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.)

I found this tip on a sewing bulletin board. It also seems like a good tip for those who cannot afford a genuine Ott-light lamp to illuminate their computer work station at home. Although Ott-light lamps do not seem to come as “goose neck” types, a similar Ott desktop lamp would cost $100 upwards.

The writer said that one can purchase a table top lamp with a flexible neck (goose neck) lamp that accomodates a standard size incandescent light bulb for $1 to $15 at thrift or discount stores. Instead of the incandescent bulb, she purchased an “Energy Saver” compact fluorescent “day-light” bulb for $7 that puts put out the equivalent light of a 75 to 100 watt incandescent bulb. The actual wattage ratings on these fluorescent bulbs is less than 1/3 of the equivalent incandescent bulb, therefore the “Energy Saver” fluorescent bulbs use less electricity and generate much less heat and last far longer.

The quality of light from the “day light” compact fluorescent bulb is very close to neutral and with the flexible neck on the fixture, it can be pointed to where light is needed. Choose a compact fluorescent bulb that is marked “daylight”, as regular compact fluorescent bulbs give off a blue or yellow cast that is not as natural as the neutral “daylight” bulbs.

Therefore, it is possible for under $10 total cost, to create your own mock “Ott-lite”.

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.)

| Español | Deutsche | Français | Italiano | Português |

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…)