fun news blurbs

In light of a recent news update (thanks AC) I went to the NY times online and found somethign pretty nifty. the year of great ideas in alphabetical order! needs no further introduction, eh? So without firther ado :
Air Bags for the Elderly
By JEFF STRYKER
Elderly people reasonably dread falling: falls are the leading cause of death from injury in adults 65 and older.
Perhaps they need not worry anymore. This month the Japanese company Prop begins selling a wearable set of air bags to protect against falls. The device looks something like a fishing vest with a fanny pack attached. When its built-in motion sensors detect a fall, it inflates two air bags — one around the hips, the other around the neck — in a 10th of a second. Instant Michelin Man. It retails in Japan for approximately $1,400.
Wearable air bags are not the first try at a technological fix to reduce injuries from falls. Foam hip pads, a cheaper and decidedly lower-tech approach, have also been used, though with mixed results.
Mary E. Tinetti, a geriatrician and fall expert at the Yale School of Medicine, says she wonders whether air bags would be a real advance. “It may be a good idea,” she says; but she stresses that she would first want to see research on whether the elderly can tolerate the bouncing involved when air bags cushion a fall.
If the foam-hip-pad experience is any guide, the future of wearable air bags may come down not to bioengineering concerns or cost consciousness but to fashion sense. “One of the reasons people shy away from hip protectors is that they don’t want to make their hips look larger,” Tinetti says. “Self-consciousness is going to be a real barrier here. And these air bags look kind of parachute-y.”

see? self-consciousness can kill a person! who care sif your hips look fat, you won't have to die this way!

Bubble Wrap That Never Ends
By VANESSA GREGORY
Is there any cheaper, more satisfying catharsis than that of a good Bubble-Wrap-popping session? That pleasing little sound. The release of pressure as each plastic cell yields to the crushing thumb. There are online games and an iPhone application devoted to recreating the experience. But they obviously lack the tactile joys of the real thing.
Enter Japan’s Mugen Puchi Puchi, a battery-powered key chain with a panel of eight push buttons designed to simulate bubble-packaging destruction. Since the key chain’s buttons rebound, users can vent their frustration endlessly. Mugen Puchi Puchi roughly translates as “Infinite Pop Pop” and the toy has been an almost infinite success for the manufacturer, the Bandai Company, which sold a million of the little gizmos in the first two months after it was released in Japan. The product reached the shelves of Target, Wal-Mart and other American stores in late October.
At the Sealed Air Corporation, the New Jersey-based company that manufactures actual Bubble Wrap, the anxiety-relieving benefits of the packing material have long been acknowledged. “None of this stuff ever surprises us,” a spokesman, Ken Aurichio, says. “Somehow, this product became sort of the icon of the stress reliever.” This latest invention can’t compare to Bubble Wrap, he says. Besides, at Sealed Air, there’s no need for the Mugen Puchi Puchi: employees get desktop “stress boxes” that dispense little sheets of Bubble Wrap to soothe them at difficult moments. Sorry, they’re not for sale.

now that is what I need in school!!


Crystal Chair, The By ALICE RAWSTHORN
If there’s one profession that’s given license to indulge in control-freakery, it’s design. Why, then, did the Japanese industrial de-signer Tokujin Yoshioka leave it up to nature to decide how one of his new products, a chair, would turn out?
Because he thought the result would be much, much lovelier than anything he could have dreamed up himself. That’s why he filled a large glass tank with water and submerged in it a block of polyester fibers arranged in the shape of a chair. After adding a special mineral formula to the water, Yoshioka watched and waited while tiny crystals formed on the fibers and gradually grew to form an exquisite but entirely random structure: the Venus Natural Crystal Chair. He revealed the result to the public in October by exhibiting four tanks, each showing chairs in different stages of development — or crystallization — at the 21_21 Design Sight design gallery in Tokyo.
“Nature shows us a beauty that exceeds our imagination,” Yoshioka says. “On the other hand, it contains a strength that is al-most frightening.” But maybe not so much strength, in this instance. While Yoshioka claims that his crystal chairs are perfectly capable of being sat upon, he advises against trying to do so too often.


yeah so ABC, that's all you're getting because the other stuff wasn't so great or funny, oh well!