Tag Archive for: Water

Mysterious Fruits of Water: Yumberry

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Installment #3! The world’s most esoteric fruits are helping marketers de-commoditize bottled water with mysterious, value-added flavorings.

Here’s Vital Lifestyle Water, a product that jacks up your IQ and memory with a gentle hint of Yumberry! Yumberry is one of the up-and-comers of the “Superfruits.” “Superfruit” is a term coined by marketers (naturally!) that refers to high-antioxident, nutritionally-rich fruits that have an appealing taste.

Yumberry is actually commercial slang for the fruit of Myrica rubra, also called yangmei, yamamono and various types of bayberry and wax myrtle. It is native to eastern Asia, mainly China, where it has been grown for at least 2000 years. There are more than 100 varieties of yumberry including white, pink, red, and purple. (Usually the purple variety is considered the yummiest!)

And, modern-day marketers are pretty late to the party when extolling Yumberry’s health benefits. From www.yumberryjuice.com,

Adapting Yangmei to medication was firstly seen in Shi Liao Ben Cao, a herbal medicine book written by Meng Xian in Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 AD). According to the Compendium of Materia Medica, a herbal pharmacological masterpiece written by Li Shi Zhen, the greatest herbal pharmacologist in 16th century, Yangmei is able to “eliminate sputum, stop vomiting, helpful to digestion and alcoholic drinking, quench thirst, conciliate the five internal organs, cleanse stomach and intestines, remove the muddleheaded, and be efficacious to cure diarrhea”.

Like Yoga, But On a Floating Stick

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Looking for something unique and entertaining for today’s holiday family fun-day? We’re not convinced that this will be the newest hot trend in water sports, but it does look like fun. Gather up the kids, grab some fat bamboo poles and head out to the lake.

 From Chinatoday, some photos of odd-sports enthusiasts performing “bamboo balance.”

For those who like the concept but seek more competitive thrills, how about “Bamboo Boat Racing, ” which involves racing a “boat” that’s a single cane of bamboo with a thin bamboo oar.

Via Ananova,

Villagers from Chishui, near Zuiyi city, came up with the idea, reports News Express. They make the boats out of locally grown bamboo and hold races on the Pinzhou River.

“Participants can sit or stand on the piece of bamboo, and with a thin bamboo oar, they race and compete at other tasks,” explained one villager.

I Hope They’ve Been Chlorinating

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It’s Memorial Day weekend! That means Americans are heading en masse to the pool. Hopefully, many of that masse will take this article from cnn.com to heart, and resist the temptation to keep the party rolling non-stop by peeing in the pool.

Although urine in the water probably will not cause swimmers to go to the emergency room, it causes “more of a respiratory, ocular irritation: the red puffy eyes or a cough, an itchy throat,” said Michele Hlavsa, an epidemiologist in the division of parasitic diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” A big health message is not to urinate or pee in the water.”

And it happens far more frequently than water-lovers would like to think. In a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted in April and May, 17 percent admitted relieving themselves in a swimming pool. Even the Olympics’ most decorated swimmer, Michael Phelps, confessed to urinating in the water to TV host Jimmy Kimmel in a 2008 interview.

And if that’s not enough to put a damper on this weekend’s pool party fun, the survey

found that 11 percent of the surveyed adults said they have swum with a runny nose, 7 percent with an exposed rash or cut and 1 percent when ill with diarrhea. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Suddenly, a 3.1% margin of error seems HUGE! But never mind, I’m being a party pooper, aren’t I? (pun score!) Dive in anyway, and here’s a soundtrack for some summer fun: “I Peed in the Pool,” a bad-taste parody of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” (You can buy the mp3 here if you’re so inspired!)

Lyrics include: I peed in the pool and I liked it, It saved me a trip to the toilet
I peed in the pool ‘stead of waiting, I hope they’ve been chlorinating

Only the Best Beverages for our Precious Poopsie!

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“Some people love it, some people hate it and think we’re mad but we just love our dogs,” Pets Palace spokeswoman Diane Costa said. “I don’t have children and my four dogs are like children to me so I don’t mind spending money on them.”

Yes, Dianne, we really do understand! But you should know that most of us would never buy our children water (or anything else I can think of) in a handmade, jewel-encrusted bottle!

Nevertheless, Australia’s Pets Palace now offers Bellaqua, a crystal-clear sparking natural mineral water just for pets.

Via news.com.au,

While are humans tightening belts during the credit crunch, it seems money is no object to certain favoured furry friends, The Daily Telegraph reports.

Sydney-based animal product company Pets Palace has launched a range of natural mineral water for dogs that’s more expensive that bottled water for humans.

And if you think crystal-jugged mineral water is where it ends at the Pet Palace, you’d be wrong.

Pets Palace sells, via the internet, dog joggers, lifejackets, pirate and skeleton costumes as well as sunglasses.

Ms Costa said she had spent more than $2000 on clothing for her dogs Lulu, Honey, Coco and Annie and would not think twice about food and water.

“Pets really are one of the family. We treat them and spoil them,” she said.

“It’s just as much fun to put a dog in a cute sweatshirt as it is a child so why not offer them a decent drink every now and then.

“As humans we drink bottled water and every now and then it feels good to give them bottle plus the bottles are cool.”

Bellaqua sells for $42.50 a box of four (that’s about $33 US).  For the less flashy pooches, there’s Pet Pop, available in colorful hues and flavors like Luscious Lulu, Lemon Lola, Betty Blu and Candy Pop, $22.95 for a box of four (US $17.50).

The Eafieft Ways to Raife Water

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Today we shew a glimpse into the brainstorms of 18th century water engineers as they struggle with the same-old age-old dilemma of raifing water, courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Gallery. This 1701 book is “A Work both Ufeful, Profitable and Delightful for all forts of People.” (Put aside any pressing work you really should do, and instead peruse all the new and rare inventions from this text; Neptune, horses and birds, yea!)

Solar Powered!

Plate IX. To raise a standing water, by means of the sun.

A fuftainable folution!

Plate V. To make a dyal with the course of a natural fountain, the which shall move very true, without being subjec to …

Made the chisel obsolete.

Plate XII. An engine of great service to bore elms or other trees to make pipes to conveigh water, and for other uses.

Note: We are opposed to solving problems by violence.

Plate XXVI. Force-pump, which is one of the best inventions. They can force the water with great violence to 50 or 60 feet…

Art to Go: Creative Toilets and Urinals

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From Now That’s Nifty, a blog that earns it’s name with their post of Unique and Strange Toilets and Urinals. Check out the post to see them all, but here are a few that will leverage robust, innovative solutions for “doing your business.”

Here, you can go with vertigo! The trompe l’oeil mural at this Japanese ski resort toilet leaves you on the edge of your seat!

There will always be a market for creations such as this lime-colored art loo. Because, recession or not, there will always be affluent people who simply MUST have something different. (This is not a pipe.)

If I owned this breathtaking object, just like guest towels and good china, I would forbid anyone but “company” from using it.

Here is a “mouth” urinal. Worth nothing: due to gender preferences, I assume, there are no coordinating “mouth” toilets.

h2o mp3: Moon River: Audrey Hepburn

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Moon River was composed by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini in 1961. It’s been recorded by hundreds of musicians, but this is the “original” performed in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Audrey Hepburn. Oddly, Hepburn’s version was not included in the original movie soundtrack. Only months after Hepburn’s death in 1993 was her version released on an album entitled Music from the Films of Audrey Hepburn.

In the movie, the song comes in a scene where writer Paul ‘Fred’ Varjak (George Peppard) has his typewriter-pecking interrupted by Holly Golightly (Hepburn) strumming her guitar and singing the tune on the fire escape outside their apartments.

Lyrics:
Moon River, wider than a mile,
I’m crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you’re going I’m going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There’s such a lot of world to see.
We’re after the same rainbow’s end–
waiting ’round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.

Play the track

[audio:http://thirstyinsuburbia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/audreyhepburn-musicfromthefilmsofaudreyhepburn-moonriver2.mp3]

Download Moon River: Audrey Hepburn
Low-fi mp3 file for sampling.
Like it? Support the people who make music. Buy this track at iTunes or amazon.com

Most Dangerous Species in the Mediterranean

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A public service campaign that will delight you into doing the right thing. From the website of Klas Ernflo (cool name!) it is a “Campaign for the Government of Catalunya to keep the Mediterranean sea clean.”

Look closer and read the text in this larger version.

(I saw this on Presurfer, who saw it on Dark Roasted Blend. Thanks for sharing!)

Aquamantra Gets Its Groove Back

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Remember Aquamantra, that deeply spiritual fluid that “resonates with the energy and frequency of your well-being?” That karma-in-a-bottle where “the quality of your thoughts determine the quality of your life and NOW your water?” From the company whose “purpose in creating this water is to Raise Consciousness in Humanity One Sip at a Time?”

I’m feeling better just writing that, but the negative energy emanating from that politically-incorrect plastic encasement is ruining the good vibe, so Aquamantra will be introducing their recyclable, biodegradable bottle this summer. It’s from “Phoenix, Arizona-based ENSO Bottles, LLC, which had developed a form of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) that appeared to be both recyclable and biodegradable within 1-5 years in microbial landfills, in either aerobic or anaerobic conditions.”

Ah, energy waves over me as a new mantra emerges, please repeat with me: I am profitable. I am profitable. I am profitable.

(For students of flackery: the glowing press release is here.)

California’s Big Squirt: Fertile Farmlands and Tourist Meccas!

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An out-of-the-box engineering idea from the October, 1951 issue of Modern Mechanix, via blog.modernmechanix.com,

CALIFORNIA’S BIG SQUIRT

THE parched deserts of Southern California need water to transform their barren soil into fertile farmlands and tourist Meccas such as those existing elsewhere in the state. So far the problem has remained unsolved. But Sidney Cornell, a Los Angeles construction engineer, thinks he has a solution. He wants to construct a series of geyser-like power plants one mile apart to shoot water from the mouth of one into the funnel of the next, as depicted here by MI artist Frank Tinsley. The water would arc over hilly sections, have a flat trajectory over plains. Its velocity would approach 400 mph. These stations— 400 in all—would cost about $300,000 each.

I can’t imagine what I can add to that, except to say that Sidney Cornell has certainly never used a garden hose in the wind!