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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.

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

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.

“[Video Link] This is a fascinating 15-minute video that shows a hunter-gatherer tribe in Papua New Guinea meeting with people from the outside world for the first time. They are very cautious, but also very curious, about the man on the other side of the river. They eventually cross the river to meet Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, the producer of Tribal Journeys: The Toulambi. When the men see Dutilleux’s clothing, they then look at the clothes they are wearing, as if for the first time. When they stroke Dutilleux’s hair, they then stroke their own hair.

It looks like all five parts of the documentary are on YouTube.”

I’ll post all 5 videos after the jump.

thanks Matt!!

via  spoon-tamago!

“kiko+ brand was launched this May by Osaka based Kukkia Design, an interior design firm that started dabbling in toy design. The brands theme is simple, “Forest and children, children at play, play and art.”kiko+ specializes in “wooden toys and plans for kids” that will draw out the creativity, design and character of the child through play.

The sandals are available starting at ¥2,625~¥2,835. This footwear line is only one of eight products currently offered by kiko+. To see more of their fun and creative products, visit the kiko+ website.”

Neat!  I should make a filter on my google search engine to do this to me daily…maybe link it to the weather. When its hot, its red, when its cold, its blue, when perfect,  everything is green!!

“By now, color-coordinated bookshelves are nothing new. But hey, why not organize your website content by color? Yep, that’s what Here’s Looking at Hue does. Neat idea.”

via swissmiss

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.

(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.

According to Wikipedia:
“Before its acquisition by Google, the gmail.com domain name was used by a free e-mail service offered by Garfield.com, online home of the comic strip Garfield.”

Interesting how things work out. I wonder what the alternatives were? goomail, gomail, Omail, etc

“Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion.

For more details see this link

The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations.

Our apparatus was built from a design published by Richard Berg [Am J Phys 59(2), 186-187 (1991)] at the University of Maryland. The particular apparatus shown here was built by our own Nils Sorensen.”

via youtube

“When Christian Schallert isn’t cooking, dressing, sleeping or eating, his 24 square meter (258 square feet) apartment looks like an empty cube. To use a piece of furniture, he has to build it.

Apartment designed by Barbara Appolloni.
Original story here.
Youtube video.

Located in Barcelona’s hip Born district, the tiny apartment is a remodeled pigeon loft. Christian says its design was inspired by the space-saving furniture aboard boats, as well as the clean lines of a small Japanese home.”