We’ve all heard of the fuss regarding BPA in plastics. Perhaps a bit overblown, but a valid health concern nonetheless. The result is that it’s easy enough these days to find BPA-free plastics, but what does that really mean? In many products, BPA was replaced with BPS, and it’s really not that clear that BPS is any better than BPA. So, what can you do? Not much, but start by avoiding plastics in your food chain where possible. This means avoiding canned foods (the metal cans have plastic linings inside), avoid soda (for oh so many reasons!), avoid #3 and #7 marked plastics, choose BPA free lids for canning, and use glass water bottles. Ok, so that last one especially seems like a stretch, and I can’t see a glass water bottle being a good choice for an active outdoors lifestyle, but do keep in mind that even metal water bottles have a plastic liner inside.
Record-setting Rube Goldberg Machine
Engineers at Purdue have created the most complex Rube Goldberg machine ever, using 300 steps to blow up and pop a balloon. It’s impressive and a cool machine, but what’s most amazing is that they spent so much effort building this enormously complex machine, only to do such an incredibly awful job of producing the video showing it in action!
Matterhorn Glass
As a scotch drinker and mountain lover, I love this artistic glass concept from Tale Design in South Korea. Embedded in a relatively normal-shaped glass is a mountain-like protrusion, inspired by the Matterhorn. Tale Design has done some other creative glasses as well, such as this moon glass where the surface of the liquid changes as the level drops, and represents phases of the moon.