Archive for December, 2006
Insulate Your House with Packing Peanuts?
As a professional civil engineer, I recommend against using packing foam for building purposes in the strongest possible way. This is a DANGEROUS idea. Foam panels sold for insulating buildings are treated with flame retardants while it is likely that foam peanuts are not. Untreated Polystyrene foam is dangerously flammable and produces highly toxic fumes.So there you have it. I still say "probably not," because the main problem is flammability and it's possible there's an inexpensive flame retardant that could be used. But just dumping them into cheap garbage bags and laying them in the rafters looks like a bad idea. Still, it's not like using polystyrene is unheard of in the building industry. For example, I have found instructions for using peanuts in green roof construction, usually bagged into batts or pillows. Thermasave building panels are made of polystyrene foam sandwiched between two (presumably flame-retardant) concrete boards. At least one interior designer (so, not quite a civil engineer) recommends using the peanuts to insulate basement windows. Many do-it-yourselfers recycle them into projects such as solar water heaters. Of course, those biodegradable packing peanuts made from corn starch are fairly common these days. If I ever have to buy any peanuts, I'll definitely get those, and still save the world on packing peanut at a time. But right now I still have a ton of non-degradable peanuts to deal with. There's a company in England turning them into pencils, rulers, and other school supplies, but they are too far away. I've only found a few other reuse ideas. So my best bets are to keep them around in case I have to do a lot of shipping (though now I'm worried about the fire hazard), or take them to a shipping company like Mailboxes, Etc (now the UPS Store) so that other people can reuse them. I'm not likely to be sending a lot of materials that require packing peanuts for shipping any time soon, so I guess I'll go with the latter. Maybe I'll help someone avoid getting fired.
How to Win the War in Iraq
Nintendo Wii Could it Kill Your Child?
Nintendo has announced that they are offering a recall of 3.2 Million wrist straps for the Nintendo Wii controller. Apparently people are getting so worked up playing the Nintendo Wii that the controller straps aren't durable enough to resist the force and the controller ends up being hurled at the TV.
Quite frankly people just need to calm down. You don't see people hurling bowling balls, tennis rackets or baseball bats in real life. When people play sports they can "control" themselves enough to to not start hurling sports equipment without prejudice. When you're playing Wii Sports just pretend that your actually playing real sports and be a little more cautious when swinging the controller.
But for all those ADHD kids who just can't settle down, Nintendo will replace the current strap with a thicker one. Honestly I don't think this will stop the problem. These maniacs will just keep swinging the controller as hard as they can until they break the new strap.
The solution to this is to replace the strap with a handcuff. This way if they throw the controller the rest of their body will go with it and hopefully they'll learn a lesson. Attached is a clip of what I'm talking about. Also what is that one kid drinking, a bottle of wine? Kids these days...
[youtube]Wz-Rwwja2uQ[/youtube]