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Form follows social function
Check out “the fairest system for payment of carriage or anything by air”. According to Samoa Air, they are the first airline in the world which charges you by the pound and provides a better level of comfort, customized to your needs. The system is super simple - the price of the ticket is ...
There’s been a pretty cool design piece circulating the tumblrsphere in the past few days. It’s called The Window Socket and is designed by Kyuho Song and Boa Oh. It’s a solar powered portable plug socket, which allows you to plug in any of your devices into a sun-lit window of a house, car, plane ...
If the current growth rate continues, the global demand for petroleum will double in the next 40-50 years. According to the IEA we will need to introduce more than 30% zero-carbon fuels to stabilize CO2 levels at 450 parts per million. New Zealand’s company LanzaTech is going to be part of the ...
There’s hardly ever been a Bulgarian kid growing up in the 80s, including myself, who doesn’t remember their baba (granny), sitting on the couch, knitting yet another sweater. For some it may have been the horrible piece of clothing they can’t sneak out from wearing and for others a rare chance to ...
It started with the thought of crowdfunding the U.S. national debt (for me at least that’s how it started - by stumbling upon this witty marketing campaign and an April Fools' Day joke - http://www.crowdfundthedebt.com/). I mean, could we really? Why not? When it comes to crowdfunding, I’ve ...
I love smart design, when you can just look at a product or service and be able to see the methodical, thorough, detail-oriented thinking process that went behind it, aimed at solving a problem, innovating, and disregarding convention. The invisible bike helmet from the Swedish company Hövding (don ...
If you believe that the nonprofit sector has a serious role to play in changing the world, then you’ve got to see this TED talk, given by Dan Palotta, AIDSRide founder and author of Charity Case . Why? Because according to him, it is the way we think about nonprofits that undermines our very own ...
Two decades after creating the World Wide Web, in a speech at an MIT symposium, Tim Berners-Lee said that "access to the web is now a human right". Probably not many people know, however, that only 25.6% of the world population has internet access. This means there are 5 billion people worldwide ...
In a previous post, Teddy Zareva wrote about a biodegradable urn made by the Spanish designer Martin Azua that turns you into a tree when you die. Big Think readers quickly warmed to this romantic notion of life after death in the form of "an eco solution," and the post went viral. One big ...
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after military service went by many names before it was recognized as a legitimate condition. “Shell shock,” “combat fatigue” and “soldier’s heart” are among the more recent terms for the haunting anxiety problems that some military personnel endure after ...
Here are three interesting items that make the process of packing, eating and separating trash a bit more practical, fun, and smart. I love the idea behind the packaging of one of the world's most expensive olive oils, El Verd Del Poaig. It's design was done by Spanish studio CuldeSac and it's ...
Nature doesn't litter, people do. In the US that trash amounts to 1.4 billion pounds per day. And 40% of that is packaging. Recently, Greenpeace tried to provoke the global community portraying Barbie as a serial killer because of her addiction to cheap packaging. I personally think that ...
1.3 trillion bricks are manufactured each year worldwide. 10% of them are made by hand in coal-fired ovens, emitting on average 1.4 pounds of carbon per brick or 800 million tons of carbon per year. In countries like China and India where the kilns are outdated this process is one of the major ...
A year ago, Ronald Shaich, the founder of Panera Bread, one of the biggest restaurant chains in the States, decided to try something different. He opened the Panera Cares Community Café in Colorado, an establishment that looked like and sold the same things as all the rest of the Panera Breads out ...
Iceland's 320 000 citizens all have a say in the writing of their new constitution. With the help of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, the 25-member council drafting the constitution is reaching out to Icelanders to get their recommendations. Everyone registered with their name and address can ...