More Article Excerpts
Here are a couple of other little bits of information from weekend reading.Carrots weren't originally orange. They "came in a variety of hues ranging from black to purple to red to yellow to white." In the early sixteenth century, Dutch growers crossbred them until they "matched the color of the House of Orange." That's taken from this CBC article about a local farmer mysteriously growing some purple carrots:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/10/26/purple-carrots051026.html.
Do you remember that crazy news story a while back about Qatar banning the use of child jockeys (as young as four years old, believe it or not) for camel racing? They brought in children from the Sudan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and the children were treated incredibly inhumanely. The international outrage (and threat of sanctions) forced them to end the practice.
Camel racing is a big, big sport in several Arab countries, and without children for jockeys, a replacement had to be found. So a Swiss company named K-team designed robotic jockeys. Here's an excerpt from the article at Wired:
Camel jockey robots, about 2 feet high, with a right hand to bear the whip and a left hand to pull the reins. Thirty-five pounds of aluminum and plastic, a 400-MHz processor running Linux and communicating at 2.4 GHz; GPS-enabled, heart rate-monitoring (the camel's heart, that is) robots.
It's a bizarre intersection of culture and technology, and the article is fascinating (and detailed). Here's the link:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/camel.html?pg=1&topic=camel&topic_set.
So what could be stranger than robotic camel jockeys? Leave it to DQ reader Nathan Carpenter to find something, and he did. It's a website called "Eat Hufu"
(http://www.eathufu.com/home.asp).
What is Hufu? I'm so glad you asked.
Why, it's the "healthy human flesh alternative." Hufu is a product "designed to resemble, as humanly possible, the taste and texture of human flesh. If you've never had human flesh before, think of the taste and texture of beef, except a little sweeter in taste and a little softer in texture. Contrary to popular belief, people do not taste like pork or chicken." And yes, it's vegetarian and vegan friendly--it contains no human or animal products. I believe it's made out of tofu, with lots of "special flavorings," I guess. Aggghhh.
Is this a joke? Damned if I know. It's one of the most expertly constructed satires I've ever seen if it is, and the media articles and coverage he's received are real, because I was able to find them from the listed source (like MSNBC).
Either way, it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. The world is stranger than we can imagine.
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