Trawling The Net

Oysters and hazelnuts: Elizabethan popcorn Elizabethan audiences at The Globe and The Rose theaters gnoshed on oysters, mussels, hazelnuts, walnuts, pies and dried fruit while attending plays by the likes of Shakepeare and Marlowe. The evidence has emerged from the most detailed study ever carried out on a Tudor or early Stuart playhouse. Archaeologists have been analysing the thousands of seeds, pips, stones, nutshell fragments, shellfish remains and fish and animal bones found on the site of the Rose Playhouse on London’s South Bank. Museum of London Archaeology has just published the findings in The Rose and The Globe: Playhouses of Shakespeare’s Bankside, written by archaeologists Julian Bowsher and Pat Miller.

The good people at Flowing Data uncovered this old graphic which they dubbed the "Engineer's Guide to Drinks." The name's fitting: unless you're an engineer these diagrams will probably leave you more frustrated than inebriated.

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur ’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. 2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian. 3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still. 4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption. 5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work. 6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery. 7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering. 8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart. 9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie. 10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. 11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it. 12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization. 13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, “You stay here; I’ll go on ahead.” 14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me. 15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: “Keep off the Grass.” 16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, “No change yet.” 17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion. 18. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large. 19. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. 20. A backward poet writes inverse. 21. In democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes. 22. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion. 23. Don’t join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects.

It’s easy enough for anyone to knock up a CAD model, but if they want to print it in 3D, they need to either lay out a lot of money for a 3D printer or find a local print shop who will do the work for them. Hewlett Packard wants to change all of that: just as their inkjet and laser printers are ubiquitous in consumer homes, HP wants to branch into affordable mainstream 3D printing

Pass the shovel  via

I love dirty martinis, but thank god (little “g” on purpose because I’m not fond of  strict rules of behavior and BS dogma regarding a point source deity with a beard who looks like us). I only drink them on weekends – fer now (hee hee!). I used to hate the taste of DMs along with other hoytee- -toytee bourgeoisie (I’m not a communist – I swear!) drinks (e.g. manhattans, cosmos, rusty nails, etc), but a dear friend of mine for over twenty five years introduced them to me a coupla years ago. Did this post have too many parentheses in it? If it did, it’s cuz I’m on my second dirty martini. If U check the date on this post, it’s a Sunday :^).

Researchers in Germany and the UK have discovered symmetry hidden in solid state matter at very small scales. The findings, published in the journal Science, indicate that symmetry involves the golden ratio famous from art and architecture. The research was supported in part by the NMI3 ('Integrated infrastructure initiative for neutron scattering and muon spectroscopy') project, which was funded under the 'Coordination of research activities' Thematic area of the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) to the tune of EUR 21 million

Scientists say that in mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is the same as the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one.

'Such discoveries are leading physicists to speculate that the quantum, atomic scale world may have its own underlying order,' Professor Tennant, who led the HZB team, said, adding that 'similar surprises may await researchers in other materials in the quantum critical state.

Every time winter rolls around in Minnesota, hundreds of thousands of people are left with only two options: hibernate for the season, or get on with living. The Art Shanty Project was borne out of the latter mentality as a new take on the local sport of ice fishing, in which dedicated outdoorsmen and women trudge out into the cold, go sit on frozen lake in a little shack, drink beer, and stare at a hole in the ice... for hours.