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The last of the Lebanese chickpea seeds (of doom)

Who knew that Australia pos­sesses the last sur­viving crop seeds of certain vari­eties of Lebanese chickpea? Sparing us the nightmare scenario of a future devoid of farting hippies, Australian farmer and sci­entist Dr Tony Gregson has pre­served these and other seed samples in the Arctic environs of that mother-of-all spice racks, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.

But seeds? Snow? Doom? (Okay, doom in the sense of ‘doomsday, pre­par­ation for’, but still.)


Is the ‘con’ in ‘chili con carne’ short for ‘consequences’?



According to Google Analytics, someone visited my website imme­di­ately after typing the search phrase “where to buy flat­u­lence underwear mel­bourne australia”.

There’s nowhere I can go from there.


From a US patent for a flat­u­lence deodor­ising pad that sits in your underwear (in, the patent help­fully informs us, “the anal area”).

The back­ground notes make for com­pelling reading (the charcoal cloth of which the pad is made was ori­ginally developed to defend sol­diers against chemical warfare), but I par­tic­u­larly like the idea that some­where there’s an illus­trator whose spe­cialty is the infographics of the fart.

(Google Patents, via Amy and Aaron Edgar)