The mysterious origins of infantile fartalism

How much study was done into this? And why wasn’t it front page news?

Apparently, according to  Dr. Lester Gottesman, a proctologist from St. Luke’s Roosevelt in the US, and reported via Vice, the smell of our farts are pretty much determined by the bacteria in the digestive system, and these usually get passed on to us from our mothers.

“A baby is born with a sterile intestinal track,” Dr Gottesman says.

“ During the delivery, there’s lots of fluid and stool and whatever, and it’s thought that at that exposure the baby’s colon is populated by the mother’s colon bacteria, thereby affecting the smell of the individual’s farts for the rest of their lifetime. There’s also other theories claiming the colon is populated during the first few months of exposure to fecal material, but that probably doesn’t affect the smell as much as the initial intake of feces by the baby during delivery.”

The magazine asked, does that mean that what your mum ate before you were born influence the aroma of your bum cough today?

“Yes,” replied the good doctor.

“In fact, they now also think that the appendix keeps an arsenal of bacteria so that if, for whatever reason, the bacteria in your colon gets killed by antibiotics the appendix can repopulate your colon with the bacteria that you’ve had since birth. That’s the new thought as to why the appendix is around.”

He said arsenal.

The Periodic Table of Nerd-dom

I never really got where vanadium was in, say, relation to scandrium or yttrium on the periodic table. But I do know that this version not only offers a rational breakdown of the known science fictiony universe, but it also posits where shows and movies not yet discovered may lay on the continuum when scientists and their plastic pals get around to watching them.

Comments at Gizmodo are useful indication as to worth of this table. (But really, no 2001?! The first 20 minutes which explains human nature with nary a proto-word being spoken … I find that hard to believe).

It’s like seven-minute abs for the kitchen

Kim and Rachael can help any slack arsed bachelor boy get reasonable nutrition without all the dicking around with those ingredient thingies.

Their career-making schtick is four-ingredient meals - ingredients that actually make sense, rather than cobbling the last four things left in the fridge that aren’t quite suitable yet  for biological warfare.

You can sign up for newsletters so you don’t even have to go to their website for them, you lazy fuck. Well, you do have to go to the website to sign on, but life is full of challenges.

http://www.4ingredients.com.au/

Here’s one a fan sent in. It has salmon, which is good for Omega 3, which may delay the day that your junk food-encrusted heart pops out of your chest. Though the cream may cancel this out. What the hell, it’s from bleach blond Australian chicks. There’s no way they’d come the raw prawn.

Smoked Salmon Gnocchi

• 400g potato gnocchi
• 100g smoked Salmon
• 1 cup of cream
• 1 punnet of cherry tomatoes

Boil gnocchi until it floats to the surface of the water. Place cherry tomatoes in frying pan and sauté until soft. Add salmon and tomatoes to the gnocchi mix. Add cream allow to reduce and serve. [Editor's note: I'm not 100 on this, but I think by saute, they mean cook the shit out of it. ]

Happy St Patrick’s Day.

A role model for every hard-arse

Bosworth, where Richard copped several bad blows to the head, torso, arms, legs and spleen. He apparently fell where the trees are.

THE last stand of Richard the Third has apparently been almost totally certainly possibly located.

Dick3, as some called him behind his hunched back, is the kind of guy every douche admires. Kill a guy, marry his missus, have your brother killed off, have  a couple of kids knifed and STILL get all the good lines …  There’s the inevitable day of retribution, but remember this is fictionalised truthalisation. These days he’d probably get a book deal, mini series and directorship on a minor government monopoly.

Anyway, the Guardian (February 19, 2010) reports:

“Archaeologists …  have located not just the site of the Battle of Bosworth, but the spot where – on 22 August 1485 – Richard III became the last English king to die in battle when he was cut down by Tudor swords.

“Nearby Henry Tudor was crowned Henry VII, with the crown which had tumbled from the dying Richard’s head.

“The crucial evidence, including badges of the supporters of both kings, sword mounts, coins and 28 cannonballs, was found in fields straddling Fen Lane in the Leicestershire parish of Upton, where no historian had looked before.”

The farm belongs to the farmingly-well named Alf Oliver and the key find was a silver boar.

The History Blog says the boar no bigger than a thumbnail, is battered but still snarling in rage after 500 years.

“It was found on the edge of a field still called Fen Hole, which in medieval times was a marsh that played a crucial role in the battle, protecting the flank of Henry Tudor’s much smaller army. The marsh was drained centuries ago, but Oliver said it still gets boggy in very wet summers.

After a charge in which Richard came within almost a sword’s reach of Henry, he lost his horse in the marsh, a moment immortalised in the despairing cry Shakespeare bestowed upon him: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

“The fact that this little boar is Richard’s personal emblem, and made in silver gilt, means that it can only have been given to one of the closest members of his retinue. The man who wore this would have fought and died at Richard’s side.”

Any one of these could totally rule NZ

Arizona’s Boneyard is where former US Air Force planes go to die. Or at least laze around doing bugger all.

Just one, that's all I ask ...

It seems something akin to pathetic that the only aircraft of the Royal New Zealand Air Force that have jet engines these days (and it shames me to say this as an air force brat) 757 passenger transports.

What might be a good idea is for some keen bean NZ defence officials to pull up one night outside the Boneyard with a trailer and try and pop something fast-ish onto it. It’s not like the Yanks would miss anything. Just one. Maybe another for parts.

Is it really too much to ask that a small country in the arse end of nowhere with a giant sea area to patrol  has at least one military plane that can fire something? Or at least drop a rock or a beer bottle on an unco-operative person?

Two words: Ruweisat Ridge. You have been warned Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Pulsing Pulsing Pulsing

Bob Maddox and his twin pulse jet-powered bike.

The heading is a reference to the song by early 80s Wellington electro group The Body Electric. Just so you know.

This is actually about the pulse jet devices built by Bob Maddox in Oregon. He’s apparently going to get a tv show built around his love of pulse jets, and his attempt to build some so big he can ride them to 25,000 feet and parachute back to earth. I shall be in first to salute him, before I have to salute the small, icky pieces of entrails that use to be him.

What is particularly nice, is that the former cabinet maker has an eye for a good line. Check out the finish on his bike (basically a standard pushbike) and the attractive fiddly bits he’s put on the engine mountings.

In the video below he takes it to 70mph, 0r 112 kph. It’s very, very loud. Not as loud as the big bastard here will be once finished, at bottom.

http://http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2009/06/jetpowered_bicycles_wont_fly_o.html

Show me your scabbard

One of the best shops I have ever been to is Napier’s King of Swords. It is seriously tooled up with a crapton of big pointy sharp things that you could have a real hoot with if you were, perchance, watching Highlander, and wanted to get in on the Claymore action.  Hell, they even have plenty of helmets to deflect at least some of the blows.

And you know what else they got? BONGS!!!! Big bongs, little bongs, mythic bongs, classy bongs … basically, a very large number of bongs. Now, I don’t know if mixing bongs with swords is a good idea, but if you need both, it’s the ideal convenience  shop for you.

Funny thing though, they don’t list the bongs on their website.