"This is a toilet.  If a woman wants to use it she has to pull her pants down.  A urinal is a small toilet without privacy.  If you make it the same size as a toilet, you have a toilet.  No woman will use this.  I can see how this was arrived at, but someone needed to step back and say, "We just designed a toilet.""

"I suspect that critical reviews are more valuable.  Also they're a lot more amusing.I think this would come across better if their renowned design firm had found someone to do typography that didn't look like a 1990s web page."

"These things were popular around here in the late 1970s.  They were a fad for a while, but they took the experience of serving milk from being casual and unconscious to being something which was fraught with peril and required constant vigilance.  The small plastic jugs held one bag which usually didn't last for a whole meal.  Also they always felt as though the bag would fall out when it was poured, which was unnerving.  When they were down to the last quarter they sometimes did.  You had to have a pair of scissors to open them, and if you wanted to decant them into a larger and more stable container you were wrestling with four separate bags which changed their handling characteristics the second you cut off a corner, which meant you only had one hand to support a bag that, if it was held tightly enough to give a good grip, would overflow and spill milk.  Even with two hands they were unpleasant to pick up and pour from.  Nobody liked them and they were discontinued after a few months.I don't think this is a lot more eco-friendly than a gallon of milk in a very thin plastic container.  It's not at all good design."

"I live in a metric country, and while metric is scientific, it's really not that great.  People building stuff for human use like imperial units because they're intuitive and work well.  Metric also has that whole, "Thou shall have no other god but me" vibe - nobody ever says "let's use both systems."I worked recently with people from a 'metric only' country, and I was surprised by little intuitive feel they had for measurements.  If someone says six inches, I get it.  If I said, 150mm, they'd get out a ruler and look.People in countries that switched can usually use both.  I've seen exchanges like, "How long is this?"  "Six foot eight and a half, and a millimeter."  If metric is really that great it would have taken over because people would use it no matter what.  As it is, people who want to like it bitch that they can't.  Again, having used both systems, it's not that great.  If you want a good system, you're a designer.  Make up something better.  Better yet, consider what you really want out of a measurement system and whether, "It's scientific!" is really a sound basis for deciding."

"I bet the skateboard building community would love a source of free veneer."

"Someone built one of these years back - I believe the picture was in Fine Homebuilding.  It used dovetails angled in both directions so no wedges were required.  These are much less elegant, and the price is slightly insane."

"This sounds like something our culture as decided is a huge annoyance, when it's not.  I usually wait to the end, walk on at the tail of the crowd, and get seated.  I get to sit outside while the first class and privileged people are already in their seats, and I get there at the same time as everyone else.  It takes a couple of minutes.  Compared to the time wasted standing in lines for the waste-of-space TSA it's nothing."

"Excellent article.  I'm very tired of the assumption that any 'tool shaped object' will do the job as well as another, and that cheap tools are in any way a good idea.  I see the statement of the web that 'a tool that you'll only use once can be cheap crap.'  Who uses a tool only once and isn't infuriated when it can't quite do the job, or when it breaks and damages the work?  Lots of people have told me they can't afford good tools, and maybe they're right, but I've bought some of my best stuff when I was unemployed and didn't know if I'd ever see another paycheck.  My tablesaw (Delta Unisaw) cost a months wages when I was flat broke and got a tax refund check that almost covered it.  There are obviously people who can't take that risk or will never have money.  I'm sympathetic, I've been very broke.  As a general rule, however, you should buy the best tools you can afford.  There's just nothing else that makes sense."

"I think the observation that you can do better work when you physically handle the materials is very worthwhile.  However, when I look at this table i have the rather strong impression that it needs to pee.  It might be interesting to use it in a school setting and see what happens."

"I like the water scoop thing.  I've had to pick a small depth of water off a flat surface quite a few times.  Usually I try to find a dustpan, but this would be better, at least for the initial stages."

"I've seen a lot of clever wrench designs.  Many of them are beautiful and ingenious.  I always go back to a chunk of metal with no moving parts, one that can take a huge amount of stress and a lot of abuse.I've got parallel jaw pliers, things that adjust themselves, wrenches that do what this Joker wrench does by jaw geometry instead of mechanisms.   Once in a blue moon I pull one out and admire it.  Most of the ones with moving parts fail, eventually.  Any mechanic will reach for a fixed wrench before a crescent wrench, if he has one.  Crescents are perfect in their way, but a fixed wrench is still what one uses first.There are some things it's tempting to improve, and clever design is nice to admire, but some things settled into their most useful form a century ago."

"I have one of these in my desk.  My wife gave it to me maybe fifteen years ago.  It was blown from glass, and cost about $12.  It writes very nicely, but inevitably gets ink all over your fingertips.  I'm amazed by the things I see on crowdfunding sites which have been around forever.  Very often what's presented as innovative design seems more like an excuse for bored people to spend money."