An interesting segue

The Segway personal transporter is an invention that encourages all the worst characteristics about the U.S.: laziness, useless technology, and conspicuous consumption. It takes the worst stereotypes about our culture and bundles them all up in one machine.

The inventor of the Segway (Dean Kamen), however, has taken his profits from that invention (and his other, more medically beneficial inventions) and decided to use them in a way that could actually help humanity. He's developed the Slingshot water purifier and the Stirling engine generator.

These two boxes, each about the size of a washing machine can take any source of liquid (in Kamen's words: 'anything wet') and turn it into purified drinking water. The other can use anything flammable (cow dung, for example) and turn it into enough power for a small village (about 70 low-energy light bulbs).

The invention was announced last year (Newsweek wrote an article, as did Wired on their blog) but I'm just now getting around to hearing about it. There's a mention of it near the end of the book The Ghost Map by (you guessed it) Steven Johnson. Expect a review of it in the coming days...