respublica

Spring cleaning anyone?

Is spring cleaning still a thing? Back in the really old days it was the thing to do, but back then they were without modern conveniences like electric vacuum cleaners and washer/dryers etc. That type of work required some outdoor time and winter just wasn't the time. But Spring Cleaning is still discussed and this article from the London Daily Mail tells us some mistakes we make when spring cleaning.

If you do spring cleaning that is. I have to believe after going through all this advice that the article is sponsored by a baking soda company.

1. Dusting with a dry anti-static cloth.  Use a damp cloth of some type, it picks up more dust rather than moving it around
2. Emptying the vacuum cleaner when it's totally full.  Empty it when it's about 2/3's full so it works more efficiently.
3. Don't clean your windows on a sunny day, it will cause streaks. It also advises to clean windows with vinegar followed by a buffing with newspaper. I've tried this in the past and by the time I'm finished my hands are black with newsprint.
4. Washing machines do not clean themselves. Every now and then run a clothes free load with baking soda in the drum and vinegar in the detergent drawer. I'm not sure of this one, isn't the combination of baking soda and vinegar how science fair kids make volcano's?
5. Kitchen sponges have about 10 million types of germs and your mop has even more. Wash it after every use. How do you wash a sponge mop? Do these people still use the old fashioned mop head?
6. Don't scrub a carpet spill. Instead sprinkle baking soda over it and gently press down with a paper towel. Vacuum when dry. I've heard that if red wine is spilled on carpet quickly pour some white wine over it. Does this work? I do not know.
7. Clean your mattress by sprinkling baking soda all over it, wait 3 hours and then vacuum it up.
8. Putting smelly shoes outside does not air out the smell. They suggest putting dried tea bags in them to absorb the moisture.
9. Don't use chemicals to unclog drains, instead bring back the baking soda and vinegar.

Almost April

March has been the dreariest month, with rain, chill, more rain, one or two nice days then cloudy. We needed the rain, no doubt about that, it's been a dry winter, but these clouds...ugh.

Yesterday there was about two hours when it gave us some hope, a bit of sun, a bit of blue sky, then boom, back came the gray. And it's so wet right now, there is standing water everywhere, squishy mushy lawns. We even dropped the "Field Closed" sign on our soccer field to protect the turf from getting smashed by people and dogs.

But for one shining hour we had this.

Awful traffic issues

What is going on with all the one-way drivers on St. Louis highways lately? There have been so many. Are the on-ramps not marked well enough for people to realize they can't go that way?

Also, with the early morning rain today, there have been tons of crashes all over the place. On 170 southbound near the Forest Park Parkway there was a 5 car pile-up. This is a bad spot, drivers wanting to get on the parkway from 170 find the exit lane to be very narrow and comes up with very little room to navigate. Accidents are frequent here and as someone who gets off at this point very often I find myself holding my breath until I'm free of 170. Also today with the rain, I'd guess the disappearance of lane lines has something to do with all this. Darkness and MoDOT painted lane lines are accidents waiting to happen. Someday MoDOT will begin using lane paint which will show up under these circumstances.

Oh, and, Mattresses 32  Ladders 42

About those pillows

So many stories on social media begin with a headline which almost guarantees you'll click it and after some minutes of debate I decided against my better judgement to click this one. Even traditional mainstream newspapers put these type of stories up hoping to get hits on their site. This one sounded just gross enough for me to want to know what's going on.

Headline: How to clean your pillows, because they're full of dead bugs.

Tell me, wouldn't you be tempted to see what this is all about? It's a story from USAToday.

In essence here are the facts as laid out in the article: "pillows are ideal breeding grounds for dust mites and the flu. The research stated that after two years, approximately 1/3 of a pillow’s weight contains dead skin, dust mites (which eat the dead skin), and droppings (poop from all those mites)! Additionally, 10% of people and 80% of allergy sufferers are allergic to proteins found in waste and decomposed dust mites!"

1/3 of your pillow's weight comes from icky stuff after 2 years! Ok, instead of going ahead and following the advice from this author on how best to wash our pillows, I plan to use a couple of the dozen Bed Bath and Beyond coupons I get in the mail every other day and go buy new ones.

The problem with buying new pillows is that there are so many varieties to choose from. Ever walked through the pillow area in stores? There are way too many different ones all claiming to provide the best, most comfortable sleep. I've even touched the "My Pillow" advertised on tv constantly and it's the thinnest pillow I've ever seen, almost like sleeping without one.

So what to do? Foam? Down, microfiber? Anti-bug?

 

Where members of the House of Representatives eat lunch

Our daughter Katie who works for the Oversight Committee, took a picture of the House of Representative's cafeteria yesterday and this shot is amazing to me. This place is for members and their staffs. I've always imagined all these people leaving the building and heading for local lunch places, but certainly they did not do that yesterday. The lunchroom workers must have been overwhelmed.

The place where politics and food collide.

Why Baseball Games are so Darn Long

Someone finally did a little investigating into why baseball games go so long. The length of games is a reason why I'd never want to have season tickets and feel obligated to attend all those games. At least watching at home gives you an option to read something while watching or taking a time out to walk the dog, make dinner, whatever. At the stadium you're kind of stuck in your seat beyond bathroom breaks.

Grant Brisbee, a writer for SB Nation, a sports website, compiled a comparison to two very similar games, one from 1984 and the other from 2014. The data looked like this:

On April 13, 1984, the Mets played the Cubs at Wrigley Field. The home team won, 11-2. Both teams combined to throw 270 pitches. Both teams combined to allow 27 baserunners, and 74 batters came to the plate. There was exactly one mid-inning pitching change.

On April 17, 2014, the Brewers played the Pirates at PNC Park. The home team won, 11-2. Both teams combined to throw 268 pitches. Both teams combined to allow 27 baserunners, and 75 batters came to the plate. There was exactly one mid-inning pitching change.

The game from 1984 lasted two hours and 31 minutes.

The game from 2014 lasted three hours and six minutes.

The aim for this study was to find out what made the difference in the length of the two games.

You may believe the difference in time was due to more commercials, but no, that is not the case. This effort by SB nation is amazing, they watched both games with a stopwatch or some such and related the time and details for every inning even giving you quotes from the announcers. If you like baseball you'll like all this.

But in the end, the reason the current games are much longer is because of the length of time between pitches. Pitchers today are taking way more time to throw the ball after they receive it from the catcher.

The author of this piece said, "I tallied up all the pitches in both games that we’ll call inaction pitches — pitches that resulted in a ball, called strike, or swinging strike, but didn’t result in the end of an at-bat or the advancement of a runner. These are the pitches where the catcher caught the ball and threw it back to the pitcher, whose next step was to throw it back to the catcher."

The total time for the inaction pitches in 1984 — the elapsed time between a pitcher releasing one pitch and his release of the next pitch — was 32 minutes and 47 seconds.

The total time for inaction pitches in 2014 was 57 minutes and 41 seconds.

Pitchers are taking too much time to actually throw the ball!  Keep your eyes on them when you next watch a game.

Dollar coins

I spent some time yesterday during a rainy morning rolling up all the loose change we've been emptying into a container. Part of the change happened to be several dollar coins which got me to wondering just how often these things are used. We sure don't use them. Someone wrote me after I tweeted this question and said that Metro Link uses them and these dollar coins are given as change.

I looked up the dollar coin history which was enacted by the US Mint in order to hopefully phase out the paper dollars since those wear out fairly quickly and have to be replaced. But why haven't they been commonly used? I learned several things.

The first dollar coins were big and fairly heavy, think silver dollars. In 1979 the government produced a lighter, smaller dollar coin, the Susan B. Anthony. However, these were almost identical in size to the quarter coin, with ridges around the circumference and the same metal makeup. They were mistaken for quarters. It got so ridiculous these were nicknamed the Carter Quarter.

In 2000 the Mint issued the gold dollar coin, gold being the look of it, not the substance. It had the face of the Shoshone Native American Sacagawea. It also had a smooth edge around it so that it could be easily distinguished from the quarter. Interestingly we have several of these and one appears to be worth quite a bit more than one dollar.

If the Sacagawea coin is marked 2000 with a P under the 2000, it is being offered on some coin sites for over 500 dollars. We have two of these. But we aren't coin collectors and most likely this amount is not true, kind of like the constant fake stories of how much certain Beany Babies are worth.

However, I may continue to look into this. I do wonder, though, how many store clerks would recognize that these are worth a dollar if you handed one over to buy a coke or some such.

As for the NCAA basketball brackets

I've been part of a small group of family and friends who joined together to form a bracketology group and we all chose are picks for each game in the NCAA tournament. After each round the brackets showed how each person did and the order from first to last. Now that the tournament is down to 4 many of us are out, not having picked any of the 4 while others have 1 or two teams still standing. I have two, Gonzaga and North Carolina and luckily for me they don't have to play each other in the semi finals.

Monday morning highway debris tally

Ladders 31

Mattresses 40

Thus far the 2017 total. And these are just the numbers which get reported.

Wedding rings orbiting in space

Here is a story which does not answer one question.

"European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who has been aboard the International Space Station since November, posted photo to social media of two wedding rings floating in micro gravity.

The flight engineer from France tweeted that he carried in his personal items the wedding bands of two friends tying the knot this Summer."

The story link which is pretty much the same on every site which carried it is pretty much the same and has a photo of the two wedding rings floating in space. But as far as I can tell from the photo from the story, the rings are not tethered to anything so how does he get them back in?

In the journalistic world of who, what, where, why and how, the "how" is missing.