Category: Out there

On our occasional trips to the local Asian supermarket, I always enjoy discovering some new, hard-to-believe-it’s-real foodstuff to bring home. Last week I found Greenmax brand “Pai Ku Grain Powder,” which I thought would be a sort of tea, but is actually a sort of soupy, slightly chalky energy drink. The list of ingredients were too intriguing to pass up, including purple yam, ginseng, snow lotus, pearl (?), spinach, black sesame, seaweed, bitter melon, lily bulb, ginkgo nut, and… caterpillar fungus. There are actually about 50 ingredients total. Didn’t know whether the label was referring to a fungus that grows on caterpillars, or a variety of fungus nick-named “caterpillar.” Turns out:

Spores of Cordyceps sinensis grow inside the caterpillars filling the caterpillar with filaments (hyphae). When the caterpillar dies the fungus produces a stalked fruiting body that produces spores. The spores are spread in the wind to the next generation of caterpillars. Uninfected caterpillars pupate into relatively large primitive moths. Today the most common way to prepare the caterpillar fungus is to stuff a duck with the caterpillar fungus then after boiling the duck in hot water, patients drink the liquid. Some consider the benefits to be similar to those of another valuable Chinese tonic, ginseng.

There were dozens of brands of this stuff, so apparently it’s pretty popular. After an initial period of adjustment it’s actually not bad, and the energy/clarity it yields is noticeable. Not sure I’m ready to give up coffee for it just yet though.

For NPR, Adam Burke has a nice piece on a restaurant in Zurich, Switzerland called the Blind Cow. “Diners eat in complete darkness and are served by blind waitresses.”

… and during a toast, he hits her in the head with a wine glass …

But it actually sounds like a fascinating experience. It would be interesting to see how the sense of taste was affected/enhanced by the diminution of visual input. Wondered while I listened whether the chefs put much energy into presentation (appearance) of the food. And whether anyone has ever snapped on the lights in a panic, or out of habit, and how the diners would react.

via BoingBoing

Hell-bent on destroying the earth? We’re not talking about erasing humanity here, but gen-u-ine vaporization of all earth particles. There are ways.

The Earth was built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you’ve had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.

Scientific summaries are offered on the feasibility of techniques such as harnessing the untapped power of the vacuum, throwing chunks of earth into space via space elevators, consumption by an army of von Neumann machines, and other awe-inspiring technologies. Some methods require no more equipment than a simple light bulb — others require elaborate constructions: “You will need: a big heavy rock, something with a bit of a swing to it… perhaps Mars.”

The most promising method? Near-infinite patience.

via Strata Lucida

Pretty much since I’ve known her, Amy has been collecting things to photograph: She has a collection of her own trimmed fingernails dating back to the early 90s (never missed one!), a collection of things Miles put in his mouth when he was a baby, a collection of all the lint collected from our clothes driers in this house and the last… For my part, I’ve been under strict orders to put a newspaper over the sink when trimming my beard; the clippings are dutifully slid into a small box in the bathroom cabinet labeled “Scot Small Beard Trimmings.” Today, after three years, I finally filled the box to capacity. As you dig down through the box, you can see the accreted layers as evidence of my beard’s transformation from nearly all black to nearly all silver. Now what happens? Either I’ll be relieved of the responsibility, or will be issued a larger box.

Every time I sign a credit-card receipt, I wonder what the point is. I don’t recall any clerk ever checking to see whether it matched the signature on the back of the card. Apparently I’m not the only who’s wondered. Old Ziff-mate John Hargrave’s Credit Card Prank is the ultimate real-world proof that credit card signatures are worth even less than you think they are.

NOT AUTHORIZED

Update: I realize now that the prank linked to above is actually just the first chapter of the prank I really meant to link to, which is bigger and funnier.