Hovercraft Golf Cart

Just what you need, next time you're on the golf course. You can get one HERE.

Northern Pike Decimating Salmon And Trout

Northern Pike, a non-native invasive species, are threatening salmon and trout stocks in the Northeast.
Apparently the problem started in Alaska and has now spread to Washington state, Idaho, Montana and beyond.

The pike like to hang out in shallow, reedy areas where they prey on the fingerlings of these species. In some areas they have wiped out the other fish. They have been implicated in the crash of king salmon runs in the Deshka River.

Some anglers are defending the pike saying that they make good fishing.

Here are links to two articles reporting on this. The Peninsula Clarion. United Press International.

Buycott Helps You Vote With Your Dollars

Are you tired of buying products from businesses whose policies disgust you? Tired of  funding the Koch brothers assault on American politics? Tired of paying Monsanto to poison the food chain?

This is the app for you. Buycott lets you see the entire product chain right up to the company that owns the works. As the Buycott's webpage states, "It will look up the product, determine what brand it belongs to, and figure out what company owns that brand (and who owns that company, ad infinitum). It will then cross-check the product owners against the companies and brands included in the campaigns you've joined, in order to tell you if the scanned product conflicts with one of your campaign commitments."

That's the way you can make real change happen, vote with your dollars.

Fun Time! Ambiguity!

"Ambiguity is a game that makes the brain squirm. The concept is simple—roll eight letter die, set the timer, jot down as many words as players can make out of the letters—but mastering the game isn’t easy. The letter dice are designed, as the game's title suggests, to be confusing. Many of the die faces represent more than one letter, and it's not immediately obvious what they are."

A 2013 Parents Choice Award winner.

Think Unemployment Is Bad Now? By 2045 Everyone Will Be Out Of Work!

It's everybody's dream: not having to work!

It's everybody's nightmare: 100% unemployment!

Moshe Vardi, a computer science professor at Rice University, believes that by 2045 this dream/nightmare scenario might come to pass. He thinks that artificially intelligent machines may be capable of  doing all our jobs. He says, “if not any work that humans can do, then, at least, a very significant fraction of the work that humans can do.”

As a child growing up in the '60s, a future where automation relieved humans of the burden or work was viewed as a positive thing. Then as time passed, it became obvious that the benefits of such a utopia would not be spread around evenly. The robot owners could relax. The replaced workers could starve.

As we move towards an economic singularity such as a world without work, we must ask ourselves, "How do we spread the benefits around more equitably?"

130 Square Foot Paris Micro-apartment

Here is a photo spread on an elegantly designed Parisian micro-apartment.

Travel Photo of the Week

Mexico City, Mexico

Ken Robinson: How To Escape Education's Death Valley

Sir Ken Robinson discusses the irony of No Child Left behind in this 2013 TED talk. He argues that the Bush era policy stresses conformity (in a culture of compliance) and that is what is turning our kids off to the potential of education. He says that in some parts of America 60% of kids drop out of highschool and 80% of Native American kids drop out and he adds that if these numbers were halved it could create as much as a net gain to our economy of a trillion dollars.

Isn't that what's at stake? The future of our children AND our economy?

Mattel Designer Builds Dream Home From Shipping Containers

Debbie Glassberg is a toy designer for Mattel and she has designed and built this absolutely stunning house for herself and her family out of five shipping containers.

In this recent piece on Inhabit, we get a tour of her 2600 square foot home. The first floor has the kitchen, an open-plan living/dining room and an Asian themed spare room for entertaining. There are two bedrooms, an office and bathroom on the second floor and a vegetable garden on the roof.

If you're interested, she designing for others.

Formlabs 3D Printer

Formlabs is just about to start shipping their new 3D printer. Here's a video showing it in action.