Tag Archives: Body & Mind

China Hearts Wikipedia

Ever since the Chinese government uncensored Wikipedia, people in China have been visiting the site in droves. Explosive growth of the site’s content is a great sign for freedom in China.

“Activity on nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation’s Chinese Wikipedia site has skyrocketed since its release, which Internet users in China first started reporting on Nov. 10. Since then, the number of new users registering to contribute to the site has exceeded 1,200 a day, up from an average of 300 to 400 prior to the unblocking. The number of new articles posted daily has increased 75% from the week before, with the total now surpassing 100,000, according to the foundation.”

Spitting the Cure

Human saliva contains a natural painkiller according to new research. The chemical is named opiorphin may soon be able to provide a new gamut of painkillers and maybe even anti-depressent drugs.

I guess this means that YOU really are the cure.

“Its pain-suppressive effect is like that of morphine,” says Catherine Rougeot at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, who led the research. “But we have to test its side effects as it is not a pure painkiller,” she says. “It may also be an anti-depressive molecule.”

World Usability Day

Today is World Usability Day!

Making things easy to use is hard, and it goes unappreciated. People are more likely to complain how something is not working and hard to use than express their appreciation of things that just work.

World Usability Day wants to make the world easier to use. That sounds weird, but I assure you that it’s a good thing.

“Why doesn’t this work right? What am I supposed to do with this now?”

World Usability Day, November 14, 2006, is for everyone who’s ever asked these questions. This Earth Day style event, focused on raising awareness and visibility of usability engineering and user centered design, is currently being organized by volunteers and local event coordinators from around the world. Whether a usability professional or just an enthusiastic (or frustrated) user, each participant is making a contribution to “making life easy”.

French Kissing

Last week France, land of the French Kiss, fell far short of beating the current Guinness World Records holder for Most Kissers At Once.

At the Guinness World Records’ sponsored event, in Paris, 1,188 people showed up for simultaneous kissing.  (I know, you’re thinking, “Best. Date. Ever.”) Unfortunately, they failed to beat Budapest’s impressive 2005 record of 11,570 kissers.kissers.jpg

Some Parisians blame the location chosen for the event: La Defense, a modernist business park on the west edge of Paris.  It’s been suggested that a better known, and perhaps more inspiring spot, would have been the Eiffel Tower.

Ducks for Desalination

ducky thingWater is becoming more precious round the world, yet the oceans are filled with the wet. If someone found a way to turn salty water into potable water easily and cheaply there would be a lot less thirsty people out there.

Stephen Salter at Edinburgh University has found a way to use the power of waves to remove salt from water. Desalination takes a lot of energy and by using waves, the energy cost obviously is a lot lower. The system is shaped like a duck and works by popping in the water and using that force to steam water for clean, drinkable goodness.

THe inventor also invented the first system to use wave energy for electric power and he was inspired to make this system from a trip to India.
“I visited India just after they had missed two monsoons and water was becoming a worry,” Salter told New Scientist. “I thought that using wave power for desalination would be a neat idea.”