Cool Inventions

Have you ever heard of "disemvoweling"? Well, neither had I, but I found it today in a list of Time magazine's 50 best inventions of 2008. Disemvoweling is what moderators do to obnoxious posts and comments on blogs or online forums. Rather than deleting the offensive post altogether, which could be considered obsessive censorship, moderators simply remove the vowels from all the words in the post. With only the consonants left, the post is still mostly readable, but a lot less obnoxious. What a concept.

There were all kinds of cool inventions on the list, including Smog-Eating Cement, Einstein's Fridge, the Orbital Internet and Facebook for Spies. Check it out here.