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The Lady and the Highwayman
May. 13th, 2012 08:40 amI read something the other day about language death, and how it's not just languages and words that are dying: it's also number systems. Not everyone uses base-10 like we do. For example, a tribe in Papua New Guinean has a septivigesimal (base-27) number system. I'd be 1B years old if I lived with them. So young!
And so to this week's thing of the 100 random things:
2. Tea bags
At some point in the mid-1980s, a tea company had a competition. Like a golden ticket in a Wonka bar, they hid a symbol in the label of a tea bag. My grandfather and I whiled away a rainy weekend afternoon pulling tags off every tea bag in my grandmother's new box. We didn't win, and my grandmother was very cross when she found that each of her tea bags had string that wasn't attached to anything. I don't remember what the prize we didn't win was, but it surely wasn't as good as this:
(From http://www.luxuo.com/most-expensive/tea-bag.html)
That would be a tea bag studded with 280 diamonds, valued at $12,000, awarded as a prize in a different competition. Runners-up won a teapot and a year's supply of tea, which, frankly, seems much more useful than a diamond-studded tea-bag. Perhaps they should have put the diamonds on the teapot instead. Or could you take the diamonds off and have them set in something, then make a nice cup of tea with the plain bag? Or, or, could you make a cup of tea with the diamond bag, then take the diamonds off, just so you could say you've drunk diamond tea? Hmmm. What would *you* do with a diamond tea bag?
The filter paper on tea bags is made from abacá, the 'leafstalk of Philippine bananas also known as Manila hemp'. Thanks, Wikipedia.
Next week: Pears.
And so to this week's thing of the 100 random things:
2. Tea bags
At some point in the mid-1980s, a tea company had a competition. Like a golden ticket in a Wonka bar, they hid a symbol in the label of a tea bag. My grandfather and I whiled away a rainy weekend afternoon pulling tags off every tea bag in my grandmother's new box. We didn't win, and my grandmother was very cross when she found that each of her tea bags had string that wasn't attached to anything. I don't remember what the prize we didn't win was, but it surely wasn't as good as this:
(From http://www.luxuo.com/most-expensive/tea-bag.html)
That would be a tea bag studded with 280 diamonds, valued at $12,000, awarded as a prize in a different competition. Runners-up won a teapot and a year's supply of tea, which, frankly, seems much more useful than a diamond-studded tea-bag. Perhaps they should have put the diamonds on the teapot instead. Or could you take the diamonds off and have them set in something, then make a nice cup of tea with the plain bag? Or, or, could you make a cup of tea with the diamond bag, then take the diamonds off, just so you could say you've drunk diamond tea? Hmmm. What would *you* do with a diamond tea bag?
The filter paper on tea bags is made from abacá, the 'leafstalk of Philippine bananas also known as Manila hemp'. Thanks, Wikipedia.
Next week: Pears.