Mildly interesting
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In Japan, there is a large group of carpenters (15,000 members) called Kezurou-kai that demonstrate the traditional Japanese hand tools and techniques that were used to built the pagodas and temple structures that are the world’s oldest standing wooden structures.
Every year the Kezurou-kai have a planing competition to see who amongst them can shave the thinnest piece of wood with a hand planer. The winners are typically between 4-5 microns. A human hair is typically 50 microns… A red blood cell is 8 microns… And these measurements of the shaving are taken at their THICKEST point…
Link to videoThat’s thinner than George used to plane wood, back when he had a wood shop.
Well, it is….
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If you watch nothing else, go to 7:50 or so. Amazing.
Many Japanese tools cut on the pull-stroke. Because of that, it requires less effort to guide it through the wood.
That's particularly true in the case of saws. Because you're pulling, the blade needs no support, allowing it to be thinner and require less work to cut through wood.
In contrast, look at a Western backsaw. Such a saw is used to cut dovetails, for example. It's called a backsaw because it needs stabilization on the blade to keep it from buckling when you're pushing it through stock. A Japanese saw is totally different.
Some Japanese saws do have the metal backing, but the blades are always thinner and much easier to use.
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When we think of excellence in woodworking and craftsmanship we tend to think about the Amish or European traditions. When we think of Japan we think of electronics, robotics, and high tech… But the fact remains that the oldest wooden buildings still in use were built over 1100 years ago (one building in the temple grounds was started in 607 AD) in Japan. That craftsmanship still exists today.
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Ultimate pwn by a Dutch architect.
When the Euro was first circulated, it was important to the EU that the banknotes not have a specific country’s landscape feature so as not to aggravate anyone so they had fictitious bridges put on the bank notes.
Afterwards a Dutch architect went and made bridges in Rotterdam looking like the banknotes to “claim” all the designs for Holland.
Fvcking dutchers.
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Ralph Lauren’s son David Lauren married George HW Bush’s grandaughter Lauren.
Her name is now Lauren Bush Lauren.
@jon-nyc said in Mildly interesting:
Ralph Lauren’s son David Lauren married George HW Bush’s grandaughter Lauren.
Her name is now Lauren Bush Lauren.
I worked with a guy who had a daughter named "Kelly." She married a guy whose last name was, yup, "Kelly."
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@jon-nyc said in Mildly interesting:
Ralph Lauren’s son David Lauren married George HW Bush’s grandaughter Lauren.
Her name is now Lauren Bush Lauren.
I worked with a guy who had a daughter named "Kelly." She married a guy whose last name was, yup, "Kelly."
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I have an ancestor named Smith Smith. The family joke is she was born Smith Court, then she caught a guy named Smith....
I think she came from a strict protestant upbringing, and they didn't hold with decorative names.
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I knew a guy named Brian O'Brien
A lack of parental imagination
But not quite as bad as Sirhan Sirhan
@Copper said in Mildly interesting:
But not quite as bad as Sirhan Sirhan
“ The good one about God and his wife’s difficulties had to do with the fact that it had taken God only six days to produce the whole world, whereas his wife had spent a full day and a half in labor just to produce Major Major. A lesser man might have wavered that day in the hospital corridor, a weaker man might have compromised on such excellent substitutes as Drum Major, Minor Major, Sergeant Major, or C. Sharp Major, but Major Major’s father had waited fourteen years for just such an opportunity, and he was not a person to waste it. Major Major’s father had a good joke about opportunity. ‘ Opportunity only knocks once in this world,’ he would say. Major Major’s father repeated this good joke at every opportunity.”
...
“There were six people and a Scotch terrier inhabiting the remote
farmhouse Major Major called home, and five of them and the Scotch terrier turned out to be agents for the F.B.I. Soon they had enough derogatory information on Major Major to do whatever they wanted to with him. The only thing they could find to do with him, however, was take him into the Army as a private and make him a major four days later so that Congressmen with nothing
else on their minds could go trotting back and forth through the streets of Washington, D.C., chanting, ‘Who promoted Major Major? Who promoted Major Major?’ Actually, Major Major had been promoted by an I.B.M. machine with a sense of humor almost as keen as his father’s.”
