Whittle It a Little, It’ll Fit

Odds and sods I look at regularly, just because they amuse me. I hope they do the same for you. Incidentally, I found this page’s title on Greg Ross’s Futility Closet (it’s somewhere on this page) in a mini-article which also includes the delightful sentence in Icelandic: Barbara Ara bar Ara araba bara rabbabara. Ross points out that this, “besides being fun to say, is spelled with only three letters. It means “Barbara, daughter of Ari, brought only rhubarb to Ari the Arab.”

Futility Closet » Better Safe

Friday 19 April 19:35:21 UTC 2024

The word curfew derives from the Old French phrase couvre-feu, which means “cover fire.” Under a law imposed by William the Conqueror, all lights and fires had to be covered by 8 p.m. to reduce the risk of conflagration in towns still built largely of timber. The practice spread through medieval Europe. Writes historian Roger Ekirch, “Not only were streets … [Link]

Weird Universe » French Fry Injector

Friday 19 April 12:54:17 UTC 2024

Why slather your fires with ketchup or cheese or mayo like a peasant, when you could laboriously inject the condiment into each individual fry?

Full patent here.

[Link]

Weird Universe » Wizz Air to fly on human waste

Friday 19 April 8:31:38 UTC 2024

So there really is a European airline named Wizz Air (I had to check wikipedia to make sure it was real), and it recently announced that by 2030 "up to 10% of its flights could be powered by sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) derived from human waste." From msn.com:

The concept of converting human waste into jet fuel might raise some … [Link]

Futility Closet » Protocol

Friday 19 April 7:33:43 UTC 2024

New Mexico’s state senate took up a startling amendment in 1995 — it would have required psychologists to dress up as wizards when providing expert testimony on a defendant’s competency: When a psychologist or psychiatrist testifies during a defendant’s competency hearing, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall wear a cone-shaped hat that is not less than two feet tall. The surface … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons