Cheap Thoughts: buoyant disposables

With a built-in air pocket, this can might have stayed at the top of Falls Lake, not the bottom.


On my greenway ride last weekend I couldn’t stop staring at the trash floating on the surface of Crabtree Creek. The trash was mostly plastic bottles: sealed but empty plastic bottles, that is, and therefore buoyant.

I thought it would be far easier to fish floating trash out of the creek as opposed to submerged trash. Empty plastic bottles are easy to fetch, but what about empty aluminum cans? Most go under as soon as they are filled with water.

What if all disposable bottles and cans were mandated to float? What if each was made with air pocket built in that would force the empty container to float? I think it would make it far easier to corral trash that floats before it fouls our seas than trash that doesn’t float. Recycling the materials would be boosted as well, since containers which might have ordinarily been flushed into the oceans could be better recovered.

I wonder if something like this could be done.

On being a Gladys Kravitz

Mrs. Kravitz


I’ve heard that some neighbors are calling me a “Gladys Kravitz.” For you youngsters not familiar with the TV show Bewitched, Mrs. Kravitz was the nosy neighbor of Samantha and Darren Stephens who was always alerting her disinterested husband, Abner, to the strange goings-on in the Stephens household. Gladys is always right, of course, but that does not make the comparison … um, flattering.

I love my neighbors and would do anything for them. It doesn’t matter who they are, what they look like, how much money they make, or anything. It doesn’t even matter if they don’t see eye-to-eye with me. If you’re my neighbor, you’re my people. It’s as simple as that.
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Cheap Thoughts: focused magnetic fields

Magnetic lines of force


I’ve been thinking that there must be a way to focus magnetic fields to very precise shapes. As I drove to work this week, I imagined my car driving through such a field in a way that my car’s speakers vibrated from the field’s effects, creating sound as the car moved through it. I think it would be a neat trick to get sound from a car’s speakers independent of whether or not they’re connected to anything!

For a while I’ve been thinking that perhaps magnetic fields could be used as antennas. Rather than have a big, metal dish to collect signals toward a focal point, a magnetic field could be generated that would invisibly reflect radio signals toward a focal point. By strengthening or weakening the field, the virtual dish could be expanded or contracted as needed, raising or lowering the gain.

Magnetic fields are circular in nature and the challenge would be how to create a parabolic shape with a field. I also have no idea if a magnetic field can even be made to reflect radio signals. It’s an interesting idea, nonetheless.

Update 25 March: I am reminded that a device exists that can beam sound to a remote location, only for this one the receiver isn’t just a speaker, it’s a human brain! Behold MEDUSA, which makes use of the microwave auditory effect.

Cheap Thoughts: pollen and rain

We all know what role pollen plays in “May Flowers,” but what about its role in “April Showers?”

It’s well understood how clouds are formed by water condensing on particulates high in the atmosphere. Certainly pollen would be among these particulates, wouldn’t you think?

Put another way, do plants have the ability to actually make it rain?