18 Cool Inventions From the Past

40 Belief-Shaking Remarks From a Ruthless Nonconformist If there’s one thing Friedrich Nietzsche did well, it’s obliterate feel-good beliefs people have about themselves. He has been criticized for being a misanthrope, a subvert, a cynic and a pessimist, but I think these assessments are off the mark. I believe he only wanted human beings to be more honest with themselves. He did have a remarkable gift for aphorism — he once declared, “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.” A hundred years after his death, Nietzsche retains his disturbing talent for turning a person’s worldview upside-down with one jarring remark. Even today his words remain controversial. Here are 40 unsympathetic statements from the man himself. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. More of Nietzsche’s genius here. Have a lot on your mind? Everyday mindfulness has transformed my life, and the lives of many others.

THE LAB Toilet Tech: A Power Generator Turns Falling Wastewater Into Electricity Here's a novel way to get a little more out of time spent in the bathroom. An industrial design student at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, has created a clever power generator that turns falling wastewater into electricity. The HighDro Power is a waterwheel-like turbine that can be incorporated into the pipes of tall buildings to turn one man's waste into another man's wattage. Student Tom Broadbent's inspiration came when he emptied a bath in a hotel room and it drained quite quickly and with impressive force. He started tinkering around with ideas for harnessing the kinetic energy that accompanies each drained sink or flushed toilet, using rapid prototyping machines and vacuum forming to create the parts. Installed in series in a tall building, those generators can return quite a bit of power either to the building itself or to the grid. [Creative Boom via Core77]

Albert Einstein: Becoming a Freethinker Taken from: Albert Einstein's Autobiographical Notes Open Court Publishing Company, LaSalle and Chicago, Illinois, 1979. pp 3-5. When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely personal," from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings.

Give a Listen: It’s Conversational Commerce Russ: “Siri, are you ready to help me buy something online?” Siri: “Not yet, Russ, but I may be able to at some point.” Not the answer I was hoping for, but at least Siri was honest about it! Siri, of course, is the new voice-enabled personal assistant that comes with all of the new Apple iPhone 4S smartphones. Our particular interest in Siri here at Glenbrook is how this (or other) intelligent voice-aware agents might be enabled at some point to truly streamline how we buy stuff online. It’s easy to imagine the possibilities for using Siri to: Find the next Virgin America flight to Seattle, and book/buy an aisle seatFind a specific product online, select the merchant based on availability and total cost out the door, buy it, and have it shipped to your houseFind when “Moneyball” is showing next at my neighborhood cinema, buy two tickets and deliver ‘em to my phone From Intelligent Agent to Humble Personal Assistant Apple has not completely given up on those external data integrations.

Bairim by Timon Sager Naut Your Average Yacht Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids (kidding!). But seriously, the Bairim luxury-yacht by designer Timon Sager is enough to make you want to leave it all behind and hit the high seas. It’s no-resistance design is hydrodynamically optimized for cutting through rough waters. Below deck, the polished interior is enhanced by advanced comfort features and water-level floor-to-ceiling windows on the port and starboard sides. Gotta love the classic wooden deck that opens to the interior and that center stairway leading to the water. Designer: Timon Sager RELIC 5 trends driving the future of work As the year draws to a close, you may be assessing your career plans against the backdrop of holiday hoopla and the uncertain employment climate. To get a leg up, grab an eggnog and read on to learn about trends that could change how you'll be making a living in the years to come: Trend 1: Independent consulting to see hockey-stick growth curve According to a new study from MBO Partners, a company offering services to independent consultants, by 2013, the number of independent workers in America is expected to grow from 16 million to more than 20 million. Blame the economic turmoil or a change in values, but more people are demanding greater self-reliance, control and satisfaction in their professional lives. MBO CEO Gene Zaino highlighted results from the national study last week at the GigaOM Net:Work conference in San Francisco. Other key findings from the study: Trend 2: Order books, movies and now ... workers online Rosati points to technology and independence as the main drivers:

Fake Capsizing Boat Artist Julien Berthier created a boat, named Love Love, that looks like it’s sinking, but actually has a motor that allows it to be driven around, fully afloat. Check past the jump for a picture of the boat out of the water. As one can plainly see, the boat has a proper bottom: This picture of the boat in port was too hilarious not to include: Julien Berthier: Unique artist, troll of the high seas, or both? >>>See also: Optical illusion of little girl chasing a ball down the street used to slow down reckless drivers. (designboom via DVICE via Geekologie)

Philosophy Bro Prospective 2100 Custom Tree House Plans, DIY Ideas & Building Designs No, really: would you want to design, build and live in an real fantasy tree house all year round? More and more people have decided to do just that and where treehouses were once novelty architecture for kids they are now (almost) mainstream structures, as attested to by the pictures above via Bella Seven. Many modern tree house designs and home designers and custom builders take a site-specific approach and construct their tree buildings around not only views and rooms but also have to account for access and structural support in unique and novel ways. Some of the results are little auxiliary spaces intended for guests or vacations while others are fully developed tree homes with everything need for daily living. While a lot of attention is paid to lofty plans by fashionable designers, there are many people who continue to use quite conventional home-building plans, techniques and materials to construct tree homes and cabins that look much like ordinary residences on the ground below.

Crimes Against Humanity Having been conditioned your entire lives, the way we are all conditioned our entire lives, to receive sound-bite answers to questions we have never had the critical ability to form in our minds, forecloses our ability to interrogate reality and draw conclusions from it. That is the function of the media. That is the function of the educational system you understand. It's not to teach you to think critically, which is educational in value. It's to teach you what to think. That's a rather different thing, to be indoctrinated than to be educated. We've got an ignorant leadership. At Nuremberg it was said that there was a complicity on the part of the German citizenry. [You] do what's necessary. You are not going to morally persuade a criminal state structure, bent upon perpetrating genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, to do the right thing.

Rapport CES 2012 Voici venu le temps de vous délec­ter avec la sep­tième édition du Rap­port du Consu­mer Elec­tro­nics Show de Las Vegas , ver­sion 2012. Comme d’habitude depuis 2006, je vous pro­pose ce docu­ment PDF gra­tuit pour faire le tour de l’ensemble des offres du monde des loi­sirs numé­riques. C’est à la fois un tour d’horizon très large de l’offre pré­sen­tée au CES mais aussi de la situa­tion du mar­ché elle-même. J’élargis par­fois le pro­pos à des pro­duits et solu­tions décou­verts pen­dant l’année pas­sée, notam­ment dans des star­tups fran­çaises ou autres, mais pas for­cé­ment mis en valeur pen­dant le CES. Cette édition 2012 du rap­port est télé­char­geable sous deux formes : Une ver­sion avec les images en pleine réso­lu­tion, indis­pen­sable pour un tirage papier et aussi pour lec­ture sur tablette, de 39 Mo : lien de télé­char­ge­ment . Nou­veau­tés mar­quantes dans l’édition 2012 Dans cette édition, vous trou­ve­rez notamment : Relec­ture et révisions Témoi­gnages de lecteurs Pho­tos