Everything is Interesting
A bucket bong, also called a gravity bong, is a method of consuming cannabis. The smoke in a gravity bong never actually passes through the water as it would in an ordinary bong. The water is used to draw the smoke into the container by pulling up, creating a change in air pressure. The smoke is then pushed into the mouth of the user by pushing down causing air compression.
The DARPA PowerSwim program is developing a human-powered swimming device for use by combat and reconnaissance swimmers. The device uses the same oscillating foil approach to swimming that is exhibited by many fish and aquatic birds. This propulsion approach is more than 80-percent efficient in conversion of human motions to forward propulsion. Typical recreational swim fins are no more than 15-percent efficient in their conversion of human exertion to propulsive power, and freestyle swimming converts only 3-percent.
Valrhona is a French chocolate manufacturer based in the small town of Tain-l’Hermitage in Hermitage, a wine-growing district near Lyon. The company was founded in 1922 by a French pastry chef, Albéric Guironne, and is today one of the leading producers of chocolate in the world. The company also maintains the École du Grand Chocolat, a school for professional chefs with a focus on chocolate-based dishes and pastries. Valrhona focuses mainly on high-grade luxury chocolate marketed for professional as well as for private consumption. Though considered one of the foremost chocolate makers in the world, Valrhona is in roughly the same price range as Godiva and Neuhaus.
The product line includes chocolate confectionery, plain and flavored chocolate bars and bulk chocolate in bars or pellets. Valrhona produces vintage chocolate made from beans of a single year’s harvest from a specific plantation, primarily the Grand Crus which is grown in South America, the Oceania and the Caribbean. Currently three brands of vintage chocolates – Ampamakia, Gran Couva and Palmira – are in production with plantations on Madagascar, Trinidad and in Venezuela respectively.
Barefoot running was widespread for the majority of human history and is still relatively common in undeveloped populations. In competitive running virtually all modern athletes use running shoes, but a small minority of runners have achieved success running barefoot, including Olympic champions and world record holders Abebe Bikila and Tegla Loroupe, as well as Zola Budd. The biomechanics of running are changed quite significantly when shoes are used – in barefoot running, the balls of the feet strike the ground with the most force. With padded shoes more emphasis is placed on the heel and the back of the foot. Running in thin-soled, flexible shoes such as moccasins, VivoBarefoot and Vibram FiveFingers is biomechanically similar to barefoot running.
Barefoot running is experiencing a small resurgence of popularity. Its proponents believe it is healthier for feet and reduces the risk of chronic injuries, notably repetitive stress injuries due to the impact of heel striking in padded running shoes. These health claims are supported by some research and advocated by some authorities, but the research is not conclusive or widely accepted in the medical community. Barefoot running is not generally advocated by medical or sports organizations, who recommend that padded running shoes be worn, with particular consideration to foot type (type of pronation in heel strike gait).
The Areni-1 shoe is a 5,500-year-old leather shoe that was found in 2008 in excellent condition in the ‘Areni-1’ cave in Armenia. It is a one-piece leather-hide shoe and the oldest piece of leather footwear in the world known to contemporary researchers (the oldest footwear of any kind yet discovered are a 10,000 year old pair of sandals made of sagebrush fiber, from Fort Rock Cave in Oregon). The use of shoes is believed to have begun between 40,000 and 26,000 years ago. The Areni-1 shoe was found in near-perfect condition due to the cool and dry conditions in the cave and a thick layer of sheep dung which acted as a solid seal.
Large storage containers were found in the same cave, many of which held well-preserved wheat, barley, and apricots, as well as other edible plants. The shoe contained grass and the archaeologists were uncertain as to whether this was because the grass was used as insulation to keep the foot warm, or used to preserve the shape of the shoe while not being worn. Radiocarbon analysis dates the shoes to 3,500 BCE (a few hundred years older than a leather shoe found on Ötzi the Iceman, 400 years older than shoes found at Stonehenge, and 1,000 years older than shoes found at the Great Pyramid of Giza).
The Daily Omnivore 