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.

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)

“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

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.

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

via designmilk

Elecom Site

“Made from a paste of old newspapers, the Pulp Lamps by Enrique Romero de la Llana feel organic and natural as the trees they originally came from.”
via designmilk

Wow, this is bizzarre, cool, and ever so slightly creepy! A shop in Akihabara called Clone Factory will scan you face, produce a very realistic 3D-print of your head, then attach it to a 20 inch doll of your choice! The creepy part is how real the head looks compared to how doll like the bodies are. For an in-depth pictorial documentation in the process, look at our ever so loving dancing Storm Trooper Danny Choo’s documentation here!

A few pics from dannys process mirrored after the jump.
via LaughingSquid

“Nervous System is a design studio that works at the intersection of science, art, and technology. We create using a novel process that employs computer simulation to generate designs and digital fabrication to realize products. Drawing inspiration from natural phenomena, we write computer programs mimicking processes and patterns found in nature and use those programs to create unique and affordable art, jewelry, and housewares.”

thanks sijia!

People Staring at Computers from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

Have you ever smirked at how you looked when your webcam turned on and you looked awfully depressed and miserable, then quickly perked up just to look decent?.
We’ll, with the thousands of us that think about it, leave it to creative Kyle McDonald to come up with a project that automatically took pictures of you at this moment then showed it to you. Pretty cool project! People Staring at Computers project!

haha, this is awesome. A bit of Branding mashup. Do you know the two brands?!

“In UK logo designer Graham Smith’s “Brand Reversions,” he plays with some of the most recognizable brands byremixing their logos with those of their major competitors. When viewing the schizophrenic logos that result, it’s hard not to be disoriented–a testament to the power of brand identities.”

via and mirrored from laughing squid

More after the jump.

I’m just learning about Dear Photograph which asks you to “take a picture of a picture from the past in the present.”  Pretty cool! This sure does make the past a rich memory! Now I need to find a site that does this with video!

DearPhotograph

2 more images after the jump.

Awesome. I want!!

“The Untitled (Hello World) sign by Valentin Ruhry is an enormous grid of 5,000 orange rocker switches that illuminate when switched on. The piece is currently on display as part of the Fünf Räume (five rooms) exhibition at the Austrian Cultural Forum NYC through September 5. I can only hope they might let you flick a few of these awesomely tactile switches. (via triangulation)”

via thisiscollassol

(picture from laughingsquid)

I’ve been waiting to visit Jay Walkers incredible “Library of Imagination” for several years now and in about 12 hours I’ll be inside pondering, wondering, imagining, and wishing I could take everyone along. I’d write more about it, but the 2008 TED video above or the Wired article will explain it best until after I return, though I’ll have no photos as this is not allowed during my visit. I’ll have to thank TEDmed for arranging this visit, which is also a must go to conference I highly recommend.