Coffee Klatch

Scientists have harnessed the power of gecko feet to create a unique kind of adhesion power.

For years, scientists have tried, without great success, to find a way to reproduce the gravity-defying abilities of gecko lizards, which are so good at climbing that they can cling to a glass surface with just one toe.

The animals’ special talent is the result of molecular interactions between their foot hairs and the surface material.

Because the foot hairs are so small, they can get extra close to the surface, where fluctuating charges of molecules inside the hairs attract opposite fluctuating charges of molecules on the surface, much the way opposite ends of magnets attract.

A team of scientists from the University of Akron, Ohio and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed synthetic gecko foot hairs made from hundreds of strings of carbon molecules called nanotubes embedded vertically into a plexiglass material.

The fibers exhibit adhesion forces 200 times greater than those measured in gecko lizards.

The article goes on to describe how this discovery (pardon the pun) could revolutionize the dry-stick industry, affecting anything that would need to be unstuck and restuck. Kinda like Post-It Notes on steroids. Geckos can hang upside very easily, so 200 times that would be very strong.

For details on how the process actually works, as well as where they want to go from here, you can read the whole story at Discovery Channel News.

Today was my first Italian 101 class. I think it’s going to be quite fun. And relatively easy. For me, anyway. Of course, I enjoy learning languages and am pretty good at it, so it’s right up my alley.

It’s four days a week (and, yes, four credits), for 50 minutes each day. The teacher is friendly and forgiving. I think she’ll make the class fun and not just “sit and listen.” The textbooks were quite expensive, but other than that, it’s great. I have a small fee for submitting my Tuition Remission form, and that’s all. It’s nice to work at a university!
I decided not to take the German class this year. That would put me at 7 credits, and 6 is technically the max we’re allowed to take. I could probably get authorization to go over, but I figure this is my first full semester working here and I’d better ease into taking courses. Plus, I know I have a tendency to jump into things “gung ho” and worry about how hard it might be later. My first priority has to be to my job, with class coming second, so taking just one right now is probably the smart thing for me to do.

I figure that, if my current German proficiency is roughly equal to 2 or 2.5 years of college-level German classes, that taking two years of any language will get me an acceptable level of competency. And then I can take additional if I want to pursue actual fluency. What fun! Beside Italian, I’ve got Spanish, French, German, and Chinese available here at Butler. Gotta love it!!

Current music: Adiemus IV: The Eternal Knot

It’s been a long four days, but it’s done. After doing some serious weeding of part of our Reference Collection, we figured that we could fill in all the holes that were created and clear off one whole stack, which could then be dismantled, allowing for more student seating.

(FYI, on average: 20 books = 1 shelf; 6 shelves = 1 bay; 4 bays (usually) = 1 side; 2 sides = 1 range. Therefore, 1 range = 8 bays or 48 shelves. Or close to 1,000 books.)

After removing all the weeded materials and shifting the books to fill the space, we were just able to get one whole range cleared off. But then, after talking the Dean of the Libraries, we agreed that an empty pocket in the back corner of the Reference Department would not be as good as removing one range from the front of one side. Because of how things are arranged, the effect would actually be more balanced. Plus it would create actual space in front of the office doors of two of the Reference Librarians. Final effect: a roomier Reference Dept.

After shifting everything back one range, it worked out that we had lots of extra space on that side of the room, plus a full bay or more empty at the end. So I ended up taking the Career Reference section (about 6 shelves total) and moving it from the Beginning of the Reference Collection to the End of it. Then I could take the encyclopedias and other materials in the Religion & History subjects and shift them forward, spacing them out and creating a more balanced arrangement of free space on the shelves. Before that, the first half of the collection (Library of Congress A - KZ) was crammed together rather tightly, while the second half (including all the Gale Literature series) had plenty of free space per shelf.

Now it’s shifted, balanced, and new shelf labels are coming soon. It was my goal to get this done before classes started. It’s 4:00pm on Tuesday and classes begin at 8:00am tomorrow morning. On the first shift, to clear a range, I had someone helping me shift. On Friday, Sunday afternoon, all day Monday and much of today, I’ve been working by myself. Those that might have helped me had deadlines for preparing instructional materials, which I didn’t have, so at least I was able to work on this, to try getting it done before school officially starts. Since I re-shifted much of the LC range A - F today, the end result is that I’ve physically moved every book in our Reference Collection myself. In just the last few days.

I am SO glad it’s done. You might not think it’s that much, but books can be really heavy. Especially older ones. And when you’re picking them up and carrying them around bookstacks to their new location, hefting them up (or down) to the appropriate shelf, then turning around and doing it again, and again, and again… it gets tiring. Whew! If you do the math, it’s roughly 10,000 books I’ve moved in the last three days. No wonder I’m tired.

Time to go home and totally veg! (Boy that looks weird! But although “vedge” gets the right pronunciation, it certainly not the right spelling! Oh well.)

It’s amazing what goofy or nonsensical things people will do in the name of fashion. If it is perceived that something is “cool,” it doesn’t seem to matter much if it’s safe or attractive or even practical. “Cool” is critical, and fashion is determined thereupon.

Some examples of what I’m talking about:

• Reclining the driver’s seat in a car so far back that the car’s frame between the two doors blocks your vision and you can barely see over the hood (yes, I saw this today)
• Females wearing pants so low cut that they can’t bend over to pick up something off the ground without scandalizing the entire room
• Playing around with fireworks
• Lying in the middle of a highway at night because you saw it in a movie
• Alaric tells me kids at school wear visors upside down and backwards
• Trying ever more extreme skateboarding tricks (ever seen all the video clips circling the Internet with people wiping out?)
• Drugs
• Getting a cell phone, but never turning it off when you’re in a meeting or class
• Wearing your pants hanging down off your butt just because a rapper does it

It’s like on the second Back to the Future movie, where kids wore their pants inside out because it was cool.

As for me, I’m with Gilda Radner, who said: “I base my fashion taste on what doesn’t itch.”

Current music: Autumn, by George Winston

There are lots of interesting and useful (or not) weather utilities on the web.

The Weather Channel has a nice desktop utility.
So does WeatherBug, and, NO, it’s NOT Spyware!

Another good overall program, and probably my favorite over the free versions of the two I just mentioned, is Weather Depot. I like it because you’ve got the hourly forecasts, and the next couple days, and a map and current conditions all on the default start screen.

Weather Watcher is another free program that does the same basic things.

If you use Firefox, you MUST download the ForecastFox extension. It keeps the forecast (customized to your settings, and even including a popup of the radar) available in any select toolbar. For instance, I keep the radar, current conditions, and the forecasts for today, tonight, and the next three days all on the same menu bar that has File, Edit, View, etc., on my web browser. Lots of information at your fingertips, displayed in an otherwise unused portion of your browser window. That’s what good utilities should always do!

Here’s a cute one that I just found this morning. It’s called Froggy. It’s a cute little program that shows a frog in a jar on your desktop. He climbs the ladder and basks in sun, or shivers under an umbrella, based on the weather. You can even pick different locations and have him display the weather conditions as you pick them.

Current music: None. I’m working the Reference Desk for a few hours while we greet new students and parents. Butler University classes begin this week!

They say that smell is the strongest scent tied to memory. So it’s no wonder that I have a particular cologne that conjures up specific memories.

In March 2004, I went on a 10-day trip to Italy with the Cornerstone University Chorale. I had just bought a bottle of Lagerfeld, which I got hooked on when my college roommate knocked a bottle off a shelf onto the tiled floor. (It smashed behind one of our recliners and the room smelled like it for weeks.)

Anyway, I hadn’t used it in a long time until I bought that bottle before our trip. Now, every time I put some on, I’m mentally transported back to Italy. In particular, to the room I was staying in in Rome, where I remember hurriedly trying to change for a concert. We arrived in Rome in the late afternoon, and by the time we got our luggage, got to our bus, and got to where we were staying, we hardly had any time to change before we ran out to do a concert that same night. A couple other evenings were less hurried, but they all involved the smell of Lagerfeld, since that was the only cologne I brought along.

So now, every time I use it, I’m taken for a moment back to Rome. Ahhh… Rome!

Current music: Conversations With God, a Windham Hill Collection

Unless you’ve been actively running a blog for a while, you probably haven’t run into this. Spam is a term generally applied to unsolicited, unrequested emails. Those aren’t done one at a time by a person, except when someone posts an unrelated commerical-type email to multiple mailing lists or discussion boards. Typically, the spammer uses a program to send the same message to thousands of people, hoping even a few will click the links it contains, so the spammer can be paid.

This has also become somewhat common on blogs and wikis. They find a blog post to comment on or a wiki to alter, and add a message containing links (to websites they’ll be paid something for if you visit). Sometimes it’s dozens of links in the one posting, other times (especially if the spammer is trying to be cautious) just a couple.

I’ve been using WordPress for my blogs since early Spring 2005. It’s very flexible and customizable and easy to work with. Another nice feature is that it can require approval from me for comments that are posted containing more than a set number of links. Instead of getting comments left with tons of links to online gambling sites, for instance, I’ve gotten an email from “myself” asking me to approve or delete the coment. I don’t have to go looking for comments that are unrelated and link ridden, and I don’t have to monitor every single comment if I don’t want to. And still it will catch practically all blog spam.

If you have your own website that can use PHP or MySQL, you can probably use WordPress. If you don’t have a site like that, check out WordPress’s list of hosts. Having someone host your own quality website can cost as little as $6.95 a month. I’m not sure if any of the free ones would allow you to set up WordPress on the site, but for around $7 you can do quite a lot with your own website, from running a quality blog to selling things you’ve made. For $7.95 a month you can use DreamHost to do even more. That’s what I use for all my web needs any more.

Anyway, if you find yourself struggling with getting blog spam, find a program like WordPress that can readily handle it for you.

Currently watching: The Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Mitchell

We watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang tonight. It was taped off of TV a long time ago, and we even had to fast forward through commercials. The first thing that I noticed once the movie started was that it was produced by Albert R. Broccoli. Yes, THE Albert R. Broccoli. The one that produced all the James Bond movies! How weird to think of him doing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! When this movie was made, Broccoli had already produced five James Bond movies.

Anyway, the credits progressed, and I saw that the full title of the movie was Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Go figure! All five of the 007 movies were titled Ian Fleming’s… too. Ian Fleming wrote the novel that the movie was based on. It’s the Broccoli-Fleming connection!

And as an extra gem, Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay for the movie. Oh, and he also wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice. Very nice!

Currently watching: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

There are plenty of things that we see which require us to suspend disbelief. For us to enjoy cartoons, for instance, we have to be able to set aside the thought that “that could never happen” and just take in the cartoon as it was meant to be viewed. An example is Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. Every one of those cartoons is LOADED with things that could never happen. If you start picking apart all the non-real things, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy the cartoon. Plus you’d probably get an ulcer. Cartoons are meant to be fun and to bring laughter or at least some lightness to our lives. Spending time fretting over why the rocks don’t fall or why the traps only work on the coyote just isn’t worth it and ruins the cartoon.

The same can be said for movies. There are plenty of movies that are made in the same spirit. They’re not intended to be “serious” movies, and so they shouldn’t be viewed that way. You need to set aside your disbelief and just enjoy the movie for what it is. There’s no sense getting bent out of shape over a plot point or something that just wouldn’t happen in the real world. Sure, there are elements of quality filmmaking that keep the audience from reaching that point, but even with movie that aren’t quite at that level, they’re meant to be enjoyed, not worked up over. Why come down on movies about this? Who needs more stress in their lives? If you can’t watch a movie without your blood pressure rising because you can’t suspend your disbelief for a couple yours, you should just avoid them.

Movies, like many things in life, can be a source of joy or of stress. I choose to take joy from these things, rather than grief. We’ve been given life, intelligence, and creativity to enjoy them and use them well. That’s something that we can all aspire more to.

As the theme song from Mystery Science Theater 3000 says,

“If you’re wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself ‘It’s just a show,
I should really just relax.’ “

Current music: The Memory of Trees, by Enya

So I don’t know if this is a common fashion thing, or a black thing, or some kind of fashion subculture thing, but lately I’ve noticed a lot guys walking down the street (as Eve puts it) “holding their crotch.” Have you noticed this?

My instinct tells me that it’s a natural aftereffect from wearing pants that are so baggy that they fall half off the butt. It looks more like they’re holding their pants up than holding their crotch. Still, it’s an odd site to see on the street, and it makes me wonder what kind of image that’s supposed to help portray. As if being out in public with 6 inches or more of your boxers showing because your pants are so baggy they fall off your butt without help didn’t make them look goofy enough. At least when they’re “holding their crotch” they’re usually wearing a long tshirt or something, so you’re not seeing that AND their boxers.

Or is this some other kind of fashion statement? Am I attributing caring about pants falling down to a group of people who are trying for a newer and creepier look altogether? Do any of you readers have more information on this phenomenon?