Get ready, LEGO addicts: Now you can rent LEGO sets with Pleygo‘s innovative mail-in service. Sign up for their exclusive LEGO club by registering for one of their low-cost plans, and you’ll have full access to their wide, ever-growing collection. From Duplo to Friends to Star Wars LEGO sets, there’s something for every one in your family. And even though sets’ age limits say 5-16, who’s really checking? LEGO doesn’t have age limits! Find out more about this awesome site here.
What has nearly 100,000 LEGO pieces, spans nearly 2.5 miles and can be used to transport a Lilliputian army? The world’s longest LEGO railway, of course! On May 10th and 11th, Lego enthusiast Henrik Ludvigsen and 80 friends got together in Denmark to assemble the longest LEGO track in the world, and for their troubles (which sound like a lot of fun), they received the Guinness World Record.
Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries believes that only attractive people should be encouraged to wear A&F clothes, but writer Greg Karber disagrees. Offended by Jeffries’ callous statement and the fact that the company refuses to make clothes larger than a size 10, Karber launched Fitch the Homeless – a campaign to outfit as many homeless Americans in their clothes as possible. Hit the jump for more details.
Anyone who has ever taken a course in biology or left produce out on the counter for a little too long will recognize the noble fruit fly. Easy to breed, feed and observe, they are the subject of choice for many hoping to study a broad range of scientific inquiries. After hearing her parents debate the benefits of organic over conventionally-raised foods, Texas student Ria Chhabra decided to use the insect to investigate their argument. The 16-year-old looked at the rates of stress, fertility and longevity of the flies and noticed that all fared better on the organic potatoes and bananas that they were fed. She has since published her results, been named as a finalist in the 2011 Broadcom Masters national scientific challenge, and partnered with a research laboratory at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Canadian designer Tat Chao gives old, damaged and unwanted wine glasses a new life as energy-efficient LED lamps! Chao detaches the bases from wine glasses and champagne flutes and joins them to create his beautiful Bipolar Lamps, which look like floating icicles.
Greetings from ICFF! Inhabitat is on the scene today reporting live from the mother of all home furnishing tradeshows, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. Stay tuned for all of the fresh green designs we uncover on our treasure hunt across the show floor and keep it tuned right here and on our Twitter feed to see our latest finds.
The ceiling of a shoe factory in Cambodia that makes Asics athletic shoes collapsed on Thursday, killing two workers and injuring at least a dozen. The tragedy, which took place less than a month after a clothing factory in Bangladesh collapsed and killed more than one thousand workers, is the latest incident to highlight the poor safety at factories in developing countries. The latest building collapse is a reminder that worker safety isn’t an issue that’s confined to Bangladesh; many other countries are also grappling with poor work conditions for low-paying jobs in the fashion industry.
Photo via Shutterstock
A new report by the Washington Toxic Coalition and Safer States has revealed that over 5,000 children’s products contain toxic chemicals associated with cancer, hormone disruption, and reproductive problems. The products, intended for those from infancy through adolescence, include party hats which contain cancer-causing arsenic, cosmetics which contain formaldehyde and dolls which contain hormone-disrupting bisphenol A (BPA).
Many people bemoan the fact that they can’t grow their own food (or even flowers) because they lack any kind of garden space, but guess what? You can actually grow more than you realize in really small areas as long as they get a bit of direct sun. Hell, you can even grow things indoors under a lamp, but there’s something special about plucking your own food from a stalk that’s been sitting in summer sunshine all day. In any case, whether you have a little concrete slab behind your house, a fire escape outside your window, or even a tiny balcony, your urban garden can be a veritable Eden of fresh, healthy, home-grown vegetables, and herbs.
There are some phenomena in nature that inspire tears of joy, some that spark a sense of awe, and then there are those that send chills up your spine. The Taylor Glacier in Antarctica, which was discovered in the McMurdo Dry Valley in 1911, appears to be bleeding. The bright red waterfall, dubbed “Blood Falls,” is nearly five stories high, and it seeps through a crack in the ice. Geologists first believed that the color of the water came from algae, but the hue is in fact caused by a small body of water containing a hidden lake of microbes.
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