bookofjoe

Blast from the past: Tricycle Exhaust System is 50 years old

Yesterday's Turbospoke Bicycle Exhaust System post elicited this link from reader jim who added, "What's old is new again."

Cord Lamp Mini

Its big brother (appearing here last September) measures 51 inches tall

while this one is 20 inches high (including bulb) with an 8-inch diameter base.

"The cord of this Mini Cord Lamp goes from supple textile to stable steel,

holding an oversized 60-watt globe bulb aloft."

$134.

World's oldest mattresses discovered — in South Africa

No, not in your attic/basement/bedroom, contrary to what you thought.

Excerpts from a December 10, 2011 article in The Economist follow.

Setting up home in the modern world means acquiring some furniture — particularly a bed. And things were not so different 77,000 years ago, according to the latest research on the behaviour of early man in South Africa. Caves in that country have yielded a lot of discoveries about how Homo sapiens made the transition to modernity. That he liked to sleep on a comfortable mattress is the latest.

That, at least, is the conclusion of a study just published in Science by Lyn Wadley of the University of Witwatersrand and her colleagues. The bedroom in question is in a natural rock shelter called Sibudu, 40km (25 miles) north of Durban.

The most interesting layer is the oldest. It is this stratum that dates from 77,000 years ago. Among the things Dr Wadley's team found in it were sheets of plant matter several square metres in area, themselves divided into layers. The lower part of these layers, compressed to a thickness of about a centimetre, consists of sedges, rushes and grasses. The upper part, just under a millimetre thick, is made of leaves from Cryptocarya woodii, a tree whose foliage contains chemicals that kill insects.

These insecticidal leaves would have discouraged fleas and other biting arthropods — and possibly mosquitoes, too. Dr Wadley thus thinks that what she has found are mattresses on which the inhabitants of Sibudu slept.

The upshot is another piece of evidence of how, around this period, humans were creating a range of hitherto unknown artefacts. Adhesives, arrows, sewing needles, ochre-decorated pictograms and jewellery made from shells are all contemporary with Dr Wadley's finds. And stone tools became more delicate and sophisticated during this period. It was also a time when humanity went through several drastic shrinkages of population, which probably applied selective pressures that forced the pace of evolution. The origins of modern, consumer-good-loving humanity might thus be illuminated by this scene of ancient domestic bliss.

ScienceNOW offered a more in-depth piece on the early mattresses.

The abstract of the Science paper follows.

 The Middle Stone Age (MSA) is associated with early behavioral innovations, expansions of modern humans within and out of Africa, and occasional population bottlenecks. Several innovations in the MSA are seen in an archaeological sequence in the rock shelter Sibudu (South Africa). At ~77,000 years ago, people constructed plant bedding from sedges and other monocotyledons topped with aromatic leaves containing insecticidal and larvicidal chemicals. Beginning at ~73,000 years ago, bedding was burned, presumably for site maintenance. By ~58,000 years ago, bedding construction, burning, and other forms of site use and maintenance intensified, suggesting that settlement strategies changed. Behavioral differences between ~77,000 and 58,000 years ago may coincide with population fluctuations in Africa.

[Illustration (also from The Economist) up top by Claudio Muñoz]

Poem Cup & Saucer

I love this.

Green stoneware, designed by Katarina Häll.

Notebook and pen included.

$30.

Josef Albers' poster for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich

Albers designed it in 1970 when he was 82 years old.

He died in 1976.

[via Leanne Shapton]

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N.B. The show "Joseph Albers in America: Painting on Paper" will be up through October 14 at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. Holland Cotter's rave review appeared in Friday's New York Times Arts section.

Lacy Bike Basket

Designed by Marie-Louise Gustafsson.

Polypropylene (plastic) basket with metal frame and polyester strap; metal holder included.

17.75" x 11.75" x 9".

$79.

Helpful Hints from joeeze: How to open a knotted plastic bag

[via BuzzFeed, i.imgur.com, and Kay (Leah)]

Balloon Bookend

Jeff Koons, call your office: they're ripping you off [see comment on this post].

From websites:

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Real balloon animals are lightweight — and eventually deflate!

This contemporary canine provides all the whimsy with sturdy bookshelf support.

Cast resin with painted periwinkle or orange matte finish.

10.5"L x 3.5"W x 8.5".

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$49 (Books included. Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?).

Wrote one owner: "We actually use ours as a doorstop — it's nearly as tall as our real dogs, which amuses visitors to no end."

[via Paul Biba]

I wonder if anyone actually believes "Books included" and suchlike, as appended by me from time to time.

Not that it matters, I'll keep doing it.

Just curious.