Do Croc Shoes let People Down on Escalators?

Sometimes, if you're the designer of a product and you can't think of a way to make something particularly stylish, you decide to go the opposite way - you try to make something that's clunky and homely-looking, but that kind of flaunts its unattractiveness. If you're lucky, like the Croc shoes you see everywhere these days on kids’ feet, you get a runaway hit. Croc shoes are about protecting your feet - about footwear that are friendly, cheap and safe. Well, that's not what the professional medical magazine injury prevention feels about these lurid looking foam clogs anymore.

Apparently, Croc shoes and escalators don't mix. Crocs are designed with a special nonslip construction; and apparently, this safety feature is what is causing a great many accidents involving children and escalators. In dozens of cases, children wearing crocs often find their shoes getting caught on an escalator step. There are so many of these accidents happening these days to children wearing Croc shoes, there is an entire blog dedicated to it called CrocsAccidents.

Of course, the makers of Cshoes feel that the problem is not with their product but with escalators. They feel escalators have for quite a while now been implicated in injuring children. They feel that the children who've had those accidents would have half them even without Croc shoes. It's just that the shoes are so popular, that any time anything happens that involves them, people like to drag them into the picture. There are tens of millions of crocs worn around the world. There seems no reason to believe that escalators, that have always been involved in accidents that come out of design flaws, should have a special thing for croc shoes. People have been getting their shoelaces caught in escalators forever.

Estimates place it at 25,000 American children under 18: that's how many are injured on escalators every 10 years or so. And that's not including accidents involving strollers. The only way to prevent footwear related injuries on escalators would be for parents to always keep a close eye on their children. Of all the accidents that occur on escalators every year, about 20% are from things like children's clothing and shoelaces getting caught between a step in the wall of the escalator. And these are usually far more dangerous than merely slipping and rolling down an escalator. Whenever you take a child on an escalator, make sure that you keep the child at the center of the escalator and not leaning over one side. You need to keep your child away from the dangerous parts of the machine.

Time for That Internet Explorer Nine Download. Because Your 9 Will Really Shine

Internet Explorer, the world's most popular browser (okay, the most widely used if not particularly popular) has been on version 8 for two years now. The latest, version 9 is finally here. Should the new Internet Explorer 9 download be a part of your plans for the future? What will you gain by it? How different could it be from the one you have already? Let's get down to it.

To begin with, if your operating system is anything other than Windows 7 or Windows Vista, you are pretty much out of luck as far as an Internet Explorer 9 download goes. It only works with the two most recent versions of Windows. One does wonder what Microsoft was thinking. Every other major browser supports multiple operating systems - right from Windows XP to Mac OS. Even Apple's Safari does this. Still, if you have a relatively new computer, you have an option in version 9.

The first thing you are likely notice about version 9 is how quickly it starts up, and then opens web pages. Even pages full of JavaScript with lots of interactivity features built in (like Facebook) will open right away (assuming of course that your computer and your Internet connection are up to it). It's just a big airy interface that version 9 has. Kind of like what Chrome has. No more do you have to worry about how all those toolbars take up an inch of space at the top of your screen. Come to think of it, they seem to have cut down even more space wastage than Chrome manages. Version 9 works well with HTML 5. When you go on websites like YouTube that offer an HTML 5 option to Flash, your 9 will really shine.

And then, perhaps the best reason to go forward with the Internet explorer 9 download is that it is safer. Version 9 comes with an ActiveX disabling switch. ActiveX is a standard that isn't really needed today. On almost any site, you can usually make do without it. You just need to turn it on when ActiveX is needed (like on YouTube).

So is everything rosy with version 9? Should you be an instant convert? There are problems, of course. To begin with, it doesn't support all of HTML 5; every virus-designing creep around the world will be gunning for the latest version of Internet Explorer; and of course, there is the uncomfortable feeling that Internet Explorer 9 is only playing catch-up with Chrome.

Is Local Food only Good for the Environment? Or could it be better for People Too?

If you get right down to the root of it, that movement that tries to promote the use of local food has always been about trying to help the environment and small-holding farmers. Buy from the supermarket chains, and you usually buy from major agricultural corporations that farm vast tracts of land intensively with genetically-modified seeds, massive quantities of pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizer. And that's not even including the way the farming corporations need to truck produce all over the country expending fuel and polluting the air. Buy local food, and you hand business to local farmers who have small farms that they are able to take care of with personal attention. They don't need to depend on pesticides and fertilizer all that much.

But is local food only good for the planet? What if it were to be better for your health as well? Certainly, that would convince a whole new constituency of the benefits of organic and local food. A grant has been made to a research team at the University of North Carolina; the goal given to them is finding out more information about what impact it has on public health for a community to abandon produce from large-scale farming and to move towards local food that's been grown no more than 100 miles away from anyone's home.

If people were to focus their entire diets on local food, they would, by requirement, need to give up processed foods. That itself would be a very healthy development. Not to mention, if you have to eat nothing but local food, you'll look out for variety as much as you can - and in that quest, you will have nowhere to turn but to new kinds of fruits and vegetables that you wouldn't ever have chosen before. By that measure, the local food movement has to be better for the public health. But what they're looking for in this study is more direct evidence.

The study’s going to take until the year 2013 to really come to any provable conclusions; whatever they find in the end, we will have a better understanding of what happens when we transition to farming practices that are healthier for the environment, that use less toxic material, and that produce fresher produce. The way America eats has a lot to say about our problem with a poor environment and our health problems. Half of all Americans live with at least one chronic disease like high blood pressure or diabetes. This didn't used to be the case before. A study to understand the way America treats its food could have a lot to contribute in helping America overcome its problems with obesity and malnutrition.

Putting a Recovery System in your Car for Lower Automobile Insurance Rates

How many cars do you think are stolen every year? The number has been falling of late; but on average, there were two cars stolen every minute. That amounts to a million cars every year. You need to be happy about that number, because it used to be much, much higher. Before you jump to the conclusion that this makes for some very good news, you probably want to know about another figure that's taken a serious hit - the number of cars recovered from thieves. Today, it's only about one in two stolen cars that is recovered by the police after a complaint by some unhappy owner. It's just a never-ending catch-me-if-you-can game. The manufacturers design some sophisticated antitheft system and advertise that your automobile insurance rates are going to improve dramatically once you install the system; and they do for a short time; until the car thieves figure out a way to defeat said high-tech system.

There happens to be something you can do to help your automobile insurance rates other than to install a theft prevention system. You could install a car recovery system. You could either go with something like OnStar that uses a cell phone connection and GPS among other things to help you locate a car after it's stolen, or you could go with something like LoJack.

This is a system that dispenses with the expensive cell phone connection and GPS. Instead, it uses simple shortwave radio. Any police unit near the car can pick up the signal. Once a police officer receives the message and receives a full stolen car report for more information on what the car looks like, he can locate the car with a visual check in the neighborhood. LoJack signals can be read by any police car within a 5-mile radius. OnStar actually has a pretty cool feature: once it realizes that the car is being stolen, it begins to slow the car down, helping it stopped gently. Once the car stops OnStar turns the car off and makes it impossible to start again. So which one should you buy - the simple shortwave radio based LoJack or the high-tech OnStar?

OnStar will work as long as it gets a cellular signal and a GPS signal and as long as it's actually being driven and not towed. The thief who is tows the car he steals can simply disconnect the battery and completely disable OnStar. LoJack does not depend on the car's battery. It has its own. And the device can be hidden in any number of places in the car. Better still, a shortwave signal gets to a lot of places that a GPS signal or cellular signal never could. Perhaps the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

LoJack boasts a spectacular success rate with nine out of ten stolen cars always found. OnStar has a slightly less impressive success rate of eight out of ten cars. Going with one of these two recovery systems will certainly help your automobile insurance rates. If you're really interested in not having your car stolen in the first place, you should probably be more careful than the owners of lots of stolen cars. Never leave your car keys in your car. Make sure that you park your car in some place that's in plain sight of everyone. And make sure that you use simple means such as a Ravelco kit.

Wrestling Rankings Don't Always Tell the Whole Story

A few years ago, I attended a wrestling tournament that would likely pit the top two wrestlers in the state in a particular weight class against each other. As it turned out, I did not get to see them go at it, because neither one of them reached the finals.

That was when I first realized that wrestling rankings don't always tell the whole story. While some of the wrestlers who were ranked lower certainly deserved their rankings, some of them also deserved to be higher.

I saw one kid out of El Paso that was supposed to be one of the top two wrestlers in the state. All I had heard about all season was how he was going to be there in the end, wrestling for a state championship.

As it turned out, the kid was smoked by another wrestler from Dallas who was sixth in the state in the wrestling rankings. I could not believe that it was such a one-sided match, so I decided to investigate a little.

What I soon discovered was that the kid from El Paso had a very impressive season record, but had only faced a few truly difficult opponents. Of those tougher opponents, he had lost to two of them.

The wrestler from Dallas had lost five times that season, but they were to other top-ranked wrestlers, and some of them were from a private school that produces some of the better wrestlers in the country.

The wrestling rankings were accurate in some regards, as the youngsters who took third and fourth place at the meet were probably the third- and fourth-best wrestlers in the state, but one of the young men who wrestled for the tournament championship came into the competition ranked seventh overall in the state, and in some blog posts I read, nobody really gave him much of a chance.

His story was that he also played football for a school that had a very long run in the playoffs, so he did not have as many matches as some of the other wrestlers, and I guess his standing suffered because of that.

I did get to see a very good match in the championship, just not the one that I was expecting. It is kind of funny how things seem to turn out that way a lot.

I do believe that wrestling rankings serve a purpose in that they provide a frame of reference for the average wrestling fan to follow and provide some type of idea about who people can expect to see at the state tournament. They also provide records of those wrestlers and key match-ups, typically, but just like with most things in life, I really believe that they are to be taken with a grain of salt.

A New Engine to Revolutionize the World With

As far as the planet-conscious car buyer is concerned, there is almost no more sacred a choice in the car market than the hybrid. The problem with that view of things is that the hybrid, while it makes very clever use of a battery-driven motor so as to not have to use the engine at very low and inefficient speeds, does absolutely have to switch to the regular engine past 15mph. And that engine is a truly inefficient device – a century-old contraption that wastes 85% of the gas it consumes. All of that is about to change. Regular gas engines are about to go completely out of fashion. Welcome the new wave disk engine, a product of the automotive department at Michigan State.

The thing about the wave disk engine is that it isn't just a replacement for the engine of the regular car, which it of course, it is. It's that it's a replacement for the entire transmission of the car as well. A car powered by a wave disk engine would have no transmission, no pistons, and no cooling systems - nothing. This is the essential engine – a pure powertrain that is four times more efficient than regular gas engines. And what about emissions? Well, let's just leave it at saying that emissions from a wave disk engine would be 10% of what they are today coming from regular hybrid cars with regular gas engines.

So how does an engine combust gas without chambers and pistons? The new wave disk engine has a rotor that has a wavelike scroll that traps fuel in its peaks and troughs to burn. When the trapped fuel ignites, it transmits energy through shock waves. Such a vehicle would have an additional advantage in fuel savings over a regular car. It would be hundreds of pounds lighter than a conventional car - because it would have very few of the heavy space-hogging parts that a regular car does. Just imagine - to power a regular-sized car, you would need a wave disk engine that was no larger than a regular pressure cooker.

The basic technology in a wave disk system is actually more than a half-century old. The new design from Michigan State builds on the original and makes it a lot more efficient. One way in which it is more efficient is that it doesn't just a waste hot compressed air out the exhaust. It recycles it to use over and over again. The venture has netted a government grant of about $2.5 million. And they aim to produce a working model of car by the end of the year. These are exciting times then for the green movement.

Liposuction for Men

I have been overweight for most of my life, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that there's nothing good about this situation. I suffer from low self-esteem, have been the target of bullying, and have never had much of a social life outside the Internet. I've tried every kind of diet and exercise program imaginable, and have had numerous consultations with doctors. Nothing has ever worked. But I'm tired of being embarrassed about my weight and wasting my life by not engaging with other people. That's one of the reasons I'm currently researching liposuction for men.

Some people might think that only women would be interested in this type of procedure, but liposuction for men is becoming increasingly common. There's no longer a stigma attached to this surgery because we now know about the many major medical problems that could stem from being overweight. Liposuction for men isn't about being vain or taking shortcuts to weight loss. It's about getting a chance to start over and live a healthier life.

From the little bit I've read about liposuction for men, it sounds as though the procedure has become safer, cheaper, and more effective than it was just a few short years ago. Now there are far more specialists around that can perform the procedure, so I will have more of a choice when looking for a doctor. In addition, some types of liposuction for men might be covered by insurance. Most of the time, this would be considered a cosmetic or unnecessary surgery, but in some instances and under some policies, it might be covered. Obviously I'll need to check with my provider for specific details, but I think I'm going to move forward with the procedure either way.

I know that this will lead to drastic changes in my life, so I need to be prepared to deal with some of the issues that might surface. I recently read through some posts on a forum about liposuction for men, and was interested in the stories of guys that had had the surgery. Most of the stories were positive, but some folks experienced a bit of negative backlash because of the drastic changes in their bodies and lifestyles. They talked about friends or significant others leaving them, and about other unexpected problems. Frankly, I think if my few friends did that, they probably weren't true friends to begin with, but I will definitely prepare myself for the possibility of this kind of reaction.

Anyway, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that I need to move forward with my plan. I will keep reading about liposuction for men until I have a better understanding of what both the procedure and immediate aftermath entail, and then I'll consult with a doctor. I can't wait for the new me to emerge!