Where do Super Models come from?

The answer is: Brazil.

This fascinating video from the New York Times shows a unique poverty stricken area in Brazil that has produced some of the world’s top super models like Gisele Bündchen and Alessandra Ambrosio. It turns out that German, Italian and Russian migrants settled in this area many years ago and their descendants have the features that the world finds attractive. Modelling scouts study books and websites to track which areas Europeans settled in. They then visit schools (which is kind of creepy) hunting for attractive teens and pre-teens (even creepier) for their modelling agencies.

I won’t spoil the rest of the story but the article and video can be found in the following link: Finding Supermodels in Rural Brazil – Video Library – The New York Times.

Times sure have changed

The guy in the picture is Chauncy Morlan, who once made a living as a side show fat man. People paid money to look at him, because he was considered to be unusually fat. Today you can walk into any fast food outlets and see people far more fatter than him. How times have changed.

Food Inc. Everyone should see this!

Food Inc. is one of those documentaries that can change the world. It asks the questions, you’re too afraid to ask, when it comes to food and while we can’t watch it on PBS here in Australia it is available on youtube and I’ve put the 9 parts that make up the movie below.
Food Inc. Shows us why it is cheaper to by a fully cooked hamburger than a head of broccoli. – in other words, ‘Why is junk food cheaper than healthy food?’. Everyone is focussed on the HOW when it comes to mass producing our food but no-one is asking WHY? And you’re going to see that ‘because it’s cheaper’ is not a great answer.

Your going to see how your food is controlled by a tiny handful of companies that have taken the farming out of farm and the implications from this are pretty serious.

In short, grab a coffee – the full show is below although split into parts:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4: – told you it was rivetting stuff didn’t I?

Part 5:

Part 6:

Part 7:

Part 8: I can’t embed part 8 so you have to watch it at youtube – I’ll pop it up in a new window for you.

Part 9:

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and I also hope the links still work and PBS haven’t taken them down.

How to make a $3,000 kitchen knife

Fascinating video of Master Bladesmith, Bob Kramer, revealing the techniques and time it takes to make high-end Damascus steel chef’s knives.

How an engineer loses weight

We’re constantly bombarded with ads offering the latest scientific way to lose weight – usually when you add the word ’science’ in your claim then you know there’s going to be money involved. Wired.com has a fantastic article on how to lose weight mathematically . . .

Want to drop 10 pounds in two months? All you have to do is the math, says Autodesk founder and Hacker’s Diet author John Walker. Here’s the skinny:

1. Multiply the pounds you want to lose by the number of calories in a pound of fat: 10 x 3,500 = 35,000.
2. Divide the total by the days you’ll diet: 35,000 ÷ 60 = 583.
3. Calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate 100 calories per ten pounds of body weight
4. Calculate your calories expenditure from exercize
5. Then use the formula (BMR+Exercise)-diet=total allowed calories

Or stated more simply: if you can eliminate 100 calories per day, that can add up to about 11 pounds a year, says Dr. Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating. 100 calories – that’s less than the calories in a can of Coke! Substitute one glass of water for one can of soda a day, and you’re well on your way to permanent weight loss.

Obviously exercise can help but eating less also makes sense. And how do you know if you’re over-eating?

One night, eat only half the amount of food on your plate. Wait 30 minutes, assess your feelings of satiation, and then wait 90. If you’re still not hungry, you’ve probably been overeating. Most people grossly overestimate the amount of food they need to feel full, says Dr. David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating

You can read more of this article at wired.com

What if scientists could sing?

What you’re about to see is amazingly poetic and beautiful – thanks to the wonders of Autotune (the technology that most popstars use to shift their voice when they sing out of key) you’re about to see boring physics lectures turned into something amazingly poetic.

John Boswell of Symphony of Science made this song featuring Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye.

Popstars should be banned from using autotune leaving autotune to the people who really do have something to say:

What if the earth had rings like Saturn

I know you’re thinking the same thing too – what would it look like from earth if we had Saturn-style rings? Well your curiosity has been answered with this cool video:

Don’t you just love the interweb? So many people with way too much talent and way too much time on their hands. Oh yes, make sure you hit the FULL SCREEN button and watch this thing in full screen glory.

Personally, I’m all for space junk – we should be shooting all our trash into a ring like orbit in space around the earth and then our great great great grand kids would have these amazing rings to marvel at and they would thank the wasteful ways of the past.

Sonic Pistol Shrimp

I’m still not sure I believe this, but it comes from the BBC so I guess it must be true. This species of shrimp has a unique way of catching its prey – it stuns them with a massive sound wave. I’m not even going to try to explain, see for yourself:

I wonder what they taste like?

Scales Vs Other measuring tools

Having just finished our latest cookbook I was struck by the words of wisdom from Gizmodo arguing that we should be using scales for ALL our measurements in our recipes. The argument goes something like this:

Recipes work better when you weigh ingredients. A cup of flour can weigh between 4 and 6 ounces. That means if you’ve got a bread or cake recipe that calls for 4 cups of flour, you might measure out 16 ounces or 24 ounces—a 50% difference in the main ingredient! . . . Measuring is easier and cleaner and results in fewer dirty measuring cups when you use a scale. You can measure everything right into your mixing bowl.

Makes sense to me – you can read more here:

The Kitchen Scale, Unsung Hero of Great Cooking – Kitchen scales – Gizmodo.

Honey bird talks to humans

Amazing video about the relationship honey birds have with african tribesmen that has evolved over thousands of years. The wild honey birds lead the hunters to wild bees’ nests so the hunters can get the honey – in return the hunters leave some of the honey out to reward the birds. Fascinating!