The 5-Minute Rule Eaterie

Anders Bohrigs set up and manages the Fem - Minut Regel Restaurang (Five-Minute Rule Restaurant) in Malmo, Sweden. As well as pancakes cooked to his grandmother's secret recipe, the restaurant offers a 45% reduction on food if it is dropped on the floor and scooped up before it reaches the table, 65% if it is a soup or 'heavily-sauced dish'. Asked to explain the policy, Bohrings said,

"What we are trying to achieve here is a movement to reduce people's overly fussy attitude to food. The policy is not meant as an apolgy; we actually prefer for customers to request their food be dropped when they order their meal. Very few customers have had any kind of health issues, and I feel this is something very positive for society."

The Fem - Minut Regel Restaurang, where the offer for Christmas is "Free main course if your waiter licks your starter." This photo provided by La Citta Vita.

©2011 James Mathurin

The inventions of Dimitri Dutruv Pt. 6

One of Dutruv's more controversial, and less well documented scientific escapades was his 'Metro Mass Driver' series of experiments. These represented the period where Dutruv developed an interest in the self-styled "Guerrilla Science" movement, which encouraged,

Systems of experimentation and technological development, freed of corporate and government sponsorship, staid academia and restrictive Health and Safety restrictions, by utilising the environment and resources we find in it.

For Dutruv, this involved utilising several miles of the Tunnelbana Metro system in Stockholm in order to attempt to turn an unmanned Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) vehicle as a 'DIY mass driver', in order to create 'miniature Black Holes'. Although Dutruv often worked alone, the scale of this project required him to ask for assistance from Guerrilla Science, specifically to help him hack into the Tunnelbana computer system to ensure that no staff were working overnight on the sections of track he was using, and to use two assistants he recruited from advertisements in magazines and tobacconists. Records of what happened are legally sealed by the Swedish government, but Dutruv was arrested and faced legal charges, and at least one of his assistants may have been removed from the spacetime continuum as a result of the experiment.

This picture was taken by 'Guerrilla Scientist' Pacopus, and is said to show Dutruv, the surviving assistant, and the unidentified 'hypothetical' assistant, who has come to be known in online discussions as 'Assistant H'.

Dutruv was released from the custody of the Swedish police without being charged. The investigating officer, Faltmo Lindegaard, explained,

While we do feel that some kind of offence took place here, our suspicion is that the victim, if indeed there ever was one, has been erased from all of time and space, and as such, the crime remains purely hypothetical, even though we believe that it did happen. This is confusing, and well beyond our jurisdiction.

Although details of this investigation were not included in the remains of Dutruv's work, after his death in 1996, several of the 'Guerrilla Scientists' who knew of it posted discussions about it on various online message boards, saying that they felt it should stand as a tribute to Dutruv's contribution to human understanding.

©2011 James Mathurin

The most corrosive hamburger sauce

The most corrosive Hamburger sauce ever was Kathter’s Old Number 9, a concoction created on a Texan farm in 1972 by retired Chemist Peter Chan. Although he kept the ingredients secret, he told Hamburger Review magazine, “it contains 5 different types of chillies, and gunpowder for seasoning.” Chan was later taken to court by PETA, accused of killing several sows by testing his sauce on them when it was still in its experimental stages. Kathter’s Old Number 9 was eventually taken off the shelves in 1975, when it was discovered that one of the ingredients used  by Chan had actually been extracted from the larval form of a rare parasitic wasp which was on the Endangered Species list.

The results of the application of 75ml of Kathter’s Old Number 9 to an undercooked quarter pounder. Chan noted that the bottle did carry the disclaimer "contents may become volatile if brought into contact with raw meat products." Photo copyright of Public Domain Photos.

©2011 James Mathurin

Moustaches of Australia

The Moustaches of Australia Museum is a recent addition to the Perth cultural scene. Curator Del McGarneck estimates that the combined weight of all the facial hair in the exhibition would exceed 2 metric tonnes.

"Moustaches have formed an integral part of Australian culture," he explained in the Perth's Eye  local newspaper, "Which is part of the reason I personally found Crocodile Dundee so offensive. Moustaches, in many ways, have been what has separated us from the animals, especially the reptiles."

Del McGarneck, pictured at the Moustaches of Australia Museum's grand opening, where he was engaged in a heated debate about his policy against including sideburns in the museum's exhibits. Picture supplied by the MoAM's official photographer, Gagilas.

©2011 James Mathurin

Livestock fondue

Freddie Salzburg's Animal Fondue Rotisserie has been in business in Mankato, Minnesota in the USA since November 2008. The restaurant features whole pigs and lambs slaughtered on the premises, and cooked by being lowered by a crane mechanism into boiling vats of molten cheese.

The entrance to the Animal Fondue Rotisserie. "We hadn't meant to have such a grand entrance," said proprietor, Freddie Salzburg. "The original plan was for a feature here that customers could take advantage of a feature we were going to build in here, that involved a large air cannon, a razor-edged grating, with a heated angled cheese tub. We had to adapt our plans while we let the applications go through." Photograph taken for the avlxyz review service.

©2010 James Mathurin

Mass suicide at Museum station

This photo is the earliest image of a mass suicide, taken on October 17th 1924 at Museum Station in Sydney, Australia. It began when some 16 men climbed onto the tracks, while another, (Frank Hardbunt, 24) photographed them before jumping down onto the tracks himself, leaving his camera apparatus on the platform.

As the picture shows, the station was still under contruction at the time, and this was, in fact, merely a test run for the electrical system, leading many to suspect some kind of 'suicide cult', as only 3 of the men, Terry Bosforth, Henry Turner and Samuel Gishop, had any business being at the station on this particular day.

This copy of the photograph is actually on display at Museum Station. In 1998, when asked why such a tragic image should be left on display, the station manager, Duncan Hawkins, replied, "Well, we just thought it was better than another advert for toothpaste."

©2010 James Mathurin

The most sarcastic piece of correspondence

The most sarcastic piece of correspondence was the infamous Go ahead and invade then, you green-tongued coward parchment, written by King Osingwald III of the Ostrogoths to Emperor Maxwell V of The Bulgars in 543AD. Although the two were childhood friends, Osingwald sent a messenger to Maxwell, whose message consisted of 15 pages of insults, after which the messenger, as instructed, dropped his britches and mooned the Emperor, who promptly invaded Luxembourg. Folklore has it that, just before being bludgeoned to death with his messenger’s severed rear-end, Osingwald wailed, “I didn’t think he’d take it that way!”

This frieze was produced by the court of King Osingwald to commemorate his insult of Emperor Maxwell. Academics have speculated that the figures around the face represent specific insults from the parchment, such as the one pictured on the left here, which seems to show Maxwell in an improper embrace with a dog or wolf. None of the figures, however, shed any light for the motivation for the insults. Photograph from the Cåsver collection.

©2010 James Mathurin