Muddle

sagan|sense: Trace space back to you: 20 everyday items we have because of NASA

Have you ever wondered how space exploration impacts your daily life?

Every year since the mid-1970s, NASA has published a list of space technologies that have been integrated into everyday items. The tangible benefits span from life-saving medical devices to protective eyewear. To date, NASA has documented nearly 1,800 “spinoff” technologies. Here’s a short list. 

• Artificial limbs
• Baby formula 
• Cell-phone cameras
• Computer mouse
• Cordless tools 
• Ear thermometer
• Firefighter gear
• Freeze-dried food
• Golf clubs
• Long-distance communication
• Invisible braces
• MRI and CAT scans
• Memory foam 
• Safer highways
• Solar panels
• Shoe insoles
• Ski boots
• Adjustable smoke detector
• Water filters
• UV-blocking sunglasses

NASA did not invent:

• Tang
• Velcro
• Teflon

(Source: Business Insider)

Reblogged from Mike Mitchell's Tumblr of Amazing Things..

Link

prostheticknowledge:

LED Hats by Moritz Waldemeyer 

Created for London Fashion Week 2012, spinning helicopter blades with lights create illusionary headwear - from Moritz’s website:

For Moritz Waldeyemer it’s the satisfying culmination of ongoing experiments to integrate lighting completely into his designs: ‘it has long been my aim for the technology to disappear, to dissolve it into the surface of the work, so that the light effects themselves become the focus.’

Moritz again drew on the idea of weightlessness when asked to design his own piece for the show. This time a continuous band of light sweeps around the head with no apparent physical connection to the wearer at all. This uncanny effect is achieved courtesy of a carefully positioned propeller headpiece – each blade is finished at the end with LED lights. When in full motion the blades themselves disappear leaving only an ethereal halo of light. It’s millinery for the 21^st Century.

More about the show here

Genuine question, Has any designer ever had a show which bypasses cloth material entirely and instead uses spinning light effects like this?

Can I get a source on this? Wow.

kottke.org: Magical heart rate monitor iPhone app

jkottke:

Using just the camera on your iPhone, the Cardiio app can accurately measure your heart rate. Here’s how it works:

Every time your heart beats, more blood is pumped into your face. This slight increase in blood volume causes more light to be absorbed, and hence less light is reflected from…

One more step towards a real life tricorder. (In case you don’t know what a tricorder is, click here.)

programmerryangosling:

Hey girl,

you are the .clearfix to my floating #heart

笑 (means lol in japanese, i learned today)

Anyway, don’t usually get all these, but I got this one.

“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” 

The Joy of Quiet on the NYT.