Blog Posts Phoebe Likes

With A Piece of Chalk

Hopscotch ain't what it used to be anymore, folks! Check out this kid's moves in this wonderful short film by JuBaFilms starring Justen Beer.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]


Counting Song


(YouTube link)

Adam Buxton wrote a song about the joy of counting that soon turns into something not quite so joyful. Despite appearances, this is not for children. Video directed by Cyriak Harris, illustrated by Sarah Brown. -via Laughing Squid


How A Slush Machine Works


(YouTube link)

How are liquid slushes served at temperatures below freezing? It's the magic of physics! -via The Daily What Geek


The Pooping Duck Automaton

More than two centuries ago, French engineer Jacques Vaucanson built the Digesting Duck automaton, a mechanical duck that could eat and digest grains, and then ... poop them out!

The 18th century was the golden age for a type of self-moving mechanical device called the automaton, and Vaucanson was the era's most famous creator. When he was 18 years old, Vaucanson built automata that served dinner and cleared tables for guests. Later, he built a breathing, flute-playing automaton, as well as one that could play the fife-and-drum. But Vaucanson's most popular creation was undoubtedly the defecating duck he built in 1733-1734.

Vaucanson's gold-plated copper duck could not only move and quack like a duck, but it could eat like one, too. The duck swallowed kernels of grain, and as Vaucanson explained, digested the food in its chemical stomach, then poop them out through a mechanical sphincter.


(L) Vaucanson, from Illustrierte Geschichte der Medizin/Richard Toellner (M) Photograph of lost original or imitation in ruined state/Musée du Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris
(R) Reproduction in Musée des Automates de Grenoble

There was no shortage of viewers, who each paid a week's wage to see the duck. Voltaire even mused that "without the shitting duck of Vaucanson, you will have nothing to remind you of the glory of France."

After Vaucanson became a rich man, he sold all of his automata to collectors and the duck was soon lost to history ... until it was found languishing in a pawnbroker's attic more than a hundred years later. The discoverer brought the duck to a magician named Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin (who's now considered the father of modern magic, and from whom Houdini took his name). Robert-Houdan found out that the duck was actually a clever hoax: Vaucanson had built a special chamber inside it to store a preparation of dyed green breadcrumbs that people thought was duck poop!

Source: Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life by Gaby Wood


"This Guy Is the Bob Ross of Brick Laying."

We never see the mason's face. He moves smoothly from brick to brick, the trowel an extension of his body, his mind, his artist's soul. It's beautiful. But also tragic, as YouTube commenter Trumacron points out:

Just think of all the hard skilled hours that go to waste every time the Cool-aid Man shows up

Video Link -via Althouse


On the Gradual Diminution of the Human Head

by F.F. Tuckett and Dr. Beddoe, F.R.S.

[Originally published in Proceedings of the Bristol Naturalists’ Society, New Series, vol. 3, part 3, 1882. Thanks to Desmond T. Donovan for bringing it to our attention.]

Mr. Tuckett’s attention had first been directed to the subject of his communication by a remark made to him some time ago by Mr. Castle, hatter in St. Augustine’s Parade, to the effect that during the last twenty-five years the size of hats, as regards the dimensions of the head, had been gradually diminishing, the difference of the circumferential measurement during that period amounting to as much as half an inch.

Other hatters, both in Bristol and in different parts of England, were requested to communicate whatever information they might possess on the subject, and it appeared that this experience agreed with Mr. Castle’s.

Mr. Tuckett gave a tabulated form, drawn up by Mr. Castle from the hats supplied to him by Messrs. Lincoln & Bennet, the well-known London hatters, and showing the progressive rate of diminution since 1855, from which it appeared that the average size of hats sold by them had fallen from No. 7–1/25 in 1855 to 6–19/21 in 1880, the average shrinking in size being 1/7 in., or rather more than one size, which amounts to 1/8 in., the scale of measurement used by hatters being derived from the sum of the length and width of the head, divided by two, and is expressed in inches, and eights of an inch.

One hat manufacturer wrote: “Fifteen years ago the usual sizes of hats in England were from 6–3/4 to 7–3/8, and even 7–1/2 was not uncommon. But now, if a 7–3/8 hat was wanted, we should have to make a block purposely. The diminution in size has been attributed by some to the prevailing fashion of wearing the hair short; but as heads certainly average two sizes less than they did, and as the difference between long and short hair cannot amount to a quarter of an inch in length and the same in width, this solution of the matter is inadmissible.”

Dr. Beddoe produced evidence, collected for him by Mr. Garlich, hatter, of Castle Street, which very nearly agreed, as to the extent of the reduction, with that given by Mr. Tuckett. While in Scotland last summer, Dr. B. inquired of Mr. Kirsop, the principal hatter in Glasgow, what his experience was, and he fully corroborated what had been stated, so that the diminution appeared not to be confined to the southern portion of the islands.

Several explanations had been brought forward, but none were entirely satisfactory.



The most plausible of these rested on the different manner of wearing the hat, which was formerly drawn somewhat further down on the back of the head. Those which were based on supposed changes in the classes of people wearing hats did not appear to Dr. Beddoe to be of any value—the lower classes, who had the smallest heads, wore fewer stiff hats now than formerly.

There was a good deal of evidence, much of it collected by himself, pointing to a certain degree of physical degeneration in the population of large towns; and he thought it possible that heads as well as bodies might have dwindled somewhat; but the fact, if it were one, was not capable of proof.

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the January-February 2012 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.


The Nutmeg Wars

The following is an article from Uncle John's Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader.

In the 17th century, all Europe was mad to have the little brown nut from Indonesia- nutmeg. Especially the Dutch, who monopolized its cultivation and, in doing so, built their tiny nation into one of the wealthiest trading powers on the planet.

BACKGROUND

Spices have been used by human beings for millennia for food preparation and preservation, medicine, and even embalming. But until modern times they were largely an Asian commodity, and controlling their flow to the spice-obsessed West meant power and fortune for the middleman. Over the centuries, these hugely successful merchants were the Phoenicians, Persians, Arabs, and later, Venetians.

Many of the great European explorations of the 15th century were driven by the need to bypass the Arab and Venetian monopoly. Crying, "For Christ and spices," the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama shocked the Arab world when he sailed around Africa's Cape of Good Hope in 1498 and showed up in the spice markets of India. It marked the beginning of the decline of Arab dominance and the rise of European power. For the next 100 years, as Spain and Portugal fought for control of the spice trade, the tiny countries of England and the Netherlands looked on in envy, waiting for their chance to get a piece of the action. It came first for the Dutch.

THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY

Always in danger of being overwhelmed by their much larger neighbor, Spain, the Portuguese began subcontracting their spice distribution to Dutch traders. Profits began to flow into Amsterdam, and the Dutch commercial fleet swiftly grew into one of the largest in the world. The Dutch quietly gained control of most of the shipping and trading of spices in Northern Europe. Then in 1580, Portugal fell under Spanish rule and the sweet deal for Dutch traders was over. As prices for pepper, nutmeg, and other spices soared across Europe, the Dutch found themselves locked out of the market. They decided to fight back.

In 1602 Dutch merchants founded the VOC -the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, better known as the Dutch East India Company. Other trading nations had formed cooperative associations like it but none were more successful than the Dutch. By 1617 the VOC was the richest commercial operation in the world. The company had 50,000 employees worldwide, with a private army of 30,000 men and a fleet of 200 ships. Yet even with that huge overhead, the VOC gave its shareholders an eye-popping annual dividend of 40% of their investments. How'd they do it? With sheer ruthlessness... and nutmeg.

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