Wired: Top Stories (4 unread)
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Bot Psychology: The Blogging About Blogging Edition
Posted: May 26th, 2008, 2:20pm EDT by Underwire
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Underwire writers Jenna Wortham and Angela Watercutter discuss hot topics in tech and culture. This week's discussion revolves around the blog backlash to former Gawker writer Emily Gould's piece in The New York Times Magazine.
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Chelsea Hotel: Rock's Vortex of 'Death and Destruction'
Posted: May 26th, 2008, 1:45pm EDT by Listening Post
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Back in the day, it was ground zero for sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Now New York's Chelsea Hotel is back in the spotlight, as the subject of both a film documentary and photo essay. There's a lot to work with.
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What's Inside: Foamalicious, Vaporlicious Easy-Off Oven Cleaner
Posted: May 26th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Patrick Di Justo
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Butane
Oven schmutz is usually encased in a nearly impenetrable charred-carbon crust, which is best breached by an organic solvent. Enter butane. Also an aerosol propellant, liquid butane loosens carbon molecules that conglomerate when other elements evaporate at high temps. One of the most commonly abused inhalants, butane poses severe health risks. But that's not a worry here: Huffing fumes from the other ingredients would almost certainly kill you first.Monoethanolamine
Exhibiting properties of both an alcohol (mixes with water, has a high boiling point) and an amine (has a high pH, absorbs water, smells like ammonia), MEA can undergo reactions common to either group of compounds. It breaks down the gunk on oven surfaces, neutralizing some fatty acids and turning others into grease-cutting solvents. Another reason to not inhale this cleaner: MEA is a volatile organic compound, which can cause confusion, nosebleeds, and cancer in humans and animals alike.Diethylene Glycol Monobutyl Ether
A major component of brake fluid, hair coloring, and floor sealer, DEGBE's job here is to delay evaporation of monoethanolamine, letting it work longer to vanquish baked-on mess. But like any good wingman, DEGBE has skills of its own: It helps dissolve some of the fats and grease loosened by MEA. Breathing DEGBE vapors while consuming excessive alcohol can lead to kidney and liver problems. So remember, friends don't let friends drink and clean.Sodium Hydroxide
You know that scene in Fight Club where Brad Pitt explains what happens when you mix lye with melted animal grease? That's exactly what happens when you spray this stuff into your oven. Butane and MEA soften the hard organic coating, allowing the sodium hydroxide to attack the underlying fatty triglyceride molecules. That reaction gives off heat and results in a simple form of soap. Incidentally, don't use Easy-Off on aluminum — the metal serves as a room-temperature catalyst, breaking down the NaOH and releasing flammable hydrogen gas.Diethanolamine
Manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser will neither confirm nor deny this, but the patent information for at least one version of Easy-Off indicates that diethanolamine can be used in place of up to 60 percent of the monoethanolamine. This makes sense because Easy-Off is foamy when it comes out of the can, and DEA is much more foamalicious than MEA. And this isn't just to create the impression of a sudsy, effective cleaner; the foam smothers the other ingredients and prevents them from evaporating, forcing them to slave away at making soap and dissolving grease. The problem is that while DEA is technically not a volatile organic compound, it has been shown to limit brain development in the fetuses of pregnant laboratory mice. Just don't use Easy-Off to clean your kid's Habitrail.
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Military Secrets Help Produce the Ultimate Synthetic Fishing Rod
Posted: May 26th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by William Snyder
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Andy stone meets me in front of a small building in Manchester, Vermont, a Green Mountain hamlet known for factory outlets and maple syrup. He's wearing busted Carhartts, a flannel shirt, and a thick backwoods beard. As he guides me to the industrial freezer around back, Stone is so excited that I'm starting to fantasize about what's inside (gallons of Ben & Jerry's?). The door opens, and I see a shelf stacked with what appears to be rolls of black paper towels.
"I know it doesn't look like much," he says, "but that stuff is worth several hundred thousand dollars." The "stuff" is unidirectional carbon fiber — not the ubiquitous carbon mesh found everywhere from dashboards to tennis racquets, but a new superlight variety that was, until recently, a highly classified concoction. I start to copy information from a label when Stone barks, "Don't write down the manufacturer's name," and slams the door shut.
It's not just trade secrets he's protecting — it's national security. The composite is used in Predator drones and spy satellites for the US military. Stone, along with colleagues at the outdoors supplier Orvis, use it to build a fly-fishing rod. Called Helios, its story began nearly three years ago when Stone, Jim Lepage, and another man — so entrenched in top-secret contracts that nobody would even tell me his name (we'll call him Deep Trout) — set out to build the ultimate rod: lighter than anything ever made but strong enough to land the big one.
Through his network of black-ops eggheads, Deep Trout learned about a new type of composite the military was using. Traditional sheets of carbon fiber are woven to create a matrix that's strong in every direction. The advanced brew's tapered pieces of graphite employ a high-temperature epoxy and eliminate the need for a grid, decreasing the number of fibers and cutting weight by up to 25 percent.
It's a long cast from bamboo, which until recently was the preferred material for top-shelf poles. No synthetic could surpass its light touch and ability to maneuver a tiny fly. But bamboo is a total pain in the ass to work with: It can take 80 hours to craft a single rod. And because of all that labor, fine bamboo rigs sell for around $1,500.
As early as the 1940s, rod makers started experimenting with fiberglass, but it couldn't match the mighty grass. In the '70s, they looked to graphite, but it felt dead. Then, as government aerospace contracts started drying up in the mid-'80s, "guys who had been developing military systems started sending us their resumes," Lepage says. They brought with them the secrets of carbon fiber. "We realized that if we could perfect carbon fiber," he says, "it would make bamboo obsolete." But though the new composite could outcast bamboo, it lacked the feel.
They worked for years with composite, never quite matching nature. Finally last year, Orvis rolled a tube from the unidirectional material. It was less than half the weight of bamboo, just as bendy, and substantially stronger: The Helios was born. It's so light — 2.1 ounces for a 9-foot rod — it's even more precise than the panda food. Bamboo was bested — especially considering that a Helios costs only about $750.
Of course, engineers now have another problem: The Iraq war makes it tough to get their secret stuff. "Since we're using the raw materials of Apache helicopter blades, it's not easy to secure an order for fishing rods," Lepage says. If the carbon-fiber supply does dry up, there's a riverbank not far from the shop where bamboo grows like crazy.