Photo: Design Boom

In 1979, Japan built its first capsule hotel -- an inn with rooms consisting of little more than a bed, and certainly not enough room to stand up. Now developers in Kyoto are contrasting that minimalist approach with luxury furnishings at the 9h Hotel, which will open in December. It's called 9h because users are expected to shower, sleep for seven hours, and then rest in a nine-hour period -- although you can rent your room for up to seventeen hours at a time. Each pod comes with customizable lighting to help lull you to sleep and then gently wake you.

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/8111/9-h-nine-hours-capsule-hotel-in-kyoto.html via Fast Company (where there are pictures of a similar endeavor in Manhattan)

Image: d-barcode

The Japanese graphic arts firm d-barcode creates customized barcodes for clients who want to use them to grab customers' attention. In Fast Company, Cliff Kuang writes:

They've even begun selling their wares to anyone who wants to license them, starting at $1,500 for the design, and $200 a year for licensing. A custom or exclusive use code will run upwards of $4,000--but given that companies spend millions on designing a single package, why don't we see more detailed thinking like this? Middle managers spend weeks arguing about kerning--it'd be better if they spent more time rethinking every inch of such highly prized real estate.

Link via Fast Company

Image: Jeff Brunner

Jeff Brunner offers this scathing critique of the values that the Disney Princesses teach girls. At the link, you can view a response about what Disney teaches boys.

Link via Popped Culture

Photo: Kibardin Design

Prague-based Russian designer Vadim Kibardin created the Deep Forest Lounge Chair out of 374 wooden dowels, carefully molded to seat a person comfortably. Each is custom-made and priced at $6,584. More pictures at the link.

http://www.kibardindesign.com/collection/collecton3/deep-forest-chair.aspx via Gizmodo

Photo: flickr user Prince Roy

Deck Chair has compiled pictures and videos of seven unique golf courses, including one that floats, one that sits astride a motor speedway, and another that is 1,365 km long. Pictured above is a scene from the golf course at Coober Pedy, a small mining town in Australia. The land is so desolate that golfers must carry around a piece of turf from which to tee off.

http://www.deckchair.com/355/ via The Presurfer | More about the Coober Pedy golf course

Photo: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, best known for its aggressive tactics against whaling vessels, had added a stealthy, high-speed boat to its fleet. At The National Post, Jeremy Barker writes:

The Ady Gil, a bio-diesel powered trimaran, can hit 40 knots and Captain Paul Watson plans to sail it quickly into harms way....The Andy Gil, which has circled the globe in a little over 60 days, has been coated with radar blocking black paint, which will be used as an 'intercept and blocking' weapon against the Japanese fleet.

More pictures and video at the link.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2009/11/09/anti-whalers-sea-shepherd-buy-record-holding-powerboat.aspx | Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

(YouTube Link)

Three computer scientists at Colorado University programmed several Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners to act like Pac-Man and the ghosts which chase him. Jack Elston, Cory Dixon, and Maciej Stachura did so in order to demonstrate the unmanned aerial system that they are developing. Click on the link for more videos, pictures, and schematics for this project.

Link via CrunchGear

In old Western movies, heroes often wore white hats and villains wore black hats. Why? Wray Herbert wrote in Scientific American about a new study that investigated why people often associate the color white with righteousness and black with wickedness:

In Sherman and Clore’s version of the Stroop, volunteers read not the names of colors but words with strong moral overtones: greed and honesty, for example. Some of the words were printed in black and some in white, and they flashed rapidly on a screen. As with the original Stroop, a fast reaction time was taken as evidence that a connection was mentally automatic and natural; hesitation was taken as a sign that a connection did not ring true. The researchers wanted to see if the volunteers automatically linked immorality with blackness, as in black ink, and virtue with whiteness.

And they did, so quickly that the connections could not possibly be deliberate. When moral words were printed in white and immoral words in black, reaction time was significantly faster than when words of virtue were black and sin were white. Just as we unthinkingly—almost unconsciously—“know” a lemon is yellow, we instantly know that sin and crime are black and that grace and virtue are white.

The researchers conducted further tests and determined that this color-moral association may stem from concepts of physical cleanliness:

This result offers pretty convincing evidence in itself that the connection between black and bad is not just a metaphor we all have learned over the years, but rather it is deeply associated with our ancient fear of filth and contagion. But Sherman and Clore wanted to look at the question yet another way. If the association between sin and blackness really does reflect a concern about dirt and impurity, then this association should be stronger for people who are preoccupied with purity and pollution. Such fastidiousness often manifests as personal cleanliness, and a proxy for personal cleansing might be the desire for cleaning products. The researchers tested this string of psychological connections in a final study, again ending with the Stroop test.

Link | Image: Republic Pictures

Image: Robert Chaplin

Teeny Ted from Turnip Town by Malcolm Douglas Chaplin is, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the world's smallest book. Each page measures about 11 by 15 microns:

The Robert Chaplin/SFU Nanobook project was produced using a focused-gallium-ion beam with the assistance of Dr. Li Yang, and Dr. Karen L. Kavanagh of Simon Fraser University, located at the summit of Burnaby Mountain, Burnaby, BC. The gallium beam has a minimum diameter of 7 nanometers, and was programmed to carve the space surrounding each letter of a book. The book was typeset in block letters with a resolution of 40 nanometers, and is made up of 30 microtablets, each carved on a polished piece of single crystalline silicon. The entire collection of microtablets is contained within an area of 69 x 97 microns square with an average size of tablet being 11 x 15 microns square.

Link via Make

Farmer Zheng Dexun of Langzhong, China dug up a fleeceflower root that looks like a human being right down to the arms, legs, and facial features. It is 62 centimeters tall and weights 5.8 kilograms. Zeng, worried about the consequences of digging it up, put it back in the ground, saying " don't know whether it is good or bad to dig out a Chinese knotweed that looks like a human. I'd better put it back in the earth!" Full-sized image at the link.

Link via Urlesque | Image: WENN

Image: Sean McNally

Sean McNally, a 15th-level artist and 7th-level animator, created a resume that looks like a character sheet from Dungeons & Dragons. He claims to have a Base Art Bonus of +11, of which I am skeptical. But maybe a little exaggeration is expected on a resume. Click on the link for a larger image.

Link via Geekologie

Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall was breached and collapse of European Communism rapidly accelerated. From the archives of the BBC:

At midnight East Germany's Communist rulers gave permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points.

They surged through cheering and shouting and were be met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side.

Ecstatic crowds immediately began to clamber on top of the Wall and hack large chunks out of the 28-mile (45-kilometre) barrier.

Link | Timeline of the Wall | Interactive Map of the Wall | PBS Documentary | Image: U.S. Department of State

(YouTube Link)

Ford is developing a seat belt that inflates when the car detects a crash. In The Wall Street Journal, Matthew Dolan writes:

Its inflatable rear seat belts spread crash forces over five times more area of the body than conventional seat belts, said Sue Cischke, Ford group vice president of sustainability, environmental and safety engineering

Each belt's tubular air bag inflates with cold compressed gas, which flows through a specially designed buckle from a cylinder housed below the seat. The inflatable belt's accordion-folded bag breaks through the belt fabric as it fills with gas, expanding sideways across the occupant's body. It looks something like a water wing children wear in the pool before they know how to swim.

Link via Popular Science

Photo: Dalia Birske

Martynas Birskys of the Vilnius-based design studio DaDaDa sells slippers made out of bread. For your comfort, you can select from various sizes and grains. It's hard to argue with his sales pitch "eatable…dries itself… made from bread...first in fashion…needs no pressing…feels good in dry climate …won’t sag."

Link via GearFuse

(YouTube Link)

Ben Miller of Urlesque has compiled several pop, rock, and metal songs performed by harpists, such as CKania13's rendition of Led Zepplin's "Stairway to Heaven." The other videos are selections from Journey, Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Lenny Kravitz.

Link | Previously on Neatorama: Harptallica