Raymond Burr – Rear Window (1954) — via arcaneimages
Sneaky Bed Dog originally uploaded by Red Wolf
Kay Bojesen is known for his wooden toys, especially his monkey. In the 1950s he also created these alphabet blocks for Danish schools, which have recently been reissued.
Made from beech, they are a variety of curved and straight block shapes from which children can build letters or spell out words and messages. The blocks come in their own wooden carry case so they’re also easily packed away.
The set is priced at £79 — via Retro To Go
It is not a great idea to carry a plank of wood down a busy sidewalk. Nor should you ride a horse while drunk, or handle a salmon under suspicious circumstances.
But should such antics be illegal? Still?
Thanks to centuries of legislating by Parliament, which bans the wearing of suits of armor in its chambers, Britain has accumulated many laws that nowadays seem irrelevant, and often absurd.
So voluminous and eccentric is Britain’s collective body of 44,000 pieces of primary legislation that it has a small team of officials whose sole task is to prune it.
Their work is not just a constitutional curiosity, but a bulwark against hundreds of years of lawmaking running out of control.
Over the centuries, rules have piled up to penalize those who fire a cannon within 300 yards of a dwelling and those who beat a carpet in the street — unless the item can be classified as a doormat and it is beaten before 8.00am.
To have a legal situation where there is so much information that you cannot sit down and comprehend it, does seem to me a serious problem,
said Andrew Lewis, professor emeritus of comparative legal history at University College London. I think it matters dreadfully that no one can get a handle on the whole of it.
Yet, as Professor Lewis also noted, many old laws have survived because crime and bad behaviour have, too.
One reason is that human nature doesn’t change much,
Professor Lewis said, though of course the institutions which we develop to protect, organize, and govern ourselves do change, and then it becomes necessary to adjust the existing law to practice
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Lovers of pets and the planet, San Francisco-based PLAY offers an Under the Sea collection with a clam, turtle, starfish, crab and a giant squid to make your beloved dog go crazy. Inside each plush toy is a squeaker but also eco-friendly, certified-safe filler made from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic bottles; it’s built to last for hours and hours of entertainment — via Cool Hunting
Denver Zoo’s two, two-month-old lion cubs made their public debut this morning in the maternity yard of Benson Predator Ridge. Visitors may now see male Kalu (pronounced Kuh-LOO) and female Kamara (pronounced Ka-MAR-uh), along with the rest of the Zoo’s lion pride, as they explore their new habitat– via Youtube
— via Youtube
Edible Geography readers have perhaps heard of pollinator pathways
, an initiative to thread together isolated pockets of green space into nectar-filled corridors, in order to give butterflies and bees easier passage across otherwise unfriendly urban expanses of concrete and asphalt. A recent article in British Airways’ High Life magazine about efforts to save Kenya’s last remaining elephants introduced me to an interesting twist on the concept of bee-based landscape design: honey fences
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Although the main threat to the elephants’ survival is ivory-market driven poaching, a significant number are also killed each year following altercations with local villagers. As Angela Carr-Hartley, director of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, politely put it, These communities have mixed feelings about an elephant coming into their smallholdings overnight, as they can wreak havoc eating the crops.
Zoologist Lucy King came up with the honey fence solution, which takes advantage of the fact that elephants are terrified by the sound of bees. (The delicate skin inside their trunks is apparently particularly vulnerable to being stung.) King had read that elephants tend to avoid acacia trees, usually a favourite food, if bees have built a hive in the branches. Based on that initial insight, and after several years of behavioral experiments, including playing elephants the sound of disturbed bees from a hidden loudspeaker and filming their reaction, King developed the honey fence system: a series of hives, suspended at ten-metre intervals from a single wire threaded around wooden fence posts. If an elephant touches either a hive or the wire, all the bees along the fence line feel the disturbance and swarm out of their hives in an angry, buzzing cloud — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Lamborghini Miura from the opening of The Italian Job is alive and well.If you have the money, it could be in your garage too.
The car is a 1968 Miura P400, one of two used in the opening scenes of the classic Michael Caine film — via Retro To Go
They don’t come cheap, but these Rocket salt and pepper grinders by Suck UK look amazing.
Based on a classic retro rocket, there are two versions available in a choice of a light or dark hardwood, each one standing at a considerable 36.5cm high.
They look good and when your guests want some seasoning, they are guaranteed to make an impact at the table too. As we said they don’t come cheap, with each one selling for £60 — via Retro To Go
The US Food and Drug Administration has cleared the use of the XSTAT 30 — an innovative sponge-filled gunshot wound dressing device — for use in the general population. Approved last year for battlefield use, the device can plug a gunshot wound in just 15 seconds.
The XSTAT Rapid Hemostasis System is an expandable, multi-sponge dressing that’s used to control severe, life-threatening bleeding from wounds in bodily areas where a traditional tourniquet is of no use, such as the groin or armpit. It works by pumping expandable, tablet-sized sponges into the wound, staunching bleeding while a patient is rushed to hospital.
The tablets are standard medical sponges that expand on contact with blood, and the dressing lasts for about four hours. Each applicator absorbs about a pint of blood, and up to three applicators can be used on a patient. To assist with extraction, each tablet contains a radioplaque marker that can be spotted under an X-ray — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Prospect Park Zoo‘s red panda cub duo is super active exploring their exhibit — via Youtube
This image is part of an ad campaign for the Cité de l’Architecture in Paris — via BLDGBLOG
This cam-gear mechanism is an essential part of Chicken Point Cabin house by Olson Kundig Architects. Thanks to it the huge window-wall with size 9 x 6m can be easily opened even by a child — via Youtube
— via Youtube
— via Youtube
— via rubyetc
Malcolm Turnbull has dialled down the terror-scare rhetoric since taking the reins from Tony Abbott — and some in his party are not liking it one bit.
A number of MPs have been speaking out with cabinet member Josh Frydenberg and the member for Canning Andrew Hastie leading the charge this weekend, doing their bit for social cohesion by arguing there is an intrinsic link between terror and Islam.
In an interview with Murdoch tabloid the Herald Sun Hastie said modern Islam needs to cohere with the Australian way of life, our values and institutions. In so far as it doesn’t, it needs reform
, in an article title ‘Islam must change: War hero MP Andrew Hastie leads radical push’.
Frydenberg reiterated criticisms Australia’s Grand Mufti, while MP Michael Sukkar said Islam had not reformed as Christianity had.
George Christensen, the Nationals MP who appeared at a Reclaim Australia rally earlier this year, moved a motion in Parliament today which, among other things, calls for continued action in countering violent extremism and in particular, radical Islam within Australia in order to prevent further acts of terrorism within our borders
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Somewhere along the way Labor MP Tim Watts — who has previously taken aim at the Reclaim Australia movement — decided enough was enough.
In four minutes and 58 seconds flat the Member for Gellibrand shredded the dissenting Coalition MPs in Parliament — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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