Monday, December 24, 2007

Sticky Fingers

Before Chinese factories began putting antifreeze in cold medicine and toothpaste, coating toys with lead paint, and producing counterfeit prescription drugs, China produced generally reliable yet inexpensive goods.

Many "American" brands are actually manufactured in China. You don't even need to look very carefully. For example, Black & Decker produces sealed lead batteries intended to start cars and provide electricity during emergencies.

The actual battery is manufactured by the Vector company in China, and the consumer product is apparently assembled in Mexico.

But let's not pick on Black & Decker, whose power tools are dependable. Although model lines change so rapidly that last year's rechargeable battery is unlikely to fit on this year's driver, or drill.

Some tools are still made in the U.S., and they generally work the best. American hand tools from the 1950s are magnificent.

Which brings us to Bushnell, maker of optics of all sorts, from telescopes, to binoculars to rifle scopes. Virtually all of it's products are made in China, including an inexpensive pair of zoom binoculars with rubber grips.

After a few years in its case, under normal environmental conditions, the rubber grips underwent a chemical reaction of some kind. They're no longer rubbery, they're sticky. Like tacky paint. And since they got sticky just sitting in a case, it seems unlikely that the grips will "dry."

What were the grips made out of? Plastic mixed with industrial waste? Plastic with insufficient plasticizing chemicals? Recycled rubber with leftover epoxy or cyanoacrylate thrown in? Modeling clay mixed with black paint?

We have a heightened suspicion of Chinese goods these days, but it's possible that the American importer insisted that the Chinese contractor make binocular grips out of bubble gum mixed with powdered coal.

Whatever the reasons behind the stickiness problem, the binoculars are useless as binoculars.

When the weather gets warmer, they could be suspended from a ceiling to catch flies.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Nice Doggy! Now, let go... of my throat...

If it's any consolation, the individuals who maimed a dog last week in Milford for no discernible reason are probably going to end up in prison.

Torturing animals is usually a warm-up for other, more severe, anti-social acts. Like killing people.

But meanwhile, the amount of public outrage at the dog slashers is way over the top. Greg, from Guilford, says he would execute them. Ken, of North Branford, thinks they should get a taste of their own medicine.

And Bruno, of Milford, is threatening their lives.

It goes without saying that people should not harm animals. But animals are, well, animals.

Why do so many people care more about dogs than about fellow humans? Because dogs are innocent and have done nothing to deserve this kind of vicious act?

Because pets are pure and people are corrupt? Sure. What about dogs that attack and maim people? There are currently about 75 million dogs in the U.S. and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculate that these dogs bite about 2 percent of the population - more than 4.7 million people - a year.

Do we hear any outcry over dog bites? Getting bitten by a dog is the fifth most frequent cause for visiting an emergency room. About 1,000 people end up in ERs every day because of dog bites.

It is not a shock to find that pit bulls and rottweilers are responsible for 74 percent of the attacks; 68 percent of the attacks on children, and 65 percent of the deaths.

Owners never think their dogs are dangerous until the dog mauls someone. Then the owners say, "He must have provoked the dog."

So, basically, the number of people who attack dogs is minuscule, while dogs take chunks out of people all over the place.

It would be interesting to hear what people who've been bitten and scarred by dogs have to say about the Milford case.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Why Is This Woman So Happy?

We've all seen Rachel Ray and we've all seen Rachel Ray grinning like a maniac.

Why is not clear, except that she's either really happy, someone told her to smile, or has had some transcendent religious experience to which we are not privy.

Her grin is so ubiquitous that there are hardly any photos of her with a straight face. Go ahead, search Google for one.

This means that she could go pretty much anywhere incognito, as long as she does not smile. She could knock over convenience stores and banks and mug elderly people. She must be wealthy, so these activities would have to be purely for fun.

But she must already be having more fun than she can handle, judging from her insane cheek to cheek smile.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Cancer? No thanks!

Plants have cells, chromosomes, hormones, and most of the cellular organelles as animals, yet plants apparently do not get cancer, which is kind of strange.

Plants cannot survive without the sunlight that gives humans skin cancer. So, how come we have cells that proliferate out of control and plants don't?

Plants have a complicated collection of pigments that handle excess energy in solar radiation. That may protect underlying cells from having their DNA blasted and ionized.

Radiation will kill plants. But not give them tumors.

Plants do get things called "galls" but galls are caused by viruses, insects, nematodes and other kinds of parasites. The gall is a way for the plant to hold its enemies at bay.

If humans behaved more like plants physiologically, we would grow a tough container of cells around tumors. Of course, part of what makes cancer perplexing is that it is our own cells out of control. Normal cells would recognize the abnormal ones, but as we know, will not kill them all, all of the time.

Why doesn't yeast develop cancer? Suppose one yeast grew a duplicate, and the "daughter" had damaged genes and would not separate? And then the daughter starts to make messed up yeast cells like crazy. They grow into a relatively big clump.

There is no "central yeast" so the mutated yeast could multiply until it ran out of food. No yeast cancer.

Do we even know if insects get cancer? Generally they are not around long enough to accumulate a cancerous number of mutations.

No, only big animals with a lot of cells get cancer.

Maybe that's the evolutionary price we pay for having trillions of cells. Sometimes one of them goes berserk and makes billions of crazy copies.

In return we get eyeballs, brains, bones, and the rest of the stuff. Respiration, metabolism, the Krebs cycle, and so on.

Would you rather be a plant?

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Water, Water, Everywhere...

Earning a platinum designation from the U.S. Green Building Council is tough and only the most determined institutions make the attempt.

Essentially, the building has to produce about as much energy as it consumes and should have no carbon footprint.

Yale's under-construction Kroon Hall is aiming for platinum, which is laudable.

How a building of laboratories and classrooms can produce as much energy as it consumes is a puzzle. Either the building has to use a minimal amount of energy, or must come up with ingenious ways to generate electricity.

It would be easy to reduce energy consumption to zero. Just eliminate lights, heating, and electrical sockets. True, the interior would be freezing and dark for several months a year, and then hot, stuffy and dim.

That doesn't seem practical. Solar power in New England is not a great idea because about one out of three days is cloudy. Likewise, New England does not have large plains that naturally generate wind.

Here are a few suggestions: Internal fans, connected to generators, spun by the wakes of walking students. Have students wear thermocouples. Line the halls with copper coils and have students wear magnets as they walk from one room to another.

The Kroon plan does include an intricate water system that will supposedly save 500,000 gallons annually. How in the world could Kroon Hall even consume that much water, unless they are converting bauxite into aluminum?

The water system is intended to treat storm water run-off. Not anything as gross as sewage. Just relatively pure rain that has flowed through turf and soil. The first rain water is dirtiest and it's diverted into a large tank. So is gutter water.

This water is then directed into a pond containing aquatic plants that serve as biofilters. Clean water then flows into a harvesting tank. There it will be used for toilets and irrigation.

So basically, the storm run off still ends up in the sewage treatment plant and/or Long Island Sound, but first it runs through some pipes and a pond. Why bother to clean water that will be used in toilets?

Unless the slope of the pipes is carefully designed and adjusted, moving the water will require pumps, or students turning a big wooden wheel connected to a pump.

The expense of the pipes, pond, and tanks hardly seems worth it. How long will the storm water project take to pay for itself?

By then we'll all be using fusion power.

Monday, December 3, 2007

More applications, more rejections, more money

Johns Hopkins University, the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore, the real Johns Hopkins University, sends pleas to high school seniors.

Johns Hopkins wants you to apply for "the most amazing four years of your life."

The six-page, full color brochure must have cost a fortune. And the university is sending them out indiscriminately. Why?

Johns Hopkins isn't the only university to engage in this practice. Most of the ones that self advertise are either schools you've never heard of, schools you'd never consider, or both.

After the first few letters, high school students start throwing out the solicitations unopened.

By now, after undergoing SATs, SAT IIs, ACTs, "How to succeed at SAT" classes, private tutors, and several weeks or months of anxiety, most of those applying to college have already settled on their favorites. Or at least, the favorites to which they think they can gain admission.

So here's Johns Hopkins, one of the most selective of the selective, begging the poor student to spend another $60 or $70 to apply to a university that costs around $50,000 a year.

Out of about 14,000 applicants, fewer than 4,000 are admitted, and 1,207 end up attending.

Here are some universities that don't send out unrequested promotional materials: Yale, Harvard, the rest of the Ivy League, Reed, Williams, Oberlin, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Chicago, Stanford, and on and on and on.

Their attitude is "If you don't know who we are, then you're unfit to go to school here." Unfit to take Western Civ, room with an ominous eccentric, play "residence hall" hockey, seal someone in his room with a pile of beer cans, and the rest of the college experience.

The National Guard has a well thought out mailing. Many pretty young women apparently enroll in the Guard, despite what you may think. The Guard brims with possibilities for betterment: education, experience, discipline, service. And, oh yes, (you may have to try to kill people who are trying to kill you). That last part escapes mention.

It's easy to see why the National Guard needs to promote itself. But Johns Hopkins?

The accepted theory of college solicitations is that enlarging the applicant pool while accepting the same number increases the appearance of selectivity. The higher the selectivity, the higher the tuition can be.

But Johns Hopkins? What's up with that? Huh?

Just another one of the strange, inexplicable, and mystifying parts of the college application process.