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Showing posts from April, 2020

The Roman Candle Fountain Pen from Birmingham Pen Company

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Writing as a form of human expression has evolved with our civilization, and so have the writing instruments. Since the earliest days of writing when cuneiform expressions were made on clay tablets by the ancient Sumerians (modern day Iraq) and a quill was used by ancient Indian sages to write hymns on palm leaf, writing instruments have evolved from reed stylus to quill and made its way to the modern day stylus used on iPad and Android devices. Yet nothing is as charming a writing instrument as the good old fountain pen.  A fountain pen is a "thinker's instrument".  Similar to brewing tea, there is a certain degree of meditativeness to using a fountain pen. A fountain pen user eschews the hurried nature of our modern lifestyle and prefers to take time to prepare the writing instrument. (S)he opens the barrel deliberately, fills the pen with ink and wipes down the excess, before putting the nib to paper. There is a certain ritualistic aspect to all this, to be done weekly

Installing Bees in Beehive

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Although the 2019 winter was mild, my bees didn't make it through the winter.  I had fed them plenty of sugar syrup, and they had produced more than sufficient honey to make it through the winter. So I know it wasn't starvation. Could it be that despite mild winter, the hive was too exposed to cold winter winds? I'll have to find a way to protect the hive from cold winds next winter. In any case, when I checked the hive in January, the bees were gone, and I decided to install another package as soon as weather turned nice. Jiya holding the package of bees In March, I called Stan Wasitowski of S&F Honey Farms in Flemington, NJ, and placed my order.  Stan spends his winters in Florida and around early April he picks up the honey bee packages from Georgia in his trailer, on his way back to New Jersey.  Alas, COVID-19 has impacted the bee keepers business as well, and around the end of March I got a call from Stan saying that he won't be able to supply the package becau

To mask or not to mask - Part 2

Earlier I wrote that using masks to prevent spread of infections makes a lot of sense.  But it turns out, prolonged use of masks may actually increase the risk of infection from respiratory virus.  Dr. David Fein of Princeton Longevity Center, has nicely summarized a couple of papers published on use of face masks.  In one study, which looked at the impact of using face covering on three types of viruses - seasonal Corona virus, Rhinovirus and Influenza virus, the researchers concluded that ...seasonal coronaviruses can be transmitted in aerosols produced during normal breathing. However, even without a face mask, there were low amounts of viral shedding from people with influenza virus and seasonal coronavirus in both aerosols and respiratory droplets... But another study served up some disconcerting information. In observing the effect of cloth masks and medical-grade masks in healthcare workers, the researchers found that ...that cloth masks increase the risk of infection from

To mask or not to mask, that is the question

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Face masks have emerged as a matter of controversy In the US, there is a raging debate about whether masks are helpful in preventing transmission of Covid-19 or if its just a useless exercise, unlikely to help with prevention. For the longest time, the centers for disease control (CDC) contended that face mask should only be used by those known to have symptoms of respiratory sickness - coughing, sneezing etc, out of a sense of public service. Only recently and under tremendous political pressure, did the CDC put out a recommendation for wearing face masks by everyone in public places. On the face of it, the argument to selectively use makes a lot of sense - after all, viruses are so small that no coarse material like cotton or paper fabric would be able to prevent virus penetration.  But that misses the point of prevention, which is all about relative risk reduction not absolute risk reduction.  In relative risk reduction, a group of measures, when used together, reduce the