My new favorite YouTube channel is called Primitive Technology. It features mostly silent videos of an Australian man making and building things using only Stone Age technology. He built a hut out of mud, sticks, and leaves:
He made his own charcoal:
To make the charcoal the wood was broken up and stacked in to a mound with the largest pieces in the center and smaller sticks and leaves on the out side. The mound was coated in mud and a hole was left in the top while 8 smaller air holes were made around the base of the mound. A fire was kindled in the top of the mound using hot coals from the fire and the burning process began.
He’s also made an axe, a sling, baskets, and a cord drill for starting fires…all completely from scratch. Here’s the accompanying blog. (via @craigmod & sarah)
From the NY Times and Redglass Pictures, a video in which political advisor Mark McKinnon details how to win an election. His short answer: “successful campaigns tell a good story”. My “favorite” part is after discussing his irresponsible fear-mongering campaign for Bush in 2004, McKinnon talks about bowing out of the McCain campaign because he believed Obama was a good man and good for the country and he didn’t want to smear him. Wish he could have moved procuring a conscience up a few years. NSFW if you, like me, see George W. Bush and involuntarily start loudly swearing like a sailor.
I love watching Gordon Ramsay make scrambled eggs. I first saw this video years ago and, possibly because I am an idiot, have yet to attempt these eggs at home. You and me, eggs, next weekend.
P.P.P.S. In Jiro Dreams of Sushi (now on Netflix!), an apprentice talks about making tamagoyaki (Japanese omelette) over 200 times before Jiro declared it good enough to serve in his restaurant.
After 11 years, the WireTap radio show is coming to an end. As a farewell, they put together a video of people giving advice to their younger counterparts.
Dear 6-year-old,
Training wheels are for babies. Just let go already.
Regards,
A 7-year-old.
Dear 7-year-old,
Stay weird.
Signed,
An 8-year-old.
This video is magical…give it 20 seconds and you can’t help but watch the whole thing. (via a cup of jo)
Matt Might, who is a professor in computer science at the University of Utah and a professor at the Harvard Medical School, responded to a question on Quora about minimizing the chances of having a disabled child and ended up answering two seemingly unrelated questions as well: How do you get tenure? and How do you live the good life? Long story short: he got tenure and started living the good life because he had a disabled child. But you should read the long story; it’s worth it.
My son forced me to systematically examine what matters in life — what really matters — and in the end, I came to appreciate a quote from his namesake, Bertrand Russell, more than I could have ever imagined:
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
My first year as a tenure-track professor cannot be described as anything other than an abject failure. I was so desperate to publish and raise funds that I began thin-slicing my research and submitting lots of poor quality papers and grant proposals.
I must have had a dozen rejections in a row that year. It sucked.
I remember huddling on the porch at the end of that year with my wife, telling her, “Well, I’ll at least have a job for six more years.”
I looked at my young son, cuddled in her arms. I saw his very existence hung in the balance between knowledge and ignorance.
Then it hit me: Life is too precious and too fleeting to waste my time on bullshit like tenure. I didn’t become a professor to get tenure. I became a professor to make the world better through science. From this day forward, I will spend my time on problems and solutions that will matter. I will make a difference.
I stopped working on problems for the sole purpose of notching up a publication. I shifted gears to cybersecurity. I found a project on cancer in the med school. I joined a project in chemical engineering using super-computing to fight global warming.
Larch Wood Enterprises is a Nova Scotian company specializing in the manufacture of cutting boards from end grain wood…that is, the top surface of the board shows the rings of the tree. Not only that, but each row on the board is cut from the same stick of wood so you can see how the grain changes through the tree. It’s tough to explain…just watch how they make ‘em.
End Grain is when the individual boards of wood are arranged so that the grain of the wood (the growth rings) runs vertically (up and down). This puts one end of each board up so that the cutting surface is actually the end of many individual pieces of wood. With the grain aligned in this manner (up and down), when the knife strikes the surface during cutting, the grain of the wood actually separates and then closes when the knife is removed. This accounts for the self-healing aspect of the end-grain surface. The wood itself is not cut, but instead you are cutting between the fibers.
A medium sized board costs $220 but if you can pass it on to your grandkids, perhaps it’s worth the price to upgrade yourself. (via devour)
As something of an expert on the topic, I thought this New York Magazine piece about spending time alone in the Big Apple is pretty good. The opening of the piece gets at why busy, crowded NYC is actually a good place for an introvert to be:
Being alone here is a state of mind, a perpetual choice, and an occasional imposition, a burden, and a gift — and sometimes the very best way to meet a fellow stranger. “Every form of human expressiveness is on display,” Vivian Gornick writes of walking the streets by herself, “and I am free to look it right in the face, or avert my eyes if I wish.”
And this tip on the Empire State Building is one for the ol’ bucket list:
A lot of people don’t know this, but the Empire State Building is open until 2 a.m. The last elevator leaves at 1:15. If you go up then, it’s empty, it’s beautiful, and the city sounds like the ocean.
Each year, using traditional Incan techniques, communities along a canyon in Peru rebuild a rope bridge that has been in continuous use for hundreds of years.
That you can take thousands of thin grass stalks and, through the careful application of engineering and hard work, make them strong enough to hold the weight of several people over a canyon still seems magical. (via cynical-c)
Man at Arms is a YouTube show in which real-life weapons from movies and TV shows are recreated. Recently they made the Bride’s Hattori Hanzo sword from Kill Bill. They started from scratch by building a furnace from before the Edo period (before 1603) to smelt the iron ore.
I know zero about swords, but it looks like these guys really did their homework in making as close to a traditional katana blade as they could. (via devour)
As you know, I love videos of how stuff is made. (See below.) Well, I just discovered this treasure trove of more than 300 14-minute videos from a Japanese show called The Making: playlist #1, playlist #2. Each video shows how a different thing is made, from wires to sugar to trophies to cheese and all of them are dialogue-free. Here’s the one on how 55-gallon drums are made:
I can’t wait to show some of these to the kids. Their favorite online video, which they request weekly, is this one on how croissants are made.
When I was a kid, maybe 12 or 13 years old, I watched this program on PBS that showed how a snack food manufacturer came up with a new snack food, from design to manufacturing. The thing that stuck with me the most was that they showed a number of the missteps in-between…like they tried a certain shape with a certain filling and it didn’t work out in taste tests, that sort of thing. I LOVED seeing that trial and error in action. I only saw the show once, but it’s one of my most vivid childhood TV memories. Maybe it’s why I ended up becoming a designer?
Wait, wait! Holy shit, holy shit! I found the show! It was a NOVA program called How to Create a Junk Food that aired in 1988, when I was 14. I couldn’t find the video or even a clip, but here’s a review in the LA Times.
The ultimate weapon is the flavorist, a 20th-Century alchemist who analyzes natural things like Danish blue cheese or barbecued beef, reconstructs them chemically in the lab and produces their essences to punch up the taste of bland fillings.
Marketing and technology co-produce a croissant-dough cone with a moist meat or cheese filling that appears perfect. But when they test it on the mouths of real consumers (English housewives), it’s a bloomin’ flop.
Undaunted, the technologists go back to their gizmos and test tubes. After doing such goofy things as gluing electrodes to a chewer’s cheeks to get “chew profiles” of different fillings, they come up with a second prototype, Crack a Snack. The wheat-cracker wrapped “savory tube” is called a “triumph of food engineering,” which, we’re warned, if it is given the proper image, “there’s little doubt we’ll buy it.”
So yeah, now you know I’m the sort of kid who gleefully watched food engineering documentaries on PBS at 14. But you probably already suspected as much. (via @go)
I’ve never looked closely at my dishwasher’s instruction manual before, but apparently all the manuals tell you how best to load the dishwasher. Joe Clark went through a bunch these manuals and compiled screenshots of the “Loading Your Dishwasher” pages and put them on Flickr.
I’ve read a lot about introverts and extroverts over the years (posted this back in Feb 2003 for example), but this list (found here) of how to care for introverts still hit me like a pile of bricks.
1. Respect their need for privacy.
2. Never embarrass them in public.
3. Let them observe first in new situations.
4. Give them time to think; don’t demand instant answers.
5. Don’t interrupt them.
6. Give them advance notice of expected changes in their lives.
7. Give them 15 minute warnings to finish whatever they are doing.
8. Reprimand them privately.
9. Teach them new skills privately.
10. Enable them to find one best friend who has similar interests & abilities.
11. Don’t push them to make lots of friends.
12. Respect their introversion; don’t try to remake them into extroverts.
It’s just dawned on me that when something goes wrong in my life, it’s often one of the things on this list that’s the culprit, especially #4 and #6. And #2 pretty much explains my middle and high school experience. Has anyone read Susan Caine’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking? I’ve heard great things about it, but haven’t had a chance to read yet. Thinking I should bump it to the top of my queue. Holy crap, it’s only $2.99 for Kindle…BOUGHT. (via @arainert)
Also of note: the segment on the conservation of old books starting at around 9:55…I never knew they took them apart like that to dunk the pages in water! Sadly, the Cockerell Bindery ceased operation in the late 1980s with the death of Sydney Cockerell and its contents were sold at auction. (thx, matt)
Gear Patrol visited 12 whiskey distilleries (including Buffalo Trace, Maker’s Mark, and Jim Beam) to find out how bourbon is made.
Cool. Some of that I knew, and some I didn’t. My favorite detail is how the placement of the barrel in the aging room can affect the flavor of the bourbon within. Just like cheese. (via digg)
In 2012, Joe Ayoob broke the world record for the longest distance paper airplane flight with a plane designed by John Collins. In this video, Collins demonstrates how to fold that plane, the Suzanne.
The goal should be that the reader can make the recipe his or her own — that the instructions are clear and good enough that after a few tries, he or she can improvise to please themselves. The chef gives ideas so that the cook can profit. It’s not dictation; it’s inspiration.
I wasn’t expecting too much of this video about how to eat sushi, but it’s actually pretty good. It features Naomichi Yasuda of the highly regard Sushi Yasuda in Manhattan making sushi for a newbie and telling him how it should be eaten.
This Old House + Jiro Dreams of Sushi = this video.
There were open spots at the counter. But the chef, Susumu Yajima, instructed me to take a seat nearby and wait. Eventually I was summoned to a place directly in front of him, and the attack began: Piece after piece in rapid succession, as Yajima barked orders at me.
“Eat now!” he said, milliseconds after passing me a glistening slice of buri (amberjack) atop shari (the finger of rice that forms the base of nigiri sushi). “Use your hand!” he upbraided me, as I reached for my chopsticks. He even instructed me to half-chew one piece before washing it down with sake.
It may hurt to write it. And reading it? For some, that’s the worst part. The world might spin a little, and everything familiar to you might fade for a few minutes. But remember, remind yourself as you stand there, you are the lucky one.
And that’s not because you aren’t dead. You were selected. You get to stand, face the group, the family, the world, and add it up. You’re being asked to do something at the very moment when nothing can be done. You get the last word in the attempt to define the outlines of a life. I don’t care what you say, bub: That is a gift.
This rule surprised me:
You must make them laugh. Laughs are a pivot point in a funeral. They are your responsibility. The best laughs come by forcing people not to idealize the dead. In order to do this, you have to be willing to tell a story, at the closing of which you draw conclusions that no one expects.
What exactly is a good shot in soccer? The nascent field of soccer analytics is hard at work trying to figure that out. It won’t surprise anybody to learn that closer is better, and using your feet is much, much better than using your head. So, much like getting into the lane is of paramount importance in basketball, getting the ball at your feet in front of the goal is just about the best thing you can do in soccer. Getting to the byline (baseline) in the corner of the penalty areas (like where Maicon was in the above video) is a hot destination. That’s where you can cut the ball back for a teammate to have one of those coveted close shots. Hey, look at that - it’s like basketball again: Get to the goal or get to the corners.
If you were not able to contact her before hand, and you are sure that you want to proceed, find out the location of the wedding. Unless you have been invited, you will have to find out where the wedding ceremony is to be held, and the exact time. Ask family members or mutual friends if it doesn’t appear too suspicious, or perhaps check the wedding notices in the local newspaper.
I have never seen something so batshit crazy described in such a calm methodical way. And the photos! The caption for this one is “Enjoy life with your stolen bride or groom”:
I haven’t worn a watch in more than 25 years and I have no plans to wear one ever again, but I will watch videos on how to make watches until the heat death of the universe.
Plenty of tradition and handcraft — combined with high-tech, where it outperforms handcraft.
Jim Koch is the co-founder and chairman of The Boston Beer Company, brewer of the Sam Adams beers. Part of his job is to drink professionally and he does so without getting completely sloshed. What’s his secret? Eating a packet of dry yeast before tying one on.
You see, what [expert brewer] Owades knew was that active dry yeast has an enzyme in it called alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH). Roughly put, ADH is able to break alcohol molecules down into their constituent parts of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Which is the same thing that happens when your body metabolizes alcohol in its liver. Owades realized if you also have that enzyme in your stomach when the alcohol first hits it, the ADH will begin breaking it down before it gets into your bloodstream and, thus, your brain.
“And it will mitigate - not eliminate - but mitigate the effects of alcohol!” Koch told me.
Could have used this tip last night. Does this mean no hangovers as well?
Update: I got two kinds of feedback about this post:
1) What’s the fun in drinking alcohol if you’re not getting drunk? (Good point.)
2) Yeast doesn’t really work. What does seem to work is Pepcid AC and Zantac. From Shenglong on Hacker News:
Again, I’m not a chemist or a doctor, but from my preliminary internet research and anecdotal testing (though I have quite a few different data points), Famotadine (OTC) [Pepcid], and higher levels of APO-Ranitidine (can be prescription) [Zantac] seems to slow the rate of ethanol -> acetaldehyde, balancing out the drunkness effect more, and giving you more time to process the acetaldehyde -> acetic acid. I typically go from maxing out at 2 drinks / 3 hour period, to about 11 drinks / 3 hour period on Ranitidine, given favorable conditions. I’ve had lower levels of success with Famotadine.
And it goes without saying, I don’t recommend trying any of this at home. At the local bar on the other hand Nope, not there either. (thx, @natebirdman)
The small village of Ciocanesti in Romania produces the most beautiful hand-painted Easter eggs I’ve ever seen. This video is a wonderful look at the process and tradition.
First, the (duck, goose, chicken, or even ostrich) egg is drained, through a tiny hole. Then, using a method akin to batik, it is dipped in dye and painted one color at a time, with the painter applying beeswax to those areas she wants to protect from the next round of dying. The painting implement, called a kishitze, is a stick with an iron tip. (Previously, egg-painters would have used thorns or pig bristles.)
And then the wax is melted and wiped off the egg, revealing the colors underneath. So cool. (via @colossal)
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