From On the Level…

Do you have stinky pants? It might be your washer if Smelly Washer is to be believed. Apparently, detergents and fabric softeners can build up in the washer and create a foul odor. I didn’t believe it until I asked around the office and a co-worker reported that it happened to him.

This sounds plausible, but why won’t bleach take care of the problem instead of the fancy product they talk about?

Dean L. Kamen is one of the few people alive today who really impresses me with his brilliance. Any fool can be smart. But few can be as smart an creative as Dean L. Kamen. His Wikipedia profile does not do him justice.

To be sure, some of his stuff is over hyped. I never did think that much of the Segway. But a lot of his other feats were truly amazing. This clip shows off his most recent product.

Edit: This profile of Kamen from Wired is better, even if it is dated

From Sippican Cottage comes a list of Ten Dreadful Things That Have Become Housing Standards. He is to be congratulated on keeping the list so short.

As this essay sets out to prove, there is no assurance that the sky will not fall any minute now. Consider yourself warned.

From the New York Times…..

The first signs of declining interest among the young in science and engineering appeared almost two decades ago, after Japan reached first-world living standards, and in recent years there has been a steady decline in the number of science and engineering students. But only now are Japanese companies starting to feel the real pinch.

By one ministry of internal affairs estimate, the digital technology industry here is already short almost half a million engineers.

Headhunters have begun poaching engineers midcareer with fat signing bonuses, a predatory practice once unheard-of in Japan’s less-cutthroat version of capitalism.

The problem is likely to worsen because Japan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. “Japan is sitting on a demographic time bomb,” said Kazuhiro Asakawa, a professor of business at Keio University. “An explosion is going to take place. They see it coming, but no one is doing enough about it.”

This is happening all over the developed world. To much talent has been directed towards being a lawyer or a banker. Add that to a shortage of kids general and young engineers are going to be in high demand.

I know I should not feel this way, but I can’t but help feel that the upswing in coyote attacks in California represents some kind of cosmic justice. Especially when I read lines like this….

Authorities dissuade people from hunting renegade coyotes themselves and suggest that they instead make noise or throw objects to scare them from neighborhoods.

Wardens have spotted the coyote that tried to drag a 2-year-old girl from her front yard Tuesday in Lake Arrowhead, about 65 miles east of Los Angeles, but did not have a clear shot to fire. They have since set up traps for it.

Authorities were also investigating reports of two possible attacks earlier this year in the same resort town in which a coyote may have bitten two young children in the buttocks as their father barbecued on the deck.

In the latest case, police said her mother was photographing the toddler and her siblings in front of the house when she ran inside to put the camera down. That’s when a coyote tried to make off with the toddler.

The girl was treated for wounds to the head and neck, but was expected to survive.

Dotti Edwards, a neighbor, came home after the attack and spotted a scrawny coyote in the street. Her neighbors have complained of coyotes in recent weeks with reports of the wild animals sleeping in yards and pestering residents.

“They’re so brazen right now,” she said. “They just stand there and look at you.”

Coyotes are not stupid. If they know that the worst that will happen to them is that people will try to “scare” them they will have no fear. But a clear eyed understanding of nature is not politically correct in California.

William M. Briggs examines the Sean Bell shooting.