Caliendo Impressionifies !-)

Priceless!

IdeaStream 2008 ~ MIT Deshpande Center Celebration of Innovation

Very interesting to be at MIT's IdeaStream 2008, the Deshpande Center annual conference. (An event I helped create with Bob Metcalfe and Mark Gorenberg back in 2001, it turns out). It was nice to see both Desh and Jaishree Deshpande as well, since it was their vision and generosity which made things possible.

Several excellent morning speakers, including industrial electrochemistry rockstar Professor Don Sadoway who discussed his building-sized battery ideas -- basically learning-lessons from aluminum smelting and looking at less popular parts of the periodic table! Solar manufacturing rockstar Professor Ely Sachs discussed his new 1366 startup company dedicated to making solar competitive with coal. (I finally now understand that 1366 is the solar constant, the number of watts per square meter incident on Earth!) Finally, MIT alumnus entrepreneur Kailas Narendran gave a progress report on his neurorobotics stroke-rehab venture Myomo, born of Deshpande-financed research back in the first year, 2002.

Deshpande Executive Director Leon Sandler put the shout out to Stan Reiss of Matrix, Lori Pressman with Harris & Harris, and Jamie Goldstein of NorthBridge as representative members of our entrepreneurship ecosystem. The panel discussion was kind of a waste of time, too much high-level pontification about either obvious things or stuff we can't change easily. The innovation showcase was great, on the other hand, featuring both Deshpande-funded projects and emergent ventures from the greater MIT-landscape, including my Developmental Entrepreneurship class spinout company ClickDiagnostics!

The finale keynote by astronaut superwoman Suni Williams was rockin cool. Turns out she and Jim Matheson from Flagship has been Annapolis plebes back in the day. Anyways, Suni shared with us some of the fantastic experiences she's had in space and exposed us to some of the unique technical challenges we need to overcome.

In the reception afterwards -- in a dungeon-esque venue, alas, nothing like the Spinnaker Room at the old Hyatt venue -- I had a nice chat with Aleks Franz co-founder of Lilliputian and Matt Trevithick from Venrock. Turns out I knew Matt at a distance from his co-founding Flash Communications in mid-1990's. We discussed several things, including my Howtoons and educating kids generally, as well as venture opportunities in the hybrid-electric vehicle sector.

Floating Urban Accomodations ~ NYC Housing!-)

I showed my MIT MOT alumnus classmate Dave Perko the Floating Power Plant link and he got very excited, writing me...

It has me wondering about other potential offshore development opportunities. One thought in the article particularly struck me: it was the comment about augmenting land-scarce cities like NY with services they need. Why not build condos -- even communities -- near-shore? Or office buildings? People love the water, the view and proximity to the city. This is a viable solution to a real estate crunch. Think South East Asia. Plus, there is already ferry service in the Boston Harbor, in NYC, and SF. People vaction on house boats, take cruises, and travel to islands ... why not live there!

Indeed, said I, pointing out that the powers that be -- brighter minds than ours -- are already on it! Check out these multi-million dollar accomodations moored off New York City. Hundreds of people already live there... Seriously, though, this is a damn great idea. Floatable stuff is fast: fast to install, fast to change, fast to improve, fast to remove. All excellent qualities, worldwide.

Sovereign Wealth Flows

Nice article in the NYT on sovereign wealth flows entitled Follow the Money plus extra-cool graphic...

Racy Doodles or Innocent Images ?-)

First impressions are often deceptive (Courtesy some lovely Brazilians and DestroyMyArt)!

US & Global Mega-Region Analyses

Here's a couple papers on both US Mega-Regions -- specifically the Northeast from the Regional Plan Association / America 2050 -- entitled Toward an Action Agenda in the Northeast Megaregion. (More generally, there's an interesting America 2050 Prospectus.) And here's an analytic piece by Florida et al entitled The Rise of the Mega-Region. And finally, a piece pushing the new term Megapolitan.

Arab-Persian Gulf Economies ~ Boom Cities!

In a nice article entitled Gulf economies: How to spend it, the Economist surveys both the emergence of Gulf boom cities and the ailments of wealth. Among items discussed are the boom in Diabetes, the prospect for Saudi economic cities, the challenges of migrant labor, and emergent innovation institutions like the Masdar Institute of Science & Technology.

More About US Mega-Regions

In a piece entitled Economic Development Opportunities For U.S. Mega-Regions, Katie Bullard, Project Manager with AngelouEconomics writes about...

"large networks of metropolitan regions that are linked by environmental systems and geography, infrastructure systems, economic linkages, settlement patterns, and shared culture and history." The U.S.'s primary mega-regions are highlighted with blue boundary lines on the map below.

U.S. mega-regions will account for 50% of the nation's population growth and 66% of its economic growth over the next 45 years. Given those projections, it's clear that considerable investment will pour into these regions. This article describes the major U.S. mega-regions, evaluates their relative position of strength for sustaining economic growth, and outlines emerging areas of collaborative opportunities within the mega-region framework.

Robotic Bike Storage in Japan!

MIT's Frank Hebbert pointed fellow DUSP folks to this Japanese video of an amazing robotic bike storage system in Toyko! Frank says the system is: "$1 per day or $18 per month. Seems like you pay with a pre-loaded card when you pick up but this is apparently not made totally clear in the video. There are 36 of these systems at this one station, each one is 7m wide and 15m deep." Such systems will radically boost the density of storage and viability of cycling in ultra-populous urban settings.

Business Investment as Force for Peace in Middle East

Catching up on my reading, I discovered a most interesting FT interview, entitled Nothing Ventured by Michael Skapinker, of private equity investor Sir Ronald Cohen. Key quotes: "Business investment can act as a force for peace in the Middle East." "...encouraging enterprise in deprived areas [...] for regeneration projects." "Politicians are generally skeptical about the importance of economics in peacemaking [...] but Northern Ireland show that if you concentrate on business, peace will follow." And more. The interview spotlights Cohen's foundation, The Portland Trust for promoting peace and stability between Palestinians and Israelis through economic development, and two investment initiatives in particular, a $1 Billion housing project in the West Bank, and a $300 Million Palestinian loan guarantee program.

Mega-Regions ~ Economic & Innovation Hubs

A couple weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published an OpEd piece by Professor Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at Toronto's Rotman School of Management, entitled The Rise of the Mega-Region. Florida spotlights the dramatic and disporportionate importance of the 40 mega-regions powering some two-thirds of global economic output and innovative production. Fascinating stuff. Also worth looking at is Florida's earlier work seeking to understand the Creative Class and what attracts and inspires such folks. His latest book is Who's Your City, which he spoke about at Google... And here's an example map from his website, in this case, the density of Creative Class people in the US... And this map of US Mega-Regions... And finally this humorous map of Singles!

Update ~ Floating Power Plants

I wrote about Floating Power Plants a while ago. And indeed, given the power crisis in South Africa and beyond, as documented by the Wall St Journal in an article entitled In Africa, Outages Stifle a Boom, there's a timely Waller Marine update article entitled Are Non-Nuclear Floating Power Plants an Option for South Africa? Also, TR spotlights the promise of floating windpower in an article entitled Wind Power That Floats: Advances in floating platforms could take wind farms far from coasts, reducing costs and skirting controversy. They note several examples, including the Blue H deepwater windpower floatsystem.

Dissecting the Livescribe!

MIT's Technology Review magazine has a nice take-apart dissection of the Livescribe...

...a computerized pen that records as you write and digitally syncs the audio recording to the notes. Write or draw on specially patterned paper; then tap the pen on a word or sketch, and it will play back what was being said when you made those marks. The pen can also solve equations and define or translate words.

MIT as Microcosm ~ Energy is Not Enough...

As ardent readers of Maximizing Progress know -- from having read either my Imagining MIT piece, or my personal MIT 2020 story -- I'm one of those at the Institute who are interested in having our campus be a predictive microcosm of what the world might become in the future -- i.e. green, clean, efficient, effective, beautiful, amazing. But getting there soon -- or even launching an initiative to raise the money -- means educating and inspiring people and rallying folks around big ideas and common goals. Towards that end, I wrote a small missive to our organizing team pleading with them to embrace a bigger vision. Right now everything is very energy-centric, with some folks pushing to be under the umbrella of the MIT Energy Initiative. I argued that "Energy is not enough..."

With all due respect to Energy Initiative folks and our Walk The Talk leadership, I think Energy alone is NOT enough for even our initial efforts.

This is not merely a quibble over selecting our top short-term tactics, but a matter of core strategies and overarching vision.

I deeply believe the Institute needs a much broader -- and more inspiring -- action agenda. We ought to aspire towards Regeneration & Vitality in the large. This means embracing economic renewal, environmental sustainability, worthy aesthetics, and transformative innovations in physical infrastructure, operational excellence, institutional leadership, and beyond.

If we at MIT can't get our own house in order by 2015-2020 (or sooner), what moral standing do we have for advising others, and what hope do we have for our planet more generally?

Indeed, the MIT of 2020 should be a microcosm of what we want our civilization to become. Using our campus-as-testbed would allow us to see the future first. Plus using our campus as exploratory learning-lab both lives up to our Mens et Manus motto and educates and inspires new generations of innovators. We urgently need to ramp-up our efforts to do this not merely in Energy, but across many different dimensions, including at least:

• Aesthetics -- The MIT campus could use an intense aesthetic upgrade, with greenways, widewalks, bike lanes, underground parking, greenroofs, indoor foliage, informal cafe-style seating, proper maintenance, essential repairs, and more. The best of these initiatives would offer two-for-one. For instance, attractive roofgarden cafes would also boost our LEED qualities. It is inexcusable that MIT today owns and just land-banks ugly surface parking lots in the heart of Kendall Square, along Amherst Street, and along the premier pedestrian and urban thoroughfare of Mass Ave.
• Environmental -- In addition to pure aesthetics, many of the tangible aspects of campus energy are predominantly environmental in nature, for instance, localized air temperature control, fresh-air access, insulated entry-doors and windows, wide-spread recycling, waste minimization initiatives, emissions remediation, garbage handling, transportation solutions, and more.
• Information Technology -- Lots of new energy ideas would benefit from MIT having a campus-wide Project Athena Version 2.0, this time a distributed mobile-wireless network enabling sensors and distributed information mining, and most important, the feeding forward of essential info to users via mobile phones and other highly distributed end-points. We could mine social patterns of energy-use and transport behavior and fast-iterate accordingly.
• Economic -- Our near-neighborhood is too much of an economic monoculture of bland office parks and corporate labs. Those are certainly essential, but alone insufficient. We need to extend the mixed-use aspects of University Park to pervade greater-Kendall Square, the Mass Ave axis from MIT-through-Central, and the edges of the Institute along Main, Vassar, Portland, and Albany. This means ground-floor retail, a mix of residences and offices, and orchestrating a few investments in conference facilities, entrepreneurial incubators, and university coop residences. (Plus the aesthetic improvements noted earlier).
• Organizational -- Many of the underlying challenges here are actually driven by the Institute's loosely-coupled organizational form. This structure works wonders in allowing for distributed innovation and fast-action at small-scales, but can impede bold cross-connections and big moves. If our institutional leadership neither gets this nor understands how to both weave together an integrative vision and inspire people to rally around it, then we will continue to remain stuck where we are -- more muddling. In this regard, MIT is yet again a microcosm of the nation and world at-large.

We need to BE how we want the world to BECOME. Aspiring to anything less means becoming irrelevant.

Devil's Pool @ Victoria Falls ;-)

Remarkable natural phenomenon: a slow-flow Devil's Pool at the lip of one of the world's most amazing waterfalls! Thrill-seeking daredevils hang at or even over the edge. (Btw, Victoria Falls is just one of the hundreds of natural resources and tourist attractions that Zimbabwe has to offer. That country should be one of the richest in Africa, and, I hope, soon will be if Zimbabweans themselves act in concert for positive change. As I've written before, the world can help but not lead in this effort.)

MIT West Africa Networking Reception 2008

I'm delighted to report that the MIT Sloan Trip to Ghana was a success and especially that the first-ever MIT West Africa Networking Reception went outstandingly well, connecting current and potential students, alums and friends together in a wonderful Accra, Ghana venue. This is one of a growing series of global development efforts -- and especially West African initiatives -- I've helped finance and co-orchestrate. Kudos also to the MIT Sloan Africa Business Club for spotlighting the economic and entrepreneurial promise of Africa.

Goofy DIY Cartoon ;-)

Amazing Feat of Human Strength & Balance ;-)

Preposterous and amazing at the same time, a remarkable gymnastics-physiology tag-team demonstration...

Monetizing How-To DIY

Nice article in the New York Times yesterday entitled Making Money, the How-To Way about "the rush to capitalize on the popularity of how-to videos on the Web." Couple links to popular videos too, including several ways to use sodabottles, something we at Howtoons especially care about!

Anne Swift of Young Inventors on HighTechFever (Repeat)

I re-introduced an interview with Anne Swift, founder and president of Young Inventors, on my HighTechFever TV show today. A little while ago she wrote an Xconomy.com article entitled Universities: An Entrepreneur’s Ecosystem discussing...

Universities offer a thriving ecosystem that lends itself particularly well to entrepreneurship among students, faculty, and staff. My belief in the ability of the institution of higher education to foster entrepreneurship comes first hand from my experiences as a student entrepreneur at the University of Toronto, as well as my work with Young Inventors International, a non-profit organization that has taught hundreds of student entrepreneurs at universities across North America about innovation and bringing new products to market.

Martin Fisher / KickStart ~ MIT-Lemelson Inventor Awardee

It's most excellent to see that Martin Fisher, co-founder of KickStart, a developmental entrepreneurship venture, is winner of the MIT-Lemelson Award for Sustainability 2008! Martin and colleagues produced and shipped hundreds of thousands of my favorite African brand, the Moneymaker Pump! From the press release...

Dr. Martin Fisher is transforming the lives of thousands of poor African farmers through a combination of technological invention and system-wide business development. In collaboration with his co-workers, Fisher, the 2008 recipient of the Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability, has already enabled over 310,000 people to rise out of poverty.

Fisher will accept his award and present his accomplishments to the public at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the second-annual EurekaFest, a multi-day celebration of the inventive spirit, June 25-28, presented by the Lemelson-MIT Program.

The "In Club" @ MIT

Excellent Green Issue this past weekend in the New York Times Magazine. They mentioned the MIT Energy Club (and MIT Muddy Charles Pub) in a mini-article entitled The IN Club at M.I.T. Key club leaders Daniel Enderton and Lara Pierpoint were quoted discussing various events including the recent MIT Energy Conference (Version 3.0) and the MIT EnergyNights (co-created by yours truly and energy rockstar venture capitalist Dave Danielson, founder of the MIT Energy Club).

Robot Revolutionaries!

I'm sitting right now with MIT Media Lab alumnus roboticist Cory Kidd at the MIT Muddy Charles Pub. Cory's visiting from Hong Kong where he and partner Erica have founded Intuitive Automata to commercialize Cory's weight loss coachbot, Autom. His work was also just mentioned in a US News & World Report in an article entitled The Robot Revolution May Finally Be Here. The article showcases a couple MIT spinoff companies, iRobot and Myomo. Very cool!

GDP per Capita ~ Measure of Progress

My MIT entrepreneur friend Manish Bhardwaj just pointed out this nice Economist piece entitled Grossly distorted picture: If you look at GDP per head, the world is a different—and, by and large, a better—place. "Using growth in GDP per head rather than crude GDP growth reveals a strikingly different picture of other countries' economic health" as you can see in comparative chart...

Global GDP ~ Per Capita & Absolute, both Nominal & PPP

African Economic Promise

In an article entitled African economies: Lion cubs?, the Economist casts "an up-beat assessment of Africa. FOR those used to thinking of Africa as a fiscal bucket with a hole in it, a new IMF report on the continent makes for a heartening read."

Visualizing Economics!

I've been thinking a lot about economic convergence, or the Catch-Up Effect, where poorer countries have historically -- and potentially could in the future -- grow faster such that their GDP/capita converges with that of richer countries. Surprisingly difficult to find good visualizations about this phenomena, but here's one I found earlier from The Futurist... While surfing about, though, I ran across the Visualizing Economics site run by Catherine Mulbrandon, an interaction designer. Some quite cool stuff posted there to help us grok economic essentials at a glance. Just as one tasty example, check out this chart comparing geographic origins or share of global GDP...

Old Enough to Vote... and Drink?!

This week's Economist in an article entitled Drinking -- Too young to have fun: Is it time to lower America's drinking age? spotlights one of the most glaring examples of unconstitutional legislation in the US today, that of drinking age laws prohibiting 18-21 year olds from imbibing. In a crazy MADD extortionist social policy experiment in the 1980's, young voting-age citizens were systematically prohibited from drinking. Whereas Prohibition in the 1920's required a constitutional amendment, one ultimately overturned in an admission of futility by Repeal in the 1930's (another constitutional amendment), today's insidious and unfair and age-discriminatory laws have no worthy legal standing. And they're finally being attacked by a thoughtful coalition of ex-University Presidents, legal scholars, and outraged citizens. One entity spearheading change is Choose Responsibility, founded by John McCardell, the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, who is leading the effort to lower the drinking age to 18. Again. Just to emphasize how anti-liberty and backwards the US is in this regard, check out the drinkingmap showing the legal drinking age by country...

Emergent Dubai!

Maps of emergent Dubai...

Lingophone Regions ~ Dominant Languages in Given Geographies...

Anglophone Commonwealth countries... French speaking... Portugese speaking... Hispanophonic region...

XXX Tech ~ Yes, Teledildonics, Dildroids, Blowbots, and "Worse"...

Moralistic religionists pronounce certain voluntary consensual acts by and/or between adults "immoral". And, worse yet, these mullahs-priests-rabbis-shamans-witchdoctors have influenced the organs of the state to denounce such acts as "illegal". But the fact remains that free choice and consent by sentient adults should remain absolutely inviolate -- i.e. in line with both the moral intent and written word of the Constitution of the US (despite both Demogogue and Republicrat misinterpretations). And yet, in the face of this moral muddle, we have even bigger challenges ahead! As multiple pundits have speculated (including yours truly) and as the London Times has just pontificated in an article entitled Humans to have robot lovers by 2050, we must come to terms with robot relationships, not just cyborgs, but myborgs and xxxyborgs and more. Very disconcerting;-)

ABLE Technologies ~ Accelerating Wheelchair Innovations...

The MIT Enterprise Forum Global event on ABLE Technologies spotlighted a promising technology-business category, ABLE or Achieving Better Life Experiences for people with injury, disability, and aging challenges. A hugely compelling subset of this arena is Wheelchair Innovation. That's why I'm very pleased to have attended the design review of my friend Amos Winter's MIT class, SP.784 Wheelchair Design in Developing Countries (WDDC), this past Thursday afternoon. A half-dozen student teams gave a progress report on their design and organizing efforts to an audience of advisors and mentors, including rockstar engineer-inventors Bill Warner (MIT alumnus co-founder of Avid, Wildfire, and Move with Freedom) and Ralf Hotchkiss (Founder of Whirlwind Wheelchair). Coincidently, in today's NYTimes, Su-Hyun Lee tells the inspiring story of MIT alumnus Lee Sang-Mook in an article entitled From a Wheelchair, a Scientist Pries Open South Korean Minds. We need to not only invent better technologies, but also come to broadly appreciate the tremendous talent resident in the so-called handicapped! This is certainly true in rich countries, but perhaps even more important in developing countries, precisely the focus of Amos's MIT class!

Bikeable Boston?

Per our prior discussions of bike-shares in Cambridge & Paris and creating a greener SF and Cycle-Friendly Cities, it's quite timely that today's Boston Globe OpEd's on Dreams of a Bikeable Boston. There's a helluva lot of work to do to make this even remotely delightful. But organizations like Hub on Wheels are pushing for this vision...

From Alexandria to Alexandretta ~ the Vital Levant

I've been thinking a lot about the region from Alexandria in Egypt through Alexandretta in Turkey (today's İskenderun) and extensions east to Mesopotamia in Iraq -- a geographic realm we might think of as the vital, greater Levant. I'm quite excited by the Just Jerusalem winner HUMMUS and their ideas for a network of vibrant, connected cities in the region. The whole area has fantastic historical, aesthetic, cultural, and natural assets which should help it become one of the most attractive and wealthy places on our planet. This could and should embrace archeo-tourism to see Palmyra or Petra, or eco-tourism to see the corals of Aqaba or the Wadi Rum, or shopping visits to the bazaars of Beirut or souks of Damascus, or revitalizing wellness-trips to the muds of the Dead Sea or snows of Mount Hermon. And more. I'm especially excited by the prospect of emergent Innovation Institutions in the region -- technology universities (TUs), prosperity parks, special economic zones, entrepreneurial clusters, and beyond. My Syrian-American MIT alumnus friend Bob Ayan is involved in just such an effort in Amman, Jordan. With the support of the Kingdom and generous philanthropists, he's helping build the business park to complement one of Jordan's top IT educational institutions. Fantastically exciting!

txteagle ~ Empowering Mobile Microentrepreneurs

MIT alumnus academic entrepreneur Nathan Eagle has a new venture named txteagle.com (born of his time in Kenya building EPROM) which enables simple text-based tasks to be completed via text message by ordinary people around the globe.

The Nerd Heard ;-)

Priceless quotes from nerd central! The Tech today has an Overheard at MIT column. MIT Admissions blog includes Professor Quotes and points to other quote archives. Some samples...

• I mean, really, Maxwell’s equations are just like the word no — what part could you possibly not understand? -- Random Student at Student Center
• My point here is not to talk about the fun part of sexual reproduction. -- Prof Sive, Intro to Biology
• I'm going to repeat that question in a form I can answer. -- Prof Solomon, Cell Biology
• If you have lust in your heart to explain the molecular correlates of learning, then kinetics should be your thing. -- Prof Quinn, Neural Plasticity
• Let's look at a reaction you should never do. [Shows picture of TNT.] I am very familiar with this compound. -- Prof Swager, Organic Chemistry
• I firmly believe this value [for the mass of a quark] is correct, because the guy who measured it has his office two doors down from me. -- Prof Roland, Physics
• I have found in my previous experience teaching this course that students tend to forget this minus sign. Please do not do this unless you wish to find minus signs on your exams. -- Prof Sipser, Calculus
• I'm only a chemist because I was a pyromaniac when I was younger. -- Emma Sceats, Chemistry

Now @ Millennium Campus Conference @ MIT ~ 18-20 April 2008

Very exciting to be at the inaugural Millennium Campus Conference at MIT hosted by the Global Poverty Initiative. Genius inventor-engineer Amy Smith is speaking about technology, design & global development. Amy has some great examples of simplicity in design and the highly distributed wisdom often latent among indigenous peoples.

Global Economic Growth Rates & Equality Index

World map showing GDP real growth rates for 2007...Gini coefficient, income distribution by country...

Even Bigger Dog !-)

Amazing "improvement" on the Boston Dynamics Big Dog robot!-)

Abdulrahman Tarbzouni of SETLA & viedu...

I interviewed Abdulrahman Tarbzouni, Saudi Arabian MIT alumnus entrepreneur, on my HighTechFever TV show tonight. We discussed his venture activities, including most recently founding and building viedu, a social networking education web 2.0 site. And we discussed his efforts to encourage new ventures back home, including his founding and leading the Saudi Entrepreneurs & Technology Leadership Association (SETLA). One fun point emerged: he first heard of MIT via the movie Hackers at age 12 and aspired to attend since then! And through hard work and smarts, he did it! I've known Abdul since his freshman year at MIT when we were introduced by the MIT Sloan Undergraduate Management Association (SUMA) and I'm delighted by his enduring commitment to entrepreneurial development in his home country and beyond.

We Cycling!

I just met with MIT alumna Alison Cohen, founder and CEO of the brand new BlooBike bicycle sharing organization. Very exciting the progress she's made in just a few short months with this new venture. Ali reminded me of Robin Chase, another MIT alumna, and her entrepreneurial ventures Zipcar and more recently GoLoco.org. Robin has been rather skeptical of bike-sharing. Until recently, that is, because as Robin writes on her blog, after visiting Paris and seeing Velib, she "eats humble pie" and is now a supporter! In Success of Paris bike-sharing, Robin shares her core experience. Details of the Velib deal and operations is self-evident. Finally Robin speculates Where will bike-sharing work in other cities, etc.

An Engineer's Guide To Cats ;-)

Paul from GeekPress found this delighter via MeFi...

Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST)

MIT is collaborating with and helping build the brand new Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) in Abu Dhabi in the new greencity, Masdar.

DIY Scooters!

Envirofuel spotlights Home made solar scooter... EcoGeek spotlights Air-Powered Motorcycle... BBC Photo-of-Day spotlights "Igorot tribesman Robert Duyugan [riding] his wooden scooter in a race as the Filipino town of Banaue celebrates the traditional Imbayah festival. Igorot tribesmen are renowned for their woodcarvings."

Man Caves !-)

CNN iReporter has a hilarious piece on Man Caves, "the space in their home that belongs to them", whether that's bachelor pad or refuge from married bliss, most often featuring tools, booze, games, AV, or some combo thereof.