Years ago hygiene was not what it is today. To give you an idea of what I am talking about, one of our first presidents went on a trip to Europe. He brought two shirts, a pair of pants and one change of underwear and plenty of, what can only be called, perfume. People in those days thought nothing of wearing their clothes for weeks on end without washing or changing them. The richer you were the more you tried to disguise the smell with sweet smelling liquids like cologne or perfume. When you stayed at an inn, you usually slept in a bed that had the same sheets on it from several guests before. Ugh! Just the thought of this is disgusting. Well the U.S. Air Force has done something about wearing clothes for long periods, because facilities are not always available in war for washing clothes regularly. They have invented a self cleaning fabric. This can't help but make you wonder how something like this would work. Well guess what, I am going to tell you, but you knew that didn't you?

Before I get into that, I want to let you know that underwear has already been created from this new material and is being used without any ill effects that I know about. Nanoparticles are attached to fibers in the clothing. Microwaves are used to bind the particles to the cloth. Then the nanoparticles themselves have a chemical bound to them that repels liquids. The material now has a coating and the coating stays dry and also kills bacteria. I guess you would have to say that the cost was a bargain. It is said that only $20 million was spent on research and development. You may be wondering where this idea came from. It was an off shoot of the effort to develop materials resistant to biological agents.

Did you ever wonder how much it cost an oil company to drill on a platform in the ocean? In 2004 Chevron was spending $200,000 a day just to rent the rig that it used to drill. This did not include the labor costs. If we figure that labor is also about the same price per day, because these platforms have quite a few people on them, we get $400,000 per day cost not counting platform maintenance and the price to build it etc. Let's add another $50,000 per day. This gives us a total cost per day to drill for oil on this platform of $450,000. As near as I can guess, these platforms produce between 150,000 barrels of oil per day and 250,000. Oil was selling for $77 per barrel at the time. If we take 200,000 barrels produced per day X $77 we get $15.4 million income per day. That means that this rig would make a profit of almost $15 million per day. Now lest's say that the price falls to $50 per barrel in the future, they still would make a profit of $9.5 million per day. This is not counting the additional profit they make when they turn this oil into gasoline and kerosene and such. A barrel of oil is 42 U.S. gallons which is 35 Imperial gallons or 159 Liters. When oil was $77 per gallon, gasoline was about $3.39 for regular in the New York City area and may have went even higher. That means that the $77 dollar barrel of oil was turned into a $142 barrel of regular gasoline if you multiply $3.39 x 42 gallons.

Well I see that the identity of the woman who posed for Leonardo da Vinci as the Mona Lisa was discovered. Not only do we know who the woman was, we even know where she was buried, thanks to Giuseppe Pallanti, who has been searching archives for many years, over 30 years to be exact. The model for the painting died in 1542 and was buried at the convent in central Florence in Italy. Try and guess her first Name? I will give you a hint, it was Lisa. She was born Lisa Gherardini in 1479 and was married to a wealthy silk merchant. The name of the convent where she died is Sant'Orsola and is now in ruins. Well I guess that this ends all those theories, like the ones that state that the Mona Lisa is really a portrait of Leonardo himself disguised.

Well there is a new scam in town and it is hard to detect. It involves ATM machines. It seems that criminals have thought up a way of installing a device on an ATM that is wireless and can read you card information and pin number and transmit them back to the crooks who are sitting in their car with a laptop, sipping a coffee and eating a donut. The equipment is a wireless camera that is disguised to look like a part of the ATM itself. It is usually installed on the weekends and at nights. All this new computer equipment coming out is great, but unfortunately for us, it also is great for the criminals, giving them the ability to steal more, while making it more easy for them. We have gone from people with binoculars watching ATMs and other crooks that have actually built phony deposit boxes and put them in front of the real ones, to criminals that can now sit safely and comfortably in their cars without lifting their little finger or risk detection.

Giant Crater Caused By Small Body Hitting Earth
Photo Source: NASA

Eschatology, wow this is a word that we don't see mentioned much, yet we do see the defination of the word way too often. It means the study of the end of the world and we have sure seen a lot on that lately. Some people think that this is the century that we will destroy ourselves. Some have been ranting that nuclear weapons will be the end of us. Others are saying that global warming will do us in. Then there are those that feel we are ripe for a killer asteroid. They keep talking about how the dinosaurs were wiped out this way. I even came across some people saying that we could be destroyed by the rays coming from an exploding star, known as a nova, that was nearby in cosmic terms. I, for one, think that it is time for us to stop worrying about such things and enjoy life. This is not to say that we shouldn't try and protect ourselves from such disasters.

Well there you have it, these are the things that I have notice lately that I thought you might be interested in.