Week of 2008-01-12 16:00 to 2008-01-19 15:59

Via Slashdot, here’s a NewScientist article on how “Corkscrew cups could keep space drinks flowing”.

Space tourists may one day drink coffee served in “cups” made from corkscrews of ribbon-like material that miraculously keep liquid suspended in their centre.

Holding liquids this way could solve the tricky problem of getting fluid out of an open container in microgravity, researchers say. They add that the same approach may also prove useful to nanotechnologists working with tiny samples of liquid.

Not to mention space tourists trying to drink their space beer. Which makes me wonder if anybody has done any brewing or distilling in orbit.

The article continues,

On Earth we rely on gravity to get liquids to pour from an open container. But getting liquid out of a container in microgravity requires pumping it out, for example sucking it through a straw.

Often, this is a frustrating process, as the fluid breaks up into globules because of the way pressure inside the liquid interacts with the shape of most containers.

Today is the birthday of A.A. Milne, creator of the much-beloved Winnie-the-Pooh.

Reading up on Pooh at Wikipedia, I came across this wonderful note.

The origin of the “Poohsticks” game is at the footbridge across a tributary of the River Medway near Upper Hartfield, close to the Milne’s home at Posingford Farm. It is traditional to play the game there using sticks gathered in nearby woodland. When the footbridge required replacement in recent times the engineer designed a new structure based closely on the drawings (by E H Shepherd) of the bridge in the original books, as the bridge did not originally appear as the artist drew it. There is an information board at the bridge which describes aspects of how to play the game there. Periodically the water authority has to come with an excavator and remove the large mass of stalled Poohsticks which can build up in the river bed downstream of the bridge over time, to the extent of causing some localised flooding.

Did you know there’s a World Pooh Sticks Championship?

[They] take place annually at Day’s Lock on the River Thames near Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England. The event was started in 1983 as a fund-raising event for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The lockkeeper put out a box of sticks and a collection box and it soon became an annual event. It originally took place in January but in the icy weather of 1997 it was moved to March. It is now organized by the Rotary Club of Sinodun, based in nearby Wallingford. The championships feature individual and team events. A member of the team from the Czech Republic which won the team event in 2004 explained the winning technique to Jonathan Hancock in an interview on BBC Radio Oxford: he looked to see which part of the river was fastest, and threw the stick in there.

Bobby Fischer, dead at 64.

He is a tragic figure, no doubt, an astounding genius on the chessboard and symbol of American defiance in the face of Russian domination of the game. He contributed immensely to chess theory. He even inspired a 1993 movie that I saw several times and enjoyed very much. Fischer was enigmatic, secluded, and mysterious for years.

Not to speak ill of the dead, but one wishes he had stayed missing.

Via Serious Eats’ Required Eating comes a NY Times story on a London fish and chips shop that is trying to go fully sustainable. It’s a thoroughly difficult process.

Part of [Tom Aikens’] mission is “to broaden fish tastes outside of cod.” His fish and chips will be made from cod imported from countries where it is not overfished as well as from sustainable species like pollack, gunard, rays and sole. He said he hoped to “raise awareness” among the top chefs in London to help bring about self-imposed moratoriums on severely depleted stocks like North Sea cod or Mediterranean bluefin tuna. A portion of the cheapest fish and chips at Tom’s Place, ray for takeaway, will run about £10, or $20.

“A Favorite Meal, Now Offering a Side Order of Environmental Awareness”