Claw hammer. When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail (someone special first said that.)

those flip out hand fan things. Cheap, easy to use, effective. what could be better

Ahhh, the spork....

the pillow

the cup

the condom

The spork is a failure. Its bowl is too shallow to use as a decent spoon for soup, and its teeth are too short to spear much of anything, and barely suficient to hold food in place for cutting. It doe, however, have the second coolest name out of all utensiils, second to the spatula, adn more religious followers than teh spoon and the fork combined ever will have.

The Venus 2000

http://www.sybian.com/venus2000_overview.htm

and for the ladies...

The Sybian

http://www.sybian.com/sybian_overview.htm

The Titty Board Post Generator gets my nomination. That fuckin' thing saves a ton of time.

fire, we wouldnt be here without it

Clothes are materials of the same that make things translucent.

The Japanese method of folding metal in sword making.

Indoor plumbing. I cannot imagine how I survived 7 years of my life without it back in good ole' Ukraine.

sometimes, all i need is the air that i breathe...

Coffee and a hot shower for the morning.
Red wine and TFP for the evening.

Liquid Prel (any shampoo).

It's bringing families together. A mother of 40 and a daughter of 16 are talking again for the first time!

"Oh mom, don't use to much, its concentrated" "Oh, it makes your hair shiney"

The heart lung Machine? whats so great about that. If its in your cabinet and it falls out...its gona break! Shampoo won't break.

And if you put a pearl in it, it sinks to the bottom real slow...

Gota love Mel Brooks

spice girls.
very nearly perfect.

Boobies, perfect in every way, nuture you when you are a yet a baby, and comfort you for the rest of your life. Ahhhhhhhhh......there is nothing like boobies......

Bowls.... nearly perfect except I still spill stuff.

I'd have to say refrigeration.
It is true that man lived without it for a long time but he also died of rotting food, scurvy, drank warm beer and ate a pretty bland diet.
I've lived without running water and electricity. The thing I missed most was the refrigerator.

just saw a pic in exhibition...clothspins would qualify, if used properly...

For the readers out there, it's hands down gotta be...Throw away underwear with short stories printed in the crotch, for those that like to read on the crapper.

soap.
and deoderant.

I'm putting in a second vote for porn. Mags, video, DVD, internet, whatever. Life in my teens and early 20's would have been much less exciting without it.

I say spoons

The clock and irrigation. Where would be be without these?

I'm surprised no one has said this but industrial strength duct tape is one of God's many gifts to man.

I've broken 3 or 4 toilet seats in my life, and most of the ones are just too damn small nowadays. Being 6'9" doesn't make life easy.

The perfect invention is one that accomplishes what it was designed to do. It may break, but only after a designated design life. I vote for the spoon myself.

the internal-combustion engine...I only say this as the hubby pulls up in the driveway...I think it might work ;)

It's debatable if you could call these inventions, rather than developments but I humby submit the following.

In order,

Language
Writing

Without both of these, we would have no civilization, as we know it, and therefore none of the other more obvious "inventions".

Agriculture comes a close third.

I highly recommend the book The Third Chimpanzee for some very interesting discussions on this fascinating subject.


Mr Mephisto

The umbrella. It's my best friend on the rainy school days when I have to walk home. :)

Have you ever been... caught... in a zipper? There's nothing perfect about it.

Language....unbreakable, versatile, and the key to civilization.

Unless you want to actually seal some ducts, then you've got problems =P

Thongs!

Snaps: those of you with infants will agree.
That and TP.

caffeine...nuff said :D

the perfect invention is NOT THE COMPUTER..

it sucks.. then again.. i'm just bored with it right now

Dammit, took the words right out of my mouth. Made 'em a little more eloquent, but ya still took 'em right out of my mouth.

the pill....

The M-14.

If you're going to go that vein, out of ARTelevision's list, there are only three machines. The lever, the inclined plane, and the pulley.

The wheel and axle is just a lever that rotates 360°.
The screw is just an inclined plane wraped around a cylinder.
The wedge is just an mobile inclined plane.

The three simple machines that I listed are, however, very different from each other. So much so, I believe, that the only thing they have in common is that they all trade distance for force to perform the same amount of work (likely, the definition of a machine).

We're only human and nothing we make is perfect and as far as I can tell never will be ...unless your definition of "perfect" is less perfect than mine. I mean material objects of course. Maybe conceptual stuff can be perfect but I'm not philosphical enough to decide that.

Things break, wear out ...is that perfect? I don't think so. Some of the good ideas above are "nearly perfect" and that's good enough for me. I guess I'm just easy.