Cooking meals in a coffee maker

From NPR's food blog:

"My nephew came home from Afghanistan complaining about the food in the mess hall," says Jody Anderson, a retired photographer in southern Oregon. "But the soldiers were allowed only to have coffee makers in their rooms."

So Anderson started developing recipes for the coffee maker, including ones for mac 'n' cheese, short ribs and chicken soup...

As Anderson describes it, the design of a traditional coffee maker gives you three basic cooking techniques:

1. Steam: The basket at the top is a great place to steam vegetables. You can throw in broccoli, cauliflower or any vegetable that cooks in about the same time as those.
2. Poach: The carafe at the bottom serves as a simple vessel for poaching fish and chicken. You can also use it to hard-boil eggs or make couscous and oatmeal.
3. Grill: This technique is a bit more advanced — and time-consuming. But if you're really itching for a grilled cheese sandwich or a cinnamon bun in a motel room, the coffee maker's burner can serve as a miniature grill.

Gregor Samsa consults a famous doctor

The relevant part of the program begins at the 41:00 mark.

 Background for the befuddled. And here, for those not familiar with the doctor.

Domino theory. And practice.

YouTube link.

A four-minute video (a "screenlink" comprised of separate events, not a continuous domino fall) illustrates some of the remarkable effects that can be achieved using falling dominos.

Via Neatorama.

How to make "Jello worms" - updated

The photo is self-explanatory.  The thread at Reddit discusses some of the details of preparation, including how to remove the worms from the straws.

For maximum gross-out effect, mix the worms with "dirt" (crushed Oreos!!).

I think we've found our front-door treat for next years' Halloweeners.  Yay!

Addendum:   I wanted to post a follow-up for those planning to create some of these.  It's not as easy as it looks.  I tried to make some for Halloween, and the result was dreadful:

The key appears to be in a casual comment at the original recipe about using extra gelatin.  The ones that I made (unfortunately camouflaged on the red plate) were too squishy to be of practical use.  If I do this again, I'm going to use a much higher gelatin/water ratio.  Also I didn't add enough cream to mute down the fluorescent color of the cherry jello.

And a final note re the straws.  I would have preferred to use the "bendy" straws as shown in the original to show the segmentation of the worms, but the straws I did find were larger (made for thick liquids/ice cream etc) and yielded a better-size worm than skinny straws.

Belt buckle = shiv

Found in a thrift store.  The best comment from the Reddit thread:  "Rick donated this after realizing that any combat advantages gained by having a small knife were immediately lost by no longer having his pants stay up."

And regarding shivs:

A shiv (possibly from the Romani word chivomengro, "knife") is a slang term for any sharp or pointed implement used as a knife-like weapon. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests shive, a razor, documented in 1915, as the root word.

Composite image made from photos posted at imgur.

How thieves can bypass a door alarm

 

Image cropped from the original at Reddit, where the comment thread includes discussion of the tools/techniques employed by the malefactors.

"Deposit candy here"

A child's clever Halloween costume (note the feet).

Image cropped from the original posted by the child's mother, MoobyTheGoldenCalf, at Reddit.

Vietnam War military trash recycled by locals

A hat tip to my brother-in-law, who found an intersting report in The Aviationist:

...even if they can be refueled by aerial tankers, tactical jet planes heavily rely on the JP-8 fuel loaded on the external fuel tanks. However, the auxiliary fuel tanks represent an additional weight, additional drag, and they will reduce the aircraft maneuverability.

In real combat, external fuel tanks are jettisoned when empty or as soon as the aircraft needs to get rid of them to accelerate and maneuver against an enemy fighter plane or to evade a surface to air missile.

During the Vietnam War thousands of fuel tanks were jettisoned by U.S. combat aircraft.  The photos above (credit Hilli Rathner) demonstrate how locals have repurposed the tanks into serviceable boats not dissimilar in design to traditional watercraft.  The images below appear to show a similar unmodified fuel tank awaiting conversion, along with other military scrap.

Optical illusions in a Honda advertisement

YouTube link.

Clever use of forced perspective, trompe-l'œil, and other devices in this advertisement apparently filmed in Lake Wobegon.

Clever Halloween costumes

It's a bit early for Halloween-themed posts, but I wanted to break a series of rather serious topics.  When I'm giving out treats to the neighbor kids, I much prefer to see home-made outfits rather than plastic store-bought Spiderman or Power Ranger costumes.

The soda-bottles-with-crepe-paper-flames comes from Been There, Pinned That (via Neatorama); the wheelchair adaptation (which seems more appropriate for a parade than for door-to-door trick-or-treating and may not have originally been for Halloween) was at imgur, via Reddit.

A vibration-cancelling spoon for persons with tremors

The device is described at Fast Company Design:

At first glimpse, the Liftware almost seems like a novelty gadget: an electronic spoon stuffed full of smartphone motion sensors and accelerometers. But the problem that the Liftware is trying to solve is far from trivial. Across the country, there are over 10 million people suffering from essential tremor; there are an additional 2 million people suffering from Parkinson's disease. For these 12 million Americans, the Liftware isn't just an electronic spoon; it's a tool that could give them their dignity and self-respect back...

Here's how it works. Inside every Liftware handle is a number of common motion sensors, the type that you might find in your iPhone or digital camera. Each of these sensors measures motion, then passes it through a small microcontroller that uses custom algorithms to analyze the signal and identify the type of tremor being detected. If the motion has the frequency and amplitude of a large human tremor, the Liftware microprocessor will tell actuators in the handle to adjust the handle's attachment in the opposite direction of the tremor, hopefully canceling it out.

Anyone who has had a family member with Parkinson's will appreciate the potential value of such a device.

Advances in logrolling

YouTube link.

Meet Wisconsinite Abby Hoeschler, who is the boom running world record holder.

“I’m the current boom running world champion and world record holder. There are two events: In logrolling, you’re trying to dislodge your competitor from the log (or just be the last one on the log) in a three-out-of-five-round match. In boom running, a course of eight logs tied end to end is attached to two docks, and you sprint across and back. The fastest time wins.”

“It uses a lot of core ... and a lot of butt, because you’re in the squat position — really digging in. It’s kind of like chair pose in yoga. You keep your shoulders up, with a strong core. It’s an all-body workout."

More about her and the sport in the StarTribune.  In the video she is promoting a synthetic log she developed and is marketing to help popularize (and standardize) the sport.  To overcome the logistic problem of transporting 500-pound logs, the synthetic ones are hollow, made of polyethylene, then filled with water at the site of use to bring them up to mass.

Here's a video of the women's  boom-running competition at the Lumberjack World Championships. And this one of the finals of the men's logrolling competition in 2011:

YouTube link.

One-man band

Slightly modified from the original, via Alabaster.

San Francisco Zoo advertisement

Agency: BBDO West, San Francisco, USA.  Creative Director: Jim Lesser

Image cropped from original at Ads of the World, via Neatorama.

A digital sundial

Like a digital clock, the digital sundial displays the current time using digits. In the true tradition of all sundials, the device is purely passive - it operates without electricity, and has no moving parts. Instead, the sunlight is cast through two cleverly designed masks in the shape of numbers that show the current time of day. The sundial is available in two versions, for use in either hemisphere. Placed on the inside of a south-facing window (north-facing in the southern hemisphere), the sundial can be read through the horizontal mirror. The display updates every 10 minutes, and gives a remarkably accurate record of the time during the daylight hours. 

More info at Digital Sundials International.

Erasable ivory plates

Thomas Jefferson's reusable "notepad":

In his pockets, Jefferson carried such a variety of portable instruments for making observations and measurements that he's been dubbed a "traveling calculator." Among his collection of pocket-sized devices were scales, drawing instruments, a thermometer, a surveying compass, a level, and even a globe. To record all these measurements, Jefferson carried a small ivory notebook (pictured) on which he could write in pencil. Back in his Cabinet, or office, he later copied the information into any of seven books in which he kept records about his garden, farms, finances, and other concerns; he then erased the writing in the ivory notebook. 

Via The Appendix and Erik Kwakkel.

Addendum: A hat tip to reader Walter Susong, who noted in a comment that modern versions of these are available:

"Based on an original that Jefferson owned. These are made of sturdy brass stock with 4 old ivory pages and a pencil. Use this for making notes in the field and just erase with a wet finger when you are done."

How to take small portions of condiments on a picnic

It's very annoying to make a great sandwich with mayonnaise and later find the bread soggy.  Lifehacker shows a simple way to transport small quantities of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise for application just before consumption.

Human-powered helicopter

YouTube link.

"On June 13th, 2013, the AeroVelo Atlas Human-Powered Helicopter captured the long standing AHS Sikorsky Prize with a flight lasting 64.1 seconds and reaching an altitude of 3.3 metres. Visit www.aerovelo.com for more details.

The competition was initially opened in 1980, and over the course of the 33 years that followed, dozens of teams from around the world pushed the limits of existing technology in pursuit of this once-thought-to-be impossible goal. This video is a compilation of footage from the record flight, as well as previous test flights."

An interesting design.  I found this diagram at their website:

An unusual lock

This apparently is a Tayhope (brand name) lock.  I found information about it at the company's website:

In commercial ventures, where access points need to be locked, padlocks are often used as they offer high security with low maintenance. Most companies nowadays use cloned padlocks operated by one corporate key, this allows easy access to many sites where the company has an interest. Multiple-Locks allow companies to share access points without having to share keys. An installed Multiple-Lock may have up to 10 users each opening and closing the access point using their own padlock.

A video at the company website illustrates some of the mechanics.  Note that gaining access does NOT require the simultaneous presence of 10 users with ten different keys - unlocking any ONE of the ten padlocks allows the gate to be opened.

Image cropped from the original at Nothing to do with Arbroath. 

Addendum: Readers offer some other varieties for multiple-user access in the Comments below.

"Toilet bowl love"

The prison equivalent of phone sex makes use of the pipes of the plumbing system, as explained at Truthdig:

Life behind bars in Union County jail and some other American penal institutions revolves around an improvised system of cell-to-cell communication through the plumbing. Known as the “bowl phone,” it crudely replicates the speaking tubes in ships that sailors once shouted through. Drained metal toilets are used as megaphones to build friendships, carry out courtship, fall in love—although the lovers may never meet—have
phone sex, pray and carry out religious conversion, pass news about court cases and families and exchange gossip...

“You take a piece of cloth,” says Blount, a small, wispy African-American in her 40s. “You take the water out [of the bowl]. You keep pumpin’ the water out until it get lower. Then you take the little cup or somethin’. You take a little sock or a little cloth or somethin’. You pump it out with the cloth, the water out. And as you’re doin’ that it’s the water’s going out. It’s goin’, it’s goin’. It don’t take but like about a minute.”...

To send or receive a call, a male prisoner one or two floors below must similarly prepare a bowl phone. It is difficult for the parties to hear each other if they are separated by more than two floors. To keep the lines of communication open, bowl phones are seldom used as toilets and rarely are flushed. Cells designated by prisoners become, in essence, public phone booths, known by their cell numbers...

I ask what most of the prisoners like to talk about. “Sex,” Pabey and Blount answer at once. 

More at the link, if you really need to know...

Illustration by Mr. Fish.