netphemera - The official Blog of Seth Wolf

Braun 7526 Cleaning Cartridge

2005-04-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

I think I finally hit on the perfect formula for refilling the Braun 7526 cleaning cartridge. There's been some discussion about the safety of refilling the Braun cleaning cartridge but I think I finally hit on the perfect formula.

You need:
91% isopropyl alcohol
Lemon oil

The first think you need to do is clean out the old cartridge. I think this is easiest to do with the alcohol. Just dump in a few tablespoons, cover the two holes, then shake up all the grime inside, and dump out. Repeat the procedure a few times until is seems clean inside.

Fill it about 1/3 full of alcohol, add about 1/2 teaspoon of lemon oil. Shake it up in a valant attempt to evenly distribute the oil. Then fill it all the way to the top of the container.

(A few notes: I found that it works best with 91% alcohol, not the 70% alcohol. You can use lemon oil, orange oil, or lime oil. Do not use lemon juice. These citrus oils are food-grade and available in any specialty food supply store.)

This procedure has worked very well for me. I'm still using the orginal plastic cartridge my razor came with.

Slow Food Magazine

2005-04-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

I created a simple page to list my have/want list for Slow Food Magazine. If you are a collector too and have any spares or dupes that I need please let me know.

Some guys have all the cool stuff

2005-02-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

Some guys have all the cool stuff.

Free Speech Zone

2005-01-24T11:06:00.000-08:00

We went on a nice hike this weekend. (Two diferent hikes in fact, both Saturday and Sunday.) Our Sunday hike took us past the gates into Muir Woods. While walking through the parking lot of Muir Woods, we stubled across their federally mandated "Free Speech Zone". While standing there I told my daughter that she was standing in a very special place where she could say anything she wanted. I wispered in her ear that she could say "George Bush is a bad president." which she was more than happy to repeat. She then wispered in my ear if it was OK to say the word "poop" in the Free Speech Zone. I told her that I wasn't sure, as naughty words have different set of rules about them. I then suggested to her that while it may not be OK to simply say the word "poop", it was probably OK to say the phrase "George Bush is a poop president." That made her very happy.

lego starbucks barista

2005-01-03T11:33:00.000-08:00

Someone made a Lego Starbucks barista and is selling it on eBay.

My noisy apartment

2004-12-23T13:56:00.000-08:00

We have some new neighbors and sometimes it feels like this when I'm trying to go to sleep. (courtesy of the person who created Mister Rossi)

Journal of Gastronomy

2004-12-20T16:58:00.000-08:00

OK, I've got rough done up of my Journal of Gastronomy fan site. Look for updates as they happen.

Firefox installation tips

2004-12-09T15:24:00.000-08:00

I created this simple page to aid installing Mozilla Firefox.

Are we forcing our kids to be too safe

2004-12-02T10:23:00.000-08:00

I oft-discussed topic in our family is the level of risk that we are willing to allow for our child. This discussion really opens up the whole dialogue to show what a wide range of risks that have existed over the years for so many children.

eBay - the new disease

2004-12-02T10:10:00.000-08:00

If you come into our house, before we have a chance to clean, you might see a pile of boxes in the corner. We live in one of those ebay houses. This one, however is a little bit different. These photos document not an eBay seller, but an obsessive-compulsive eBay buyer. Sellers beware, you are contributing to this disease.

Real dangers milk or SUVs

2004-11-15T09:16:00.000-08:00

It just amazes me that these things are still legal while we are forbidden from eating cheese made from unpasturized milk due to health and safety concerns.

Red States more charatable, or just plain broke

2004-11-11T09:05:00.000-08:00

United States	$46,160
Mississippi	$33,754
Montana	$33,775
West Virginia	$34,941
Arkansas	$35,467
North Dakota	$35,654
New Mexico	$35,894
South Dakota	$35,907
Oklahoma	$37,098
Louisiana	$37,102
Idaho	$37,636
South Carolina	$38,123
Kentucky	$38,210
Alabama	$38,472
Maine	$39,018
Iowa	$39,630
Nebraska	$39,708
Tennessee	$39,773
Vermont	$40,506
Ohio	$41,032
Utah	$41,042
Hawaii	$41,329
Missouri	$41,368
Indiana	$41,562
North Carolina	$41,896
Oregon	$42,118
Kansas	$42,187
Alaska	$42,650
Texas	$43,546
Arizona	$43,726
Wyoming	$43,817
Florida	$43,875
Wisconsin	$43,973
Pennsylvania	$43,991
Georgia	$44,802
Michigan	$45,127
Rhode Island	$45,925
Nevada	$48,025
Delaware	$48,291
Minnesota	$48,736
Washington	$49,021
Illinois	$49,662
New Hampshire	$49,720
Colorado	$49,778
Virginia	$50,943
California	$51,281
New York	$52,774
Maryland	$54,043
Massachusetts	$56,764
New Jersey	$59,159
Connecticut	$64,724

According to this blogger, Red states are more generous than blue states. But if you go back to the original source data, then resort the data by average income, you come up with the chart indicated below. Not much different, except that instead of charting some ambigous "Generosity Index", what you're reporting is simply that states with lower annual AGI are more likely to vote for Bush.

No surpise there. Lower income, less money towards education, more likely to vote red.

xenophobia

2004-10-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

Where do people get these ideas? This is incredibly frightening. These people aren't idiots, they can read and write. What's scary to me is that there is some force out there -- the mainstream media, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, public schools, something -- something that's suggesting to these folks that they should be filled with this level of xenophobia and hatred.

I'm prone to bits of anger, especially if someone driving an SUV cuts me off while talking on a cell phone, but this level of anger seems really foreign to me.

Lower gas prices = Bush wins

2004-10-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

I've been telling people this for over a year. I swear. My prediction for the "October Surprise" will be a big drop in gas prices. Aparently it's a fact that Bush's popularity seems to be closely aligned with lower gas prices.

I thought I had a bad dentist

2004-09-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

Aparently there are some dentists out there that are worse then the ones I've encounted over the years.

Hurricanes and Global Warming

2004-09-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

Boy, they sure have the ducks in a row. I haven't really been following the news recently, but a thought occured to me, "is there a link between hurricanes and global warming." So I did a quick Google search and looked what poped up. It's like a freakin' who's who of anti-environmental, coporate funded, "junk science" think tanks.

We've got opinion papers from JunkScience.com, co2science.org, The New Republic, The Greening Earth Society, Rush, Cato, and lots more. So this begs the question "why are these folks so obsessed with deflecting the connection between hurricans and global warming." The answer is simple, there are people dying out there and millions of dollars in property damage happening. People are freaking out. They're houses are destroyed, their communties desimated, their life's savings wiped out.

The last thing these groups want is serious attention being directed at the possiblity of this connection.

Even more critical, there is an election at stake here boys, and the key, once again, is Florida. If those poor Floridians ever considered for a moment that the environmental policies of the Bush & Co. was to blame for the havoc these huricans caused thier lives, they would switch thier party affiliation, permanetly.

Grover Norquist is "fuckin' Crazy"

2004-09-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

If you question Colin Powell description of neo-cons as "fucking crazies" perhaps you should read this essay from Grover Norquist.

OED Back Door

2004-09-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

This can't last long, but while it's open you should perform all you OED searches for free.

Score!

2004-09-09T15:55:00.000-07:00

We went to the California Academy of Sciences garage sale. Got there really late, but still picked up a few things, including this calculator. Last one sold on ebay for $150. This is probably my best thrift score.

Electoral Vote Predictor 2004

2004-09-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

A very informative web site that maps all the states, indicating which are battleground states, which are going to Kerry and which are going to Bush. It's updated daily so you can always get the most current numbers.

Kerry's taking a dive

2004-09-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

A while back I was telling people this commentary: You see, everyone’s been talking about how the Democratic Party is controlled by corporate interests. What they don’t realize is that while the Democrats are controlled by the corporations, the Republican Party is a multinational corporation. Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and all the others are corporate heads, running the Republican Party and the U.S. Government on behalf of their clients.

Everyone’s complaining that Kerry's not doing a very good job of running his campaign. But the way I see it, Kerry is just taking a dive. His bosses on the other side said “look son, it’s just night your night. You’re takin’ a dive. You go down in the fifth.”

But then it occurred to me, Kerry's job is not to lose the election, he’s trying to completely take down the entire Democratic Party and create massive disillusionment amongst its members. Look at things objectively, you’ve got an incumbent President with one of the lowest approval rating ever, a quagmire of a war that the majority of the citizens are against, over a thousand U.S. troops killed in battle, a stagnant economy, and an exploding national debt and deficit. Anyone, and I mean anyone, could have galvanize the opposition and steal the election (in an honest way this time). This thing should be a slam-dunk. I don’t think anyone could have done a better job of taking the election, which has been handed over on a silver platter, and muddling it up so badly that things are still up for grabs.

Now I’m not saying that a Kerry Presidency would be any different from a Bush Presidency. What’s at stake here is the future of the Democratic Party. This election would have been a golden opportunity to unify the Party, increase its membership, bring the left wing back into the Party, regain the support of the youth, poor, working people, minorities, and others who have abandoned the Party over the years. That’s the one thing the corporations did not what to happen this year, and that is exactly what they got with Kerry.

Guide: Walnut Creek

2004-09-07T11:57:00.000-07:00

Walnut Creek is a really wacky town. Its downtown area is like one big open-air outdoor mall. For a while, we spent a lot of time visiting the shopping malls scattered about the Bay Area on weekends. After living in New York City for five years and San Francisco for ten, the shopping mall possessed a certain mystique and novelty. A very foreign concept to the urban dweller, the suburban shopping mall offered a peek inside the world of temperature controlled, TV-advertised chain stores, piped-in music, teen fashions, and bizarre themed-stores. Soon we became proficient in the various types of malls and mall terminology but after a while all the malls seemed the same, and it got pretty tiring.

We abandoned the whole mall scene until we found Walnut Creek. A very wealthy community, Walnut Creek transformed their downtown to a huge open-air upscale shopping mall. Now, it’s not unusual for a community to have a downtown shopping area, that’s precisely the point of building healthy communities, but Walnut Creek’s downtown shopping area is so creepily like an indoor shopping mall, except it’s in the downtown area of a residential community and the roof seems to be missing. There are fountains, curvy walkways, even streets, but walking along you feel just like you are in a controlled mall-like environment. I’m sure it’s entirely by design. I’m sure the entire area is owned, managed, and leased by a mall management corporation. I bet even the streets, which you can drive and park your car on, are outsourced. You almost feel like you are driving right into a mall and parking your car right by the big fountain in the middle of it. (The Bay Street Emeryville mall is another example, offering a similar open-air mall that mimics the traditional urban downtown.)

Adjacent to the mall is the old part of the city, where the streets are straight and connect at right angles to each other, the bubble gum splotched sidewalks have larger trees and you’ll find fewer chain stores. Some noteworthy shops in the alt town are Bonanza Street Books, Leonidas Belgian Chocolates, and the great pizza joint Tomatina.

Another thing that stands out is the wealth and opulence of the community. You’ll find all the trademark shops that your typically find in the more upscale shopping centers; Tiffany, Nordstrom, Coach, and an Apple store. Being so far removed from The City, Walnut Creek is comfortable in its demographic, racial profile, and lifestyle. I highly recommend a visit to those more used to the Lower Haight or East Village.

Michale Moore has removed 9/11 from Oscar consideration

2004-09-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this? Michael Moore has intentionally removed Fahrenheit 9/11 from Oscar consideration. Apparently there's some obscure rule that if a film is shown on broadcast TV within nine months of its theatrical debut then it's ineligible for Best Documentary consideration. Moore is pushing to get his film shown on TV very close to election day but naturally his distributors are none too pleased with that scenario. So he's already pulled 9/11 from consideration by not submitting it to the Academy. I think that that's a pretty cool move. It really sounds like that in the unlikely event that the film is shown on TV the night before the election that it would swing the election to the Democrats. If you haven't seen the film yet, let me know and I can hook you up. I can also hook you up with Outfoxed if you haven't seen that.

Fun piece about the NYC RNC

2004-09-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

I really liked this piece. I know I would have very mixed feelings if I was still living in New York City. I'm so glad The New York Press is not owned by New Times so it doesn't have that really lame New Times style of political satire.

Gilligan's Island, the Iraq war, and monetary theory

2004-09-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how when you take someting as simple and familar as Gilligan's Island, you can understand complex monetary theory about occupied nations.