When all this first started with Tunisia, I didn’t think there was any way the people could oust their president after some 24 years in power. I’d spent just a couple of weeks there in 2008, and people seemed more or less willing to accept the corruption of a government that was at least […]
Entries Tagged as 'do something'
12 countries face egypt-inspired protest movements
February 14th, 2011 · 3 Comments
Tags: africa · darn tootin' · do something · government · holy crap · iran · iraq · law and order · middle east · news · politics
reporting potholes: there’s an app for that
February 10th, 2011 · 2 Comments
Or at least, there will be soon.
The City of Boston is working on an app that uses your iPhone’s accelerometer to detect bumps while you’re driving, and its GPS to tell the city where the bumps happened.
According to the Boston Globe, the iPhone is “sensitive enough to identify cracks and divots,” and test runs […]
Tags: americas · darn tootin' · do something · government · neato · tech · transport
how to win the lottery
February 7th, 2011 · No Comments
For a while now, I’ve been convinced that the secret behind Wired’s success is that its editors know their audience: a generation of ADHD technophiles that love cool new things but don’t want to read more than 50 words about them. The mag is chock full of charts, tables and pithy rapid-fire bursts of […]
Tags: consumer · curio · do something · fun and games · invention · money · neato · stats
what to do when the man turns off the internet
January 29th, 2011 · 1 Comment
So it isn’t news anymore that Egypt has followed in Tunisia’s footsteps, in taking to the streets to overthrow a multi-decade dictator. You’ve probably also heard that to prevent protesters from organizing, Egypt has cut off broadband and mobile Internet access to its 80 million residents in the biggest Web blackout the world […]
Tags: africa · do something · law and order · middle east · news · tech
iran confiscates nobel prize
November 30th, 2009 · 2 Comments
This summer, the Iranian government brutally suppressed citizen unrest following an election that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad won in a landslide. The consensus — on the left, on the right, and everywhere in between — is that the election was rigged.
Five months later, the anti-Ahmedinejad protests have become more muted — probably due in […]
Tags: do something · election · holy crap · iran · law and order · middle east · news · politics · sad · scary
korean companies provide fake girlfriends, roach killers, errand boys…
August 6th, 2009 · 3 Comments
I spent a bit of time in South Korea last year, and if you could sum the place up in one word — which you can’t — it would be “busy.” South Koreans work an average of 2,390 hours a year, compared to 1,777 in the U.S.A., 1,717 in Canada and 1,652 in the […]
Tags: asia · curio · do something · korea · neato · pop culture
50 cars recycled to make one “bus”
May 11th, 2009 · No Comments
Sweden’s Flygbussarna bus company has built a 300-ton “bus” out of 50 crushed cars, to highlight the fact that each of its buses can potentially take 50 cars worth of emissions out of our air. They’re calling it a bus, but it’s really more a rectangular heap of twisted metal, with wheels tacked on […]
Tags: art · consumer · curio · do something · environment · europe · neato · sustainability · transport
list of metals we’ll run out of in 42 years (with bonus wacko cult)
April 24th, 2009 · No Comments
The New Scientist has put together a neat-o graphic detailing how many years we can sustain our current consumption of lead, zinc, aluminum and other metals. If they’re right, we’ll run out of chromium, copper, antimony, zinc, uranium, tin, tantalum, silver, platinum, lead, indium and gold within the next 42 years, with huge implications […]
Tags: do something · scary · stats · sustainability
perpetual motion machine creates more energy than it consumes
March 17th, 2009 · 1 Comment
According to these guys, at least.
I’d meant today’s post to be on FlowingData’s 16 excellent graphics explaining the financial crisis in über-simple terms for us regular folk, but their site seems to have imploded under the sheer weight of its own awesomeness and, I suspect, a lot of enthusiastic Diggers. So, here’s one that’s […]
Tags: curio · design · do something · energy · invention · neato · news · science
“unbowed and unafraid”: reporter writes own obituary just before assassination
January 16th, 2009 · 2 Comments
From the inspirational self-authored obituary of Lasantha Wickramatunge, editor-in-chief of Sri Lanka’s Sunday Leader newspaper, written shortly before he was shot and killed on his way to work:
It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government’s sanctimonious assurances, there […]
Tags: asia · censorship · do something · government · journalism · law and order · media · news · obit · sad · scary
