OT: Adult colouring books? WTF?

[Commander Kinsey]

What is it with "adult colouring in books"? Surely adults should be doing something more mentally challenging. Are we all losing our mental abilities? I used colouring in books when I was 6.

[rbowman]

Stress relief, supposedly. A few years ago I had an eye operation that required you to keep your head down for three days. You can only read so many books, watch so many DVDs, and listen to so many audio recordings before going bonkers so I got one of the books. I couldn't get into it.

[Rod Speed]

Commander Kinsey [e-mail]> wrote

For those like you who never made it past being little kids all the time.

Some like you cant manage anything like that.

Hardly likely that all of us use adult coloring books.

I don't remember ever using them but likely I must have and I know I was quite shocked when told that we had lived in two different places before the first one I could remember living in, they one I do remember starting school from.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Well they have been around since I can remember, indeed, many of the old Puzzler books my mother had on our holidays to do on the beach had a colour by numbers picture inside the back cover, and that was way back in the70s and 80s. Maybe you have been asleep. I' also remember the computer equivalent of this as well back in the 80s. I never did get that as many computers only had8 colours and a brighter version of each, though bright black was not. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Yes it was OK but the character development was rubbish... grin. Brian

[Rod Speed]

Brian Gaff (Sofa) [e-mail]> wrote

Not for ADULTS tho.

Again, those werent for ADULTS.

He cant sleep, that’s why he is always completely blotto and drug crazed, that’s the only way he can get to sleep.

[RJH]

Kind of. I've known them used to help addiction recovery.

[T Maxene Price]

Some people bypass the coloring books and go straight to GIMP.

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

what about paint by numbers / ...

[Max Demian]

Marquetry sets. "Make and do" books. Rubbish.

I liked chemistry sets and books about chemistry using household products, but I don't suppose the products are easily obtained by children nowadays, when they can't even buy glue and knives.

[Mike Duffy]

I can remember when the 'hobby shops' sold individual chemicals in little bottles to replace items in the boxed sets used by budding experimenters.

I can still remember when they pulled KNO3 from the shelves, and a few years later when they stopped selling the whole kits.

As an aside, I can recall a pool product clearly labelled "Do not mix with brake fluid". What do you think I did next? (Outside & upwind)

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

you mixed it with brake fluid...what happened ? ...

[Ed Pawlowski]

Without KNO3 why would you want the set? My brother had one and the only thing I remember from it was making things that explode.

[Commander Kinsey]

That's for kids too isn't it? Why would an adult do that?

[Commander Kinsey]

So buy it for them. I grew up using a chemistry set, with many chemicals that I could have poisoned someone with (eg Copper sulphate). Funnily enough I never heard of anyone getting poisoned.

[Commander Kinsey]

Overloading old capacitors made for good firecrackers.

[Commander Kinsey]

I thought brake fluid was for damaging your neighbour's paintwork on his Ferrari.

[Max Demian]

Sodium chlorate (weedkiller) and sugar. Or nitrogen triiodide (made from household ammonia and tincture of iodine (as use on wounds). Rather unstable.

[Commander Kinsey]

Do they still sell things with their chemical name on it in the USA? In the UK, I cannot buy "household ammonia", we could back in the 50s. Perhaps some products have it as the main constituent, but it's not obvious which, and if it's concentrated enough. I can only buy stuff like "bleach", "surface cleaner", and other vague names.

[Mike Duffy]

(There is a video.)