New Year’s Eve Infographic: Champagne-Glass Pyramid

ChampagneSabering.com offers this diagram along with a table for calculating the number of glasses needed for building pyramids of various heights. Also tips for filling the glasses and all things related to Champagne. They can be hired to build a pyramid for your next event.

There is a page of Champagne quotes, including this one from Art Buchwald: "I like Champagne because it always tastes as if my foot's asleep."

May this be the only kind of Pyramid Scheme you encounter in the new year. Wishing a happy, healthy, and peaceful 2011 to all!

Found Infographic: Vintage Corset Directions

Imagine needing directions with a diagram for getting dressed! Before elastic and stretch fabrics came into regular use for foundation garments, the design and proper fit of a corset took a fair amount of engineering and customization. (See previous post on the Berlei Body Type Calculator.)

I was curious about why the name of a corset manufacturer would be “Camp.” I thought that perhaps the company originally manufactured tents--you know, canvas, cord, grommets, rigging hardware. Not so. It turns out that the name of the corset maker was Samuel Higby Camp. In 1908, he patented the "fan-lacing" system of attaching straps and buckles to groups of laces so that the garment could be tightened from the front, by the corset wearer herself. Before that, women were dependent on a maid/mother/other, to pull the laces tight from the back and tie them. So, what appears to us as a garment of torture and confinement, actually provided women with a level of self-sufficiency, not previous available to them.

And remember, NEVER pull upwards or downwards, always in a straight line!

Basketball Rules!

The diagram below, is on the back of the 1953 book below it. I don't really know if 'Basketball Rules' had a double meaning back then, but I’m pretty sure it was just the rules for playing basketball.

A Counterintuitive Counterinsurgency

Looks like we’ve now outsourced and offshored our counterinsurgency strategy.

The diagram here, outlines the Afghanistan counterinsurgency strategy. It was obtained by MSNBC's Richard Engel, and aired on The Rachel Maddow Show. Labeled a ‘working draft’, the slide is branded with the logo of PA Consulting Group, a UK-based firm.

The company made news in 2008, when it lost a memory stick containing data on the entire UK prison population of about 84,000. PA Consulting has worked successfully with the U.S. Navy on cost-cutting privatization initiatives.

You can see the full PDF here for an in-depth look at what we must surely be paying big bucks for.