The Word Project: Obscure Words in Bricolage

The Word Project: Obscure Words in Bricolage:

 

What aviary resemblance has to do with the study of soil and the irresistible urge to dance.

We love words and language, especially artful intersections of lingolove and design. Earlier this week, we spotlighted illustrator Veronika Heckova’s lovely Words Without Words project and, thanks to reader Cassandra Marketos, we discovered the utterly wonderful work of artist Polly M. Law. The Word Project is a compendium of 100 odd and obscure words, illustrated in Law’s signature bricolage paper-dolls style.

 

Strigiform: (adj) resembling an owl; Struthiform (adj) resembling an ostrich

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

 

 

 

Dinomania: (n) irresistible urge to dance

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

 

 

 

Godwottery: (n) an overly ornate garden

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

 

 

 

Pedology: (n) the study of soils

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

 

 

 

Lucubrate: (v) to work by artificial light

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

 

 

 

Bibliotaph: (n) a person who hides books

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

 

 

 

Empyreal: (adj) celestial, elevated

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

 

 

At once whimsical and illuminating, The Word Project is a playful and inspired gateway into grown-up vocabulary, approaching the intellectual with the kind of childlike curiosity we so encourage.

Thanks, Cass

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Wasabi Kit-Kat's???

Wasabi Kit-Kat

bookofjoe (bookofjoe) – 3/22/11 10:15 AM

Ummm, wasabi. And that's not all: how about purple sweet potato (below),

macha (green tea), cheesecake, soy sauce, annin dofu (a Japanese dessert with almonds), caremalized sweet potato, and yellow sweet potato?

According to Ufunk, "They're all good and tasty!"

[via Design You Trust]

Origami

origami by Brian Chan

origami by Brian Chan...(Read...)

Pop-ups

Pop-ups! They're Not JUST for Kids from Bowdoin College on Vimeo.

Growing is Forever

Growing is Forever:

"I have a deep affection for the Redwood forests of Northern California. This is my best attemp..(Read...)

 

Uncontacted Amazon Tribe: First ever aerial footage

Uncontacted Amazon Tribe: First ever aerial footage:

New footage of one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes living in the Brazilian rainforest. ..(Read...)

 

Waterfall

Waterfall:

Back to the future

Back to the future:

 

Back to the future by Irina Werning."Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, i..(Read...)

 

People of Wal-Mart - Cerail For You & Kids

Cerail For You & Kids:

This grocery list looks like something I drunkenly jotted down at 3am….with the exception of the atrocious spelling errors of course, because even hammered drunk I know how to spell “castle”.

Virginia

Yesterdays Cars of Tomorrow

Yesterday's Cars of Tomorrow:

As this short 1948 film aptly demonstrates, the hardest thing in the world is to design something futuristic. That said, I wish my old jalopy could parallel park as nimbly as the Davis Three Wheeler.

BehindTheMedspeak: The 5-Second Rule

BehindTheMedspeak: The 5-Second Rule:

C. Claiborne Ray's "Q&A" column in this past Tuesday's New York Times Science section addressed this urban legend as follows.

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Q. You know the five-second rule for dropped food? Is it really safe if you pick it up in time?

A. "The five-second rule probably should become the zero-second rule," said Dr. Roy M. Gulick, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Weill Cornell Medical College. "Eating dropped food poses a risk for ingestion of bacteria and subsequent gastrointestinal disease, and the time the food sits on the floor does not change the risk."

In general, if there are bacteria on the floor, they will cling to the food nearly immediately on contact, Dr. Gulick said. Factors that influence the risk and the rate of bacterial transfer include the type of floor; the type of food; the type of bacteria; and how long the bacteria have been on the floor.

In a study published in 2007 in The Journal of Applied Microbiology, Clemson University researchers tested salmonella placed on wood, tile or carpet, and dropped bologna on the surfaces for 5, 30 or 60 seconds. With both wood and tile, more than 99 percent of the bacteria were transferred nearly immediately, and there was no difference by the time of contact. Carpet transferred a smaller number of bacteria, again with no difference by contact time. The amount transferred decreased over hours, but there were still thousands of the bacteria per square centimeter on the surfaces after 24 hours, and hundreds survived on the surfaces for as long as four weeks. As few as 10 salmonella bacteria can cause gastroenteritis.

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Below, the abstract of the 2007 paper cited above.

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Residence time and food contact time effects on transfer of Salmonella Typhimurium from tile, wood and carpet: testing the five-second rule

[illustration at the top by Victoria Roberts for the New York Times]

Beauty is in the eye of the Blur-Tool-holder.

Beauty is in the eye of the Blur-Tool-holder.:

Beauty is in the eye of the Blur-Tool-holder.....(Read...)

Dogbrella

Dogbrella:

From the website:

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This inverted bumbershoot forms a waterproof cocoon around a small dog, enabling canine and master to maintain a walking regimen in inclement weather.

The umbrella's 29" diameter canopy is made from 8-gauge clear polypropylene that sheds rain, sleet, and snow while allowing an unfettered view of your walking companion.

Not only does the umbrella eliminate the excuse "it's too wet for a walk" from a dog owner's lexicon (to the delight of most canines and the amusement of most spouses), it prevents moisture from getting spread throughout the home, along with the unpleasant scent of a wet dog.

The tip of the umbrella hooks to your pet's leash to keep it from straying beyond its protective canopy.

Sturdy stainless steel shaft and ribs with a white plastic crook handle.

For leash-trained dogs up to 15 lbs. and less than 24" long.

Dogbrella is 24.75"L x 4" when collapsed.

Weighs one pound.

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$29.95 (dog not included).

[via Milena]

Welcome to Loserville — Population:1 (Thats You)

Welcome to Loserville — Population:1 (That's You):

I like to post this photo annually to supplement my daily in-person ration of humble pie, which I receive by keeping this wonderful beverage chiller in a prominent place in my abode.

"Wed show an Alzheimers survivor here, if there were one"

Powerful ad from the Alzheimer's Association which ran in the New York Times a few months ago.

Nastyass Honey Badger

Date unknown “This photo is from a discarded photo album...

Date unknown “This photo is from a discarded photo album...:

Date unknown

“This photo is from a discarded photo album which I found at a landfill in Victoria, Australia.”

(via Katja)

 

The three main sources of household dust

The three main sources of household dust:

 

1. Cleaning

2. Cooking

3. Movement

No wonder my house is so clean.

What with my rather sporadic housekeeping (Mario Buatta once remarked that dust protects furniture from sunlight wonderfully), heavy reliance on the microwave and movement pretty much confined to my treadmill (which accumulates dust underneath remarkably fast and in huge quantities spiked with Gray Cat hair but is easily removed since it's bundled in one place), my house is just so spiffy.

I learned a lot about dust and its discontents in Michael Tortorello's story in yesterday's New York Times Home section; excerpts follow.

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Apparently, the amount of airborne dust doubled in the 20th century, according to a recent paper in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

The claim sounds outlandish. The amount of dust in the world — like the amount of sin or acne — must be a constant. The finding was somewhat surprising even to Natalie Mahowald, the lead researcher on the study and an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at Cornell University.

Although she was working with inchoate historical data, Dr. Mahowald said, "Nobody has come up to me and said, 'I don’t believe you.'" Climate change seems to be one source for all the new dust. Human land use is another. Anyone looking for a scapegoat — and that’s all of us, isn’t it? — can start with the droughts and desertification in North Africa, she said.

Dr. Mahowald said, "Dust is such a vague term. I’m being very particular here: soil particles suspended in the atmosphere."

Cleaning can have an unintended consequence: Oddly enough, it actually breeds dust. In fact, cleaning is one of the three main sources of household dust, according to research on indoor particles. Cooking is the second; movement is the third.

Every step disturbs tiny particles of dirt, fiber, soot, pollen, paint, food and dead skin. In common parlance, it’s all dust, said Richard Flagan, the chairman of the chemical engineering department at the California Institute of Technology. As soon as these motes lift off a carpet (or a TV remote or a ukulele), "you induce air currents" that propel them around the room, he said.

Several thousand particles of this stuff will waft in any cubic centimeter of air, a space the size of a sugar cube. We travel through life emitting what scientists call “a personal cloud” of dust. The only alternative is death, which is actually worse — what with the whole "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" thing.

A clean house is easier to clean.

How does dust fall onto a bookshelf? Slowly. Very slowly.

A piece of dust that is 100 microns in diameter (the size of a dot of chalk powder) will fall about a foot a second, said Richard Flagan, chairman of the chemical engineering program at the California Institute of Technology. A mote that is 1 micron in diameter, the size of a bacteria, will fall just 30 microns a second. And many of the particles created by cooking, which is a leading source of indoor dust, measure less than half a micron across.

Where does dust this small go? Anywhere it wants. Trying to herd it into a dustpan is either an act of hubris or a clown routine. Might as well try to snare a moth with a hula hoop.

Given these absurdities of scale, cleaning will inevitably scatter dust around the room. Still, the forces of chemistry and physics can help.

There may be no more primitive dusting tool than a damp cloth. You will not see it advertised on late-night TV. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work. "The reason that you use a wet cloth rather than a dry cloth," Dr. Flagan said, "is the liquid introduces capillary forces."

The dust will bond to the wet surface, he said. "And then the particle doesn’t want to pull off."

The concept behind a vacuum cleaner isn’t hard to understand. The nozzle sucks air into a filter medium or a bag. "Some of the dust strikes the filters and sticks, and some strikes other particles and sticks."

Then there is the considerable amount of dust that doesn’t stick to anything. A spinning brush may send small particles in a kind of appliance thrill ride. And while the vacuum nozzle inhales, the vents exhale. A HEPA filter, with its fine fabric grates, should capture petite-yet-nasty particles — the ones that wear size 0, so to speak.

As for those newfangled bagless vacuums with their racy cyclonic action? Dr. Flagan contends that a centrifugal windstorm won’t capture smaller particles, except by dumb luck. That said, on the filth mats that we call carpets, "a lot of the stuff is big aggregates," he said. For that, "they’re pretty good."

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For those who can't get enough of dust, consider this entertaining book:

 

Romania to imprison witches if their predictions do not come true

Romania to imprison witches if their predictions do not come true:

 

No, not from The Onion but, rather, this past Tuesday's New York Times.

"A month after the authorities began taxing Romania's witches and fortunetellers on their trade, Parliament is considering a new bill that would subject them to fines or even prison if their predictions do not come true. Superstition is taken seriously in Romania, and officials passed the tax bill in an effort to increase revenues. The new bill would also require witches to have permits and provide their customers with receipts, and it would bar them from practicing near schools and churches. Witches argue they should not be blamed for the failure of their tools. 'They can’t condemn witches; they should condemn the cards,' said Bratara Buzea, a 'queen witch.'"

Caption for the photo up top: "Romanian gypsy witch fortune tellers at a fair in Bucharest."

 

Catatumbo Lightning

Catatumbo Lightning:

 

Roughly 160 nights a year, up to nine hours of lightning, visible from up to 285 miles away, illuminate the Catatumbo River basin where it empties into Lake Maracaibo (South America's largest lake) in western Venezuela.

From Slate: "Known as the 'Beacon of Maracaibo,' the Catatumbo lightning has guided sailors for centuries. It can sometimes be seen on the horizon from as far away as the Lesser Antilles, more than 200 miles distant. In his 1597 poem 'The Dragontea,' which tells the story of Sir Francis Drake's last expedition, Spanish poet Lope de Vega tells how the lightning — 'flames, which the wings of night cover' — illuminated the silhouettes of the English privateer's ships, tipping off the garrison at Maracaibo to his surprise attack. During the last major naval skirmish of the Venezuelan war of independence in 1823, the lightning was said to have helped steer the ships of Adm. José Prudencio Padilla to victory over the Spanish fleet. The storm is so central to the region's identity that the state of Zulia put a large lightning bolt in the middle of its flag."

The lightning flashes occur 15-40 times per minute and can reach an intensity of 400,000 amps.

Discharging more the 1.2 million times a year, the Catatumbo Lightning has been called the single greatest natural source of ozone on the planet.