Neddy's Palaver

If you hate pigeons and duct tape, WD-40 is your friend.

It keeps pigeons away so that they will leave no disgusting residue on your balcony, and it will remove the disgusting residue of duct tape that you used to hold your balcony together. However, is it really the 45 Wonder Miracle that a current email claims? It may be, yet the WD-40 company (formerly the Rocket Chemical Company of San Diego) gives its “multi-purpose problem solver” product credit for only the following number of miracles.

3. Protects silver from tarnishing.
4. Removes road tar and grime from cars.
10. Loosens stubborn zippers.
11. Untangles jewelry chains.
14. Keeps ceramic/terra cotta garden pots from oxidizing.
18. Keeps scissors working smoothly.
19. Lubricates noisy door hinges on vehicles and doors in homes.
21. Lubricates gear shift and mower deck lever for ease of handling on riding mowers.
22. Rids kids’ rocking chairs and swings of squeaky noises.
23. Lubricates tracks in sticking home windows and makes them easier to open.
24. Spraying an umbrella stem makes it easier to open and close.
26. Restores and cleans roof racks on vehicles.
27. Lubricates and stops squeaks in electric fans.
28. Lubricates wheel sprockets on tricycles, wagons, and bicycles for easy handling.
30. Keeps rust from forming on saws and saw blades, and other tools.
33. Lubricates prosthetic limbs.
34. Keeps pigeons off the balcony (they hate the smell).
35. Removes all traces of duct tape.
37. Florida’s favorite use is: “cleans and removes love bugs from grills and bumpers.”
43. If you sprayed WD-40 on the distributor cap, it would displace the moisture and allow the car to start.
44. It removes black scuff marks from the kitchen floor! Use WD-40 for those nasty tars and scuff marks on flooring. It doesn’t seem to harm the finish and you won’t have to scrub nearly as hard to get them off. Just remember to open some windows if you have a lot of marks. Wash off after use.
45. Bug guts will eat away the finish on your car if not removed quickly! Use WD-40!

These remedies should be enough to keep the company in business at least until their patent expires, even if (#38 of 45) the state of New York doesn’t spray it on the Statue of Liberty. If you purchase a can of the lubricant thinking that it will (#7 of 45) keep flies off your cows; or (#36 of 45) that spraying it on your arms, hands, and knees will relieve arthritis; or (#39 of 45) that you can use WD-40 to attract fish or cats because it is made of fish oil; think again. The WD-40 Company does not make those claims. The WD-40 Company does claim that their product is NOT made of fish oil, so please, please, please do NOT add (#46) take a tablespoon of WD-40 instead of your daily fish oil tablet. It is made of the petroleum-based Stoddard Solvent, which is primarily solvent naphtha petroleum, medium aliphatic, so you don’t even have to warn your dinner guests who may be allergic to fish that you (#3) wiped all the silverware with WD-40.

If you are wondering how WD-40 got its unusual name, here is the explanation from the company:

WD-40 literally stands for Water Displacement, 40th attempt. That’s the name straight out of the lab book used by the chemist who developed WD-40 back in 1953. The chemist, Norm Larsen, was attempting to concoct a formula to prevent corrosion ; a task which is done by displacing water. Norm’s persistence paid off when he perfected the formula on his 40th try.

See Snopes.com for more information. (Thanks Martha.)

This is a new one for me. Have you ever been to a garage sale where everything was free? This seems to be that type of happening in the blogosphere. The originator labels it bloggygiveaways.com and she invites each individual blogger to offer a free something or other. The catch is that one has to comment at the participating blog and leave an email address. I haven’t checked to see if this may be a spammersgiveaway.com in disguise, however it does appear to be quite innocent and on the up and up.

If you have some extra time on your hands, there are literally hundreds of blogs awaiting your erudite comments. If your comment wins - ta da - you get to take home some of their stuff … for free. Hurry, hurry before the spammers and robots get the message and ruin it for everyone.

Bloggy Giveaways

Every Home Needs a Five-armed Squid - the PowerSquid


Every Home Needs a POWER SENTRY POWERSQUID Outlet Multiplier

Each and Everyone One of Us! (or our direct descendants)

Could it be that the environmentalists are correct and that life as we know it is headed for extinction? There are two physicists at the University of California at Berkeley who seem to agree, although their studies have shown extinction of life to be a natural order of earthly things. They believe that we are already five million years overdue for the next cycle of extinction! The last was sixty-five million years ago when the dinosaurs and other life forms disappeared. The scientists do not have an explanation as to why these extinctions occur, however there are a number of theories:

Mass extinction comes every 62 million years, UC physicists discover

"… perhaps there’s some kind of ‘natural timetable’ deep inside the Earth that triggers cycles of massive volcanism, Rohde has thought. There’s even a bit of evidence: A huge slab of volcanic basalt known as the Deccan Traps in India has been dated to 65 million years ago — just when the dinosaurs died, he noted. And the similar basaltic Siberian Traps were formed by volcanism about 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, when the greatest of all mass extinctions drove more than 70 percent of all the world’s marine life to death, Rohde said."

It is therefore only a matter of time (sometime in the next million years or so) before the next Great Dying takes place. (First published at "Scribbles", Friday, March 11, 2005.)

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Start the New Year Right!

Did you know that if every household in the United States replaced just one incandescent light bulb with a CFL bulb, it would have an environmental impact equivalent to removing one million cars from the American roads?

So what is a CFL bulb? It’s full name is “compact fluorescent light bulb”. A CFL bulb is a type of fluorescent lamp which screws into a regular light bulb socket, or plugs into a small lighting fixture. The advantages over regular incandescent light bulbs are their long life (6,000 to 10,000 hours instead of 750 to 1,000 hours) and energy savings due to their lower power.

The U.S. government’s Energy Star web site reports that ENERGY STAR qualified CFLs provide the same amount of light (lumens) as standard incandescent bulbs, but have lower wattage ratings, meaning that they use less energy, last longer and cause less pollution.

Compact Flourescent Bulbs

Who knew that the tiny American pika is headed toward extinction? In fact, who knew that there was such a being? Reuters knew, that’s who. If no one else knew, does it matter? This little guy lives in British Columbia, so he may be safe from extinction. But then again, who knows?

Reuters reports that “Human activity and climate change may be pushing the tiny American pika toward extinction”, which probably excludes the Canadian pikas, who are still happily living and reproducing high atop the pristine peaks of the Canadian Rockies. Seems the American varmints have been moving higher and higher up the American Rockies to escape the progress of American civilization, and now that they are at the tops of the ziggurats, they find no place else to go. As Reuters explains: “They don’t have much up-slope habitat left.” Reuters does not explain why they cannot go “down-slope” on the other side. If it is something embedded into their DNA - such as the “never descend gene”, then perhaps these cute little rodents were doomed from the beginning of their existence.

And … speaking of their existence, Reuters claims they have been living in these same mountains for 40,000 years. That is quite a span of time! Perhaps now, the jig is up for these mousy Methuselahs. However, claims are being made that the pikas, are actually early detection systems for global warming, and that we need them to tell us what’s a-happening in that regard. But just how convenient a system are they for mankind, when they are camped out at the very tops of the highest mountain peaks? By the time we get up there to gather their latest message … it may be too late for us all!

pika-2, image originally uploaded by Scrambler27.
(more…)

Could save us from evil.
Should we have confidence in the government’s ability to deal with another mass national crisis such as September 11th? Since then, new and more sophisticated technologies have been implemented and the Department of Homeland Security has been created. When the next man-made or natural disaster arrives on our shores, will the American people be ready? If the recent example of the uncoordinated response to Hurricane Katrina is what we can expect, we will be dangerously unprepared. Is there something that can be done to prepare the nation immediately, not in a year or two?

Back in 2002, entrepreneur Charles Jennings decided that emergency crisis responsiveness on the national, regional and local level was barely adequate. After meetings and testing with emergency preparedness officials in Portland, Oregon, Mr. Jennings founded a nonprofit technology consortium; the Regional Alliances for Network and Information Security (RAINS). Engineers working for RAINS were able to create an emergency communications product that goes by the name of Connect & Protect. Connect & Protect is now deployed by government first responders, schools and private security firms.

Russell Shaw writes in “Here’s a private-public sector solution to our disaster communications problem” of an interview with Charles Jennings about this life-saving project:

The central problem with emergency response is that we still rely too much on government to do it. There is no “Big Brother” ready and equipped to save us. … we have developed is a system that redefines the concept of “Emergency Response Agency” - from simply government to something much broader that includes hospitals, schools, building owners, private security firms, and so on. The dirty little secret about emergency responders is that there simply are not enough of them to manage extreme disasters. Given that fact, if you are on your own in an emergency, and are called upon to make life-saving decisions, you would hope to have the best possible set of facts available to you to make that decision. We help provide the basis for such a decision.

She was outed from Underneath their Robes and discovered to be a “He”. Oh, the shame of it all! And a federal prosecutor to boot!

“Article III Groupie is stressed, depressed, and oppressed by the law firm powers-that-be,” A3G wrote on Nov. 9. “It’s only Wednesday, and she has already pulled one-and-a-half ‘all-nighters. This explains why A3G hasn’t been blogging (or e-mailing) over the past few days. But she hopes to return to the blogosphere soon. Later!”

For more than a year, some of the juiciest gossip in judicial circles had been posted on Underneath Their Robes, an irreverent blog ostensibly created by someone called Article Three Groupie - a lawyer who dishes it out between depositions and all-nighters.

A3G, the blogger’s nickname, had posted lists of Bodacious Babes of the Bench (“sizzling!”) and told U.S. district judges “you rule!!!” And “she” did it all behind the anonymity of the Internet. That is, however, until “she” was outed in this week’s issue of The New Yorker.

It turns out the voice behind A3G is a 30-year-old assistant federal prosecutor in Newark. His name is David Lat.

All according to the outer - North Jersey Media Group providing local news, sports & classifieds for Northern New Jersey!

The biggest kerfuffle of all is that she (now “he”) was the darling of The Right Honorable Samuel A. Alito, Jr.:

I feel like I’m up at the podium at the Oscars. I have so many people to thank. Actually, not really, I only have one person to thank. Article 3 Groupie, one of the greatest legal minds of her generation (at least those who are not members of the Elect), made a heartfelt plea on my behalf at the eleventh hour, when it looked like JM Luttig was going to take the nomination.

Article 3 Groupie’s letter, I have it on good authority, was read by George Bush himself. He then told his son to pick me. Thank you, A3G. While I have mentioned your site and its wisdom before, I realize that you now deserve special recognition. Plus, you published the young and handsome picture of me. You flirt.

Now The Right Honorable Samuel A. Alito, Jr. is claiming that he has absolutely no relationship whatsoever with her (“him”) in his post “A Terrific Misunderstanding”; “Ladies and Gentlemen, this has gotten out of hand. This site does not bear any relation to Article III Groupie, David Lat, or (for those of you who really need it explained) Samuel Alito.”

However, watch those “terrific” Democrats run with that “terrific” misunderstanding. “Underneath Their Robes” cached. Linked at “basil’s blog” Open Trackbacks and “The Volokh Conspiracy”.

Underneath Their Robes - Blog Search

This is an amazing video showing the manufacture of chocolate, from its very beginnings in history. It was made by the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and is hosted at the Manufacturers Blog under their “Cool Stuff Being Made”. This is great for all - adults and children - who love chocolate. The Video

The World of Chocolate

Linked at Basil’s “Sunday Bruch” and The Political Teen.

Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee. ~~Numbers 24:9

“Oetzi the Iceman”, the almost perfectly preserved 5,300-year-old corpse that was found in Europe on the Austrian-Italian border, is now the star attraction at a museum in Italy where he resides in an ice display chest. His ancient frozen remains are the subject of what is known as “The Curse of the Mummy”.

Death renews iceman ‘curse’ claim
Should working with Oetzi carry a health warning? The death of a molecular biologist has fuelled renewed speculation about a “curse” connected to an ancient corpse. Tom Loy, 63, had analysed DNA found on “Oetzi”, the Stone Age hunter whose remains were discovered in 1991. Dr Loy died in unclear circumstances in Australia two weeks ago, it has been announced, making him the seventh person connected with Oetzi to die.

* Helmut Simon, the amateur mountaineer who found Oetzi in 1991, died during an unexpected blizzard in the Alps last year, not far from his original find.

* Within hours of Mr Simon’s funeral, the head of the mountain rescue team sent to find him died of a heart attack, aged 45 and apparently in good health.

* Rainer Henn, 64, a forensic pathologist who handled the body was killed in a car crash the following year

* Kurt Fritz, the mountaineer who led Dr. Henn to the body was killed in an avalanche shortly after Dr. Henn died.

* Rainer Holz, 47, a filmmaker who made a documentary about removing the body from its block of ice died of a brain tumour soon afterwards

* Konrad Spindler, 66, an archaeologist and a leading expert on the body, died of complications related to multiple sclerosis.