ha, these are awesome. I’ll have to get some of these for my next wine party.

“These made my day. Corkers are a design collaboration between Oded Friedland and Reddish Studio forMonkey Business are push pins that you can prick into wine/champagne corks to turn them into little creatures! The options are ?Monkey?, ?Deer?, ?Buffalo?, ?Bear?, ?Bunny? ?&? ?Crow. The packaging turns it into a fun wine bottle hang tag/gift ~ perfect for the next bottle of wine… Take a peek at more details up close on the next page.”

via notcot 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

For those unfamiliar with SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), you must read and dig into this crazy Act that can and will pretty much screw up any freedom and innovation like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Reddit, etc if it happens. Please sign up to petition against it HERE. Learn more about it from the video above from Chris Hayes.

“A brilliant Quirky object currently undergoing production is the Stem, a quick, novel and efficient way to get that citrus zing without breaking out the knives.

Spray it, don’t squeeze it! Stem is designed to allow a cook to spray juice directly from a citrus fruit. No longer do you have to cut and squeeze your fruit to get the juice out like a common cook. With only one finger you can now spray citrus juice on your favorite foods evenly. Let Stem add a little zest in your kitchen and on your food!
Price and release date is TBA, and while you can’t do anything about the latter, they’re taking a survey on the former at the link above.”

via core77

This blew my mind away. NeverWet is a treatment to makes any surface liquid resistant. It’s a Hydrophobiccoating that repels any liquid, even thick liquids like syrup, paint, ketchup, etc and repels them off any surface (much like you see on plant leaves). Check out the video above and be awed when you see the white shoes come out of the muddy wet pool. Imagine all the crazy magical applications.

They even applied it to an iphone and let it sit under water for an hour and it was fine.  Personally I want to treat all my furniture with this stuff, then treat my car, shoes, rugs, etc…. No word on if it is toxic or not, and the product is expected to be available to consumers in 2012.

“At Ross Nanotechnology, we have developed a super hydrophobic coating that completely repels water and heavy oils. Any object coated with our NeverWet  coating literally cannot be touched by liquid. Any liquid placed on this coating is repelled and simply rolls off without touching the underlying surface. Not only is this amazing to see, but it solves a myriad of problems.”

via NeverWet

awesome!

“Sebastian Schmieg of the Netherlands created this video by feeding a transparent image to Google Image Search and asking it to find similar images, and then taking the top result and feeding it back into the similarity algorithm, 2951 times. It’s a wonderful look at an evolutionary process.”

via boingboing
Search by Image, Recursively, Transparent PNG, #1 (via Kottke)

Over the summer,  at my first FooCamp, I was asked “What does Education mean to you” by the amazing team over at Vittana which you should look into.

I knew Education was incredibly important in my life and one of my thoughts made it into the Vimeo video above (with some other awesome individuals), but I thought this would be a good time to reflecte into this question a bit more for the holiday break.

What does Education mean to me?

Education is the opportunity to learn from the world and discover myself to share with others.
Education gives me the ability to breath,  to grow, to be curious, to be wrong, and at times be right.
Without Education, I’d never learn, I’d  never try, I’d never know myself, nor would I  even question if I were wrong or right.
Education enables life.
Education is what makes us human.

If you have some thoughts on What does Education mean to you, drop a note over to the team at Vittana… I’m sure they would appreciate it.

A must watch video…who knew playing it safe could actually be the dangerous decision. Aspirin and salt would not be approved to this day. How would life be without those?

“Juan Enriquez discusses current regulatory hurdles to introducing new drugs, why aspirin would never make it to market today, and the hidden costs of missing out.”

via tedmed 

“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

via youtube

via youtube. Thanks Chuck Pell!
BostonDynamics

Olafur Grimsson: Iceland Bounces Back from PopTech on Vimeo.

“The President of Iceland describes how his country encountered social and democratic upheaval after the economic crisis of 2008. Over the last three years, by combining wide-scale systemic inquiry into governance and judicial systems as well as a long-standing investment in clean energy and technology, Iceland has been able to bounce back with a remarkable economic vitality.”

poptech blog

This made me smile today.
“%&$#@!$^ …. or give it to your mother. She knows what to do!”
thanks joe g

I Love these simple info graphic history stories!
Check out a few more great ones mirrored after the jump via retronaut.

All images by H.57

30 gifts to 30 strangers in Sydney from Lucas Jatoba on Vimeo.

For his 30th birthday, he bought 30 gifts and gave them out to 30 strangers. It’s magical what giving can do to make you happy. I might have to do this for all my other birthdays!

via lucasjatoba

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that a rubbish dump being created would, in the space of a century, become a protected area.  Yet that is exactly what happened to what has come to be known as Glass Beach, just outside Fort Bragg in California.

The residents there had no refuse collection so, with the sea so close by the solution seemed obvious – throw the garbage over the edge of the cliffs above their local beach.  The burgeoning population of the town proceeded, with abandon reckless if not gleeful (after all, it must have been more fun than the usual taking out of the garbage) to do just that.

Image Credit Flickr User Meganpru

They did it with relish and in great volume: glass, household appliances and even motor vehicles went over the edge until the place acquired a new name – The Dumps. It was not until the 1960s that city leaders and the local water board forced the closure of the beach as an illegal dump.

Image Credit Flickr User Mikka Skaffari

Image Credit Flickr User Teeping

Cleanups followed to remove the largest pieces of detritus, but decades of wear had done their work on much of the glass which had been thrown over the side of the cliffs.   The waves and the weather had smashed, pounded and ground the glass in to smooth, small, rounded objects – million upon million of them.

Image Credit Flickr User Mamojo

Image Credit Flickr User tofuart

It was not long until the name Glass Beach was adopted instead of the previous, less attractive appellation.  In the early years of this century the beach and the surrounding twenty acres were bought by the California State Park system with a view to incorporating it in to the surrounding MacKerricher State Park.  After a final cleanup exactly that happened.

Image Credit Flickr User thats

Image Credit Flickr User Bruces View

It is not the only glass beach created by human activity.  There is another in California (Benicia) and one in the Hawaiian bay of Hanapepe. Most curiously perhaps, there is one that exists at Guantanamo Bay. They are all testament to the power of nature to correct the mistakes made by humanity.
It seems that every color of glass can be found on the beach. Those original tippers would be suprised, perhaps, to see what had become of their garbage.

Glass Beach has become very popular with tourists, many of whom scour the beach for the most attractive pieces of glass they can find which they plan to take home as mementoes.  Ironically, where it had once been illegal to dump glass on the beach – now, it is against the law to remove it.

Wow, this is weird, but cool!

“In the “Genetic Portraits” photo series, Canadian photographer Ulric Collette combines the portraits of two members of the same family into one half-and-half composite in order to illustrate the family’s visual similarities. My Modern Metropolis interviewed Collete about the ongoing project.

photos by Ulric Collette ”

Mirrored images after the jump via laughingsquid

via brandflakeforbreakfast

Penwald: 4: unison symmetry standing from Tony Orrico on Vimeo.

Some pretty neat work by artist Tony Orrico. Check out his drawings and videos. Or a quick Google Image Search will show you his work.

“Tony Orrico is a visual artist, performer, and choreographer. His Penwald Drawings have been presented and exhibited internationally, attracting attention from prominent collectors and institutions.”

“Jonathan R. Trappe is a pilot of an unusual aircraft: literally a towering cluster of toy balloons. Didn’t you have this dream, as a child? Just holding onto a cluster of balloons, and floating off into open space? Trappe flies exactly this fantasy aircraft, in manned flight, through open skies.”

via EG