8/24/11  Heroic Marketing

      Other than both being drugs, what do heroin and aspirin have in common?

      The German company, Bayer Pharmaceutical. Both heroin and aspirin were originally brand names of Bayer products. Bayer still makes aspirin, though no longer Aspirin™. But then, a lot of other drug companies also make aspirin as the name has become a generic term for that particular pain-killer.

      On the other hand. Bayer stopped making Heroin™ in 1913. Like aspirin, a lot of other people now make heroin, though not Bayer or the other companies making aspirin. Like aspirin, heroin is no longer a brand name either.

      I don't know the origin of the name aspirin, but heroin got its name from the "heroic" feeling it gave Bayer employees during testing. Just so you know, Heroin™ was originally sold as a cough remedy. At one point, Bayer even added Heroin™ to Aspirin™.

5/17/11  Doozie of a Jeep

      There used to be a lot more American car companies than there are now-a-days. Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg, Kaiser, Packard, Pierce-Arrow, and Studebaker to name a handful. Some old brands were bought by or merged with one of the big three and survive as divisions, such as Buick, Cadillac, Lincoln, Mercury, Pontiac, and Jeep. Some old marks that became divisions later got axed and so are just as dead as the independently dead like Oldsmobile and Plymouth.

      Some of the defunct companies sort-of still exist only their mark is long gone. Willys combined with Overland becoming Willys-Overland, which later combined with Hudson to become American Motors. AMC was bought by Chrysler and became the Jeep division and the short-lived Eagle division. Basically Chrysler acquired AMC to get Jeep.

      The story of Jeep is a bit odd, as is the name. No-one really is sure where it comes from. Some say it's from how you'd say GP, which stood for general purpose. Others say it was named after a magical creature from Popeye, Eugene the Jeep.

      The Jeep was developed just before WWII by American Bantam using a Go-Devil engine supplied by Willys. The U.S. War Department concluded American Bantam was too small to build enough Jeeps, so the contract and the engineering plans went to Willys. But even Willys couldn't build enough and so during the war Ford built Jeeps, too.

      After the war Jeep production went back to Willys. What's curious is Overland, before it merged with Willys to become Willys-Overland, built America's first 4-wheel-drive production car back around WWI. American Bantam, which developed the Jeep, joined the ranks of the defunct.

      Of all the defunct car brands mentioned above, one's name lives on in the language. Well, kind-of lives on as people don't say it much any more. In its heyday Duesenberg made fast, sleek cars popular with the rich and famous. Like a Chevrolet is called a Chevy, a Duesenberg was called a Doozie. From this came the phrase, "It's a doozie."

4/15/11  The Wild One

      They tell me dogs are descended from wolves and the two are 99.8% genetically the same. You can cross a wolf with a dog and get a wolf-dog. A wolf-dog can breed with another dog or wolf to get a quarter-breed, and on and on for an endless variety of mixtures. So we ask, would a wolf-dog be a new species and are all the various combinations new species or sub-species or what.

      Looked at that way it seems a wolf might be just another breed of dog. A Chihuahua and a Great Dane are both dogs and seem more different from each other than a lot of dogs seem from a wolf. Cross a German shepherd with a husky and the results will look a lot like a wolf.

      On the other hand, there is an inherent behavioral difference between wolves and dogs. Basically, dogs relate to people and wolves don't. If you take a wolf pup and raise it like a dog among people it doesn't grow up and act like a dog, it acts like a wolf. Basically you might say wolves are naturally wild and dogs are naturally tame toward people.

      Looked at that way, different as they might be all dogs are alike and wolves are different. All the same, is a behavior difference enough to make it a separate species? I mean, it seems certain behaviors run in families of people, but that doesn't make them a different species, does it?

3/22/11  Poodle-fros

      Poodles were originally bred to be hunting dogs. Even that rather odd haircut they get was not for show, but had a purpose in the field. To understand it we need to go back to the breed's beginnings in Germany, not France despite being called french poodles.

      Hunting dogs often go in the water to retrieve downed fowl and what-have-you. That water can be pretty cold so they bred poodles to have a thick, curly coat for insulation. Unfortunately that didn't work as planned as such a coat got waterlogged and the dog sunk like a stone. Which wasn't good for the hunt or the dog.

      To solve that they trimmed off excess fur, selectively rather than all over. They left fur to protect vital areas, the heart, lungs and brain up front and the kidneys at the rear. That's the reason for those two puffs near the tail. They also protected leg joints with balls of fur near the feet. That pom-pom at the tip of the tail worked like a flag to spot the dog in the water. Something like the way folks put a ball on their car antenna to find their car in a parking lot.

      I don't imagine people much use poodles for hunting any more. Poodles aren't classed as retrievers, but as non-sporting dogs. While its purpose has rather gone by the board, the haircut remains. Miniature a toy poodles get it, too, even though you'd never go hunting with either of them.

2/24/11  Ban the Bands

      Save the penguins — leave them alone. You know how they say if you love something set it free? This is a case something like that. A recent report has it that banding the aquatic birds is doing them no favors. To quote some-source-or-other-I-forget:

      Some scientists studying penguins may be inadvertently harming them with the metal bands they use to keep track of the tuxedo-clad seabirds, a new study says.

      The survival rate of King penguins with metal bands on their flippers was 44 percent lower than those without bands and banded birds produced far fewer chicks, according to new research published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The theory is that the metal bands — either aluminum or stainless steel — increase drag on the penguins when they swim, making them work harder, the study's authors said.

      This relates to one of those things they talk of in science circles. The act of observing or measuring can change what it is you're observing or measuring. Basically it's because measuring tools can have effects. An observer just being there can have an effect, too. It's like, if you walk through the forest the animals flee which they wouldn't if you didn't.

      I think it's similar to what happens with reality TV. People act differently knowing they're on TV even though they're supposed to be acting like their natural selves. I suppose they are being themselves, only moreso. But then, who doesn't act differently in public compared to in private? Nobody picks their nose on a date, but at home alone they'll go in up to the elbow.

2/3/11  Zapping Along

      I heard where the Chevy Volt got a Car of the Year Award. I guess that's OK since awards of this kind are mostly a matter of opinion. All the same, electric cars of any sort have the same drawback they've had for over 100 years and why they died out in the early 1900s. Batteries, which are heavy and don't store enough energy.

      In listening to some people talk about the Volt there seems a view the battery problems will be rectified as hybrids become more popular. The whole "all new technologies have rapid improvements" idea. Like computers and plasma tvs. Except batteries are hardly a new technology. They've been working on them for decades.

      Anyway, the hybrid concept isn't exactly new either. Boiled down to basics a hybrid powers the wheels with electric motors from electricity generated by an onboard internal combustion engine. This concept has been up and running for 75 years or so. It's called a diesel-electric locomotive. Only the Volt also has batteries in the loop.

      Unless they come up with vastly improved batteries I don't see the Volt taking the automotive world by storm. If you really want to save lots of gas commuting, get a vehicle that gets 200 miles to the gallon. It's called a motorcycle. Or an electric motorcycle, if they ever make one.

1/15/11  Impossiblasaurs

      Paleontologists tell us about towering beasts that once roamed the Earth, dinosaurs. Natural history museums prominently display the skeletal remains of the great creatures assembled like Tinker-toy sculptures. Hollywood has dramatically portrayed the ferocious monsters in numerous blockbusters. There's only one problem, by our current understanding of biology and physics dinosaurs are impossible.

      Muscle strength is proportional to size. A muscle two times the diameter of another will be four times as strong. But weight increases even more, a muscle twice the diameter will weigh eight times as much. This relationship limits the size of any animal. Calculations indicate the heaviest elephants of today approach this strength to weight limit.

      The largest dinosaurs were many times as big as an elephant. An animal that size wouldn't even have the muscle strength to stand, let alone walk around. Yet large numbers of unearthed dinosaurs bones show they must have existed. The numerous footprints they left behind showed they walked around on land. On top of that there were elephant-size dinosaurs that flew. Imagine the lift needed for that. What gives?

      One can imagine two possibilities. Dinosaurs had super strong muscles, or dinosaurs were super lightweight. My guess as to the biological plausibility of super strong muscles would be just that, a guess. Still, one wonders how different such muscles would be, how much energy can you get out of a calorie and how many calories super strong muscles burn.

      The other possible answer, super lightweight dinosaurs, suggests a simpler solution, Earth's gravity was less in the past. Consider this, an elephant on the lower gravity moon would be just as strong but very much lighter. It could grow much bigger before reaching the strength to weight limit. In other words, grow as big as a dinosaur. And be light enough to fly, too.

      Physicists say gravity is a constant. But have they proven it? They certainly know what gravity does, but not what exactly it is, how it works. So how do they know it is unchanging?

      In any event, something must account for dinosaurs which couldn't exist today by our current understanding. Ponder one more thing, what if an increase in gravity is what caused dinosaurs to go extinct?

12/15/10  Road or Railroad

      People travel a lot more by rail in Europe than in the U.S. On the continent they have lots of commuter trains and high-speed rail, The States have some subways and Amtrak. Clearly Europeans use their railroads differently than Americans. What is largely unseen is the other side of the railroad coin, freight traffic.

      Stateside railroads are mainly used to haul freight. About 40% of fright moves by rail in the U.S, and about 30% goes over the road in trucks. In Europe, on the other hand, only 10% of freight goes by rail and about 45% goes by truck. It's like the Europeans take people out of cars and put them on trains, and take the freight off the trains and put it in trucks.

      Co-ordinating the two very different types of trains isn't easy. Freight trains are much longer and slower, passenger trains are faster and shorter, make more stops, run on tighter schedules, and run more often at peak commuter times. By running very few passenger trains, U.S. railroads move freight much more efficiently than the European roads, at one-sixth the cost of Germany for instance.

      Rail isn't the only difference in how freight travels in the U.S. and Europe. As you can imagine, being a really big peninsula sending freight by ship makes a lot of sense in Europe. You can go from Greece to Finnland by sea. In America that pesky Canada is in the way up north and just as pesky Mexico blocks half the southern route.

      In a way, freight trains make more sense than passenger trains. Which is why there aren't many passenger trains in the U.S. After all, they didn't die out after WWII because the railroads were making too much money on them.

11/22/10  Coffee Break

      Coffee is the number one cash crop in the world. Coffee is also the world's most widely used pharmacological stimulant. Coffee comes in many forms, espresso, latte, drip, instant, freeze-dried, and with many nick-names. A favorite is cuppa joe. This came from WWII, the drink of G.I. Joe. There's also java, as in mocha java, which may or may not come from Java. While coffee is associated with Colombia and not Java, it's not native to South America.

      Possibly the most famous decaffeinated coffee brand is Sanka. The name comes from the French for 'without caffeine', similar to sans culotte which means 'without breeches'. Not that coffee has anything to do with pants, that's a whole 'nother thing. Anyway, Sanka leaves off 'ffiene', a lot like decaf leaves off 'fiene'. Though you might ask, why spell Sanka with a K when the French don't spell caffeine it with a K. It's because Sanka came from Germany and Germans almost always use a K for a K sound. Like canon is kanone. Carl is Karl. Cold is kalt. Cabbage is kraut. Though kraut ain't much like the word cabbage, is it?

      Maybe I could add more coffee trivia, but I'll leave it at that. Consider this entry Fun Facts lite. Sort-of the decaf version. As in not very stimulating.

10/20/10  How's it Feel?

      When you touch something and it feels cold or hot, are you really feeling the temperature of the object? I mean, do your senses extend out of your body into something else? When you walk around bare-footed, why does a stone floor feel cold and the carpeting warm even though the furnace (or sun) is heating everything to the same temperature?

      As you may have guessed, or already knew, you don't feel the temperature of other objects. What you feel is heat loss or gain in your skin. This is interpreted as the temperature of the object you're touching by proxy, so to speak. A metal or stone object will feel colder than a piece of cloth or carpeting at the same temperature because metal and stone are a better conductors so the heat flows out of your body much quicker. That makes it feel colder even though it's not.

      The conductive property of metal can come in handy. For instance, if you need to thaw out a steak, place it on a sheet of metal, or in an unheated frying pan and it will thaw quicker than on a wood cutting board. The heat in the metal will flow into the steak quicker than from wood, and much, much quicker than from the air.

9/30/10  Less is More

      Folks naturally figure if you increase gas mileage you'll save gas. Well, maybe. Obviously you'll use less per trip, but if driving around is cheaper, will you make more trips? I mean, when something costs less we're tempted to use more rather than the same amount or less. For instance, if the price of clothing were cut in half are we likely to buy the same amount and pocket the savings, or fill our closets to overflowing because now it's cheap to be stylish? This brings us to...

Jevons’ Paradox

      In 1865 William Stanley Jevons wrote a book explaining how coal consumption rose rapidly after James Watt introduced his improved steam engine. Watt's engine made coal power more cost effective, leading to more steam engines used for more things. Total coal consumption increased even though coal used for any particular application dropped through increased efficiency.

      Jevons' premise: "[A]ny increase in the efficiency with which energy is employed will cause a concomitant decrease in the price or cost of that resource when measured in terms of work done. Thus, with a lower price/cost per unit of work, more work will be purchased. This additional work need not be for the same product, but it may be displaced into the purchase of new product ranges or work."

      The name of Jevons' book, The Coal Question; An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines. Rather a long, you might say inefficient title. That was the style back then, unlike today where books tend to have short, snappy titles. Maybe people these days have shorter attention spans. Or maybe folks back then did judge a book by its cover.