Question: What’s the single best designed piece of running equipment?
Answer: It’s a pair of gear you already own—your bare feet.
Most running shoes, it turns out, do more harm than good. The problem is that these shoes are designed to “protect” your feet in a way that they weren’t meant to be. When encased in an excessively built-up running shoe the muscles, tendons and ligaments of your lower extremities will atrophy. That’s because your shoes are doing the work that your legs and feet should be doing.
The other problem with running shoes is that they encourage you to run with the wrong form. Your body is designed to run on the ball and forefront of your feet. Try going for a run barefoot and you’ll experience this yourself—your heels will barely touch the ground. In contrast, most running shoes will cause you to land on your heels in a way that won’t only slow you down but will inevitably lead to knee and back pain.
Shoes, of course, do serve a purpose. They keep your feet cleaner and drier than bare feet, not to mention being useful when there’s a sharp rock or nail under foot.
So what’s an athlete to do? Get a pair of running shoes with a design that mimics the advantages of your bare feet. Here are our two favorite:
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The Femme Fatale Pendant is the Rorschach test of cool lighting.
Lumens is our favorite source for modern lighting. The online store has all manner of high-end designer lights. They are also have hot deals on cool lights up to 40% off the retail price.
Here are three of our favorite lights at Lumens:
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Could you build a clock out of a nob, a single-gear motor and a bicycle chain?
That might seem like an impossible challenge of the sort only MacGyver could accomplish. Yet that’s exact what Andreas Dober managed with the Catena Wall Clock.
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Spot Cool Stuff loves the high design simplicity. Which is exactly why we like the Swedese Libri bookshelf system.
And we aren’t the only fans of these bookshelves—the Swedese Libri won the Best New Product Design award at the 2008 Stockholm Furniture Fair.
What’s so cool about the Swedese Libri?
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You may have heard the term flashpacking, the act of traveling in the spirit of a backpacker but with the budget of one more monied. Well, from the Netherlands comes what might be the ultimate in flashcamping—a portable, wood-burning spa.
The Dutchtub is a personal hot-springs-to-go. If you have a tub-sized patch of flat ground, wood and 200 gallons (750 liters) worth of water or snow you can have your own spa virtually anywhere.
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There are advantages to living in an all-glass house: the views, the natural sunlight, the passive solar heating on chilly sunny days. There are disadvantages too: the lack of privacy, the unwanted extra heat on warm days, the common wisdom ban on throwing stones while living in one. So what’s a home owner to do?
If you are Ross Russell of Suffok, England the answer is: Build a house that slides open.
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If RuPaul operated a farm and Liberace an S&M palor Britain's Crazy Bear Hotel would look like a cross between the two. It's boutique, high design & unusual.
Sometimes it’s a fine line separating gaudy from opulent, and trashy from romantic. Straddling those lines is the Crazy Bear Hotel in Old Beaconsfield, England
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Nearly all refrigerators are designed for single-family households. Ask someone who has lived in a group house or shared living situation and you’ll get a story of woe about a time that someone was looking forward to enjoying a lunch of leftovers only to go to the fridge and find their meal usurped by a roommate. (Curiously, the speaker is always the victim in these stories, never the perpetrator).
To the rescue comes the Electrolux Flatshare Fridge, the refrigerator designed for shared living situations.
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