John Timmer in Ars Technica:

The light weight of a helium atom, which makes it perfect for party balloons and blimps, is also the key to its scarcity. The Earth simply doesn’t exert enough gravitational force to keep it on the planet. Once in the atmosphere, helium will migrate to the stratosphere and be lost to space. All the primordial helium in the Earth’s vicinity when it formed is long since gone, and only flukes of geology have given us the opportunity to study it on Earth

2. Flickr Blog: Photos of Military Decay

My friend Marc has three sets of photos, too, of the former Mather AFB in Sacramento, Calif., where my father was stationed a long time ago.

3. Swap Idea Emerged Early in Case of Russia Agents

Peter Baker, Charlie Savage and Benjamin Weiser in the New York Times

On a Friday afternoon in mid-June, President Obama sat down with advisers in the Oval Office and learned that the F.B.I. planned to round up the largest ring of Russian sleeper agents since the cold war. After discussion about what the agents had done, the conversation turned to the fallout: what to do after the arrests?

In that moment was born a back-to-the-future plan that would play out four weeks later, a prisoner exchange with surreal and even cinematic overtones as Russian and American airplanes met on a sunny tarmac in the heart of Europe on Friday to trade agents and spies much as had been done during a more hostile era.

4. Ride the Trans Siberian, via YouTube

It’s a map and video of the Trans Siberian from Moscow to Vladivostok. I watched the first seven minute segment leaving Moscow. One of the audio options is listening to War and Peace, in Russian, in it’s entirety. Pretty neat. (via Hacker News)

Signs include:

• Chronic Internet users may be found walking aimlessly in circles. They will look a lot like zombies, so be careful not to cut off their heads. Drive the infected to the nearest coffee shop with free wifi. Recovery is typically quick; however reports show, adding a cup of coffee results in immediate recovery in most cases.
• A large number of dead messenger pigeons will be found in the area. Packets flooding out of severed cable and trying to re-route, soak into the messenger pigeon’s feathers, causing them to plummet to their deaths due to overload.
• Affected children and adults may be noted to have a small piece of information, but believe they know everything related to the topic or they are unable to assemble all the information properly. This odd side-effect affects teenagers more than any other age group.
• Watch for an influx of gophers into basements and roadways, as packet flooding causes them to lose their ability to communicate and find direction.
• You might hear odd sounds or voices. Along with packets, you’ll want to watch out for escaped VoIPs. Their population has been growing, making them quite eager to escape when cable is severed. They are typically identified by their repetitive sound, “I can’t hear you!”, although they have been observed to make other sounds as well.

If you experience any of these problems or suspect there is a problem, please contact your local cable provider.

1. Start with a positive attitude. Organic chemistry can be easy. Like math, you need to learn the rules and apply them.
2. You are completely capable of getting an “A” in organic chemistry. To do so, you have to decide to make it priority and dedicate the time to learn it.
3. Make yourself a priority. Getting enough sleep and eating healthy keeps your body and brain functioning top notch. Your brain needs glucose to function. If you are hungry or ate a lot of junk food, your brain is not getting the consistent amount of quality fuel it needs. (For more information read “Nourish – Carbohydrates Fuel Your Brain” http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/carbs.html)
4. Repetition is your friend. There are a number of functional groups to remember. These need to be memorized and spit back like you do with multiplication tables. If you have difficulties memorizing them, carry a print out of the functional groups in your back pocket. When you have brief moments to spare, like standing in a line at the grocery store, pull out the chart and focus on 1-3 of the function groups at a time. Limit yourself to 1-3 at a time, allowing yourself to concentrate on each one fully. Say the name (Not out loud, but inside your head. You wouldn’t want people thinking you are crazy.) Describe the structure. Think about any attributes that make it unique to the others. Picture drawing the structure. Make up useful mnemonics, if needed. Before you know it, you’ll know the functional groups like the back of your hand and it was a pain free experience.
5. Learning the basic concepts makes learning the new concepts easier. A lot of things in organic chemistry build upon one another. By having a solid grasp on the basics, you already have the foundation for many additional concepts.
6. If you get stuck, ask the teacher or a tutor to explain it a different way. A little bit of clarification will often wipe the confused look off you face and put an “Ah ha!” smile in its place.

After giving up caffeine, migraine headaches became a far and few between part of my life.  I would have 2-3 a year versus the caffeine fed 2-3 a week, some of them lasting for multiple days.  What an unpleasant surprise to have the migraines show up again in the last month and be at an increasingly high frequency.  I always knew when the pain portion of these new headaches was about to begin, because my vision would get flaky right before the pain started to creep out from behind my eyes and across my forehead.

What differed about these current migraines, was the fact that my vision typically did not suffer greatly before or during an episode.  I would experience pain behind my eyes and a slight “haze”, but never a measurable vision impairment.

As if a headache is not enough to handle on its own, I had to stop by two DMV offices today.  In North Carolina there are different offices for handling license plates versus driver licenses. The first office did not help or hinder the migraine, despite they needed a second notarization on the car title requiring cash from their conveniently placed ATM with a $3 service charge.

Knowing left from right should be left up to grown-ups.

The second DMV was extremely helpful.  The cheerful DMV lady, glad to have Saturday right around the corner, asked me to smash my head into the visual testing machine 50 other people smashed their sweaty heads into previously. The machine functioned like binoculars, splitting the eyes.  The left column was blurry.  So blurry in-fact, I could barely make out the letter shapes to guess at what they were. The middle column was less blurry and the right column was very clear, but made my right eye feel strained.  How odd.

As I started up my car, renewed license exam complete, it dawned on me, “Dumb ass, you have your contact lenses switched.” I am now the proud owner of a contact lens case with the letters “L” and “R”.

[Dilbert creator Scott] Adams lists four examples of simple things that have been made unusable for him by our modern world’s complexity: service fees on his business checking account, a home video switcher/splitter system, a cellphone upgrade, and consolidating all his insurance policies.

With all due respect to Scott Adams, none of those things is something simple that’s been made complicated. They’re all just complicated.

I’m not arguing that his bank shouldn’t provide frictionless, reasonable service for his business transactions, or that he shouldn’t be able to change his insurance policy; I’m saying that there’s nothing simple about those.

It’s hard enough to keep simple things simple. It’s several orders of magnitude more difficult to keep a difficult thing as easy as possible.

Separately, The Infrastructurist looks at the two recent massive earthquakes in Haiti and Chile and considers why the death tolls were so different:

After a massive 9.5 earthquake hit the country in 1960 (the strongest ever recorded), the Chilean government developed a seismic design code for all new buildings, shown in the image above. According to AIR Worldwide, the country’s building codes were revised again in 1993 to include significant advances over previous versions. And they were wise to do so, given the frequency with which Chile experiences quakes: the country gets hit with a magnitude 7 or higher quake at least once every five years, meaning that the earthquake awareness, both in engineering and building codes, is superior.

There is debate in the comments whether or not the regulations themselves or market interest are the saving grace. One points out that it’s not strictly a black-and-white proposition. There are also geographic differences in the quakes to consider.

Woodford Reserve and Jefferson's Bourbon

While this was not an official experiment and no control groups were used, this was one of the most fun, opinionated, and tasty experiments we’ve conducted @crazylikethat.

For this “experiment” we decided to compare two quality bourbon and then see what kind of foods pair well with them. The bourbons in question, Woodford Reserve and Jefferson’s.

Woodford Reserve, Distiller’s Select by Labrot & Graham is a small batch bourbon full of flavor and a deep butterscotch scent. It has a nice oaky flavor and comes with the burning alcohol (45.2%) zing you’d expect from a whiskey. Fabulous to say the least.

Jefferson’s is a very small batch whisky. So small in fact, we had to head out on a bourbon seeking adventure to find it. The ABC Stores in Raleigh, NC stocked it around the holidays, but were unable to get additional orders fulfilled. Thankfully, the ABC Stores are filled with helpful and knowledgeable people who directed us to the last location in Raleigh, NC still carrying a few bottles. When we hit the front counter with the last four bottles in the city, the staff knew who we were. “You’re the folks people were calling around for.” Indeed. We figured, it isn’t going to go bad and if it is as good as we heard, we have plenty of friends who will appreciate it when they come for a visit.

We were delighted when we opened the first bottle. It had a subtle butterscotch scent and an amazingly smooth finish. I can’t put my finger on the flavor, but it is delicious. If you are looking for a whiskey burn, this is not your drink. If you are looking for quality, this is it!

Results:
Which is the best of the two bourbon? We couldn’t decide. Both bourbon were top-notch and excellent in their own way. We wouldn’t turn our noses up at either of these fine beverages and to feign a preferrence would mean we’d miss out on the absolute goodness of the other.

Pairing:
Like fine cigars complement good scotch, we figured something had to go well with bourbon. We started out with Krispy Kreme glazed donuts. The sugary glaze went rather well with the butterscothiness of the bourbons, but we felt there had to be something even better. We tried a very hard cheddar cheese, which was also good, but not the end-all be-all for bourbon pairing. Finally, we moved on to chocolate. Don’t waste your time with dark chocolate Toblerone. The chocolate was not rich or smooth enough to complement the bourbon well. Ritter Sports dark chocolate was an excellent companion, but I would not call it boubon’s soul mate either. If you know something that pairs well with bourbon, besides more bourbon, we’d love to hear about it and give it a try. We suspect a chicken pot pie or other full meal will give these beverages better respect.

We conducted our experiment in the safety of our own home. No driving was involved for at least 12 hours after the testing. A good night sleep was had by all.

Migraines can leave you feeling like ...

Ah, migraines. If you get them frequently, you have probably come up with a few tricks to help you stay semi-functional throughout the day; otherwise your life would be spent curled up in the fetal position with a pillow over your head to keep the light out.

Migraines like to run a pattern.  Mine start with a dull subtle pain that stays for days and sometimes grows into a more blatant pain that knocks me on my ass. As the migraine progresses:

• Vision wise, the world seems slightly fuzzy.
• A normally, beautiful, sunny day turns into a blinding curse that stabs you behind the eyes and sends you cowering for the shadows, like a vampire.
• Hearing wise, every sound is amplified.
• Food is the thing you eat when you like tasting things twice.

Helpful migraine relief:

• Caffeine. It is also an excellent way to ensure you get re-occuring migraines. (Caffeine and the adenosine receptor: Genetics trumps pharmacology in understanding pharmacology, by Charles Mobbs)
• Sleep.
• Reducing stress. Try some cognitive behavioral techniques like those outlined in “Feel the Way You Want to Feel … No Matter What!” and “The Feel Good Handbook“. These books are not only for people who are stressed or depressed. They teach useful, rational thinking techniques for dealing with life when life happens.
• Brain freeze!  Chug freezer cold milk, ice cream, a Frosty, ice slushy, etc… It does not get rid of the migraine, but it gives great relief. The best way to explain it is, the pain from the “brain freeze” overrides the migraine pain, with a more tolerant and tasty form of pain.

According to Cold Therapy in Migraine Patients: Open-label, Non-controlled, Pilot Study (.pdf), using an ice pack placed on the head might also give relief. Please note, this study did not have a control group, making it possible that participants either experienced a placebo effect or other aspects of the experiment, like resting for 3 hours with a cap on their head, actually gave the relief.

Why does ice appear to work? I have not found a study that spells it out, but correlating what I know about icing injuries and migraines, I would venture to guess the ice reduces the swelling taking pressure off of the nerves that are screaming out in pain.

No matter what your migraine symptoms are, if you are having migraines, it is important to see a doctor.  Arnold would say, “It’s not a tumor.” and move on with his day, but migraines can be your body telling you something is not quite right. Get them checked out.

What  migraine “fixes” do you use to help you get through the day?

Let’s take a brief look at the power of water.

Countertops: Imagine a kitchen counter covered in goo and many hard stuck on  pieces from dinners gone past.  Take a wash cloth soaked with warm water and lightly go over the entire countertop, leaving small puddles in the problem areas.  Walk away for 5-10 minutes.  This will allow time for the dehydrated food particles to rehydrate.  Once in a hydrated state, they come off the counter much more readily.

When you come back, wipe off any loose particles and repeat until the counter is clean.  This will give you time to do other things you love instead of spending your time scrubbing.

It is a good idea to have a final wipe down using a prepared cleaner containing bleach.  While the goo might be gone, you don’t want any lingering bacteria hanging around.  Additionally, you will not want to walk away from your cleaning too long or the water will evaporate, the food particles will dehydrate and you will be back to square one.

Salt Shakers

Removing product labels stuck to glass: How many times have your purchased a product that has a nasty label stuck across it?  The label might not cause the object to be nonfunctional, but who really wants salt & pepper shakers with a craptastic label and scan code staring at them during meals.

Glass is something that can withstand some amount of heat and water, making label removing fairly simple.  You may also find this technique suitable for some plastics and other items.  Using common sense will keep you from destroying whatever you are trying to remove the label from.

To determine the best way to remove labels from glass, I conducted an experiment. To conduct this experiment at home, you’ll need 4 exact objects with product label stickers on them, 4 containers of water: 1 hot, 1 hot with soap, 1 cold and 1 cold with soap.  Place one object in each water container and start a timer. Check in on your experiment frequently to get the most accurate results.

Hot Water & Soap Wins!

To be honest, the cold water time is not completely accurate.  After 2 hours and 15 minutes, the label was still firmly stuck on.  @base10 and I met @KE4ZNR for dinner at Boylan Bridge BrewPub and I checked the results when we got back.  Despite my impatience, it is clear the combination of water and soap was the fastest technique by a landslide.  The heat loosens the glue and the detergent assists in breaking down the compounds used in the glue, taking away its sticking ability.  If you decide to conduct this experiment for yourself, notice how the labels that came into contact with detergent are no longer sticky versus the ones that sat only in water still have tack. The great thing about removing labels in this fashion is, no matter what method you choose, you don’t have to come back in 5 minutes.  The glass will still be sitting in the water, unharmed 24 plus hours later.

We occasionally drive up to Pennsylvania to visit Robin’s family. As it happens, our schedule usually puts us near DC and Baltimore at times that seem too close to rush hour to really want to chance driving I-95 straight through to Philadelphia. We’ve also noticed that I-95 from Fredericksburg to Alexandria is frustratingly stop-and-go. So, on our last few trips, we’ve made ample use of the iPhone’s internal GPS and the Maps application. While we don’t have experience using an Android-based phone or a Blackberry, Google offers much of the same functionality via the browser.

The iPhone’s also been a big help for other travel in New York, Northern California and just our general day trips around central North Carolina.

In that vein, here’s what we’ve found helpful when traveling:

• Seeing where backups are and re-routing around them (see the image to the right for why this is a good idea).
• Maps has added labels to buildings. There are also icons for restaurants, gas stations and such.
• Just being able to use the phone to search for what’s near-by is incredibly helpful. We found a Safeway-hosted Starbucks on an unfamiliar Delaware highway that way.
• The iPhone maps application and Google Maps both provide info on public transit in many cites. In New York, we could get directions that mixed the subway and walking and included departure times.
• Use Google street view to scope a couple streets over for food ideas.

There are also situations we’d like more assistance with:

• If traffic is “backed up,” it’d be helpful to know if it’s affect all lanes.
• Knowing where tolls are, what the toll is, and the status of E-ZPass lanes.
• If construction has moved a bus stop. Admittedly, this isn’t easy, but, over Labor Day weekend, we were a little frustrated trying to find the right stop for a bus that completely bypassed the street we were on in Lower Manhattan.

There’s also a caveat; Map locations and pinpoints are approximations. There are a number of restaurants and stores that aren’t accurately mapped, beyond being on the same block as where the map shows them.

Sure, adventuring in the unknown and finding your own way is a lot of fun, we’ve found solving small needs infinitely less frustrating when we can see we’re only a two block walk, or half-mile driving detour away from what we need. That keeps us happy travelers, eager to see what’s around the next bend with our own eyes.

Towel dry before opening the shower curtain.
One of the dreadful parts of winter is stepping out of the warm shower and feeling the cooler air. While the coolness created by evaporation might be a nice effect during the warmer months, some find it less than pleasant in the winter. By keeping your towel within easy reach, you can dry off first in the warm environment created behind the shower curtain. Sure, evaporation is still occurring, but in a slightly more toasty environment.

I personally enjoyed my grandfather’s solution to this problem. He installed several heat lamps in the ceiling of his bathroom. No matter what the season, you were head to toe warm in that bathroom!

Wear mittens instead of gloves.
Let’s talk surface area. With gloves, each and every finger has its own barrier to the environment. That means the cold can creep in from all directions around each finger. When wearing mittens, not only is there less surface area in contact with the cold, your fingers can snuggle and keep each other warm.

Don’t drink alcohol.
While alcohol feels warm going down, it actually causes your body temperature to drop. The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics has a nice article on “Effects of Alcohol in the Cold“.

Wear a hat … and a scarf too for that matter.
While losing most of your body heat through your head appears to be a myth, wearing a hat on your head will still keep you warmer than if you didn’t. Any exposed area of your body can experience heat loss. Typically, in colder weather, people bundle up with a nice thick coat, boots and gloves. This creates a barrier between the body and the elements, reducing the amount of heat loss. If you leave your head and face uncovered, these areas will be the primary sources of heat loss on your body, simply because there is no barrier to prevent it. There is a simple fix. Put a hat on your head and pull that scarf up over your face a bit. You’ll find yourself considerably warmer.

For more information on the physics of heat loss:

• How Warm is an Igloo (.pdf) is an interesting paper on how heat from a human body effects the temperature and flow within an Igloo.
• Heat Loss From the Nude Body and Peripheral Blood Flow at Temperatures of 22 degrees C to 35 degrees C (.pdf)
• The Physical Laws of Heat Loss From the Human Body (.pdf)

As Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne would say, “Oh the weather outside is frightful, But the fire is so delightful, And since we’ve no place to go, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”