Safety Tip: 9-Volt Batteries

Do you have any 9-volt batteries in your home?  Of course you do.  They are most frequently used in our smoke detectors, but they have several other uses, too.

Storage and disposal of these batteries is very critical, as the position of the terminals so close to each other can easily cause a short, and that in turn can start a fire.  Since they are usually stored in a drawer in the home, this can lead to tragic consequences.

Most batteries have the positive and negative terminals at opposite ends of the unit, but the 9-volt is unique in that it not only has both terminals on one end, but they are less than an inch apart.  The battery is also thin and tall, so it is unstable in the sense that it tips over easily when not in use. It also has the danger of contacting a piece of metal that will conduct between the battery terminals to cause a short.

There is a very easy method to protect your battery from any accidental short that could cause a fire.  Simply buy a roll of 1/2 inch wide electrical tape and place a strip of it over the terminals to keep them from being exposed until you need to use them.  And after you have used them and they are "dead" --  a very deceptive term, because no battery is ever completely dead -- tape the terminals again before recycling them. 

In case you think this warning is unnecessary, just Google the term "9-volt battery fire" (without the quotes, of course) and see how many hits you get.  But if you want to see a very graphic video about the danger, here is one that will do the trick.  Don't fret, there are no charred human remains, but the house certainly did get "toasted."

Potpourri

A follow up to my column on Wodens Day

One of my respondents called to my attention that the Germans have a special word for Wodens Day, or Wednesday.

Notice the German "tag" which means "day" as the last part of their weekdays, as in:

Sunday - Sonntag

Monday - Montag

Tuesday - Dienstag

Thursday - Donnerstag --Dunner is the German word for thunder.

Friday - Freitag

Saturday - Samstag

Wednesday is not in the list as it has no "Tag" or day to its word.

The German Wednesday is Mittwoch which translates to "Midweek".

Okay, we still don't know why Wednesday is spelled W-E-D-N-E-S-D-A-Y!

Thanks anyway, Hank

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Restroom Arithmetic

I was recently in a rest stop on I-81 in Virginia, and on the wall above the urinal was a sign that read:

            "This waterless urinal is earth-friendly. By eliminating the need to 

             flush, we save 40,000 gallons of fresh water per year for each urinal.

             Please do not place any cigarettes or other debris in this urinal."

Now that got me to doing the math, because I estimate that the modern urinal uses only about 2 quarts of water per flush.  Therefore, by the estimate shown, the urinal would be flushed 80,000 times per year, or 220 times per day.  And since there were 4 urinals in that particular restroom, that would make 240,000 flushes per year, or 880 flushes per day for all four, and that presupposes that everyone flushes—which they don't—and that nobody uses the sit-down toilet—which they do.

That, my friends, is a whole lot of males visiting one restroom in Virginia. 

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New use for an old word

Another one of my respondents recently emailed me a new word, but it turns out that it is actually an old word that might have new meaning.  The word:

imbricate  \IM-brih-kut\

adjective - lying lapped over each other in a regular order

In its new meaning it is a verb, and the definition, 'lying', is also a verb, and by the mere addition of a comma, we make the definition:

Lying, lapped over each other in a regular pattern.

So what we have here is a shingle-like overlapping of lies to build a strong cover for the original lie.

Hmmm...  does that sound familiar?

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Déjà vu all over again

My wife and I are avid readers and, we read a mystery that included a real-life person, Alan Turing, the father of modern computers, and breaker of the WWII German Enigma code at Bletchley Park, near London. 

A few days after finishing the book, I saw a news article about the royal pardon of Alan Turing for 'gross indecency' in 1952.  In addition to his great contribution to shortening the war, he was gay, and was caught in a compromising situation with another man some 60-odd years ago.  Now, the Queen has pardoned him -- a few years too late, since he poisoned himself shortly after the indiscretion.

It never ceases to amaze me that I see a name or an occurrence twice within a short period.  I had never heard of Alan Turing before I read that book by David Baldacci. Yet, I came across his name twice in less than a week.

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Global Warming Update

I'm certain we've all seen or read about that Russian ship that was stuck in the ice at Antarctica, and the ice breaker that went after it unsuccessfully.  The Russian scientists, who were on a mission to study global warming, or climate change, as it has now morphed into for PC reasons, had to be airlifted by helicopter and the ship is apparently still stuck fast in the polar ice.

You know, I have a theory about that.  We all wondered what happened to all the ice up north in Greenland and Scandinavia and Alaska that scientists keep telling us is "melting away."  Well, I think I now know where it went.  It didn't melt away after all; it just migrated to Antarctica.  It went south for the winter.