John Farrier's Liked Blog Posts

After Being Rejected 73 Years Ago, 92-Year Old Black Woman Finally Gets Her Library Card

(Photo: Tribune News Service)

In the Jim Crow era, racial segregation shamefully extended into many of America’s public libraries. Pearl Thompson experienced this herself in 1942. She went to the public library of Raleigh, North Carolina to check out a particular book. The library staff refused to issue her a library card because she was black. Thompson was permitted to read the book on site, but only down in the basement.

Now that injustice is being rectified. In a special ceremony at the Cameron Village Regional Library of the Wake County Public Libraries, Thompson was granted her library card. The News & Observer reports:

Ann Burlingame, deputy director of Wake County Public Libraries, said she was thrilled when Deborah Thompson reached out about getting a library card for her mother.

“I just feel like this woman was denied access to a library and a book,” Burlingame said. “I just wanted the opportunity to rectify that, not just for her but for us as the library system.”

Deborah Thompson said her mother loves to learn.

“That’s the legacy that she leaves,” she said.

Pearl Thompson could have spent the past seven decades being angry about what happened to her at the Olivia Raney Library, which now serves as a local history library.

But that’s not her style.

“I don’t hold any kind of hate in my heart, because that doesn’t do it,” she said. “That doesn’t get you there.”

-via Huffington Post


Cucumber Surprises Cat

“I swear, man, that monster came out of nowhere!”


(Video Link)

This poor cat was just minding his own business and eating his lunch. While he dined, his human servant sneaked a huge cucumber right behind him, just out of his field of view. When the cat turned and noticed the cucumber about to attack him, he justifiably panicked.

-via Tastefully Offensive


The Hot Tub Hammock

We’ve previously seen a bathtub shaped like a hammock. But the Hydro Hammock goes much further. It’s a portable hot tub that you can sling between two trees or embed into the sand of a beach.

The structure is strong enough to hold over 700 pounds, which you can think of as more than 50 gallons of water and two full grown adults. The entire kit fits into a rolling hard case trunk with a built-in 12 volt battery. The water heater is powered by camping fuel. The system filters and recirculates the water for 3 hours.

The Hydro Hammock does come with a killjoy warning: “Please don’t hammock drunk.” Well, never mind, then.


Fugitive Asks Police to Post a Better Photo of Him on Facebook

Police in Victoria, Australia posted on Facebook that they had a warrant to arrest a man on traffic and drug charges. The suspect showed up in the comments to complain that the mugshot did not show his appearance in the best light. The police helpfully responded that they’d be glad to retake the photo at the nearest police station.

The police told the BBC that the suspect has yet to show up for the new photo. He says that he wants to get a lawyer first, which seems like an odd professional to have at the site of photoshoot.

-via Daily Telegraph


When America’s Librarians Went to War

(Photo: University of Illinois Archives)

In 1917, the American people launched into a major war on a scale unlike anything that had been seen for more than 50 years. The whole nation was mobilized for the effort, including the librarians. The American Library Association (ALA) formed the Library War Service to establish more than 30 camp libraries among the troops. Pictured above are some of the librarians who accompanied 10 million books sent to American troops. Taking the job very seriously, they wore uniforms designed especially for them. NPR quotes ALA archivist Cara Bertram about the work of these volunteers:

"In both wars, librarians back at home or on the front were key in collecting and distributing books to soldiers," Bertram says. "During World War I, librarians maintained camp and hospital libraries," and in both world wars, "librarians promoted books drives and encouraged donations."

Librarians were especially active during World War I. The ALA reports that between 1917 and 1920, its Library War Service established three dozen camp libraries with the support of the Carnegie Corporation and raised $5 million in public contributions. Special uniforms were created for librarians in World War I. The American Library in Paris — established in 1920 by the ALA and American expatriates, and seeded with books from the LWS — continues to this day.

-via Daily of the Day


A Portable Staircase for Trees

The is the CanopyStair. It’s a portable and removable spiral staircase that straps securely to the trunk of a tree. Robert McIntyre and Thor ter Kulve designed it after a visit to the Azores. They stayed in a house near the sea, but because of obstructions, they couldn’t see the sea until they climbed a tree. It occurred to them that there had to be an easier way to get to the top of a tree for recreational purposes. For their final project at the Royal College of Art, McIntyre and ter Kulve built an apparatus that will do precisely that.

The CanopyStair is made with an aluminum frame and held in place with ratchet straps. It takes about 3 hours for 2 people to assemble. Pads protect the tree bark from damage by the stairs. A railing makes it safer for people to climb the full 20 feet that the CanopyStair rises into the air. 

-via Dornob


The Incredible Transforming Castle Truck

Justin, Jola, and their son Piko live in New Zealand in an amazing house built over the back of a truck. It’s both a completely functional home and a moving work of art. This video tour of it is over 11 minutes long because their fantasy castle is packed with a seemingly unending array of features.

(Photo: Living Big in a Tiny House)

Continue reading

The T-Rex Skeleton Trike

This wonder fit for riding through Jurassic Park incognito is Sue, a custom tricycle that is 12 feet long and 8 feet tall. It has a 9-speed drive train that can take it up to 15 miles an hour (which is roughly 1/3 of the top speed of a real Tyrannosaurus Rex). The owner is selling it on Craigslist from . . .

Can you guess which city?

. . . yes, Portland, of course! As Sean Fallon of Nerd Approved says, if you buy it, “You’ll be the most Portland person in Portland.” I think that it’s the ultimate commuter vehicle, but the owner insists that “she is not a daily-driver dinosaur.” We’ll see about that.


Awesome Mom Invents Decorative Hearing Aid Covers for Kids


(Photos: Lugs)

When he was 3 months old, Sarah Ivermee’s son, Freddie, was diagnosed as deaf. He later received cochlear implants, which are surgically implanted hearing aids.

When a young friend of Freddie who is also deaf refused to wear her hearing aids because they made her look different from other kids, Ivermee devised a solution. She added decorative nail stickers to make them look pretty. The little girl loved them. So Ivermee saw an opportunity. She founded Lugs, a company that makes hearing aid covers in styles that kids appreciate. They look like superheroes, cartoon characters, and animals. Ivermee tells the The Mighty that the market has been tremendously responsive:

“I get emails from professionals to thank me for what I’m doing; it just amazes me,” she told The Mighty. “People all over the world are wearing the little kits that I make in my living room; it’s unbelievable!”

-via 22 Words


The Steepest Residential Street in the World

(Photo: Oyvind)

A 529-foot stretch of Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand has a gradient of 1 to 3.41. There are roads elsewhere in the world that are steeper, but no one is crazy enough to live on them.

But the Kiwis do not take such challenges lying down. They prefer leaning over, which is why they get to claim this Guinness World Record title.

How did this happen? City planners in London considered that a grid plan is the best way for a city to develop, so they designed it that way for Dunedin. They did not give much regard for the local topography. You can see more photos of this amazing place at Twisted Sifter.


Kingii, The Wrist-Mounted Lifesaving Device

People will look at you funny if you wear a normal life jacket everywhere.  And, honestly, it gets bulky and cumbersome. The Kingii is a better option. It fits onto a wrist. There’s a pull lever that activates a CO2 tank, which inflates a small bag. It’s bright orange and has a whistle, which can hopefully signal rescuers. There’s a compass in case you have to navigate on your own. Now if you suddenly find yourself if the water, you’ve got a better chance of surviving. And the strangers at the mall who laughed at you will be drowning while you’re still alive and safe.


50 Years of Frank Herbert’s Dune

(Image: Universal Pictures)

In 1959, struggling writer Frank Herbert journeyed to the sand dunes of Oregon to research a story about a government plan to stabilize those ever-shifting sands. The experience dug into him and grew. It became the groundbreaking 1965 science fiction novel Dune. That novel almost didn’t make it to print. Herbert submitted it to more than 20 publishing houses before Chilton, the car repair manual publisher, agreed to print it.

Dune won the Nebula and Hugo Awards, but its popularity grew only slowly over the following decade. It influenced Star Wars and led to the development its own movie in 1984 and miniseries in 2000. In The Guardian, Hari Kunzru argues that it’s one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time and an essential story:

Though in his later years he enjoyed huge success, Herbert, the man who dreamed of greening the desert, had mixed feelings about the future. In Dune, he has Kynes, the “First Planetologist of Arrakis” (and hero of the novel’s first draft) muse that “beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.” Gloomy Malthusianism was much in vogue in the 1960s and 70s. In 1968 Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb became a runaway bestseller, predicting mass starvation unless population growth was restricted. The flip side of the green movement’s valorisation of small scale and self-reliance is an uneasy relationship with the masses, and with the idea of economic growth more generally. Herbert’s libertarian politics reinforced this worry. In Dune, Paul knows that if the desert planet is made to bloom, it will support a larger population, and the ethic of individualism will be eroded. He himself, as he is transformed from aristocrat to messiah, loses his individuality and begins to dissolve into myth, becoming part of a Jungian collective unconscious. But perhaps Herbert would take heart from the thought that history does not appear to be teleological and some long-term plans do not take on the character of destiny. Fifty years after Dune’s publication, the US Department of Agriculture is still at work on the Oregon Dunes, rooting out European beach grass, an “invasive non‑native species”. They want to return the dune processes to their natural state.

Have you read Dune? What do you think of it?

-via Marginal Revolution


This Dog’s Best Friends Are 8 Birds and a Hamster

Everyone, meet Bob. He’s a kindly Golden Retriever who shares a home in Brazil with not just humans, but also 8 birds and a hamster. He’s got to be the chillest dog who ever lived because he’s perfectly content to let his little friends climb all over him, even when he’s napping. The pictures that result are supremely adorable. You can follow him on Facebook or Instagram.

-via Tastefully Offensive


How to Make a Giant Oreo Cake

How many Oreo cookies do you want to eat? I'll have just one--provided that it's one of these. YouTube user Hey! It’s Mosogourmet used special plastic baking pans to create this massively scaled-up version of an Oreo cookie. The creme filling has broken Oreos inside, so it's truly authentic. Now I'd like to have a huge glass of milk in which to dunk mine.

-via That's Nerdalicious!


Family Finds 2,000-Year Old Ritual Bath Beneath Their Living Room Floor


(Photo: Assaf Perez/IAA)

A family in Jerusalem, Israel found an incredible archaeological find beneath their living room floor: a huge, well-preserved, and ancient mikveh, which is a Jewish ritual bath. It's carved directly into the rock and lined with plaster. Pottery fragments suggest to archaeologists that it dates back to the First Century A.D. Haartez describes the find:

When they did call in the Israel Antiquities Authority, beneath the doors, the archaeologists found the carved stone staircase leaving to a big mikveh, 3.5 meters in length and 2.4 meters wide, with a depth of 1.8 meters.

The rock-hewn bath was meticulously plastered according to the laws of purity appearing in halacha. The staircase leads to the bottom of the immersion pool.

-via Messy Nessy Chic


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Profile for John Farrier

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