Historical Perspectives

SF Bay Area’s Pacific Pinball Museum

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Pinball machines are a glimpse into our historic arcade past.

The Bay Area’s Alameda Island is home to the Pacific Pinball Museum, a decade-old non-profit “dedicated to teaching science, art and history through pinball, and to preserve and promote one of America’s great pastimes.” The Bay Citizen spoke with founder Michael Schiess. From the Bay Citizen:

Disappointed by other museums’ pinball offerings, Mr. Schiess started snapping up the machines in 2001, buying 36 all at once. He installed 14 of them in a room that he rented for $400 in Alameda and put out a donation jar. In 2004, Lucky Ju Ju, as the arcade was then called, expanded to become the Pacific Pinball Museum, a nonprofit, and instituted a $15 admission. It now features 90 machines; most are free to play, but a few are for display only…

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Crazy Stuff, Historical Perspectives, New Discoveries

The Largest Gun ever built

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One big bang!

In 1939, Adolf Hitler needed to figure out how to get past the French Maginot line, a 1500km defensive wall of fortifications, tank barriers, artillery and machine gun nests running along the French-German and French-Italian borders. Before he figured out to simply run around the line via Belgium, Hitler schemed to destroy it outright…

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Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Historical Perspectives

E-Prime: The invented language that has no verb to be

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The E-Prime language promotes critical thinking.

To be or not to be … is not a question in the invented language of E-Prime. TopTenz explains:

Another language constructed to make a philosophical point, E-Prime is simply a version of English that forbids all forms of the verb ‘to be’ (is, was, were, etc).

According to Alfred Korzybski, who promoted the language in his 1933 book Science and Sanity, E-Prime can be used to sharpen critical thinking and make ideas clearer…

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Breakthrough Thinking, Culture, Current Events, Economy, Global Warming, Globalism, government, Green Friendly, Historical Perspectives, Latest News

France launches €10 Billion offshore wind project (1,200 turbines & 10,000 jobs!)

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Harvesting the wind in water.

The French government of Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a €10 billion ($14.26 billion) tender to build about 1,200 wind turbines in 5 different offshore wind farms. The goal is to diversify France’s energy generation (they are very reliant on nuclear, which accounts for about 80% of their electricity generation) with renewable sources and to have 23% of France’s energy come from renewable sources by 2020. The wind farms will be located off France’s coast on the North and West and should produce about 3.5% of the country’s electricity according to government authorities. The farms should come online between 2015-2020…

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