The Strip Club

                Being in our school’s Robotics Team, I found one of the biggest frustrations on working on the robot where we would accidentally strip a screw. What is really cool is that someone made this, which creates more contact between the screw head and the screwdriver and makes the screw much more difficult to strip. I will also admit that one of my first rookie mistakes in trying to drill a screw into wood was that I had not drilled before and so when I was forced to because everyone else was busy, I did not drill the hole first, instead I just tried drilling the screw into the wood where they said I was supposed to drill. Naturally, anyone who does know about drilling would know that the wood, instead of having a hole in it, actually split into two pieces down the middle. Luckily, these new screws save any future user from the embarrassment I went through because these have self-drilling parts to them.

                Although it is not mentioned in the article, it is only obvious that these screws will cost slightly more than the standard Phillips screw, but I think that the price difference should be affordable and comparatively better. Since these are screws, and a standard project needs a lot of screws, not including the ones dropped, lost, or stripped. Thus, if these new screws were not cheap and affordable, it would not be worth the price. Not only does that bring the price down, but these are screws. Screws are all supposed to be uniform so they have to be mass-produced in a factory, which as we all know from history with Henry Ford and Levittown, will drive down the price sharply. How I think these will turn out comparatively is that the ones able to be stripped are incandescent light bulbs while the ones that are much more difficult to strip are like compact fluorescent light bulbs. Although one may be cheaper up front, in the long run, there is going to be a higher need for them due to how often the screw is stripped. Thus, over time it would be more cost efficient. A big problem for stripping screws is that it is hard to get out. This invention, although great, is kind of a hidden insult to people, because all these new inventions are all geared towards assuming people are becoming more lazy and so appeals to that aspect, which I am. I admit that I am extremely lazy, but I do not like other people pointing it out.

Just A Rant

                I would like to take this time to quickly rant about the inefficiencies of the school system. As you can probably tell from my blog, I am a nerdy Asian kid, who obviously is very athletic. Well, actually my school is making me take a physical education class, which is a problem described later, but luckily they are letting me take a sport so not to harm my grade point average which is already fairly difficult to keep up. Next year though, they are thinking about not letting a student take a sport to waive the physical education requirement, which I find not one of the better things they could have done.

                My first problem with the inefficiencies at school is that every student is required to take a physical education class. At my school, the grade point average is supposed to be on a 4.0 scale, but many times a student’s grade will exceed the 4, which does not make sense though beside the point. Advanced Placement courses can add 5.0 to the overall grade point average, and guess which class does not have any sort of weighted grade? That is right, all physical education courses. I also find it stupid that gym teachers will actually grade a person on how “healthy” or “fit” they are. The few courses that I took before realizing I was killing my grade point average was where the more a person runs, the higher the grade, and although many people think students do not run the entire time because the students are being lazy. Many times it is not the person running’s fault, but instead the fault of the parents or a mesh of different factors. As described in Food Inc., families with a lower income usually resort to the more unhealthy foods because the food is cheaper than organic foods. Gym just is not a fair way to base a student’s future academic studies on.

                A couple weeks ago when I was actually practicing for tennis, well “practicing”, I forgot to turn in a signed physical to the school. I know this was extremely irresponsible of me because I had a couple weeks to turn it in, but what the teacher made me do was a complete waste of time. Instead of actually doing something productive, like playing tennis by myself on the courts, or studying, I stood there for the entire practice. Two whole hours of my life that I will never get back. Just standing. That is it. I know how much the administrators have to do, but at least they could make some of the gears run more efficiently, I mean, that is what they are paid to do, administer children and teachers.

Intelligence Quotas? More Like Impressive Quirks

                I found this article on Popular Science blog and it actually was not the content that interested me this time, but actually the title for the article, which was “Goats Found to Be Smarter than Previously Believed”. You can read the article, but the main point is that goats were being tested with a puzzle and if the puzzle was solved they would obtain a piece of fruit, or their prize. Two of the goats were disqualified from this “intelligence test” because instead of using the puzzle to open the lock, these just chose to gnaw their way through the box and so were dismissed. It is kind of funny that a goat’s intelligence is being measured through how well they can adjust to human standards and orders given out by humans. In a way, it kind of reminds us of school.

       Bill Gates once said, “I failed in some subjects in exam, but my friend passed in all. Now he is an engineer in Microsoft and I am the owner of Microsoft.” This shows that the “intelligence” of a person should not be measured in how well he or she can regurgitate information or follow orders, just like the intelligence of these animals were measured in. As Bill Gates shows, an obviously successful businessman, that the scores that appear on a report card do not define us as human beings, because many of us are more than just statistics and numbers. Of course, unless you are part of the secret robot revolution, which I am totally not, hahaha… In all seriousness though, my parents have always expected the best out of me, and by best I do not mean that they wanted me to try my best, but they wanted me to be the best or at least close to it. This kind of discouraged me from doing a lot of stuff, because I knew I would never get up to their expectations, so I quit a lot of activities that I kind of wish I did not.

                Of course, I complain about these things all the time, but honestly, I have no good alternative or at least a reasonable one that is not extremely radical. It is pretty difficult to judge a person based on what they put forth because many people do put up different fronts when they are with a different person, but next time a terrible grade comes out, if you care about grades, or called stupid, just remember that there are different types of intelligence. As Einstein said, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its entire life believing it is stupid.

Turn Up the Heat!

                One of the more well-known laws of physics, the second law of thermodynamics states that then amount of entropy in a system will continuously increase in value. In English, it just means that energy or heat in a system will become more disordered which means that heat turns into a worse, more unusable form. However, London has found a way to reuse this energy by collecting the smoke from the heat and uses it to turn a fan which generates kinetic energy and reduces the amount of energy wasted. This is an important outlet to look at because carbon emissions are destroying the environment and this could reduce the overall carbon emissions, and increase the duration for how long we can stall out on renewable resources before these fossil fuel stores become exhausted.

                Although this method is viable to do in London, it would be almost out of the question in America, because London’s distribution of energy is in a smaller scale than the United States. The degraded energy has a very small service area and since the United States is clearly much larger than London and even Britain, so it would be difficult to provide the same amount of energy. Although if America was to have smaller much more centralized systems of power, it would be more environmentally friendly, but yet again, this is impossible. Many of America’s systems are the same. What I mean by that is that the products are tightly controlled by a couple companies, as demonstrated in Food Inc., and to split these companies up, as some presidents did, would cause a decrease in revenue and so would destroy the economy, but save the environment, and still, think about which is more important?

                This increases the efficiency of the electricity and energy, but makes one wonder, how would this decrease the overall carbon emissions? With an increase in the productivity, we would not use up as much coal or fossil fuels year to year and so to provide the same amount of electricity there is not as large of a need for the same amount of coal. Thus if not as much coal is used, then there is less of an output. One problem I see with this is that once the heat is used up again, it turns into a much more useless version of the once previously thought useless heat. This may or may not have adverse effects too, because sometimes humans are ignorant and do not think of other organisms when doing something. Hopefully this does not have any detrimental effects on the environment but it may take many more years before we realize the full extents of this.

Don't Be So Salty

                A group of researchers, who published their findings in Science Translational Medicine magazine found here, have been working on a new type of sodium called Tenapanor to replace the current sodium circulating throughout America. This is because they want find out if this new type of sodium will have better effects on humans rather than the original sodium, because Tenapanor inhibits the absorption rate of the body, so Tenapanor passes through the system as feces, where sodium would remain for a while. Sodium remaining in the body is a problem because it usually correlates with higher blood pressure and more heart diseases and heart problems.

                Although this new type of sodium has not been widely released to the public, it has been tested on humans and in rats, and in both cases, the desired effects have produced. This is important to our society because it could significantly reduce the amounts of deaths caused by heart attacks and cure multiple cases of high blood pressure cases without actually detracting from the usefulness of sodium in every day food. There would also be enough of Tenapanor to replace the supply of sodium, because it seems they have found it and created it from plasma.

                Like many engineered food, such as genetically modified apples or corn that are engineered to produce the most desirable traits of the food, such as larger yields or bug repellant, Tenapanor is yet another genetically modified food. Although it is genetically modified, it does not actually damage the body any more than any naturally created foods. In fact, this probably has more beneficial effects than the naturally created Sodium. Sodium Chloride, otherwise known as just table salt, if ingested can cause heart attacks if there is a little too much in your system; on the other hand, Tenapanor easily passes through the body and is excreted as feces so the Tenapanor does not stay in the body too long so it increases the quantity able to be ingested before actually doing the body harm.

                Others may argue that if people are allowed to ingest more than the standard amount, they will tend to eat much more than they originally would have, which then leads to wonder about if there was a restriction on how much food a person could eat or just restrictions on what a person could do, it would be another case of hampered freedom, which kind of defeats the purpose of America. People should be allowed to choose what they do, as long as it does not affect anyone else, whether it is a good choice or a harmful choice.

Sleep is for the Weak?

            I enjoy playing League of Legends or Sid Meier’s Civilization V until five in the morning as much as the next person, but at some point, I wonder if this instant gratification and short-term happiness is worth the loss of future endeavors. How much does lack of sleep actually affect a person’s activities the next day? According to a chart published in Popular Science, a lack of sleep can be extremely detrimental, in fact, sleep deprivation can cure multiple issues about a human, such as mental disorders, mental clarity, and weight gain. Although many people do not think this actually affects them that much, or think, “I have done this enough times that it does not change my normal routine anymore.” It actually does.

            Enough sleep is vital to the efficient function of a human being. A typical person will need seven to eight hours, and even six hours will cause harmful effects to the body. Without this extra hour of sleep, a standard human body will lose its mental acuity and actually seem slightly drunk. This, coupled with any actual alcohol one might take, multiplicatively decrease coherence and increase the amount of micro sleep – unintentional naps throughout the day – will most create an irritable person.

            A necessity for a functional human is food. Food is transformed into energy which helps focus the mind and provides nutrients for the body. This conversion is fairly efficient for it keeps many people alert during the day. However, a lack of sleep will decrease the overall efficiency for the body. Missing a night of sleep can in fact increase hunger hormones the next day, which requires the person to ingest approximately 20% more food to function at nearly the same rate as they could have with the amount of sleep needed. Teenage brains are also developing at this time and need sleep to further this development.

            Oftentimes, students do not have a choice. This is an important idea because many teachers often give busywork to students for a grade. This kind of work does not help the brain in the first place because it is just what it is termed, “busywork” and teaches no new material. This detrimental effect is doubled again when it keeps the student awake late at night to complete this, and so the brain is deprived of crucial time to develop. Yet, teachers still require students to be awake during their classes, though the students lack sleep, which is a huge contradiction.