Lets have a Tea Party!!
Here’s an article on How to make your own kombucha tea.
Kombucha is on its way to being the new “it” drink. This fermented tea is so popular that several brands are available at upscale grocery stores, and its Wikipedia entry has tripled in length since I first checked. I’ve heard the tea’s culture — which looks like a rubbery pancake — called a “mother,” “mushroom,” “starter,” and most accurately, a “scoby” (‘symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts’).
Whatever it is, kombucha is entering a renaissance after millennia of use in China and centuries in Eastern Europe, from whence all good fermented things come. Its loyal following claims health benefits of all ilk, citing vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and probiotic microorganisms present in the tea. I just like it because it tastes good (like a sweet-sour sparkling apple cider).
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Skull-a-Day: A new mixed media skull every day
Skull-A-Day is a project to create a new and cool skull every day, using a variety of materials. The creativity on display is hot — I love the styro cup skull and the nail skull!
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Ctrl C
Top 10 Clipboard Tricks: One of the greatest features the point and click interface brought to personal computers is the clipboard – that invisible, temporary shelf you use more times per day than Google. If you think the clipboard is only about Ctrl+C, you’re missing out. Several utilities can turbocharge your clipboard and track, transfer and reformat the clipboard to your heart’s content…
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Wrath of the Lich King
Well, it’s official. After numerous rumors, leaks, and even someone with a sharp eye for trademark searches, it was revealed this morning with the first entrants to BlizzCon in Anaheim, California that the next World of Warcraft expansion will be called Wrath of the Lich King, complete with new areas to explore, new hairstyles and character customizations, level 80, and the first new class to be introduced to the game since it opened.
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Fortress of Solitude
The gypsum crystals in the Cave of Crystals at the Naica mine in Chihuahua, Mexico, are some of the largest and most spectacular in the world. [Last link is a .wmv]
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Putting their bandwidth where their mouth is
Good Copy Bad Copy is “a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture,” featuring Danger Mouse, Lawrence Lessig, Dan Glickman of the MPAA and others. The film’s creators are releasing it free of charge, via Bittorrent.
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Helmets, NOW!
Meet the star-nosed mole. Capable of smelling underwater as well as the usual digging, it looks like some kind of bizarre mole–illithid hybrid and is the world’s fastest eater.
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We all live in a makeshift submarine…
A detective from the New York Department Intelligence Division noticed a strange-looking submarine in the vicinity of the at the cruise ship terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The submarine’s design appears to be similar to that of Bushnell’s Turtle, the first submarine used in battle.
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They’re Back From the Dead
These five companies were flatlining until they made bold management decisions. Business Week tells you how they did it.
- Nintendo: The Wii dared to market to families and non-gamers
- Audi: Banked on engineering and prowess and didn’t get distracted
- Hewlett-Packard: Started marketing the PC as a lifestyle, not a product
- Burberry: Increased brand prestige by cancelling cheaper lines
- Citibank: Sold itself as a “neighborhood bank” with global reach
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visuals
Life beneath Antarctic ice, The Fascinating, Frightening World of Insects, Ingmar Bergman, Turning Points-A timeline of the conflicts, trends and transformations that helped shape modern India, Heatwave in Europe and other photo essays from Time/CNN.
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Soviet Space Art
That the first space race was politically motivated shouldn’t detract from your enjoyment of Soviet propaganda space art. More here and here.
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The Universe is Finite
Remember CERN from The Da Vinci Code? And their mega-project the Large Hadron Collider. This BBC Horizons show, The Six Billion Dollar Experiment, does a good job illustrating why such an experiment is so cool, important and fascinating. Apparently, the universe is finite.
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If you hum a few bars, I can bark it
A Basenji dog can’t bark but man; they sure can sing.
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Tommy Makem
Tommy Makem has passed. May a craic wake follow. Tommy Makem, he of the Clancy Brothers, and solo fame, has died of lung cancer. He will be missed. Raise a pint and sing a wee bit in his honor.
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Bursting the (bubble boy’s) Bubble
Bursting the Bubble – an alternate look at the life of the so-called “bubble boy” David Vetter.
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Chainsaw sculpture!
Chainsaw carving. For kids, too! Videos of some neat carvings in progress.
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Office printers ‘are health risk’
The humble office laser printer can damage lungs in much the same way as smoke particles from cigarettes, a team of Australian scientists has found.
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In a university not far away, sci-fi heaven
UC Berkeley has the world’s premiere collection on Mark Twain — and
Yale an unmatched trove of rare medieval manuscripts. But for research
on Capt. Kirk, Frankenstein or Harry Potter, nothing tops the
110,000-volume Eaton collection at UC Riverside, the world’s largest
library of science fiction, fantasy and horror books.
“It’s like going to Graceland if you’re an Elvis fan,” said Drew Morse,
a creative writing professor who made the pilgrimage to Riverside from
Ohio last summer to study rare poetry by “Fahrenheit 451” author Ray
Bradbury.
As appreciation for the literary qualities of science fiction has grown
in recent years, the UC Riverside collection has emerged from an
academic ghetto. No institution had ever stockpiled science fiction
like this, or subjected itself to such an internal clash over the worth
of the genre.
A Rare Collection (related slideshow)
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Botanicalls: The Plants Have Your Number
Imagine answering your cell phone to hear your Scotch Moss plant telling you in a fake Glaswegian accent that it needs a drink. This scenario is not far from reality, as a group of postgraduate students at New York University is developing a way for over-watered or dry plants to phone for help. The “Botanicalls” project uses moisture sensors placed in the soil that can send a signal over a wireless network to a gateway that places a call if the plant’s too dry or wet. Recorded voices are assigned to each plant to match its biological characteristics and to help increase the charm of the phone message and give plants their own personality.
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Siskel & Ebert & Roeper & You
On At The
Movies this past weekend Richard Roeper announced: 1) The past 20
years of At The Movies (formerly Siskel & Ebert & the Movies) is
going to be archived for free download online. That’s several thousand reviews
— from Adventures in Babysitting to Zodiac. Unfortunately,
the first ten years of of the show was poorly preserved. Ebert writes, “Starting
Thursday, Aug. 2, visitors will be able to search for and watch all of those
past debates, including the film clips that went along with them, plus the “ten
best” and other special shows we did. The new archive will be at www.atthemoviestv.com, and will be the
web’s largest collection of streaming reviews.” 2) Roger Ebert will be a guest
for an online chat Thursday at 8:00 Eastern (7:00 Central). You can submit
questions in advance here.
The chat will be at this link.
(Until the actual archive shows up online, you can enjoy these
links.)
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Play money
Want to learn some coin tricks? There are six fundamental tricks you need to learn: the coin spin, one-finger spin, the walk down, the edge walk, the coin flip, and the coin roll. Once you have these mastered, you can do some amazing tricks with the videos and instructions at Coin Manipulation and from Expert Village.
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Ok fine so I’ll never read Ulysses. But we can still talk about it.
How to discuss books that one hasn’t read… “in order to . . . talk without shame about books we haven’t read, we should rid ourselves of the oppressive image of a flawless cultural grounding, transmitted and imposed [on us] by the family and by educational institutions, an image which we try all our lives in vain to match up to. For truth in the eyes of others matters less than being true to ourselves, and this truth is only accessible to those who liberate themselves from the constraining need to appear cultured, which both tyrannizes us and prevents us from being ourselves.”
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Northern Ireland: Operation Banner Ends
Operation Banner [Wikipedia], the British Armed Forces’ campaign in Northern Ireland that began in 1969, ended midnight on July 31, 2007. The period included Bloody Sunday in which 13 civilians were killed by the British Army. The Guardian have published a summary of significant events (and one going further back). In pictures: Guardian, BBC.
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Imaginary Places
If you like looking at maps of imaginary places, you should take a peek at the Fantasy Atlas, a German-language collection of maps of literary fantasy and sci-fi worlds. For a more obsessive (but just as interesting) take on maps of imaginary places, you can check out the work of Adrian Leskiw, who’s been creating road maps of non-existent places since the age of 3.
RobDurdle.com 
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