Tongue Tied

 Even though tongue prints are proving to be a safer biometric authentication than fingerprints or eye scans it will still be awhile before you'll be using lick to open technology. Fingerprints can be altered, smeared and other wise ruined for identification purposes, same deal with eyes, they can change with age or eye disease and both fingerprints and eye scan can be obtained fairly easily for nefarious purposes. Enter the tongue print...since the tongue lives in your mouth it would be harder to make someone use their tongue for ID purposes short of cutting it off. The problem is there is no data base at this time that catalogues tongue prints but don't be surprised when tongue prints become the next security authentication.  

Scrap Art

 It may not be the best way to recycle but an Oregon artist uses springs, nuts and bolts, silverware and various used items from auto shops to sculpt these incredible animals. He works on commission and is branching out with his sculptures into other areas like a cowboy boot and a human face. 

Mad Honey

 What happens when bees feed exclusively on rhododendrons? The honey takes on a reddish hue, is slightly bitter and it causes hallucinations. The toxins in the bushes are to protect them from the herbivores who would otherwise dine on the rhododendrons. The mad honey isn't much of a problem unless you happen to be in Turkey or Nepal but even then the hives are built on cliffs and are hard to harvest though that didn't stop army commanders in ancient times from leaving honeytraps for the opposition leaving them sick and disoriented for days and death wasn't out of the equation if too much mad honey was consumed. 

You Say It's Your Birthday

 Celebrating a birthday varies from country to country, in Jamaica the celebrant gets doused with flour and sometimes eggs, at a first birthday in Japan the child is expected to predict their future by choosing from a selection of items or sometimes cards representing items to indicate what their occupation will be. The Dutch people have what they call circle parties where everyone sits in a circle and congratulates the other people on knowing the person having the birthday and no you can't just say congratulations everyone as it would be thought rude. I'm hoping at some point all these other customs are followed by cake otherwise having birthdays would be even less fun. 

Space Fashion

 Remember how the space program was exposed for gross overspending? then not long after that things went quiet and no more missions were planned. Now we are back in the space business but this time instead of million dollar pens (which NASA didn't actually pay to develop) we are partnering with Prada to make the space suits for the 2025 trip to the moon. The explanation for the partnership is that Prada has the technical expertise of the raw materials and how to engineer the design to make the suits more comfortable. Now it's beginning to make sense why fashion shows have been churning out designs that look like astronaut garb for many years! 

Croctober

 Who knew that Crocs took over the month of October in 2017 on what was once National Crocodile Day or October 23rd? and if you don't find that disturbing then how about Crocs Cowboy Boots? Wasn't the whole idea behind Crocs to be able to slip them on? never mind that they have meetings on the ideas Crocs fans send in then make the shoes from those ideas. One can only hope no one sends in an idea to strap nuclear missiles to a pair of Crocs. Last month it was a mostly harmless Shrek Croc which might be a fun thing for kids to wear or maybe to kick around the house in but would anyone be comfortable getting caught at the grocery store in a pair of Shrek Crocs? Sorry about two days of shoes as the subject matter but it could always be worse. 

If the Shoe Fits

 It's hard to believe that we haven't learned our lesson yet about the consequences of our actions after polluting our own planet but NO! we now go into space to spread debris. When Armstrong and Aldrin made history walking on the moon they left behind their overshoes and portable life support systems, of course the reason was to offset the weight of the moon rocks they were bringing back but it still doesn't make it right. Okay, back to other shoe history...the shoes known today as Romeos were originally designed for Queen Victoria in 1837 because she enjoyed walking outdoors but didn't enjoy all the lacing and buttoning that was required to wear boots at that time so she was "pleased" to receive the boots that were easy to put on and wore like slippers and the rest as they say is history.