Category Archives: Random Tangent

Believe it or Not

Believe it or Not

By Michael Pickering

Praying_Mantis_Mating_European-30
Praying Mantis

As a culture, we are obsessed with bugs.  We view all bugs, insects, beetles, and especially spiders as being nefarious.  The only general exceptions that come to mind are butterflies and ladybugs.  Even people who do not know the diet of the larvae and the beetles think they are cute.  But in this world view, the bug daddy of all of our fears is bacteria.  With the constant reminder of bacteria-contaminated food recalls and drug-resistant bacteria, we freak out.  Fungus is relegated to a minor role because most people think it only infects milk, cheese, and bread where the result is unsavory but not dangerous.  If your feet itch or you have a yeast infection, you consider it a treatable nuisance.

This is a skewed thought balance.  The crawly, multi-legged creatures fall into several categories: pernicious (usually economic damage), beneficial (usually predators of the former), symbiotic, etc.  One of the least populated categories is dangerous.  Similarly, most bacteria are benign or beneficial.  The rare, dangerous bacteria are mostly selected for by our overuse of antibiotics in medicine and more importantly in animal husbandry, where a pound is used for every gram used in medicine.  The devastation caused by fungus is mostly known to farmers, ranchers, and premature neonates, where it is the leading cause of death.

roach fossil
Cockroaches have been around for millions of years. Image from www.fossilmuseum.com

We despise flies, maggots, and cockroaches.  Cockroach larvae would also be reviled and feared, if ever seen.  This abhorrence is based on the notion that they spread germs.  Everyone knows that flies land on poop and on rotting things where maggots are subsequently found, and that cockroaches come from sewers.  They are very germy, very fungal places indeed.  However, that is exactly why the fly spends ground time where it does, and why the roach travels in sewers.  They and their larvae’s principal diet consists of bacteria and fungi.  Just as pigs to truffles, flies and roaches are attracted by smells.  Because the bacteria and fungi spores arrive airborne, they arrive long before the scent attracts the predators, so their colonies are well-established.

Flies lay eggs on rotting things for the abundance of food available for their larvae.  Not the fruit or vegetation, nor the poop, but the bugs feeding on the substrate.  Flies and roaches don’t transport germs, they eat them.  Aside:  With high sugar vegetation such as fruit, the fungus also causes fermentation, making ethanol.  Fruit flies that have been attacked by a wasp have been observed to self-medicate by moving to a “higher proof” fruit, because the wasp larvae implanted in them cannot tolerate the alcohol as well as the flies, thus killing the majority of the intruders.

Bacteria yet remain the scariest to us.  We are so phobic that we try to sterilize everything, including our mouths, our skin, our dwellings and especially our hospitals.  The truth is that we need bacteria to be healthy.  The biome needs bacteria to exist.  The reason hospital bacteria are so virulent and life-threatening is because the antibiotic cleaning agents we use kill 99% of the germs.  The one percent is the territory of the resistant bacteria.  The price the drug resistant bacteria pay for that property renders them non-competitive with the wild-type.  Without the 99% around, they can proliferate.  Aside:  That’s why, when you have a bacterial infection, the doctor insists that you take ALL of the pills.  Most of the unpleasant symptoms are gone after one or two pills, yet you still have a jar of pills.  The doctor is taking care of the one-percenters, the “hells angels” too.

Our mouths, intestines and skin would be dysfunctional were it not for our unique bacterial symbiotes.  Perhaps you have heard the popular parlor question, “what is the germiest part of the human body?”  Most people guess the nether regions, like the anus, or the feet.  In fact, it is the mouth.  Unheard of new strains of bacteria are yet being discovered in the human mouth.  Although healthy urine is sterile, a large part of normal stool is composed of living and dead bacteria.  Manure is always involved in produce recalls due to the presence of dangerous E. coli.  The most difficult type of “food” poisoning to remedy are the ones caused by bacterial invaders that displace the symbiotes in our lower intestine.  Eccrine sweat, which the body produces to regulate temperature and is most abundantly produced on the palms/soles and scalp, includes an antibiotic peptide that protects the resident bacteria.  So it is my opinion that we should use bactericidal cleaning agents sparingly and judiciously.  Don’t use antibacterial mouth washes daily – just when you have an infection like swollen gums or a sore on your cheek.  Do not try to sterilize your skin – use mild, high-fat soap when washing hands and bathing.  Our skin is hydrophobic; don’t make it dysfunctional with strong cleansers and detergents.  I believe that a large percentage of body odor issues and general skin health problems are created by misguided, overly-aggressive cleaning practices and bactericidal-spiked deodorants.

Back to cockroaches, whose presence I think make cities habitable.  Besides micromanaging the microbes in our cities, they are a balanced, healthy diet for mammals and so are a popular food in many parts of the world.  Rats and domestic cats find them irresistible too.  I’m reminded of a conversation with a visitor to our booth at the Pittsburg Conference one year.  He introduced himself as the “head shit chemist” of his state and city.  He mused about why he wasted state money on buying sophisticated, expensive air monitoring equipment for his sewer workers.  The workers had an inviolate rule about entering sewers, no matter what the expensive device reported about the quality of the air – no roaches = no entry!

maggots
Photo Credit: Cory Doctorow

Maggots are also beneficial.  Their merits have been praised in the medical literature as far back as the Greek physician Galen, during wars and for the victims in serious accidents involving exposed wounds.  An exposed wound on an immobile person is an ideal host for bacteria and fungi.  The flies eventually arrive, delivering the maggot “maids” who clean the wound, including the dead flesh, and leave the healthy parts intact.  Their metabolic heat helps to keep the patient warm if exposed to cold weather.  When I was in high school, there was an article in the LA Times about a lady who had plunged into a canyon in the Angeles Crest Mountains during winter and was not discovered for several days.  She was pinned in the car and had serious lacerations on her face, as her head had broken the door window.  Her survival was attributed to the maggots on her face – no germs or rotting flesh present, and enough heat generated to prevent hypothermia.

When observing nature, your senses, your beliefs and your emotions are all involved.  Adjust your dials accordingly.

Ripley did not care whether his writers’ submissions were true or not.  They just had to “sound good, ring true.”

Believe it or not.

The Great One

-By Michael Pickering

One tour of Denali National Park is a bus ride on a dirt and stone road.  The buses are old but so well designed that they are easy to maintain in good working order and well suited to the motorway.  The motorway is in itself a thing of beauty and wonder.  A notch on the flank of a mountain that persists, with some hand maintenance, intact in spite of the onslaught of enormous amounts of erosive rain, snow, and wind.  It is a day replete with photo opportunities, epic vistas, glaciers disguised as mountains, wildlife and flowers, and the lore of Alaska.

Denali Alaska State Flower – the Forget Me Not

When anyone on the bus sees a critter they yell out and the tour guide/bus driver stops and adjusts the position so that all who want a photo can get a good shot.  The grizzlies are much smaller than the famous Kodiaks, as they eat little meat.  They are also blonde, not dark brown, so they are easy to spot at a distance.

Grizzly Crossing Grizzly Bear and her cubs

Denali is the indigenes’ name for Mount McKinley.  It was and is formed by a rising granite pluton that is still growing.  His wife, Mount Foraker, was similarly formed.  All the posters of Mt. McKinley on display had the named taped over and the handwritten DENALI in its place.

Denali National Park and Preserve Denali

When the old world migrants traveled across the land bridge to Alaska, they encountered two main tribes and their languages.  The descendants of these peoples in the lower 48 states are Apaches and Navahos, as evidenced by custom and vocabulary.  Native Alaskans call themselves “sourdoughs,” although all those that I met did not know the origin of the term.  Being a Californian, I of course informed them.  Non-natives can achieve “sourdoughness” by staying for three to four years.  It is sort of a tenure track.  To a person, they are Alaskan.  We, the other 49, are America.  The sourdoughs like to tease Texans (who doesn’t?) by telling them that if Alaska was cut in half, Texas would be the third largest state.  They are also welcoming and generous.  One sensed my interest in plants and spontaneously gave me a recipe for a hypoallergenic flower infusion called “homesteaders honey.”  Of course I will.  

The grandeur of Alaska is enough to draw worldwide tourism, as the languages spoken on our train ride and bus tour can attest.  For us, however, it was our first opportunity to visit our daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, who had moved to Anchorage a year earlier.  The train ride across the state and bus tour in the park were our mutual amusement. 

Me (left) and the family Mt. Eielson

The title of this column is “Random Tangents.”  It was assigned to me by the editor, Wendy.  The “T” part I get; I regularly spout them during discussions.  To me, the “T’s” are perfectly germane.  The “R’s” are different though.  The “R” part I suspect is a kindness.  I think it’s the editor cutting me some slack.  So it isn’t a job, like a 500 word essay an assigned topic; an opportunity to be creative and/or amusing.

RANDOM: The eight hour train ride from Anchorage to Fairbanks is lined with antique telephone poles.  Most of the glass insulators, predominantly blue, are still in place.  For that matter, so is much of the wiring. 

TANGENT: It intercepted me ¾ of the way into the bus tour.  The topic was about the cyclic relationship between the snowshoe hares and the bobcats.  They are locked in an approximately seven year cycle of too many and too few.  Those studying the relationship are looking for a correlation factor.  One theory is that it is related to sunshine.  Sun spot/flare activity has a seven year cycle.  I suspect something more prosaic.  The hares preferred food is Willow outer bark.  Willow is the most common bush in the lowlands.  The decline in the hare population is caused by an increasing amount of salicylic acid ingestion.  It weakens the hare, causing attrition and sickens the bobcats alike.

Since the salicylic acid is synthesized only in the inner bark, the Cambrian layer, perhaps the hares engineer their own decline.  After denuding the environment of outer bark, only inner bark is available for forage.  Maybe, exposed to the sun, the Cambrian produces excessive salicylic acid, accelerating the die-off.

 

 

Chance Favors the Prepared Mind

“Chance Favors the Prepared Mind” – Louis Pasteur
by Michael Pickering 
Chapter One: Preparation
My father and his four brothers were auto/diesel mechanics.  All the families, including grandma and grandpa, moved to Moorpark, CA during World War II. It’s a small agricultural suburb east of Ventura. Small in this context means few paved roads.  The move occurred when I was about two years old.  Probably just after my brother, who was 23 months younger than me, was born.  
They obtained a property on US Highway 101 in Ventura.  The site had three commercial venues: the “Red Ball Café,” a gas station, and a multi-bay garage with a hydraulic lift.  The men managed the auto business and the women saw to the restaurant.  Grandpa was the gofer and I was his shotgun.  Anyone alive today who ate at the Red Ball during that time will have more than one fond memory. 
By the time I was five, properly greasing a wheel bearing and installing it was something I knew how to do by feel, and how to set the cotter pin.  What I learned is that it is extremelyimportant to expel ALL the air pockets before installation.  It didn’t make any sense to me then, but what five year old is going to doubt a team of mechanics.  Moreover, his father and uncles.  Now that I’m the mechanic, I get it: it’s a concept of Chaos Theory.  (See Figure X)
Figure X: A ball bearing from an improperly lubed auto front wheel.  The balls contact the tapered spindle on the inside (attached to the car) and a wheel race pressed into the drum.  All the balls from this wheel looked like this.  The outer race in the drum looked like a choppy sea, yet the spindle was unmarked.  The air bubbles and the ball orientation were maintained in perfect symmetry by chaos. 
Chapter Two: Chance
By the time I was in middle school, we lived in Highland Park, a small town on the first freeway on Earth – the Pasadena.  Freeways then didn’t have numbers; they were named for their termini (the Santa Anna, the San Bernardino, the Harbor, etc.).  We were the penultimate town before the freeway ended at a light signal in Pasadena at Orange Grove Blvd.  
The boulevard through Highland Park is the world famous Figueroa.  Town was about two miles from our neighborhood and a gradual rise most of the way to the movie theater. Since the movies changed once a week, that was our minimum number of journeys.  There were, however, more trips than that in the summer, because the public pool was further up Figueroa.  
Exiting the movies one day, someone, probably me, suggested that we have a coasting contest.  The rules were simple: one could peddle as much as possible to cross street A, about ¼ mile of the course, then not at all to the finish line at cross street B.  Joe McNeil won the first race, and I took second.  
Well, I decided that if I wanted to win, I’d have to beat Joe.  So I began to think of ways to create an advantage.  After all, we all had three speed (hub) bikes, called English racing bikes at the time. (See Figure Y)  When I realized the race was mostly coasting, I also knew the solution was to reduce friction.  Then I remembered hand packing wheel bearings, which is where I started the project.  I removed and replaced all the bearings, including the pedal hub.  Included in the soup-up job was the most expensive waterproof lube I could find.  It felt more like hand lotion than grease.  While I was preparing the bearings, my mind drifted to other ways to lower friction.  It came to me as an epiphany: any wobble of the wheels would cause friction on the bearings and on the road surface.  
Figure Y: A 1953 Schwinn three speed bicycle.
Although my only thoughts about spokes until then had been to keep clothing and body parts out of them, I had changed enough flat tires to know that they were attached to a threaded nut anchored on the OD side of the rim, and the spoke exit on the ID of the rim was a tension adjustment nut.  So it was back to the bike store to buy a new tool.
My first guess was to tune all the spokes to the same audio frequency.  Since I had no way of knowing the true frequency, my second guess was to pick the highest frequency or tightest spoke.  It also simplified the task to require only tightening.  A jig was prepared in the backyard with two 2 x 4’s so the wheels could be levelly mounted and spun.  The spokes were plucked to find the highest frequency, whereupon all spokes were tuned to match.  When done, the rim (as viewed rotating in the jig from a planar angle, perpendicular to the axle) was ‘S’ shaped.  So, Plan B was hatched. 
 
True flatness had to be established by reference to a fixed point.  Another stick with a horizontal nail through it as a palp or feeler was driven into the ground.  The spokes are anchored in turn on opposite sides of the rim.  As the rim turned, it drifted away or toward the feeler gauge.  So the process was: loosen one spoke, and tighten the next.  The eventual result was two true rims. 
Keeping my head down near the handle bar and centered over the quill, to lower friction even more, I never lost another race.

Good Toys Stimulate Imagination

By Michael Pickering

A sandbox is a reasonably scaled and so infinitely variable a toy that it should be an important consideration for any family with children and the use of about 20 square feet of ground.  The basic design is simple: 1) Make a collar of the depth you want out of rot-resistant material (i.e. heart redwood, cedar, et. al.) and 2) fill to desired level with sand.

That is the most obvious design consideration but not the most important factor by far.  Sand management is the important issue.  Sand is predominantly silica (aka quartz) and as purchased is fine grained and fairly uniform in size.  Thus it packs densely.  The most critical property is the extremely hydrophilic nature of silica.  It can sustain a great deal of water just by surface tension.  So, if you put sand in a blind hole on dirt, once it gets wet it can readily puddle and take weeks or months to dry, depending on where you live.  It rains sometime where most people live.  And to maximize the “toy-ness,” the sandbox must quickly drain so the children can add a dribbling hose to the party.

A design that worked for our four children:
Our sandbox is 6’ x 6’ x 1’ and is filled to 8” deep.  About 25 cubic feet of sand in all.  Although it is simple arithmetic, I’m going to give you the small numbers to inspire you.  Its position on the ground is controlled by gravity.  The mount is three layers:

  1. Gravel, also called drain rock, minimum one inch deep – 3 cubic feet
  2. Galvanized fencing, ¼ inch mesh, 36 square feet
  3. Aluminum screen, 36 square feet
  4. When not in use, protect your sandbox with a screen to keep the local cats out

Play Time:
You can also add a degree of nonsense.  I added marbles, surf tumbled beach glass and stainless flatware from the local Goodwill.  Our children would squirt water droplets into the air and the humming birds would come to collect them.  It was a four-act play that had a long run.