expensive cities

in the news yesterday was a report done by mercer human resource consulting – based on things like cost of housing, transport & food.

the age reported a summary. below are some interesting ones.

1. Moscow
3. Tokyo
5. London
10. NYC
19. Sydney
74. Melbourne

interesting painting method

there’s a guy in queensland who paints with his penis. i’ve witnessed this in person but couldn’t find any pix until now. here’s pix of him & 2 paintings he did (i’ve also seen both of the pix in person & they’re pretty decent). the folks in the paintings are au political dudes. the balding white haired guy with the blue background is the prime minister.

btw, queensland is considered the florida of australia.

keep warm & protect ur privacy

check out the 2nd pix on this posting. it’s a scarf and head gear that keeps u warm AND protects your text message from prying eyes. although i’d like to know if there’s a light in there or what happens if u don’t stretch the length of the scarf so u have a clear view. maybe they can add a battery charger. lovely…

where the tax dollars go …

last week the aussie gov’t announced they will be spending $116.6 million to protect innocent australian families from the dangers of net porn. it seems it will consist of an ad campaign (the govt here LOVES ad compaigns!!!) and there will be free filtering software available!!! wooo hoooo! thank goodness the gov’t is picking up the tab for filtering software.

now if we can only get them to take on spam.

sperm can smell – and they’re not very picky

great fodder for jokes about boys… from seed magazine’s i can’t believe it’s science

Scent of a Woman
A new study published in the journal Analytical Chemistry shows that sperm have a sense of smell. Further, it’s so sophisticate that even an ovarian scent that’s diluted 100,000 times will cause the little gametes to turn tail and swim in its direction. The study’s authors note that sperm have olfactory receptor proteins—much like those in our noses—which reside over their outer membranes. The researchers used mouse sperm for their study, but they are confident their results apply to man-sperm as well. Apparently, sperm does not hold much of a species bias, as sperm from one mammal will respond to ovarian chemicals from another.
(source: Discovery News)

cold. v freaking cold

i’ve been telling everyone how winter in melbourne isn’t bad. and up until this year it hasn’t been. normally in the 50s with the occasional drop to low 40s and maybe a nite or 2 in the 30s. but this year has been insane. we had no autumn/fall and right into winter. it’s been a pretty consistent 40s for weeks now. this is what weather.com just said about ‘right now’ in melbourne:

more interesting yarn work

i also stumbled upon felieke van der leest’s website tonite. the link goes to the objects page and make sure you roll your mouse over the thumbnails.

i ADORE the glove of flowers (i might have to try to make something like that – see pix below) and the pippi longstocking balaclava cracks me up (being orange, of course i’d wear it). the party tree hat might be an inspiration for melbourne cup this year!

crochet, math & the great barrier reef

a cornell mathematician has figured out how to ‘make physical models of this aberrant geometry with the feminine art of crochet’ (see links here and here). there is a project to crochet the great barrier reef…

Sea slugs, nudibranches, kelps and corals often embody hyperbolic geometry in the frills and frothings of their crenellated forms, yet with global warming and pollution of our marine environment, coral reefs the world over are dying out – some scientists predict that in 20 years Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the largest collection of coral anywhere, will have disappeared.

how very cool! such interesting shapes to integrate into a scarf or hat or something. so far i haven’t seen any patterns though. the closest i’ve found are some pix on machine project which give some hints. even the idea of having your very own great barrier reef decorating a window sill would rock.

there’s an NPR article on it too which explains it so we non-math geeks can understand and one in the ny times

and while we’re on the subject of cool arty stuff, check out this tat! amazing detail.

functional beer

from seed magazine:

Stouts for Broads
Scientists at the Czech Republic’s Research Institute for Brewing and Malting have created a non-alcoholic beer with 10 times the normal amount of the hormone phytoestrogen that they hope will help menopausal women keep their hormone levels up, thus easing the transition into post-reproductive life. The new drink is considered a breakthrough in the thriving field of “functional beer,” a research area that ought to be especially near-and-dear to Czechs, whose national per capita beer consumption is the world’s largest. (source: Cee-FoodIndustry.com)

ok, a great idea to medicate via beer but WHY would u make it non-alcoholic??????? i also heard something on the news recently about a ‘functional beer’ (aren’t they all functional if your intent is to get drunk?) that was for guys but i forget what the medical side of it was.

crocs

there’s an article about crocs in fast company.

i adore the shoes. it’s really the only thing i wear (unless i’m going to an interview). they’re comfy, you can get colours to match everything, easy to keep clean & they never smell. the only compliants i have are they wear down faster than i’d like. the bottoms of the shoes have nice tred bits which don’t let you slide when walking on wet sidewalks. but it wears down fairly quickly (of course i do wear them constantly so…). also, the little nubs on the inside wear down too. but even the ones that i’ve worn daily for like 4 months are fine except for these 2 things.

a friend told me a couple weeks ago that a whole croc store had opened here & the other nite i saw it. very exciting!!!