Archive for August, 2013

A new biological theory: the Aerial Cat!

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on August 16, 2013
in Odds and Ends
. 4 Comments

You may have heard of the Aquatic Ape theory, which deduces from our hairless skin that our ancestors had gone through an ocean-dwelling phase. Well — here is my new theory: that the common cat, Felis catus, evolved from a flying creature!

Consider the cat’s ear. Whenever I scratch a cat behind the ears I can’t help but notice the way the external ear is split near its base, forming a narrow hollow. This seemingly useless feature always reminds me of the wing root air intake seen on some jet fighters, like the Hawker Hunter seen in the photo.

Aerial-Cat.jpg

So why would the cat have this vestigial structure? Obviously, because in some earlier part of its evolution it was a flying creature, using flight to catch small birds in midair, which remain a favorite source of food with modern cats as well. Then some proto-cat discovered that it’s far easier to charm the evolving human race into feeding it, and the wings were lost over the generations, becoming the ears we see today.

Oh well, not really…

[Photo credits: Hawker hunter by Arnauld Gaillard. Cat by Michael Seljos].

An amazingly ingenious retro kitchen item

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on August 3, 2013
in Good design
. 1 Comment

Here is an item I saw on the wonderful Nostalgia Online site. They have a large collection of vintage kitchen utensils, most of which I do recall from my childhood, and many of which I run into as I rummage in flea markets in search of computing history items. However, this one I’ve never seen before, and the ingenious way it solves a real problem simply blew my mind.

Milk heaterThis, folks, is a milk heater. The problem it solves is that whereas a watched pot doesn’t boil, the moment you turn your back on it it’s liable to boil over, which in the case of milk makes a real mess.

The solution is this: you put the milk in the outer pan, and a little water in the central cylinder. Since the water will boil a little before the milk (remember your chemistry!), it will activate the steam whistle at the top and alert you that the milk will boil in a moment.

I remember when raising a baby I also wanted to solve the boiling problem for baby formula, but as an electro-optics student my thoughts were along lines of detecting the steam above the liquid by its optical absorption (I never realized that over-complicated scheme). But the whistling pot seen here is way better, I think – and it did get used, evidently!

You can see this, and lots more retro items, here. If you can read Hebrew you can even read all about them! 🙂