I slept in this morning and then stayed in bed long enough to finish reading Tom Standage’s A History Of The World In Six Glasses.

Standage presents the history of civilization in the context of the inventions of various beverages: beer, wine, distilled spirits, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola. The writing is sharp and witty. The book was an educational read too: I didn’t fully grasp the origins of wine and it’s importance in Greek culture. In retrospect it makes sense but still it was new.

I also found it interesting that none of these beverages originated in Europe. Beer, wine, spirits and coffee were Arabic inventions with rich and long cultural histories prior to European import. Tea first appeared in South Asia and was later brought to China and Japan although those cultures quickly created alternate history to explain its local origins.

Later Europe was introduced to tea, the British Empire adopted it as it’s national drink, and the rest is tea history. And of course Coca-Cola was an American invention, with its own interesting and often bizarre origins. Seems it was invented as yet another quack medical cure and only later became a refreshing beverage for mass consumption.

The book finishes up with a small discussion about water. Interesting to learn that most bottled water has less monitoring and quality control than the tap water available in most developed nations. Also interesting to know that the United Nation’s estimated cost of bringing reliable production of clean drinking water to poor nations is less than what consumers spend on bottled water every year.

Recently Dean Karmen announced a new invention to cheaply produce clean drinking water with only modest power requirements. Standage mentions World Health Organization estimates 80 percent of illness in the world can be directly attributed to waterborne disease (also mentioned in Karmen’s announcement).

Recommended if you are looking for a light yet fascinating read.

The Netherlands has released really cool new animated stamps. Yes, these are regular postage stamps that can be attached to letters and sent through the post.

They use a technology called Lenticular Printing to achieve this affect, and you’ve probably seen it before. It uses small slices of different pictures printed next to each other, with a plastic lens cover that only reveals one set of slices (all from the same image) at any particular angle. As you tilt the picture you see a different image. Do this tilting rapidly enough and you’ll see animation that mimics live video.

Creo Kodak has several customers involved in this type of printing because our device’s ability to image 10 micron features onto a printing plate. Given good enough press conditions, these 10 micron features will show up on paper. Small accurate feature placement and printing means you can do things like lenticular printing on a large scale. I have no idea if these stamps are done with Creo’s imaging technology or not, but its likely.

This is probably the start of a new trend in producing stamps. Even better that the topic is related to the Olympics.