Human Wellbeing Search Results

News: Mugshots of the World's Best Scrabble Players

Mugshots aren't just for criminals anymore. In the world of competitive Scrabble, no one's safe from the lens of photojournalist Roger Cullman. For the last couple years, Cullman has been hitting up the Scrabble circuit with hopes of immortalizing some of the world's best Scrabble players in headshot pictures of them holding racks with their surnames spelled out in Scrabble tiles.

Cocktail Couture: Robotic Booze Generating Dress

Meet DareDroid: sexy nurse, geek couture and mobile bartender, engineered into an all-in-one technologically advanced garment. Created by fashion designer Anouk Wipprecht, hacker Marius Kintel, and sculptor Jane Tingley, the team calls themselves the Modern Nomads (MoNo), and their series of garments fall into Wipprecht's invented family of "Pseudomorphs". Pseudomorphs are tech-couture pieces that transform into fluid displays—which is exactly what DareDroid does.

Squeal: iPad App Plays the Human Face Like a Theremin

Just as Smule's ocarina app yields the gentle sounds of a woodwind instrument by simply blowing into an iPhone, Squeal promises to emit theremin-esque noises from the iPad with easy fingerplay. Developed as a collaboration between Hong Kong musician/producer/composer Gaybird Leung and interactive designer Henry Chu, the musical app is a work-in-progress for Henry's ongoing experimental music project Digital Hug.

News: Indestructible iPhone 4 Case Inspired by Shark Eyes

It's not uncommon for nature to inspire technology and innovative products. Airplanes were inspired by birds, Velcro by burrs and dog fur, bullet trains by owls and kingfishers, and gecko tape by... well, you can probably figure that one out. And one of the deadliest fish ever to swim the oceans has also influenced its share of merchandise; Sharks made humans faster in the water with Fastswim Suits, and now they've helped make one of the most rugged smartphone cases in the world—SharkEye's Ru...

News: Flickr Images Corrupted by GlitchBot

The term glitch always seemed best suited for computer programs, video games and electronic equipment, where a slight irregularity in the device or system would create a temporary malfunction with annoying, sometimes even amazing unexpected results. Only the effect was never really considered artistic—until now.

LeafSnap: Identify Tree Species in Just One Click

Being a Southern Californian, I typically miss out on the incredible springtime bloom of flowering trees in the East. But not this year. By some stroke of luck, I was in Boston early last week, and witnessed the most spectacular trees and foliage at their prime—lilac, magnolias, crabapples, dogwood, and many more.

News: Become Your Own Souvenir

As a kid, my favorite thing to do at the Natural History museum was a midday stop, when my family strolled past an antiquated looking vending machine in the museum's musty basement. The Mold-A-Rama machine was oddly shaped, George Jetson-esque, and spewed out made-to-order, brightly colored plastic dinosaurs. There was such joy in watching the liquid wax pour into the mold, and then eject a warm, custom toy—well worth the dollar or two demanded. A version of this tradition was recently elevat...

News: 1.3 Million Dollar Surgical Robot Folds Paper Airplanes, Gives Manicures

Here's a two-in-one "tutorial" for you today; how to fold a paper airplane, and how to execute a belated St. Patrick's Day manicure. Just follow along and do as the da Vinci does—our adroit instructor is a surgical robot, with a hefty price tag of approximately 1.3 million dollars, plus several hundred thousand dollars in annual maintenance fees. In truth, the da Vinci doesn't have the brain power to dictate the folding of a simple origami plane, nor does it know how to paint orange and green...

News: Creepy Facial Reconstruction of Iceman Mummy

It's tough to figure out what a mummy would have looked like when he was alive; soft tissue of a human body decays, even in ice. But, Dutch brothers Adrie and Alfons Kennis took the challenge. Using techniques that belong to both science and art, they managed to reconstruct the face and body of Otzi the Iceman, a mummy who was found in the Italian Alps in 1991.

News: Trade in Your Grill for Japanese LED Teeth

In the far away land of Japan, gold is out, glow-in-the-dark is in. LED "grills" were recently conceived of by two Japanese designers/hackers for a winter advertising event at clothing store Laforet Harajuku. The LED teeth attachments quickly became a hot item. Foreseeably, one of the two designers demonstrating the teeth in the video above is the familiar Daito Manabe (our favorite "self-electrocuting" mad hacker). Manabe's partner, Motoi Ishibashi, came up with the idea when "he saw a video...

How To: Make Bullets? Make it Rain Molten Lead

In 1782, an English plumber named William Watts came up with a clever method for making shotgun ammo. Watts constructed a six story "shot tower", consisting of a series of perfectly lined up holes, drilled into all six floors of the structure. Watts then poured molten lead through a sieve from the top story, through the holes of each floor, finally landing on the bottom floor in a pool of water. The cushioned impact resulted in a perfectly formed bullet.

The Art of Farting: Extreme Jedi Anus Control

Nearly all humans (admittedly childishly) admire the ability to emit uncannily musical armpit or hand farts, or even rarer- mouth fart motor engine aping. However, it is the rare occasion that a performer's gaseous-sounding melodic notes are indeed truly gaseous (meaning literally discharged from the butt-hole).

News: 11 Dirty Tricks Played by Crooked Web Designers

Ever been Privacy Zuckered? Roach Moteled? Friend Spammed? If you've been on the net long, odds are you have — and worse! Fortunately, there's a new resource for keeping track of the web's worst design practices; it's called "Dark Patterns" and it aims to "name and shame" sites that employ "user interfaces that have been designed to trick users into doing things they wouldn't otherwise have done."

HowTo: Cremate Yourself into a Vinyl Record

Think you're a music lover? Then arrange to offer up your remains as the final sacrifice to the Gods of Rock. A UK company called And Vinyly offers music fans an interesting post-death "alternative": have your ashes pressed into a vinyl recording of your favorite song, or opt for a personalized recording of your last will and testament.

News: Cheeseburger Dipped in Acid (Plus: Why You Should Fear McDonald's)

Ok, so first Periodic Tables demonstrates how a McDonald's cheeseburger breaks down in your stomach during the digestion process. Everybody has hydrochloric acid in their stomach, so drop a burger in acid and you can see it happen before your eyes (minus the amino acids a human stomach would supply). Seems innocent enough. Here's what happened after 3.5 hours: NASTY. So my question is: does healthy food look the same? What would a pile of broccoli or granola look like? Probably just as nasty....

News: Man Spends $20,000 and 18 Months Creating Clone of Dead Lover

Sad story: a 50-year-old businessman recently lost his lover, and grief stricken, created a sex doll replica of the deceased woman. The 18-month-long painstaking process required dozens of photos to recreate an "exact" plastic copy of her face and body shape. £15,000 ($23,169) later, the clone was finished, complete with articulated joints, a titanium skeleton and lifelike skin.