Written by classic illiterature

Disclaimer: I like to make sweeping judgments about large groups of people based on very little information. Enjoy!

Here We Go

10. The Wave

If you’re from the beach, want to be from the beach, or went to a popular poster site and picked the best seller from the ‘fine arts’ category, you probably have this one hanging in your bed room.

Katsushika Hokusai’s “The Great Wave at Kanagawa” is considered to be a work of great aesthetic and spiritual significance. Apparently it also makes surfers appear sensitive. “The wave is like the most beautiful part of nature,” they will say. Well don’t forget about the bro-dodendra, bro.

9. The Beatles Abby Road

Classic album, classic picture. But guess what? 90% of the people under 35, who have this poster, don’t listen to the Beatles. However, by adding this poster to your wall and talking about the significance of Paul not wearing shoes, people will actually think that you have good taste in music. Just don’t forget to hide the Gucci Mane and Ying Yang Twins cds you’ve been listening to all week.

8. Scarface

“Say hello to my little friend. His name is played out!” Everyone has seen the movie, everyone has seen the poster, and thanks to MTV cribs, everyone is over it.

If you have this poster hanging on your wall, you probably listen to a lot of rap music, sell small amounts of marijuana, and think you are a total badass. If that rings a bell, here is a bit of advice. Take down the poster, buy Abby Road, stop selling pot, and read a book.

7. Girls

There is nothing wrong with this poster. In fact, it was chosen because…well…it’s pretty hot. It does, however, represent one of the most clich? poster trends of all time. Tasteless pictures of hot chicks wearing next to nothing — or in this case, nothing at all.

Do you have one of these hanging above your toilette? If so, you were probably thinking: “Man, this is cool. No one has done this.” You were wrong. You actually saw it in a bar last week and were to drunk to remember. And you have now managed lump yourself in with about 40 million other ‘dudes’ between the ages of 15 and 30. Congrats! How exciting.

6. Mixology

This poster — an absolute staple in large universities across the U.S. — says one thing and one thing only. ‘I’m a drunk. That’s right. I want everyone who walks into my house to know that I drink way too much alcohol and I’m so proud of that, I’m willing to put a notice right here on the fuckin’ wall.’

If you are ever at a house with one of these, you may want to inquire as to whether or not your host has any interesting drinks he can make. He doesn’t. There is a case of Bud Light in the fridge, but you can only have one because his roommates paid for it.

5. Dali

The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. It is a beautiful painting. No doubt about it. And a lot more people would probably have it in their homes if it wasn’t for all those pretentious hippies who have gone and spoiled it for the rest of us.

I can’t even tell you how many times I have heard someone say that their favorite artist is Dali and then be unable to name their second favorite. Too often, Salvador is the only thing owners of this poster know about art. But they want you to think otherwise. Damn hippies.

4. The inspirational poster

This one makes the list because it’s seen in every counselor/student adviser’s office in the nation. There are a whole serious of them that contain innate dribblings about perseverance, spirituality, and other important life lessons. I’m sorry, if it doesn’t have Michael Jordon on it, I’m just not that inspired.

These are also popular with the hipster crowd, who will sit around reveling in the irony. Oh the irony! (On a side note: If you are a hipster please click here)

3. Muhammad Ali

This poster lets everyone know that its owner is tough. He likes real men, who do real manly things. It also lets you know that he saw this poster at his buddies house and copied the idea since he was too drunk to think of anything original.

2. College

This is so clich?, words are not even needed.

1. Bob Marley

I smoke marijuana. Did you know that? Well, if you didn’t, just take a look at this giant Bob Marley poster on my wall and you will know that I do.

The problem with this poster, is that it’s not about Bob Marley. It is about joe college guy or jane college girl’s affinity for getting way to high every tuesday afternoon. Read the books boys and girls. Leave the reggae alone. It’s not for you.

Written by Ross Bonander

Here are five things you didn’t know about Starbucks

They are largely responsible for turning a diner’s 50-cent cup of joe into a travesty, or at the very least, a pedestrian pursuit. Their “stores” seem to be everywhere, and they’re populated by coffee snobs on both sides of the counter. They appear either indifferent to, or beyond the reach of, fluctuating economies. They are accused of everything from the annoying (market saturation) to the serious (anti-competition), yet Starbucks — the world’s biggest coffee peddler — keeps on peddling.

There may be no better example of the company’s imperialist domination — and the scorn they sometimes inspire — than the shocking installation of a Starbucks store in Beijing’s Forbidden City in 2000. You can’t blame Starbucks for salivating over the real estate; almost 9 million people visited the former home to 24 different Chinese emperors in 2006. Nonetheless, it took seven years of protesting, 500,000 signatures and a refusal on Starbucks’ part to sell other brands to finally drive them out in 2007.

Love ’em or hate ’em, here are five things you may not know about Starbucks, your friendly, ubiquitous coffee house.

1- On average, two new Starbucks have opened every day since 1987

Starbucks has been around since 1971, but it wasn’t aggressive about expansion until 1987, when the company came under the ownership of its current chairman, Howard Schulz. At that time, there were only nine Starbucks stores.

Today, there are about 14,396 (give or take a few). pide that number by 20 years, or 7,300 days and, after rounding up, you get an average of 2 stores per day opening every day for the last 20 years. Naturally, this figure does not include the few stores that, for whatever reason, were shut down.

2- Its name comes from Moby Dick

Confirmed by the company’s current fact sheet, Starbucks was named for the first mate of the Pequod in Melville’s Moby Dick. The question is, why? After all, the company seems more like Captain Ahab than Starbuck. In the famous novel, Starbuck and Ahab are at opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum: the first mate is superstitious and conservative, Ahab is narcissistic and monomaniacal. Starbuck is practical, opposing Ahab’s desire to commit the Pequod to circling the world’s oceans in search of the white whale in favor of a commitment to harpooning whales they can sell on the Nantucket Market. Ahab is single-minded, bent on not only killing the white whale, but also on relieving mankind of the source of its evil. Swap out a few of the right words above with terms like “market domination” and “its competition,” and you have Ahab’s, the world’s biggest coffee peddler.

The only ostensible Starbuck-like thing about Starbucks is the conservative evolution of its logo. It used to feature a bare-breasted mermaid but has, over time, developed a degree of modesty that would please the Pequod’s first mate: Initially, her hair covered her breasts, then they were cut out of the frame altogether.

3- Its founders sold Starbucks in 1987 to build Peet’s Coffee & Tea

Here’s the condensed company time line:

• 1966: Alfred Peet opens Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Berkeley, California.
• 1971: Jerry Baldwin and two other friends of Alfred Peet open the first Starbucks in Seattle.
• 1982: Howard Schultz joins Starbucks.
• 1984: Baldwin et al buy out Peet’s.
• 1987: Baldwin et al sell Starbucks to Schultz to focus on building Peet’s.

It’s not all about coffee and biscotti at Starbucks…

It should be noted that after working there for a very short time, Schultz left Starbucks to launch a line of specialty coffee stores in Seattle. He was able to raise enough money to buy Starbucks in 1987.

Additionally, today Starbucks’ market share is about 70 times the size of Peet’s, but despite the seeming similarity between the two companies, they have somewhat different business models and each has seen considerable success according to those models.

4- Part-time employees are entitled to full benefits

Starbucks seems to have a perennial spot on Forbes’ list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For,” and it has little to do with the weekly coffee or tea each “partner” takes home.

For starters, Starbucks takes a page from Warren Buffett’s playbook and calls its employees “partners,” even though they hardly qualify as such in a true business sense. The use of such a loaded word goes a long way in breeding company loyalty.

More importantly, they offer an enviable benefits package, one inspired by the childhood of Chairman Howard Schultz. As a boy, he watched his father work low-paying jobs and retire with little to show for his life, and Schultz wanted something different for employees of his company. The result is a benefits package given to employees who work a minimum of 20 hours per week that includes health, medical, dental and vision plans, a 401k, and access into Bean Stalk, the company’s employee stock option plan.

If that weren’t already enough, those benefits extend to the opposite and same-sex spouses of these employees.

5- Starbucks doesn’t franchise its stores

As a rule, Starbucks stores are not franchised to private inpiduals, and the company has no intention to begin doing so. The mentality has a lot to do with maintaining high company standards from store to store; standards that would be difficult to enforce if they were franchised.

The one exception regards their willingness to enter into certain licensing agreements with companies who hold, or have access to, locations Starbucks regards as desirable. To quote from the FAQs on their home page, these sites include “airport locations, national grocery chains, major food services corporations, college and university campuses, and hospitals.” These licensed locations represent over one-third (36%) of all Starbucks stores operating in the U.S.

Starbucks has made a point of being wherever you are. They have a tremendous, almost inescapable, presence in countless, high-traffic neighborhoods. Yet they’re also somewhat cutting-edge, not just in how they treat their employees or in their gutsy (if questionable) expansion tactics, but also in their efforts to stay relevant. This is evidenced in such ventures as adding Wi-Fi connections for customers, building Starbucks Entertainment (film production) and Hear Music (music production) and, most recently, partnering with Apple to allow customers to download songs they hear in a Starbucks from iTunes.

If Starbucks has its way, public interest will continue to rise in the coming years. According to a Time magazine article from 2006, the company aims to open another 25,000 stores in the future, bringing the total number of Starbucks stores worldwide to 40,000.

In case you’re curious, that’s 9,000 more stores than that other corporate intrusion on other cultures (read: McDonald’s) currently has in operation worldwide.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org
www.starbucks.com
http://news.bbc.co.uk
http://money.cnn.com
www.time.com
www.mhhe.com
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com
www.myprimetime.com

Download PDF book here

Introduction
01 The Ten Commandments We AlwaysSee Aren’t the Ten Commandments
02 One of the Popes Wrote an Erotic Book
03 The CIA Commits Over 100,000 Serious Crimes Each Year
04 The First CIA Agent to Die in the Line of Duty Was Douglas Mackiernan
05 After 9/11, the Defense Department Wanted to Poison Afghanistan’s Food Supply
06 The US Government Lies About the Number of Terrorism Convictions It Obtains
07 The US Is Planning to Provoke Terrorist Attacks
08 The US and Soviet Union Considered Detonating Nuclear Bombs on the Moon
09 Two Atomic Bombs Were Dropped on North Carolina
10 World War III Almost Started in 1995

11 The Korean War Never Ended
12 Agent Orange Was Used in Korea
13 Kent State Wasn’t the Only ? or Even the First ? Massacre of College Students During the
Vietnam Era
14 Winston Churchill Believed ina Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy
15 The Auschwitz Tattoo Was Originally an IBM Code Number
16 Adolph Hitler’s Blood Relatives Are Alive and Well in New York State
17 Around One Quarter of “Witches” Were Men
18 The Virginia Colonists Practiced Cannibalism
19 Many of the Pioneering Feminists Opposed Abortion
20 Black People Served in the Confederate Army

21 Electric Cars Have Been Around Since the 1880s
22 Juries Are Allowed to Judge the Law, Not Just the Facts
23 The Police Aren’t Legally Obligated to Protect You
24 The Government Can Take Your House andLand, Then Sell Them to Private Corporations
25 The Supreme Court Has Ruled That You’reAllowed to Ingest Any Drug, Especially If You’re an Addict
26 The Age of Consent in Most of the US Is Not Eighteen
27 Most Scientists Don’t Read All of the Articles They Cite
28 Louis Pasteur Suppressed Experiments That Didn’t Support His Theories
29 The Creator of the GAIA Hypothesis Supports Nuclear Power
30 Genetically-Engineered Humans Have Already Been Born

31 The Insurance Industry Wants to Genetically Test All Policy Holders
32 Smoking Causes Problems Other Than Lung Cancer and Heart Disease
33 Herds of Milk-Producing Cows Are Rife With Bovine Leukemia Virus
34 Most Doctors Don’t Know the Radiation Level of CAT Scans
35 Medication Errors Kill Thousands Each Year
36 Prescription Drugs Kill Over 100,000 Annually
37 Work Kills More People Than War
38 The Suicide Rate IsHighest Among the Elderly
39 For Low-Risk People, a Positive Result from an HIV Test Is Wrong Half the Time
40 DNA Matching Is Not Infallible

41 An FBI Expert Testified That Lie Detectors Are Worthless for Security Screening
42 The Bayer Company Made Heroin
43 LSD Has Been Used Successfully in Psychiatric Therapy
44 Carl Sagan Was an Avid Pot-Smoker
45 One of the Heroes of Black Hawk Down Is a Convicted Child Molester
46 The Auto Industry Says That SUV Drivers Are Selfish and Insecure
47 The Word “Squaw” Is Not a Derisive Term for the Vagina
48 You Can Mail Letters for Little or No Cost
49 Advertisers’ Influence onthe News Media Is Widespread
50 The World’s Museums Contain Innumerable Fakes

Here you go so you don’t go through PDF hell!

Written by Ethan

Major League Baseball?s winter meetings just ended. As general managers return to their homes, the annual flurry of free agent signings and contract extensions is in full swing. These deals aren?t just about the money, though; they?re also about bonus clauses and sweet, sweet perks. Here?s a list of some of the more ludicrous ones players have received.

1. Charlie Kerfeld, Houston Astros

After a spectacular rookie season in 1986, the rotund reliever who always pitched in his lucky Jetsons t-shirt needed a new contract. Kerfeld asked for $110,037.37, matching his number 37 jersey, to pitch in 1987. On top of that, he received 37 boxes of orange Jell-O in the deal. The Astros would soon regret this delicious bonus, though; Kerfeld, who was famously caught eating ribs in the dugout that season, would battle weight and injury problems and get sent down to the minors.

2. Rollie Fingers, Oakland Athletics

Former A?s owner Charlie Finley never thought of a gimmick he wouldn?t try, including a mechanical rabbit that delivered fresh balls to the umpire and hiring a 13-year-old MC Hammer as his ?Executive V.P.? In 1972, Finley offered his players cash for growing a mustache by Father?s Day, thereby giving birth to reliever Fingers? trademark handlebar ?stache. The A?s went on to win the World Series that season, and Fingers? contract for 1973 contained a $300 bonus for growing the mustache as well as $100 for the purchase of mustache wax.

3. Roy Oswalt, Houston Astros

Before Oswalt made a start in the 2005 National League Championship Series, Astros owner Drayton McLane promised to make the ace?s dreams come true if he won, specifically his life goal of bulldozer ownership. After Oswalt dominated the Cardinals to send Houston to its first-ever World Series, McLane came through with a Caterpillar D6N XL. Since Major League Baseball requires high-dollar gifts be disclosed, Oswalt signed an addendum to his contract, a ?bulldozer clause,? authorizing the club to give him his new toy.

4. Troy Glaus, Arizona Diamondbacks

Arizona inked the slugging third baseman signed for four years and $45 million in December 2004. As part of the deal, Glaus receives $250,000 annually for ?personal business expenses,? namely the cost of his wife Ann?s equestrian training and equipment. Although Glaus bashed 37 homers for the Snakes in 2005, he also tied for the major-league lead in errors by a third baseman with 24, and despite Mrs. Glaus? surely improving performance in the steeplechase, Glaus had to hoof it to Toronto when he was traded barely a year after signing.

5. Randy Johnson, Arizona Diamondbacks

When the Big Unit signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 1998, team owner Jerry Colangelo also threw in a pair of partial season tickets for the Phoenix Suns to lure in the lanky lefty. Seems like Johnson could have afforded his own tickets, but to be fair, when you?re making $52 million over four years, it?s hard to get scalpers to fall for ?Can you take twenty for the pair? I swear it?s all I?ve got, dude.?

6. Carlos Beltran, New York Mets

Beltran?s mammoth seven-year, $119 million deal from January 2005 showed that he had all of baseball?s five tools but lacked a conditioned ocular enhancer, a gadget that throws numbered, colored tennis balls over 150 mph to help players pick up the speed of a pitched ball. So he got a contract clause requiring the Mets lease the machine and retain an operator for it. However, Beltran only hit .266 in his first year with the club, so maybe a used copy of Tony Gwynn?s tome The Art of Hitting would have been more cost-effective.

7. Brad Lidge, Houston Astros

When the Houston Astros (sound familiar?) re-signed Brad Lidge in January 2007, their former closer got an incentive clause promising $25,000 for winning a Silver Slugger, given annually to the top hitter at each position. Lidge probably didn?t consider this easy money; as a relief pitcher, he had only been to the plate seven times in his five-season career and hadn?t seen an at-bat since 2004. Despite an erratic season on the mound, Lidge was the model of consistency at the plate in 2007, mostly because he never had an at-bat. Houston finished 13th in the National League in runs scored, though, so maybe letting Lidge take some hacks would have been worth a try.

8. A.J. Burnett, Toronto Blue Jays

Lots of players have free-plane-ticket perks written into their contracts, but some feel that air travel really lacks that fun we?re-going-to-the-prom feeling that you can only get from a long limo ride. When flamethrower A.J. Burnett signed with Toronto as a free agent in December 2005, he required that his wife receive eight round-trip limo rides from his home in Maryland to Toronto each season. That?s around nine hours in a limo each way, which is enough time to move the little divider between you and the driver up and down roughly 3,500 times.

Some other interesting perks and bonuses:

9. Daisuke Matsuzaka, Boston Red Sox ? Dice-K?s deal with the Red Sox includes a plethora of strange or excessive clauses including housing allowances and a personal masseuse, but the oddest is that he?s contractually guaranteed the jersey number 18.

10. Kevin Brown, Los Angeles Dodgers ? The seven-year, $105 million deal Brown signed after the 1998 season guaranteed twelve round trip private jet trips from L.A. to his hometown in Macon, Georgia for his family, sparing his children from cruel flight attendants? taunts about their dad being overpaid.

11. Dave Roberts, San Francisco Giants ? The deal Roberts signed last December gives him the right to buy four premium season tickets each year. He?s probably going to keep passing until management puts a decent team on the field, though.

12. Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners ? Ichiro?s five-year contract extension from July 2007 contains some reasonable perks (interpreter, plane tickets to Japan), but also stipulates the club give him a Jeep or Mercedes SUV, filling the Japanese auto industry with a deep collective sense of shame.

13. Mark Teixeira, Atlanta Braves – Teixeira?s deal for 2006-2007 (originally negotiated when he was with Texas) had a clause paying him $100K for winning the AL MVP, a tough feat since he finished the contract while playing in the National League.

14. Curt Schilling, Boston Red Sox ? The three-time World Series champ?s new deal with the Red Sox for the 2008 season not only rewards Schilling for maintaining his weight, but also gives him $1M for appearing on any voter?s three-man Cy Young ballot. Take note, enterprising voters (?Sixty-forty split sound fair, Curt??)

Ethan Trex grew up idolizing Vince Coleman, and he kind of still does. Ethan co-writes Straight Cash, Homey, the Internet?s undisputed top source for pictures of people in Ryan Leaf jerseys.

Written by Zen Habits Photo by P?rcel???g?rl?

A life lived of choice is a life of conscious action. A life lived of chance is a life of unconscious creation.
– Neale Donald Walsch

As much as possible, I try to live my life by bringing to my consciousness what is bubbling up from my unconsciousness.

I try to clear the fog through which we often drift, to see where I’m going, to make conscious choices instead of automatic ones.

Do you ever have a feeling that you’re drifting through life, and not going where you want to go? Or that you don’t know how you got where you are today?

Living consciously is about taking control of your life, about thinking about your decisions rather than making them without thought, about having a life that we want rather than settling for the one that befalls us.

If you’re drifting through life, or feel out of control, or don’t know how you got here ? deciding to live consciously could be the single most important thing you do.

Are you living unconsciously now?

Ask yourself the following questions ? if you find yourself saying yes to many of them, you might want to consider trying conscious living:

1. Are you in a job that you fell into rather than the job you want?

2. Are you doing things that are given to you rather than what you love to do?

3. Are you spending your time doing busy work rather than what you want to do with your days?

4. Do you wish you could spend more time with loved ones?

5. Do you find yourself overweight because you’ve been eating the food you’ve been eating for years and stuck in a rut of not exercising?

6. Do you find yourself living from paycheck to paycheck or in debt, not knowing where your money goes?

7. Do you find yourself wasting your time doing things that aren’t important rather than focusing on completing the things that are very important?

8. Do you go through your days not thinking about what you want out of life and how to get it?

If you answered “no” to all of these questions, you’re probably already living consciously, and you don’t need this article at all. For those who would like to live more consciously, read on.

How to Live Life Consciously

It’s not something you can change overnight. Living consciously is a lifestyle, a skill, an art. It’s not something you do just once, but a habit that you can form for the rest of your life.

But it is deceptively simple: Be conscious, and think about, everything you do. Make conscious choices rather than doing things without thinkings. That’s all.

It sounds simple, but it’s amazing how few people actually do this, and it’s amazing how easy it is to live life on autopilot, and just do what we always do because that’s what we’re used to doing. And it’s easier that way, even if our lives are difficult.

It’s not easy to changes our lives, to break out of our routines, to begin to live the lives we want.

It takes willful effort, energy and constant vigilance to think about our choices ? all of them.

Here are some key tips that have worked for me:

1. Make reflecting on your life a regular routine. Whether you keep a journal, or make reflecting on your day part of your evening routine, or have a weekly session where you review your life or take some time away from the office to reflect on everything ? it’s important that you give things some thought. Regularly.

2. At least once a year, set or review your life’s goals. What do you want to do in life? What is important to you? What do you want your life to be like? And how will you get there? Write it down, and keep it somewhere you will see it often, and take action.

3. Also review your relationships. The people we love are among the most important things in our lives, if not the only important things. You need to think about your relationships. Do you spend enough time with them? Do you show your appreciation for them? Is there a way you can improve your relationship? Do you need to forgive or apologize about anything? Are there barriers that can be removed? Communication that can be improved? Also review your relationships with others, such as co-workers.

4. Consider your impact on the world. How does what you do, what you consume, and how you live, impact the environment? How does it impact poor people in Third World countries? How does it impact the poor, the powerless, the voiceless? How does it impact your community? Your life has an impact, whether you think about it or not. Being conscious of how your decisions affect others is important.

5. Consider the real costs of each purchase. We often buy things without really thinking about what we’re doing or what they really cost. Sure, it’s just $30 ? no problem, right? But that $30 might represent several hours of your life ? hours that you’ll never get back. Do you really want to spend your life earning money for trivial purchases? Is that what you want to do with your life? Worth some thought, I think. Read Your Money or Your Life for more.

6. Consider the real costs of the things in your life. Our lives are filled with stuff ? our houses, our offices ? and beyond just the cost of buying the stuff, this stuff takes a toll on us. The stuff in our life must be arranged, cleaned, moved, taken with us when we move ? it takes up the space in our life, it is visual stress. Later, we’ll have to get rid of it, sort through all of it, take time to throw it away or recycle it or donate it. If having the stuff is not worth all of that, then get rid of it.

7. Review how you spend your time. Until we do a time audit, and keep a log of our day, even if it’s just for one or two days, we don’t really know how we spend our time. And if we do audit our time, it can be very surprising. And if we know how we’re spending our time now, we can make conscious decisions to change how we spend our time in the future. For computer-based time tracking, try Rescue Time.

8. Explore yourself. Not in a dirty way. Take some time to think about what kind of person you are. What your values are. Whether you live your life according to those values. How you treat people. How you treat yourself. Think about this: what do you want people to say about you when you die? Read more: The Key to Dying Happy.

Do you live a life of consciousness? Do you have any tips for doing so? Share in the comments.

Written by Nelson Doyle

Written by Adario Strange

We spend a lot of time here exposing you to the gadgets and technologies out there already making your life easier and more interesting “today.” But the truth is, behind the scenes, our favorite pastime is actually sniffing around for those gadgets still in the idea phase. We’re constantly searching for these electronic monstrosities so far ahead of their time that only concept designers dare tackle giving such products a face and a name. After the jump, take a peek into our future fetish and 10 nonexistent – but awesome – tech toys that take our gadget lust to a more advanced level.

10. Dattoos: Interactive Tattoos
No one brings concept design to reality like Frog Design. Winners of numerous design awards over the years, Frog has become synonymous with powerful technology meeting artistic design. So when we found Frog’s Dattoo (interactive tattoo) concept, it was like finding futurist gold. Designed by Hartmut Esslinger, Dattoos would conceivably bring us to that final convergence of man and machine. The Dattoos would offer: DNA-reader and identification technology, nanosensors and interactive “touch reading,” full voice interaction, bionic nano chips and various cybernetic components. While Dattoos would definitely look cool, what Esslinger is imagining here is nothing short of the Borg. But hey, who said being a mindless drone working within a hive mind had to be drab?

9. Astrium Spaceplane
The race to full-on space tourism is in full swing, but we’re still in the early stages of the industry, so naturally style and comfort has taken a backseat to safety and practicality. The Astrium Spaceplane looks to up the ante and allow spacefaring travelers the opportunity to look into infinity whilst nestled in comfortable and familiar surroundings. Australian designer Marc Newson’s concept vehicle doesn’t propel passengers into a far-out science-fiction realm, but if the near term of space tourism really looks like this the spaceports will likely be jam-packed and delayed like your favorite local commercial airport in no time.

8. Custom Kicks
Sneaker culture has transcended the world of fashion and transformed into an art form unto itself. Brand loyalty and price-tag importance has fallen by the wayside as pure originality and exclusive design have become the mark of a true sneaker aficionado. But nowadays, finding one of those unseen designs has become even more difficult. Enter Custom Kicks, a concept designed by the Inventables studio. Custom Kicks would allow wearers to instantly change the design of their shoes on the fly with a mere push of a button. Using a tiny iPod-like device, sneaker fanatics would beam a new pre-designed pattern to their feet and immediately up the ante on the fashion wars. We want this yesterday.

7. Nikon 360
In Star Trek: Voyager and Deep Space Nine, characters used a holographic camera to snap instant three-dimensional replicas of certain moments in time. We’re not quite there yet, but in the meantime the idea behind the Nikon 360 concept camera seems like a reasonable facsimile. According to Ye Chen, designer of the device, the camera would take an all-round picture using a built-in inclinometer indicating the horizontal position prior to execution. Sure, panoramic photos are already in existence, but they take a little more work. With the Nikon 360, capturing surround-vision images would become literally a snap.

6. Honda Cub Motocycle
Sam Jibert’s Honda Cub Motocycle concept vehicle takes the macho out of the road hog and adds just enough clean design and geek friendliness to ensure a consumer hit. Looking like a cross between a 19th-century bicycle and a modern-day crotch rocket, the Honda Cub Motocycle is not only cute but enviro-friendly since it uses a hydrogen fuel cell. If Dean Kamen’s Segway had been this cool-looking, maybe Steve Jobs’ initial prediction that it would change the way cities were built would have come true.

5. Pills To Go
British designer Priestman Goode has envisioned a product so simple and practical, it’s astounding to think that this isn’t already available. Pills To Go combines two caplets of your favorite medicinal salve with a hearty gulp of water all in one package. So simple, so convenient, yet as of now, still a futuristic concept. When eventually brought to market by some company – and you can rest assured that it will definitely happen – Pills To Go is sure to be one of the biggest sellers of all time.

4. WPA Wearable Power Suit
Vlady Spetkovsky designed the WPA wearable power suit as a project for the Bezalel Academy of art and design in Israel. Although Spetkovsky doesn’t offer much detail regarding what the suit would actually do, after watching his animated 3D movie showing the suit in action it’s reasonable to assume that it would increase the strength and speed of the wearer via an accumulator-powered exoskeleton. That’s right friends, with suits like this, one day we’ll all get to live out our superhero fantasies.

3. B-Membrain Computer
The B-Membrain won’t transport you into another dimension or suddenly become self-aware and declare that all humans are obsolete, but it does offer something we can all relate to: sexy hardware. Winner of Intel Korea’s recent PC Design Contest (Challenger category), the B-Membrain does away with the computer monitor and instead beams images to any surface via a built-in projector. As for input, the keyboard is described by its designer Won-Suk Lee as a touchscreen interface. Sure, the B-Membrain looks weird and you’d probably have trouble figuring out where to put to the oddly shaped contraption, but never has a more sci-fi-ish computer been so within reach.

2. Credit Card of the Future
Paying bills will never be fun, but in the future there’s a chance that you’ll at least be able to pay the piper in style. To that end, designer Jacob Palmborg mocked up a universal payment device that simultaneously links to all of your banking and credit accounts. The unnamed device would keep a real-time accounting of just how much you’ve spent, and what your near-term financial forecast looks like based on recent purchase activity. And if that’s not Big Brother enough for you, the device would only be accessible via biometric (think thumbprint, eyescan, etc.) verification. With RFID tap-and-pay bankcards already being used throughout the U.S., it seems like this little gadget’s emergence is just a matter of time.

1. Timeflex Stick-On Watch
It’s been awhile since a cross-demographic product has swept the country, but something like the Timeflex stick-on watch might just do the trick. Imagined as a non-permanent, self-gumming timepiece, the Timeflex would make the perfect accessory for style-conscious millennials (read: teens), on-the-go professionals, and athletes (swimmers, rock climbers, runners, etc.). The outlines of the device are meant to be fluorescent, with the interior sporting a transparent surface so you can show off your fashion-forward sensibility, and a little skin in process.

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Written by Emru Townsend

PCs that started instantly and no Registry to worry about–what’s not to like

We zip along at gigahertz speed, not megahertz. We store gigabytes instead of kilobytes. Going strictly by the numbers, we’re living in a computing paradise compared with 20 or 30 years ago, when the personal-computer revolution was just beginning. But there are a few things from the old days that we still cherish.

1. More RAM Than You Can Handle

One early quote often attributed to Bill Gates is that 640KB–that’s right, kilobytes--should be enough for any computer user. (He vehemently denies saying it.) We joke about it today, but in 1981 that sentiment would have made sense.

The phenomenally popular Apple II and Commodore 64 computers had 48KB and 64KB of system memory, respectively, and the IBM PC’s basic configuration had a measly 16KB. Few people complained. For personal computing’s first decade, none but the seriously hard-core had to push their system beyond the seemingly limitless 640KB. These days, even 2GB isn’t enough to prevent Windows from dipping into the virtual-memory well.

2. Easy, Registry-Free Tweaks

Hey, want to tweak your WordPerfect settings? Fire up your favorite text editor and edit the WP.INI file to your heart’s content.

Prior to Windows 95’s introduction of the Registry, editing .INI files was the way to customize your experience on a PC. Sure, some of the parameters seemed arcane, but dealing with them was better than deciphering the enigmatic HKEY_local_machine parameters infesting Windows machines over the last 12 years.

The .INI files were also easy to back up, restore, or swap, and messing one up wouldn’t take down your entire system. And honestly, did you ever hear of an .INI cleaner? I rest my case.

3. Software That Goes With You

Back when hard drives were expensive (and therefore rare on most PCs), the medium of choice was the floppy disk–which, depending on your operating system, could hold as little as 180KB. Without hard drives, software had to fit on floppies, meaning that applications were reasonably compact and self-contained. You could easily run your programs with your own settings on any compatible computer if you were willing to tote a few disks around. Recent innovations such as the U3 spec for USB drives are just starting to bring that capability back to modern PCs.

4. Lightning-Fast Startups

Microsoft has worked hard to keep startup times down for Windows, but let’s face it: With all of the drivers, antimalware utilities, and other doodads that load into memory (do you really need that casserole-recipe widget on your desktop?), you can probably make a cup of coffee before you can do anything on your PC.

In the old days, either the operating system was built into ROM (so the computer was ready as soon as you flipped the switch) or you loaded it from a disk (which took just a few seconds).

5. A Virus? What’s That?

It’s not that malware didn’t exist–computer viruses actually predate personal computers–but virus protection wasn’t as big a concern as it is now. Running virus scans certainly took less time; since most personal computers lacked hard drives, you could guarantee that a clean floppy would stay uninfected simply by write-protecting it. In a certain sense, an inch of adhesive tape, back then, provided better protection than a battery of antimalware utilities does today.

Collected by photo-and-image.blogspot.com

Good friendships between animals