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Let’s get right into it, shall we?
Mark Your Territory is a new system that lets individuals check-in to foursquare by physically urinating at the actual location.
Social networking has gone too far. Because, you know, it’s just a matter of time before Facebook tries to duplicate this. Then it’ll be everywhere.
Please let this be a hoax. Please.
You might remember Amy Rawson as the creator of the felted Cthulhu Santas we feature during the holidays. Her latest project is the Pee Towel, which arose from her day job as a lab tech. Specifically, from urinalysis.
Part of urinalysis is a microscopic examination, and one of the microscopic elements we look for is crystal formation. Urinary crystals result from a supersaturation of the urine with some particular substance. That substance can precipitate out to form distinctive crystals.
One kind of crystal inspired Rawson to design a fabric featuring her drawings of calcium oxalate, from which she made kitchens towels called Pee Towels! You can get yours in her Etsy shop. Read more about urinalysis and the creativity it inspires at Rawson’s new website. Link
"Signature scent" doesn’t get any more personal than this, folks! If you love to hear the unusual things artists do in the name of art, "urine" for a treat:
Conceptual artist Cherry Tree has a scent of mystery about her. And the smell of urine. Her urine. And it’s intentional.
For the last five years, Tree, who splits time between Missouri and Spain, has been turning her own urine into perfume.
"I am very much into recycling," Tree, born Charity Blansit, told AOL Weird News. "And urine is something I’ve thought needs to be recycled, since it’s something that gets eliminated." [...]
"I was fascinated by how the smell changes depending on what you eat," she said. "For instance, it smells really good after you eat a lot of honey and it smells terrible after eating chicken."
David Moye of AOL News has the full story: Link | Cherry Tree’s blog – via Fark
Craig Turner has a problem with neighborhood cats peeing on his property. They spray the house, doors, car, and worst of all, the air conditioning vents. I would just get a dog (which I did), but Turner constructed a homemade defense that involves cameras, motions sensors, and lots of planning. How successful was it? You’ll have to watch the entire video to find out. Warning: urination. -via Metafilter
I hope that Google Translate is mangling this Chinese news story so much that its actual meaning is completely different that what it appears to be. Or that some reporter is playing a joke akin to April Fools’ Day news articles in the United States.
That caveat (and wishful thinking) aside: it appears to be traditional in Donyang, China to take the urine left in buckets by schoolboys and boil eggs with it. “hawkers to sell the boy down the street selling eggs, street an odor, Dongyang people say that this is a taste of spring.”
Link via Boing Boing | Photo: China Daily
Here’s a tale of an eBay sale that grew and grew. British diver D.H. Morgan posted a wetsuit for sale. In his colorful description, he emphasized that the suit had never been peed in -and posted a picture of a bear at a urinal to somehow drive that point home. The bear picture made the auction go viral, so he changed it to a charity auction (language warning).
This listing for my urine-free wetsuit is getting a lot of unexpected attention which is nice but I’m feeling I should do something positive with all the ‘f*cking energy man’, so I’ve decided to give 90% of the money it makes to the Red Cross to aid their efforts in Japan. That sounds all ‘oh look at me I’m so nice I’m giving to charity’ doesn’t it… yeah well p*ss off.
But what! There’s more!
Just got off the phone to XCEL wetsuits in Hawaii, who are very kindly donating a BRAND NEW 2011 Drylock wetsuit to the auction, it will remain a 3/2 (summer) but will be available in a range of sizes to suit the winning bidder. So now, in addition to the original p*ss free suit, you’ll also get a brand spanker, but still no bears or doors, just TWO wetsuits free of urine, one old and knackered (m) and one lovely and new (any size).
After that, the auction snowballed. Different companies have added a lot more merchandise, like a watch, boots, surfboard, books, and concert tickets. Morgan created a separate website called bears don’t wear wetsuits to handle questions and correspondence about the auction. As of this writing, the bidding stands at £9,300.00, which is $15K US. Link -via Metafilter
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German astronomer Jens Hackmann shot this picture of what is thought to be the last waste water dump from the space shuttle Discovery on March 8 before re-entry. This waste water would, of course, include astronaut urine:
“When observing ISS and space shuttle Discovery with unaided eye, there was nothing special for me,” Hackmann wrote in the caption of his video on YouTube. “But when I examined the video clip I wondered what that tail on Discovery was…Then I read in the internet about other sights.”
Such water dumps are a usual event, allowing the spaceship to unload its dirty water and urine before returning to Earth. A similar disposal gave skywatchers a nice view during the shuttle Discovery’s STS-128 mission in September, 2009 as well.
Researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands found a positive correlation between the need to pee and impulse control:
Their findings contradict previous research which found people who are forced to “restrain themselves” put more pressure on their brain and found it difficult exerting self-control.
Dr Mirjam Tuk, who led the study, said that the brain’s “control signals” were not task specific but result in an “unintentional increase” in control over other tasks.
“People are more able to control their impulses for short term pleasures and choose more often an option which is more beneficial in the long run,” she said.
“The brain area sending this signal, is activated not only for bladder control, but for all sorts of control.
The psychologists tested their hypothesis by asking two groups of people — one consisting of people who had just drank a large amount of water and one that hadn’t — to make decisions about the future:
They were asked to make eight choices ranging from small, and immediate, rewards to larger, but delayed, ones including choosing to receive either $16 (£10) tomorrow or $30 (£18) in 35 days.
They concluded that people with full bladders were better at holding out for the larger rewards later.
Link | Photo by Flickr user mauitimeweekly used under Creative Commons license
The following article is from the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
Chemistry’s colorful past
by Neil Gussman
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Paintings of alchemists show them holding up flasks. The contents of those flasks are almost always golden in color. That’s because alchemists were obsessed with urine.
Trouble comes to the Alchemist, 17-18th century,17th century Netherlandish. (FA 2000.001.269. Oil on canvas Fisher Collection Chemical Heritage Foundation Collections.) Photo by Will Brown.
And no wonder. The limits of science all through history are set by the limits of instruments. So despite having just five senses for test instruments, the alchemist could use urine to diagnose patients and make scientific discoveries. (He was often the local healer, dentist and bleeder.) At the time when alchemy was the leading edge of chemistry, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the alchemist could observe, sniff, touch and taste this vital fluid to look for clues to the ills his patient suffered.
The Alchemist, 17th century, by Mattheus van Helmont. (Oil on canvas. Fisher Collection, Chemical Heritage Foundation Collections. FA 2000.001.277. Another alchemist working in a messy back room. This one holds the specimen at arm’s length, maybe because he is farsighted, or maybe because he decided against the sniff test. Photo by Will Brown.
The Medical Chemist, 18th century, by Franz Christoph Janneck. (Oil on copper. Fisher Collection, Chemical Heritage Foundation Collections. FA 2000.001.275.) A shabby and dirty alchemist looking for cues of the maladies of the patient through urinoscopy. Photo by Will Brown.
The Iatrochemist, 17-18th century, by Balthasar van den Bossche. (FA 2000.001.279.Oil on canvas. Fisher Collection, CHF Collections.) Many alchemy paintings hung in the homes of prosperous merchants as a warning to their children: Don’t Be an Alchemist! This painting shows the alchemist as a poor man, working in the back room of a Publick House, using his five senses to analyze an anxious lady’s urine while a dentist works in the background. This scene was almost 200 years before ether, so the alchemist worked in loud and foul conditions. Photo by Will Brown.
Arguably the greatest discovery made by an alchemist was from urine. Sometime around 1669, German alchemist Hennig Brandt distilled buckets of urine and then heated the paste that remained. In addition to creating a horrible smell, he isolated phosphorus. When the secret got out—Brandt’s neighbors certainly knew a lot about his research—alchemists across Europe began collecting urine from public loos in hopes of replicating his results. Alchemy hung on till the 19th century partly because Brandt found the route from piss to phosphorus.
Science, 17-18th century, after Gerard Thomas. (Oil on canvas. Fisher Collection, Chemical Heritage Foundation Collections. FA 2000.001.265.) This atypical alchemist works in clean clothes in neat surroundings with servants and a dog at his side, but he is still staring at a beaker of urine. Photo by Will Brown.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Amanda Antonucci, assistant image archivist at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, for help in preparing the historical images displayed here.
_____________________
This article is republished with permission from the July-August 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
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Attention hypochondriacs! Thanks to Japan (who else?), you can soon forgo frequent visits to the doctors for health check ups. Instead, simply pee into the "Intelligent Toilet" :
Toto’s engineers developed a receptacle inside the basin to collect the urine for sugar content and temperature checks, and an armband to monitor blood pressure. The readout is displayed on a wall-mounted computer screen.
"With the current model, your data is sent automatically to your personal computer, and then you can email it to your doctor," said Suzuki.
"In the next generation model, the data will be sent automatically to family members or doctors via the Internet," she told AFP.The electronic marvel, called the "Intelligence Toilet", is capable of storing the data of up to five different people and retails for 350,000 to 500,000 yen (about 4,100 to 5,850 dollars) in Japan, she said.
Link | Nerve has a few more pics: Link – Thanks Ben!
The famous Manneken Pis statue in BrusselsPhoto: Stylva [Flickr CC commons]
You pee, I pee, we all pee – but have you ever given thought to what exactly you’re flushing out of your body? In her book That’s Disgusting! An Adult Guide to What’s Gross, Tasteless, Rude, Crude, and Lewd, Greta Garbage explains all sorts of bizarre trivia about urine.
Warning: not for the squeamish. True to the title of her book, Greta Garbage’s book is like a No Holds Barred trivia book about really gross things. You’ve been warned (or if this sort of things interest you, then “urine” for a treat!) more …
The National Trust is encouraging their gardeners to urinate on bales of straw. A three-meter-long “pee bale” has been established at Wimpole Hall; gardeners visit the bale when nature calls (and when visitors are not present, because “we don’t want to scare the public.”) The bales are later added to the compost heap.
Only male gardeners are participating, in part because of some dubious claims regarding gender-based differences in urine: “There are obvious logistical benefits to limiting it to male members of the team, but also male pee is preferable to women’s, as the male stuff is apparently less acidic.”
A secondary benefit is anticipated in terms of water conservation:
“An average flush of the lavatory can use anything from four and a half to nine litres of water each time, but what people may not realise is that this water is treated to the same standard as drinking water and shouldn’t be wasted.” Urinating outdoors or in the shower is advocated by environmental activists, including Cameron Diaz, as a way of tacking climate change by saving water and energy.
They are tentatively encouraging the public to follow their lead: ““Adding a little pee just helps get it all going; it’s totally safe and a bit of fun too.”
Links for the Telegraph and the BBC (where there is an explanatory video).
Don’t dispose of that liquid gold, there’s money to be made from the hydrogen in it. Hydrogen can be an abundant source of energy, but it’s hard to store inexpensively:
Gerardine Botte, an Ohio University professor, sees the liquid as a solution thanks to the particular composition of its major component, urea. Its make-up, a 2-to-1 ratio of hydrogen and nitrogen, is convenient because hydrogen can be extracted from nitrogen using much less electricity than that needed to, say, pull apart hydrogen and oxygen. (It’s a matter of 0.037 Volts versus 1.23 Volts, if you really need to know.)
Botte has recently come up with a nickel-based electrode that can do just that: dip the electrode into urine, apply electrical current, and voila, hydrogen is released. While the research is still in an initial phase, it’s possible that urine could power cars, homes, and various devices in as near of a future as six months from now.
Did your gadget just run out of juice and there isn’t a RadioShack around for miles? Not a problem if you have this "rechargeable" NoPoPo (No Polution Power) battery. Just … um, pee into it:
The Nopopo batteries use a combination of magnesium and carbon that can be mixed with a variety of fluids (including urine) to produce a charge. These batteries only last around 500mAh, which is far less than your average alkaline AA battery, but at least you won’t have to kill the earth to recharge them.
Link – via Shiny Shiny
Previously on Neatorama: Urine-Powered Battery
