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Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Chismillionaire Watch

Patek Philippe Sky Moon Tourbillon Mens Watch
Model: 5002P
Patek Philippe Sky Moon Tourbillon Mens Wristwatch Model: 5002P
Brand Information: Patek Philippe
From its ultra-modern workshop, Patek Philippe's 600 master watchmakers and technicians craft some of the world's finest timepieces. Founded in 1839, and officially incorporating as Patek Philippe in 1851, this venerated watch manufacturer - and creator of all its own movements - consistently produces outstanding and much sought-after watches and unrivaled complications.

Sky Moon Tourbillon Mens Wristwatch
Model: 5002P
Call for availability
Retail Price: $1,750,000.00
Our Price: $1,475,000.00
Your savings: $275,000.00 (15.71%)



After adding your watch to the cart you will be able to custom engrave it for a modest fee.


This is the Patek Philippe Sky Moon Tourbillon 5002P watch
Other series by Patek Philippe include:
Calendar Complicated Annual Calendar Twenty 4 (Small) Travel Time
Patek Philippe Calendar   Wristwatch Model: 5960P Patek Philippe Complicated Annual Calendar   Wristwatch Model: 5146P Patek Philippe Twenty 4 (Small)   Wristwatch Model: 4908.11R Patek Philippe Travel Time   Wristwatch Model: 5134P
Classique Grande Complication Twenty 4 Calatrava Celestial
Patek Philippe Classique Grande Complication   Wristwatch Model: 5136-1G Patek Philippe Twenty 4   Wristwatch Model: 4910.20G.010 Patek Philippe Calatrava   Wristwatch Model: 5115R Patek Philippe Celestial   Wristwatch Model: 5102G
10 Day Tourbillon
Patek Philippe 10 Day Tourbillon   Wristwatch Model: 5101P
Item number: 5002P
Brand: Patek Philippe
Style Number: 5002P
Also Called: 5002
Series: Sky Moon Tourbillon
Style: Mens
Case: Platinum
Dial Color: White Silvered Dial. Blue Celestial Rear Dial.
Watch Bracelet / Strap: Leather - Black Crocodile
Watch Clasp: Platinum Tang Patek Philippe Buckle
Movement: Manual Wind, COSC
Engine: Patek Philippe 109 (RTO 27 QR SID LUCL (37.6mm dia, 12.61mm h, 55 jewels, 21,600vph)
Functions: Hours, Minutes, Sweep Seconds, Repeater (Hour, Quarter Hour and Minute), Perpetual Calendar
Crystal: Sapphire - Scratch Resistant, double curved
Case Diameter: 42.8 mm
Case Thickness: 16.25 mm
Caseback: Sapphire Crystal Display Back - revealing sublime celestial chart
Bezel Material: Platinum
Bezel Function: Fixed
Water Resistance: NOT WATER RESISTANT
Crown: Platinum: at 2 o'clock regulates celestial chart and sidereal hours, at 4 o'clock for other.
Calendar: Date, day, month, leap yr, moon phase (frnt), sidereal time, moon descension, celestial chart (back)
Additional Info: Geneva Seal engraved on Movement. Hidden Tourbillon. Truly awe-inspiring piece that is almost impossible to find. Poire hands. Month at 3 o'clock, moonphase at 6 o'clock, leap year cycle at 12 o'clock. Retrograde (jumps-back) center date hand. On the back celestial sky dial, the white skeletonized hands indicate the sidereal hour as it occurs every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds. The eliptical sky vault displays the present orientation of the visible celestial sky. The lunar cycle of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 2.82 seconds is also indicated on the rear dial. This watch would be the crown-jewel in any afficionados collection, other than perhaps, the Vacheron Constantin Tour de I'lle. Even more limited than the magnificent Yellow Gold version, the Platinum Sky-Moon Tourbillon is perhaps the rarest continuously produced wristwatch in the world.

What would Super Mario Bros. look like on Atari?

World's Most Evil Fish Invades Britain


Behold the giant snakehead! It attacks humans.

read more | digg story

Coolness!!!

17 Extreme Houseboats and Houseboat Designs [PICS]

Futuristic Cool Houseboat Concept Design

Ever dream of sailing off into the sunset in your very own houseboat?Some of these are dreamy but completely out of reach while others youmay be able to afford but wouldn't accept payment to live in. Thiscollection spans the extremes of design and brute-force ingenuity fromthe obscenely luxurious to the absurdly simple.

read more | digg story

This will blow your mind!


The Terminator-style helmets that allow fighter pilots to see through their planes? Only the neck and shoulders prove there is a human being in there somewhere. This is how the next generation of RAF fighter pilots will look. And with piercing green eyes staring out from behind the visor, it's no surprise that the helmet has been compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger's killer robot in The Terminator. Pilots flying the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will have an astonishing array of technology encasing their heads - enabling them to see right through their own aircraft fuselage to the ground below.



A series of cameras on the outside of the stealth warplane feed high-resolution images into the helmet, including infra-red images at night, which are then projected on to the inside of the pilot's visor. Special sensors inside the cockpit track the movement of the helmet, so that when the pilot turns his head his view of the skies or ground outside changes accordingly.

When he looks down he sees not his own feet on the cockpit floor but the ground below, slipping past at hundreds of miles per hour. On-board computers also feed in essential flight and combat data on to the display, as well as superimposing target symbols to locate enemy and friendly aircraft or ground targets, even if they are too far away to see with the naked eye.

The supersonic Joint Strike Fighter is due to replace the Harrier jump jet, and is being developed jointly with America. Britain is due to buy 150 aircraft at around $10 billion, or $66 million each. Cutting-edge: Cameras are attached to the outside of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to give pilots all-round vision

Prototypes were used in flight by U.S. pilots earlier this year and are now being assessed by engineers at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire. A Ministry of Defense spokesman said: "The computerized symbology will be displayed directly on to the pilot's visors, providing the pilot with cues for flying, navigating and fighting the aircraft. "It even will superimpose infra-red imagery on to the visor to allow the pilot to look through the cockpit floor at night and see the world below - like something out of Terminator."

Stairs Bookcase Actually Makes Me Want to Move to London



Here's a great idea for anyone who loves books and doesn't have enough apartment space or a Kindle: a "secret staircase" made of English oak, lined with books left, right and center, leading to a loft bedroom in a Victorian 1898 apartments block.
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The 70m2 apartment was remodeled by London-based Levitate Architects, who created "a new bedroom level and increasing the floor area of the flat by approximately one third." The staircase is both the way to access the bedroom and a perfect place to store books, movies or CDs. "With a skylight above lighting the staircase, it becomes the perfect place to stop and browse a tome," says Levitate's Tim Sloan, who also pointed out the unique structure of each step, allowing for anyone to comfortably sit down while picking a book. [Apartment Therapy via Boing Boing]

Most Haunted Places In World

1. Edinburgh Castle - Edinburgh, Scotland

Edinburgh Castle is reputed to be one of the most haunted spots in Scotland. And Edinburgh itself has been called the most haunted city in all of Europe. On various occasions, visitors to the castle have reported a phantom piper, a headless drummer, the spirits of French prisoners from the Seven Years War and colonial prisoners from the American Revolutionary War - even the ghost of a dog wandering in the grounds’ dog cemetery.

edinburgh castle picture

As with all castles, Edinburgh’s fortress has been a centre of military activity. As an ancient fortress Edinburgh Castle is one of the few that still has a military garrison, albeit for largely ceremonial and administrative purposes. The New Barrack Block is now home to the official headquarters of the Royal Regiment of Scotland and 52 Infantry Brigade, as well as home to the regimental museum of the Royal Scots and Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. The Governor of Edinburgh Castle is Major General David McDowall, GOC of the British Army’s 2nd Division. The Governor of the Castle has always been the head of the Army in Scotland. Direct administration of the castle by the War Office only came to an end in 1923 when the army formally moved to the city’s new Redford Barracks. Nevertheless, the Castle continues to have a strong connection with the Army. Sentries still stand watch at the castle gatehouse after opening hours, with responsibility for guarding the Honours of Scotland.

2. The Whaley House - San Diego, California,US

Located in San Diego, California, the Whaley House has earned the title of “the most haunted house in the U.S.” Built in 1857 by Thomas Whaley on land that was partially once a cemetery, the house has since been the locus of dozens of ghost sightings.

whaley house picture

Author deTraci Regula relates her experiences with the house: “Over the years, while dining across the street at the Old Town Mexican Cafe, I became accustomed to noticing that the shutters of the second-story windows [of the Whaley House] would sometimes open while we ate dinner, long after the house was closed for the day. On a recent visit, I could feel the energy in several spots in the house, particularly in the courtroom, where I also smelled the faint scent of a cigar, supposedly Whaley’s calling-card. In the hallway, I smelled perfume, initially attributing that to the young woman acting as docent, but some later surreptitious sniffing in her direction as I talked to her about the house revealed her to be scent-free.”

3. The Borley Rectory - Borley, England

Borley Rectory was constructed near Borley Church by the Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull in 1862, and he moved in a year after being named rector of the parish. The large brick building was built in a style influenced by Pugin, that replaced the rather earlier Georgian house built for a Reverend Herringham, which Henry Bull demolished. The rectory would eventually be enlarged to house a family of 14 children.
The church dates from the 12th century and serves a rather scattered rural community making up the parish. There are several substantial farmhouses, and the fragmentary remains of Borley Hall, once the seat of the Waldegrave family. Ghost-hunters like to quote the legend of a Benedictine monastery supposedly built in this area about 1362, according to which a monk from the monastery carried on a relationship with a nun from a nearby convent. After their affair was discovered, the monk was executed and the nun bricked up alive in the convent walls. It was confirmed in 1938[citation needed] that this legend had no historical basis and seems to have been invented by the rector’s children to romanticise their red-brick rectory. The story of the walling up of the nun was probably taken from a novel by Rider Haggard.

4. The Bell Farm - Adams, Tennessee, US

The Bell Farm has been made notorious through books, TV specials and movies. Most recently the events at this small Tennessee farm were dramatized in the 2005 movie An American Haunting. The story behind the Bell Farm haunting is so notable and recognized because it is said to be the only documented account in paranormal history when a ghost caused the death of a living person. Between the years of 1817 and 1821, the Bell Family was terrorized by some sort of entity, mostly said to be a woman, who became known as the Bell Witch or, more personally, “Kate.” She is said to have perturbed and tortured John Bell (the father of the family and victim of a nervous system disorder) so much that it lead to his inevitable death.

bell farm picture

He was unable to sleep or recuperate and the ghost’s antics worsened his condition. It is also said that a vile with a strange black liquid was found at John Bell’s deathbed and that Kate herself claimed she gave it to him. Supposedly, in order to test the liquids validity, a drop was placed on the family cat’s tongue and it immediately killed the animal. Though the haunting of the Bell Farm has been sensationalized many times over, it is still inarguable that something happened there during those three years. A family and a community were terrorized by an entity of some kind, and residents still believe Kate is up to no good. For an extensive history of everything that went on at the Bell Farm, click here.

5. Raynham Hall - Norfolk, England

Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England, is most famous for the ghost of “the Brown Lady,” which was captured on film in 1936 in what is considered one of the most authentic ghost pictures ever taken.

raynham hall picture

The Unexplained Site describes one of the first encounters with the spirit: “The first known sighting happened during the 1835 Christmas season. Colonel Loftus, who happened to be visiting for the holidays, was walking to his room late one night when he saw a strange figure ahead of him. As he tried to gain a better look, the figure promptly disappeared. The next week, the Colonel was again came upon the woman. He described her as a noble woman who wore a brown satin dress. Her face seemed to glow, which highlighted her empty eye sockets.”

6. The Queen Mary - Long Beach, California, US

This grand old ship is quite haunted, according to the many people who have worked on and visited the craft. Once a celebrated luxury ocean liner, when it ended its sailing days the Queen Mary was purchased by the city of Long Beach, California in 1967 and transformed into a hotel.The most haunted area of the ship is the engine room where a 17-year-old sailor was crushed to death trying to escape a fire. Knocking and banging on the pipes around the door has been heard and recorded by numerous people. In what is now the front desk area of the hotel, visitors have seen the ghost of a “lady in white.”

queen mary picture

Ghosts of children are said to haunt the ship’s pool. The spirit of a young girl, who allegedly broke her neck in an accident at the pool, has been heard asking for her mother or her doll. In the hallway of the pool’s changing rooms is an area of unexplained activity. Furniture moves about by itself, people feel the touch of unseen hands and unknown spirits appear. In the front hull of the ship, a specter can sometimes be heard screaming - the pained voice, some believe, of a sailor who was killed when the Queen Mary collided with a smaller ship.

7. The White House - Washington D.C., US

That’s right, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. is not only home to the current President of the United States, it also is home of several former presidents who occasionally decide to make their presences known there, despite the fact that they are dead.President Harrison is said to be heard rummaging around in the attic of the White House, looking for who knows what. President Andrew Jackson is thought to haunt his White House bedroom. And the ghost of First Lady Abigail Adams was seen floating through one of the White House hallways, as if carrying something.

white house picture

The most frequently sighted presidential ghost has been that of Abraham Lincoln. Eleanor Roosevelt once stated she believed she felt the presence of Lincoln watching her as she worked in the Lincoln bedroom. Also during the Roosevelt administration, a young clerk claimed to have actually seen the ghost of Lincoln sitting on a bed pulling off his boots. On another occasion, while spending a night at the White House during the Roosevelt presidency, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was awakened by a knock on the bedroom door. Answering it, she was confronted with the ghost of Abe Lincoln staring at her from the hallway. Calvin Coolidge’s wife reported seeing on several occasions the ghost of Lincoln standing with his hands clasped behind his back, at a window in the Oval Office, staring out in deep contemplation toward the bloody battlefields across the Potomac.

8. The Tower of London - London, England

The Tower of London, one of the most famous and well-preserved historical buildings in the world, may also be one of the most haunted. This is due, no doubt, to the scores of executions, murders and tortures that have taken place within its walls over the last 1,000 years. Dozens upon dozens of ghost sightings have been reported in and around the Tower. On one winter day in 1957 at 3 a.m., a guard was disturbed by something striking the top of his guardhouse. When he stepped outside to investigate, he saw a shapeless white figure on top of the tower. It was then realized that on that very same date, February 12, Lady Jane Grey was beheaded in 1554.

tower london picture

Perhaps the most well-known ghostly resident of the Tower is the spirit of Ann Boleyn, one of the wives of Henry VIII, who was also beheaded in the Tower in 1536. Her ghost has been spotted on many occasions, sometimes carrying her head, on Tower Green and in the Tower Chapel Royal.
Other ghosts of the Tower include those of Henry VI, Thomas a Becket and Sir Walter Raleigh. One of the most gruesome ghost stories connected with the Tower of London describes death of the Countess of Salisbury. According to one account, “the Countess was sentenced to death in 1541 following her alleged involvement in criminal activities (although it is now widely believed that she was probably innocent). After being sent struggling to the scaffold, she ran from the block and was pursued until she was hacked to death by the axe man.” Her execution ceremony has been seen re-enacted by spirits on Tower Green.

9. Ballygally Castle - Ballygally Bay, Ireland

Ballygally Castle is a castle in the village of Ballygally, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, located approximately three miles north of Larne. The castle overlooks the sea at the head of Ballygally Bay. The castle is the only 17th century building still used as a residence in Northern Ireland, and is reputed to be one of the most haunted places in the province.The castle was built in 1625 by James Shaw, of Scotland, who had come to the area and rented the land from the Earl of Antrim for £24 a year. It was built in the style of a French chateau with high walls, steep roof, dormer windows and corner turrets. The walls are five feet thick with loopholes for muskets. An open stream ran through the outer hall to provide water in case of siege. The castle did come under attack, from the Irish garrison at Glenarm, several times during the rebellion of 1641 but each assault was unsuccessful. The castle was owned by the Shaw family until it passed into the hands of William Shaw in 1799.

He sold the estate for £15,400. In the 1950s the castle was bought by the carpet tycoon Cyril Lord and was extended and renovated. It is now owned and run by the Hastings Hotels Group.The castle is reputed to host a number of ghosts, the most active of which is the former resident, Lady Isobel Shaw, who amuses herself by knocking at the doors of different rooms and then suddenly disappearing. When she was alive, Isobel was locked in her room and starved by her husband. She leapt to her death from a window. Madame Nixon is another ghost who lived in the hotel in the 19th century. She can be heard walking around the hotel in her silk dress.

10.The Rose Hall Great House - Montego Bay, Jamaica

Rose Hall great house, the most famous in Jamaica. It is a Georgian Mansion with a stone base and a plastered upper storey, high on the hillside, with a fantastic panorama over the coast. Built in the 1770s, Rose Hall was restored in the 1960s to its former splendour, with mahogany floors, interior windows and doorways, panelling and wooden ceilings. It is decorated with silk wallpaper printed with palms and birds, ornamented with chandeliers and furnished with mostly European antiques. There’s a bar downstairs and a restaurant.

rose hall picture

Rose Hall is most famous for the story of its mistress Annie Palmer, who came here in 1820, and the fanciful legends of underground tunnels, bloodstains and hauntings. A renowned beauty, Annie Palmer was widely feared as a black magician, and she is also supposed to have dispatched three husbands (by poison, by stabbing and then pouring boiling oil into his ears, and by strangling) and innumerable lovers, including slaves, whom she simply killed when she was bored of them. She was 4ft 11ins high and was murdered in her bed. There is little evidence to support the legend, an amusing version of which was written up by H. G. de Lisser in his “White Witch of Rose Hall”, though maybe you’ll be convinced by the ghostly faces that appear in photographs taken by tourists

CHRISTINA AGUILERA LOOKS DIFFERENT


I love Milk Sacs!!

Meteor in Portland



Was it really a Meteor, or was it that satellite?

Amazing Feb 20 lunar eclipse - see our photo gallery of totality!

http://www.discoverychannel.ca/flipbook/flip.aspx?fid=7145

 eclipse-feb-20-totality-ste.jpg[updated 2/20/2008, 10:47 pm ET] -- The Moon roared into the constallation Leo in a fiery orange lunar eclipse Feb 20.

We've posted this latest images from penumbra to totality in a gallery of more from this celestial event every few minutes, from the onset of the first penumbral shadows at 7:36 pm ET to totality, just after 10 pm ET.

Ongoing coverage

LIVE GALLERY: Images of the eclipse as-it-happens

The Most Anticipated Movies of 2009

anticipated

Yeah, yeah, we know - it’s 2008. So why talk about the movies of 2009 so soon?

With the advent of viral marketing and extremely early teaser trailers being leaked eons before a movie is scheduled for release, you can never be too early to start talking about films. Hell, you’re lucky this list isn’t about the most anticipated movies of 2010, which could’ve been done just as easy - and it still would’ve been way behind the internet’s buzz schedule.

Some of these movies will be sure fire hits, while others are doomed to flop. Either way, we offer you the chance to share your opinion in the comment section.

Click HERE for the whole list:

Stanford drops tuition for some students


Wednesday, February 20, 2008

(02-19) 23:49 PST Palo Alto -- In a radical change to its financial aid program, Stanford University will announce today that it will no longer charge tuition to students whose families earn less than $100,000 a year.

In addition, the university will waive room and board fees for students whose families earn less than $60,000 a year.

University President John Hennessy will make the announcement today on campus, university Provost John Etchemendy confirmed late Tuesday.

The university is making the change in the wake of published reports last month that its endowment had grown almost 22 percent last year, to $17.1 billion. That sum had begun to attract attention from lawmakers who want wealthy institutions to do more to reduce tuition costs.

Financial aid also will increase to families that make more than $100,000 a year.

"Thanks to our increasingly generous financial aid program ... attending Stanford will cost less than most private and many public universities," Etchemendy said.

To pay for the new tuition assistance, the university said it will increase its annual endowment payout to 5.5 percent. The new plan, which begins in the 2008-09 academic year, eliminates the need for student loans for qualifying students.

"We are committed to ensuring that Stanford asks parents and students to contribute only what they can afford," Hennessy said. "No high school senior should rule out applying to Stanford because of cost."

Stanford is among dozens of high-end colleges and universities where tuition has grown faster than the rate of inflation and where tax-exempt endowments have increased by more than 10 percent annually.

Last month, after a report from the National Association of College and University Business Officers called attention to the swollen tax-exempt endowments, a prominent U.S. senator began to question the practice.

"They're supposed to offer public benefit in return for the privilege of tax exemption," said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. "If endowments increase by double digits from one year to the next, it raises the idea that maybe these schools aren't using enough of their endowments to help students afford college."

Stanford's endowment is the third largest of any university in the country, behind only Harvard and Yale.

In the past 10 years, tuition alone at Stanford increased from $21,300 to $34,800 - roughly $7,200 more than if it had held to the rate of inflation during the decade.

The university said 3 out of 4 students currently get some financial aid. The new program is expected to reduce the average bill paid by a student's family by 16 percent.

The university said it would continue to take into account a family's assets and overall situation, in addition to earnings, in determining the financial aid it could receive. The university said it would continue its "need-blind" admission policy, guaranteeing that students will be accepted to the university regardless of their ability to pay.

How families benefit

Stanford provided these hypothetical examples to help illustrate the impact of some of the changes to its financial aid program. In each of these cases, none of the families has assets of more than $20,000 beyond their homes.

A family of four in Massachusetts: This family has one child at Stanford, a 15-year-old in high school, a father who works as a teacher and a mother as a freelance graphic designer. The parents have a total income of $54,600, and have home equity of $275,000. The new financial aid program would eliminate the $3,800 that the parents would have been expected to pay in the current school year. Their son would no longer need to borrow $2,000, though he would still be expected to contribute his earnings from work during the summer and academic year. The total scholarship would be $45,550, an increase of $5,250 from this year.

A family of six in Nebraska: This family has one child at Stanford and three others younger than 12. The mother is a homemaker, the father an engineer, and they have a total income of $80,000 and home equity of $155,000. The new plan would cut the parents' payment in half, reducing their total payment to $5,450 from $10,965. Their child at Stanford would no longer need to borrow $1,600, though still would be expected to contribute earnings from school year and summer jobs. The total scholarship would be increased by $7,100 to $40,050.

A family of three in Silicon Valley: This family has one child at Stanford. The father is a software executive, and the mother works as a receptionist. The parents would be asked to draw less from their annual income of $120,000 total and home equity of $560,000. Their parental contribution would decrease by one-third - $8,180 - to $16,135 from $24,315. Their daughter would no longer need to borrow $1,600, but would be asked to contribute the amount equal to the earnings from part-time work during the school year and a full-time summer job. The total scholarship would be $29,400, almost $10,000 more than the previous year.

Source: Stanford University

E-mail Steve Rubenstein at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/20/MNABV5LHM.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Lamp lit by gravity wins Greener Gadget award

By Susan Trulove

(540) 231-5646, strulove@vt.edu

Gravia lamp

Gravia lamp

BLACKSBURG, VA., February 19, 2008 -- A Virginia Tech student has created a floor lamp powered by gravity.

Clay Moulton of Springfield, Va., who received his master of science degree in architecture (concentration in industrial design) from the College of Architecture and Urban Studies in 2007, created the lamp when he was an industrial design graduate student. The light-emitting diode (LED) lamp, named Gravia, has just won second place in the Greener Gadgets Design Competition as part of the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City.

Concept illustrations of Gravia depict an acrylic column a little over four feet high. The entire column glows when activated. The electricity is generated by the slow fall of a mass that spins a rotor. The resulting energy powers 10 high-output LEDs that fire into the acrylic lens, creating a diffuse light. The operation is silent and the housing is elegant and cord free -- completely independent of electrical infrastructure.

The light output will be 600-800 lumens - roughly equal to a 40-watt incandescent bulb over a period of four hours.

To "turn on" the lamp, the user moves weights from the bottom to the top of the lamp. An hour glass-like mechanism is turned over and the weights are placed in the mass sled near the top of the lamp. The sled begins its gentle glide back down and, within a few seconds, the LEDs come on and light the lamp, Moulton said. "It's more complicated than flipping a switch but can be an acceptable, even enjoyable routine, like winding a beautiful clock or making good coffee," he said.

Moulton estimates that Gravia's mechanisms will last more than 200 years, if used eight hours a day, 365 days a year. "The LEDs, which are generally considered long-life devices, become short-life components in comparison to the drive mechanisms," he said.

The acrylic lens will be altered by time in an attractive fashion, Moulton said. "The LEDs produce a slightly unnatural blue-ish light. As the acrylic ages, it becomes slightly yellowed and crazed through exposure to ultraviolet light," he said. "The yellowing and crazing will tend to mitigate the unnatural blue hue of the LED light. Thus, Gravia will produce a more natural color of light with age."

He predicted that the acrylic will begin to yellow within 10 to 15 years when Gravia is used in a home's interior room.

A patent is pending on the Gravia. To learn more, contact Jackie Reed of Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties Inc. (http://www.vtip.org) at jreed@vtip.org or call (540) 443-9217.

Learn more about the lamp and the designer's philosophy at http://www.core77.com/competitions/greenergadgets/projects/4306/.

PHOTO INFORMATION: The Gravia LED lamp will be powered by gravity. The entire column will glow.

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