My wife hates when I go off-topic and ramble in these posts, but a quick thought before the cuteness: sometimes, sticking to a pretty consistent blog schedule sucks—not everything I find interesting/funny/awesome fits the mold.
I know the last few months have seen a few holes pop up each week with nonexistent posts on various days, but Mystery Monday, Top Ten/Title This Tuesday, WTF Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday and Fuzzy Friday helps me focus on stuff that 1) interests me, 2) interests you (hopefully), 3) is (relatively) easily digested and quick to find and/or report on, and 4) provides the illusion of consistency when I’m out there in the wild trying to grow Ex-Boyfriend and am too busy to post every single day, or am out there in the wild trying to recover and recharge from doing exactly that.
The unofficial fifth benefit of the schedule is that when scary, tragic, horrible shit happens, it prevents me from going nuts and saying rash things on the internet (aka Eternity’s Big Book of Evidence and Embarrassment).
This is me taking a very long time to say I’m glad that what happened in Zanesville, Ohio earlier this week didn’t happen last night, or this post would probably be text-only, with “F@#K HUMANS!” in super-huge type. Jurassic Park was fun, guys, but a cloned tiger born and bred in a lab is not the same as one from the jungle—not even Science is that smart.
Once they’re gone, they’re gone.
(Photo courtesy of Marwell Wildlife Park and ZooBorns.com)
Can’t you just take ONE WEEK OFF from fomenting NIGHTMARES in my mind-grapes?! Do you know what kind of person sits around and thinks “Hey, what if we INGEST our perfumes instead of spraying it on topically? That’s TOTALLY something EVERYBODY’S been waiting for us to develop.”?
A CRAZY person. And, god bless him, let’s not forget what happened when Mr. Wonka tried to develop similar technology:
In FORTY YEARS the most we’ve been able to advance is going from anthropomorphic blueberries to weird, moist Edward Cullen lookalikes. Does this look like progress to you?!
As we’ve already discovered ad nauseum (literally), Japan loves re-purposing poop. So it comes as absolutely no surprise that TOTO, Japan’s version of American Standard, is promoting it’s new eco-friendly image with an upcoming 500-mile jaunt from Kyushu to Tokyo on its prototype Toilet Bike Neo.
What makes Neo a “toilet bike”, you ask? Well… it’s “powered entirely by the on-board biogas digester. Biogas systems use an anaerobic bacteria system to convert dead organic matter into a usable fuel primarily made of methane.” Theoretically, this hog could run forever, provided the driver’s nice an’ regular. Oh, and if pooping out in the open into your vehicle is not embarrassing enough for you, Neo also talks as part of this campaign. Because nothing makes you less self-conscious while pooping in public than the robot you’re sitting on shooting the breeze with you. Still—pooh-derived energy certainly beats nuclear meltdowns. Right?
This is a fitting post, considering that I’m blogging at you FROM THE PAST. Real talk: I’m currently somewhere over the Pacific hoping I don’t pull an Oceanic 815 on the way to Melbourne. So Mystery Monday is actually Straightforward Saturday. But this is still very cool.
By “this”, I mean f@#king REPLICATOR TECHNOLOGY.
According to a story in the February 2011 issue of The Economist (seriously, how was I not aware of this for the last 8 months?), we (that is, humans) have been dabbling in “additive manufacturing”, which is just an extremely fancy way of saying “3-D printing”.
It works like this. First you call up a blueprint on your computer screen and tinker with its shape and colour where necessary. Then you press print. A machine nearby whirrs into life and builds up the object gradually, either by depositing material from a nozzle, or by selectively solidifying a thin layer of plastic or metal dust using tiny drops of glue or a tightly focused beam. Products are thus built up by progressively adding material, one layer at a time: hence the technology’s other name, additive manufacturing. Eventually the object in question—a spare part for your car, a lampshade, a violin—pops out. The beauty of the technology is that it does not need to happen in a factory. Small items can be made by a machine like a desktop printer, in the corner of an office, a shop or even a house; big items—bicycle frames, panels for cars, aircraft parts—need a larger machine, and a bit more space.
What. The. F@#k.
You know, when the first Iron Man movie came out, and Tony Stark tells his AI butler J.A.R.V.I.S. to fabricate his Mark II armor, and J.A.R.V.I.S. says it’ll be complete in something ridiculous like 9 hours, I chalked it up to interesting future-tech that some fanboy writer made up to make Stark and his resources seem cooler. I did not think for even a second this shit was real.
Now, about the asterix in the post title—there are two big limitations to this form or manufacturing at present:
1. The fabricators can only reproduce objects comprised of inorganic material. Hence starvation still existing and people still dying of exposure. Trust me, if these things could do cotton, every single one of the shirts you guys buy from me would be made with one.
2. They’re not exactly priced to own for everyone, but they’re surprisingly inexpensive (given that we’re talking about rudimentary Star Trek technology) at around $7000. You could buy two of these things for the same amount of money you’d spend on most sub-compact cars.
So while we still can’t get a cup of tea out of thin air, we’re a lot closer to it than I ever thought we’d be in my lifetime.
Seriously, WTF?! This thing is disgusting. I’ve never been grossed out by snails the way I am by slugs, even though they’re basically the same thing, but with houses on their backs. But this is just gross. And what’s worse? They’re illegal immigrants.
That’s right—some dumb kid Bart Simpson-ed these onto our continent back in 1965 when he snuck two back from a Hawaiian vacation in his pocket. Guess what? They were feeling pretty amorous, because it took Florida’s Dept. of Agriculture 10 years and 1 million dollars to successfully eradicate the SEVENTEEN THOUSAND snails that popped up after little Johnny brought his new pets home. Unfortunately, people idiots have begun smuggling them back into the U.S. recently.
So what exactly can these hideous things do?
• Grow to be 10 inches long
• Leave a slimy trail of excrement wherever they go
• Harbor the microscopic rat-lung worm, which can transmit meningitis to humans
• Eat garbage and pet food that’s been left out
• They’ve developed a taste for the stucco facades popular on Florida homes and can therefore EAT YOUR HOUSE.
Look, I love robots as a concept. Cats riding around on them while they clean my house. A red & blue semi that protects us from Decepticons. Pudgy maids sassing me as I swallow my three-course breakfast pill before I head off to work in my flying suitcase-car. These are just a couple of the things that excited me about the future as a little kid. MABEL, however, is a little too much T1000, not enough Hedonism-Bot:
That’s right—scientists at the University of Michigan have developed a robot that can outrun the average person. And honestly, it’s not the speed that makes this frightening—it’s the combination of MABEL’s appearance and the ominous sound of “her” metallic legs clanking along as it circles this track.
This is kind of awesome. It’s courtesy of the mad mixologists at 12 Bottle Bar. My favorite aspect of this (besides the glorious confluence of gin, sorbet, and balls in my mouth) is the presentation in the erlenmeyer flask. The recipe is followed by a cool little essay on how the best food and drink appeals to all five sense simultaneously, hence the name GT-5 (gin + tonic + all five senses gettin’ their mind-grapes squished).
The GT-5
3 oz Gin-Key Lime Sorbet
2-3 dozen Micro Melon Balls
2 oz Leopold’s Gin (though I prefer the subtle cucumber-y-ness of Hendrick’s, which I think would pair especially nicely with the melon in this drink)
4 oz Tonic (I never gave much thought to tonic; it’s strictly a mixer with minimal flavor. But this is a nice breakdown of the tonic options out there, and anything that makes Booze’s ride to my tummy better is a-OK with this guy)
1 large stalk fresh mint
Boba Straw (you know, for that other ballsy drink, bubble tea)
For the sorbet, do this; it’s a variation of El Bulli’s lemon juice sorbet:
5 oz Leopold’s Gin (or, as stated above, Hendrick’s)
1 Cup Fresh Key Lime Juice, strained
5 oz Basic Simple Syrup
Mix all ingredients together and freeze
Blend the frozen mixture in a blender, and return to freezer
To assemble the whole shebang:
• Scoop out the melon balls, making them small enough to fit through the boba straw (melon ballers come in a variety of sizes, and can be purchased singly or in sets at most houseware-oriented stores like Bed, Bath and Beyond or Williams-Sonoma)
• When the sorbet is ready, add approximately 3 ounces of it to the bottom of a large glass
• Return the glass to the freezer, allowing the sorbet to set and the glass to thoroughly chill
• Just before serving, add the melon balls to the glass
• When serving, pre-mix the gin and tonic, then add to the glass (this will keep the melon balls from disintegrating)
• Add the mint and boba straw
• Slurp that shizz!
Oh, Persian kittens, so adorable. The kind of cute that is so unbearable it makes you feel violent. These guys know what I’m talking about. The problem is that eventually they’re no longer kittens, and you spend the next 15-20 years rooming with Wilford Brimley:
So enjoy your current state of cuteness while it lasts, India.
You may be wondering why that mutated fleshlight is moaning at you. You may also be wondering why I’m making you watch it. Second one’s easy: I’m a terrible, no-good, very bad person. First one is a little trickier: it seems that scientists in Japan (why is it that that lead-in always freaks me out?) have developed a robotic voice box in order to help deaf people better modulate their voices and enunciate their speech. Noble enough idea, but this is just a nightmare of execution. No, David Blaine.
File under “things you didn’t want to know about sausage-making”: apparently, even though penguins mate with the same partner for life, they aren’t above steppin’ out to shake their money-makers and earn a little cash on the side.
According to the BBC, pent-up single male Adelie penguins will eagerly part with some of their most-prized stones (what passes for a dowery in Antarctica these days; I hear we’re headed toward a similar economy ourselves) for seven minutes in heaven with just about any lady-bird that waddles up—even if she’s not, in fact, “single”.
These gold-digging pragmatic ladies have been documented by scientists trading sexual favors to these sad-sack young men for stones that they then take back to the homestead for hubby to use in nest-building. Talk about a frigid b*tch!
I can see it all unfolding now, Mad Men-style: “Hey honey! How was your day? Oh wow! I had no idea being a member of the secretarial pool paid so well! Keep up the hard work, and we’ll catch up to the Joneses in no time!”
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