Beanolini

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• Commented on HOWTO make mushroom shelves
  #3, Marcel: In England they are known as Tinder. Sort of- one bracket fungus is sometimes called the tinder fungus, but this refers to its use for tinder rather than for a tinder box. Various bracket fungi have been used...
• Commented on Storm-sewer dwellers of Las Vegas
  This subject was also featured on BBC Radio 4's 'Americana' programme a couple of weeks ago, including an interview with a tunnel dweller. It's still available to listen here. (I think BBC radio is available worldwide on the 'iplayer', unlike...
• Commented on Fresh Greens: Tandem Bike-Pedaling Robot, Crazy Building Grown from Trees, Peeing on Tomatoes and More!
  #5, danlalan: Animal waste and urea make good fertilizer! Will the discoveries never end? But it's not as good as you might think. Large amounts of the nitrogen in urine can be lost to the air as ammonia. There's been...
• Commented on We don't pay for "content," we pay for "form"
  a good hardcover costs the same as a bad one I beg to differ....
• Commented on Beatles remasters: the Metzger review
  I don’t understand how people can be satisfied with crappy sounding MP3s that have one tenth of the digital information that a CD or lossless format has. ...and I don't understand how people can be satisfied with a CD that...
• Commented on LIFE photo gallery of old cars
  #10, muteboy: I often fantasise about getting a Citroën DS20, putting a modern engine in it, and modern electronics, and making it efficient and safe etc etc. Me too, but with a Tatra T87. It seems that Tatra themselves may...
• Commented on Google goes Fortean, part 2
  #2, Sam: Searching for kettlewell hill connected with aliens/paranormal activity/etc. yields nothing interesting. Aliens landed there in the 1890s. I'm not sure 'Fortean' is at all the same as 'paranormal'....
• Commented on Cold-brew coffee maker
  So, I don't know about that two week business. All those aromatics are, by definition, volatile. Calling food chemists -- that can't be right, can it? Well, as you're asking for chemical pedantry; no, aromatic compounds are not necessarily...
• Commented on Sysadmin of the Year 2009 -- nominations open
  a thoughtful, detailed description of why your sysadmin rock star deserves global acclaim. Because I never see him, and everything works all the time. I'm not sure I could even prove he exists....
• Commented on Vegemite's stupid and clueless linking policy
  #4, vian: it puts a rose in every cheek. ...and it makes your urine smell of bacon. I have to confess to being a faithless marmite/vegemite dilettante- I keep both in my kitchen, and switch between one and the other...
• Commented on Ouija boards and dial plates
  S-T-E-V-E-N P-U-S-H O-F-F...
• Commented on Arcade in Congo
  #28, Elvis Pelt: What about when the English refer to themselves as being from England? You miss the point. It's the people who live in Scotland, Wales, Ulster etc who particularly object to the whole of the UK being referred...
• Commented on The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics
  mathematical principal Christian principles One of these is wrong. I look forward to seeing this book. Pickover's Reality Carnival blog is a great read too- simultaneously scientifically literate and completely deranged....
• Commented on Neil Gaiman's library
  #15, gths: Next, I'd like to see Peter Buck or Afrika Bambaataa's record collection! Or John Peel's- reputedly containing about 100,000 recordings....
• Commented on Neil Gaiman's library
  The true sign of the book addict is apparent on the first photo- two-deep rows of books. I have to confess this has happened to me too....
• Commented on We're all mutants!
  #2, Antinous: I used to feel special because I have five nipples and can put my thumb on the back of my hand. Now everybody's in on it. You're only special if you've got a Beighton score of 4 or...
• Commented on Cocaine dealers hurt by recession
  #8, Anonymous: This makes me think we need a website devoted to reporting spot prices for various legal & illegal drugs. eg - NO2, Glastonbury, 27-6-09, £1-£2 per balloon About 10 years ago, there was a UK based website that...
• Commented on The Invisible Kingdom, a book about microbes
  you've got between two to four pounds of microbes hitching a ride with you I'm surprised it's that low, especially when one considers that human faeces is about 40% bacteria by mass. One of my favourite microbial facts is that...
• Commented on Prank: humans "on display" at zoo
  Maybe this will go some way to help the deluded confront the reality of their chimpunity....
• Commented on Piranha in Indiana
  #18, Keith: Reminds me of the story a few months back about Boa constrictors. A few escaped from a pet store in Florida during hurricane Katrina. Now, their descendants are spread across Florida, Alabama and into southern Georgia Are you...
• Commented on How many minutes do people in your city have to work to buy a Big Mac?
  The more important question is how long you have to work to eat something less gross than a Big Mac, of course. The UBS study that this is based on also tracked how many minutes people would have to work...
• Commented on Report: Mercury found in every single fish tested in study of US rivers, streams
  #28, Antinous: It's a blog post. It links to an AP article. if you come to BB looking for research papers, you're hopelessly lost. The research paper is here (just a couple of clicks from the AP article). It's important...
• Commented on Everything you need to know about dubstep
  #24, nutbastard: 97% of all music of every genre is complete shit. "Sturgeon's Law". Dubstep is over- I know this because I heard a 60-year-old suburban vicar asking a young parishioner if he'd been 'rinsing the dubstep'....
• Commented on Mark Dery: Post Mortem
  "botched taxidermy." Has Crappy Taxidermy been mentioned here? It's great (though some of it is far from crappy)....
• Commented on Fresh Greens: Bull Semen Hair Conditioner
  A poisonous cloud of endosulfan blew through the Sierra Mountains and into crucial frog habitats. What happened next? What you see in the picture is not what happened next- that's a Leopard frog, not one of the two species mentioned...
• Commented on When is it OK to eat moldy food?
  #53, Teresa Nielsen Hayden: Beanolini @42, you're thinking of the wrong microorganisms. The osmosis produced by the high sugar content of jams and jellies inhibits the growth of bacteria. Mold belongs in the fungi (different kingdom, different domain). It inarguably...
• Commented on When is it OK to eat moldy food?
  #6, lumpi: What we see on top is only the tip of the ice berg. Not necessarily. If you examine bread mould (Rhizopus) under a microscope, you'll see that the parts that penetrate into the bread (the rhizoid hyphae) are...
• Commented on Stephenson's Orth-speak Hugo acceptance speech
  #7, Dave Faris: Oh, I don't know. I thought Diamond Age was one of his better ones. I'd go as far as saying that I enjoyed Diamond Age rather more than Snowcrash (though I suspect that I'm in the minority...
• Commented on Bruce Sterling's story on the merger of blogging and scientific discovery
  a turd-transplant aka faecal bacteriotherapy....
• Commented on Terry Pratchett on the right to die
  (Note: it takes something damned important to get me to link to the vile Daily Mail. This qualifies.) And for those wondering about Mr Doctorow's precise importance threshold, here is a selection of his other posts linking to the Daily...