Category Archives: Human Interest

Bedding quality

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So if you want to sleep comfortably, one of the ways to get a better sleep is by looking at your sheets.

The factor we all know about is thread count – how many threads per square inch of fabric. Nowadays manufacturers are coming out with 1000 / 1600 thread count materials. This is not the whole of the story though. You need to also look at

– ply
– yarn size
– type of cotton
– how it’s woven

If it’s 2 ply, then it becomes heavier and is kind of cheating, as they up the thread count by first interweaving two threads and then weaving the fabric.

Large yarn is better.

Sea Island, Egyptian (Ashmouni) or Pima (US) cotton is best as the cotton strands (the “staple”) themselves are longest. Some people prefer sateen, which has polyester in it, making it slightly less ‘slippery’ or silky than pure cotton.

There are four main types of ELS (Extra Long Staple) cotton:- American upland , Egyptian, Sea Island and Asiatic.

(1) American upland is a plant with green coloured flowers. It gives a large yield with white fibres 7/8”-1-1/4 inches in length.
(2) The Egyptian cotton has lemon coloured flowers and produces long silky light tan fibres
1-1/2” in length. The American variant of this strain is Pima Cotton which yields fibre of 1-3/8” & above in length.
(3) Sea island cotton is grown in the West Indies . It has yellow flower and is a slow grower and the white fibres are 1-3/4” in length used for high quality textile.
(4) The Asiatic strain produces a low yield of short, coarse, harsh fibre.

Egyptian cotton seems to be grown in Karnak.

For more information:

Soleilmavis on thread count

The ebay guide to terms and differences for cotton linens

Best in Bedding FAQ

about Pima cotton and how it was bred

The four types of cotton

Howto Walk

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We’re supposed to walk on our feet, but we wear shoes for protection and fashion. This has a drastic impact on the amount of injuries we get as a result of walking the wrong way. This souds a bit wierd, but there’s an excellent article in NY Magazine which had me reading it the whole way through.

So what can we do?

We can wear Vivo Barefoot shoes:

where the sole is so thin that it feels like you’re walking on bare feet but are protected.

This is the store

Or there’s the Vibram five fingers shoes:

which you can buy here

You can buy them from toesocks.nl

Of course if you want to wear socks with them you need toe socks!

or more high tech socks

At feelmax.nl

Yup, we should be dead

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Dear Friends

Thought this might strike a chord or two!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE:-

1940’s, 50’s,60’s and 70’s !!

First,
we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They
took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Then
after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints

We had no
childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode
our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking .

As
children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding
in the back of a van – loose – was always great fun.

We
drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle.

We
shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We
ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because……

WE

WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We
would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back

when the streetlights came on.

No
one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We
would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem

.

We did not have
Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or
Internet chat rooms……….WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of
trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents

.

We played
with worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

Made up games
with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we

did not poke out any eyes.

We
rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang

the bell, or just yelled for them!

Local teams
had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn

to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a
parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation
has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors

ever !

The past 50
years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We
had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we

learned

HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You
might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our

own good.

and
while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes
you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?!

PS -The BIG
type is because your eyes are shot at your age

Best Wishes Willie

Use your own fat to grow bigger breasts

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Using fat-derived stem cells allows patients to have fat taken from the belly, the stem cells extracted and put into a cartridge and injected into the breasts. The procedure takes around an hour and costs the same as similar surgeries. After doing this, the breasts grow over a period of months. Since they are ‘real’ in every sense of the word, these are the best fakes you’re ever going to get. Of course, there doesn’t seem to be any way to choose the shape in which they’ll grow…

Scents improve memory formation

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The scientific community knew that scent is closely related to memory, as people can recall events / places with a certain smell when they smell the associated scent easily.
Now, they’ve found out that if you have a task that requires studying, then associate that with a smell and then throw that smell at you during deep sleep, you will have remembered what you studied very much better than if you hadn’t used the smells.
Interestingly this doesn’t work if you replay the smell during REM sleep, as the hippocampus isn’t activated, making researchers think that REM sleep accounts for absorbion of activity and emotive memory.

Toxic Wife Syndrome

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The new generation of gold diggers see it as their responsibility to be high maintenance and do nothing.

The danger signals of a wife going toxic are all too plain:

— She gives up work to care for the children and then sends them to boarding schools as soon as they outgrow their nannies.

— She demands wall-to-wall help with a maid hired to work up to 14 hours a day six days a week.

— Cooking and housework are strictly out of bounds.

— They have to live in a country mansion, forcing the husband to commute daily to London.

BASE Jumping Legal in US

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A NY state judge has ruled that since Jeb Corliss was very aware of the risks involved and attempted to mitigate them as much as possible, his attempt to jump off the Empire State Building was not reckless and endangering behaviour and thus legal.
Of course those namby pamby pussies who get adrenal rushes from watching their garage doors open with a remote control are all up in arms about it, but from me that gets a ‘Top Bloke’ award to that judge.