That’s right, it’s whisky toothpaste.
Retronaut is a great site showcasing photographs from history.
I have to say some of the photos are truly weird, but most are very interesting.
Here are a few I found after just a few minutes of browsing.
Juggling Rifles
Norwich City Council’s first computer, being delivered.
They must have big desks at Norwich City Council.
There seems to be a tooth theme emerging!
There are loads and loads more, so head over and check out retronaut!.
Brilliant video of Chris Akrigg showing off his bike riding skills.
Fun to watch.
I love the bit where he rolls a concrete pipe with his bike.
Below is a great video of a guy building a foot powered woodworking lathe which uses a flywheeel to maintain rotational force.
Personally, I would rethink the treadle construction and maybe use some bearings to give some longevity, but it’s just so awesome all the same!
I built a pole lathe years ago, which was connected to my lightweight shed to pull the pole back up after the down stroke from the treadle. This caused the whole shed to shake in unison with the lathe so that everyone knew when I was turning wood 
.
It looked something like this.
The idea behind a pole lathe is to use a treadle (and your foot) to push down causing the work piece to turn .
A rope is attached to the treadle at one end and a bendy pole or sapling at the other.
The rope is looped over the work piece to make it turn on the down stroke, which also tensions (bends) the pole or sapling.
During the down stroke you use your chisel to remove material from the work piece.
You take away the chisel from the work piece on the upstroke, which is provided by the pole returning to its untensioned (unbent) position.
A pole lathe works surprisingly well and can be made very cheaply.
Beer, a beautiful woman, romance and a slap.
I don’t know what it is about the Zagorka Beer ad, but it makes me chuckle, just like the Fiat 500 Arbath ad below.
What is it about girls who slap you in the face?
I don’t know about you, but sometimes the simplest lines can produce the most graceful results.
Below is a link to a video of the process Scott Lewis uses to transform a simple rectangular cutting board into a beautiful, elegantly designed and functional accessory for any kitchen.
The Coolest Cutting Board Ever? – Fine Woodworking Video.
It appeals to me.
Here’s a nice article and soundbyte describing the task of keeping track of platypus numbers in the streams of Victoria.
The closest I’ve ever come to seeing a platypus in the wild was viewing the remains of his dinner – the scattered remains of a yabbie on some rocks in a creek, torn apart as we would tear a lobster to get to its meat.
Here’s a pic of a yabbie, for those of you who were wondering .
If you’ve read this far, you might enjoy this tune: the Perry the Platypus Theme:
” He’s a semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal of action…”
Turns out we’ve been making a noticeable impact on our environment for thousands of years.
New Scientist has a nice little article about Humans’ indelible stamp on Earth, in which it is revealed that our clear impact on the environment goes back far later than the one hundred or so years we imagine.
Some nice quotes from the article:
Even though there were only a few tens of millions of us back then, nature was on the back foot because individuals needed far more land to sustain themselves than we do today, says Ellis. Thanks to more intensive farming methods, per-capita land use in western Europe now is only around a sixth what it was 2500 years ago, while in south-east Asia it is less than a tenth.
“We often assume that early agriculturalists couldn’t alter the landscape much because they lacked the technology,” says co-author Steve Vavrus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “But their impact was great because they didn’t need to be as efficient as modern farmers.”
Our forests may not be so unspoilt after all.
This picture of early human domination of much of the planet calls into question some common environmental assumptions, says co-author Dorian Fuller of University College London. It suggests, for example, that there is little truly pristine nature anywhere. Most apparently virgin rainforests are far from virgin; many are recovering from past clearance. This may disappoint some nature lovers, but “it shows nature is resilient”, says Kaplan. Nature adapts to our activities better than we often think.
However, the new study does not give us grounds for rejecting environmental concerns, he says. Our current problems – especially what may be runaway climate change caused by burning fossil fuels – are real. At least the study’s findings do offer important lessons for fixing those problems.
The rise of the TV Chef
“They also learned how to grind, boil, ferment and roast food, which allowed them to eat a much greater variety of food, and to develop early techniques of farming, such as seed propagation.”
I have often wondered why we put so much effort into cooking. Of course food is wonderful; It’s a very sensuous experience. You could even say eating is better than sex, not least because, unlike sex (for most of us), you get to eat every day, but we spend hours and hours preparing food only to see it consumed in a very delightful ten to fifteen minutes.
This article made me think about the origins of cooking, if only very briefly, and it seems that, to start with, we learned to cook so that we could partake of a wider variety of food.
I remember bushwalking/hiking in my younger days and trying to learn about some of the local native foods. One which I found intriguing was the fruit of the Burrawang (Macrozamia), an ancient fern found in the bush/forests where I did much of my exploring.
It produces large clusters of seeds coated with thick skins of bright orange fruity flesh.
These fruits look delicious, but, it turns out they are poisonous – unless that is, you soak the seeds in a running stream for up to three weeks before cooking and eating them. For details read more here.
How on earth did Aboriginals discover just how long they had to soak these seeds? I assume it was by trial and error. Once they got to a point where people no longer became sick or died, they knew they were onto a winner.
Anyhow, whatever the method they used to discover how to eat these seeds, it seems that they learned to trigger their seeding by using fire.
“Doing this with the correct timing resulted in huge crops that could sustain social gatherings of hundreds of people for many weeks.” (from http://www.survival.org.au/bf_zamia.php)
Fascinating stuff.
I know this is an ad for a beauty product, but it’s a pretty powerful statement, all the same.
Whenever someone I’ve not heard of wins a bike race in Europe, I inevitably try to find more information abut them on the web.
Oscar Gatto from Vini-Fantini – Sella Italia won this year’s Dwars door Vlanderen and I said to myself, (betraying my fledgling understanding of all things cycling) “Who is Oscar Gatto and who are Vini-Fantini?”
They sound like an Italian entrant to the Eurovision Song Contest.
By the way, it looks like this year will be another big-hair year for Eurovision.
Anyhow, Dwars door Vlanderen in English means “Across Flanders”. It is one of the Flanders Classics: a series of six cycle races held in the northern region of Belgium, obviously called Flanders.
The other Flanders Classics are:
Vini Fantini Selle-Italia are an Italian professional cycling team who are one of 2013′s UCI Professional Continental Teams.
Pro Continental Teams are the first tier down from the top UCI Pro Teams, such as BMC, SaxoBank-Tinkoff, Katusha and Sky, which we all know so well from competing in the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, etc.
But the riders in the Pro Continental Teams are still very fit, very talented individuals, as evidenced from the fact that people like Oscar Gatto and Gerald Ciolek win some of the most lauded races in Europe from time to time.
The UCI sets participation quotas for races in its calendar. Dwars door Vlaanderen, being a very popular race, has had it share of issues in deciding which teams will be included. It is only allowed to field 50% Pro Tour teams, the rest being made up of Pro Continental Teams like Vini Fantini Selle-Italia.
Vini Fantini Selle-Italia have an impressive line-up of cyclists, including Stefano Garzelli, Oscar Gatto, Franceso Chicci and Mauro Santambrogio, all with a swag of wins between them.
Mauro Santambrogio, who previously rode for BMC, has come in the top five in six races so far this season.
The team has a partnership with Cipollini-Giordana-Galassia women’s cycling team as can be seen from the image below where they are endorsing Lazer helmets with their male counterparts.
(Does it surprise you that Mario Cipollini sponsors a women’s cycling team? His bike company’s website slogan is “The champion, the power, his tool”)
Anyhow, I’ve ended up rambling more than I had planned.
For more information on Vini Fantini Selle-Italia head over tho their website, which is packed with images and stories.
And each time you hear of a winner from a cycling team you’ve never heard of, look them up!
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Magisterial Lionel!
A work colleague sent me this link to the commentary on a Lionel Messi goal for FC Barcelona.
“He literally disperses his atoms inside of his body on one side of this defender and then collects them on the other. Magisterial Lionel! Magnifico! Extraordinario!”
Classic!
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