Things That Are Going To Kill Us All

Hello friends. Me again. Back for more.

This is normally the part in the post how this might be the last post I ever make, since, you know, the Mayans are going to kill us all tomorrow or something.

Except they're not.

We're supposed to all be of the impression that the world is ending tomorrow.  Apparently, our fate as a planet was hewn into a rock a long time ago, and somewhere between the time I go to sleep tonight and the time I wake up, the world will end.  No one is sure HOW it all ends, but it just does.  Galactic alignment?  Dunno.  Great Flood?  Maybe.  The death of the Twinkie?  Compelling argument.

"Now is not the time for fear; that comes later."

But let me tell you how everything is REALLY going to shake out: 2 hours from now, I'm going to go to sleep.  8 hours from now, I'm going to wake up.  99.99998% of the world's population will wake up tomorrow.  Those that don't... well... it won't be because of the Mayans.

But rational people know this.  Rational people know a lot of things.

However, that's never stopped people from freaking out at every tiny little thing ever.

And don't think this whole post is just about Mayans and 2012. No.  This is a generational thing.  Thinking that something is going to kill us all is such a regular occurrence that you can go back through the years and pinpoint, per year or per decade, the thing(s) that were going to kill us all.

Don't believe me?


1950s - The Commies
1960s - Nukes
1970s - Nixon/The Vietnamese/Overpopulation/Global Cooling
1980s - Reagan/The Commies/Capitalism
1990s - Gangs/HIV/AIDS/Ebola
2000 - y2k (to be fair, there was a larger concern about y2k in 1999)
2001 - Anthrax/Terrorists
2002 - West Nile/George W. Bush
2003 - Mad Cow Disease/George W. Bush
2004 - SARS/George W. Bush
2005 - Bird Flu/George W. Bush
2006 - Killer Bees/e.Coli/George W. Bush
2007 - Salmonella/Foot-And-Mouth Disease/George W. Bush
2008 - Global Warming/George W. Bush
2009 - Swine Flu
2010 - Swine Flu Vaccines
2011 - Large Hadron Collider/Higgs Boson
2012 - KONY/Mitt Romney/The Mayans
2013 - ??? (Though I've already been reading that "2013" in and of itself is extraordinarily unlucky, and the kind folks in Times Square in New York City are going to painstaking measures to make sure and mitigate as much of that bad luck as possible)

And yet, despite the massive odds against us, here we all stand, unscathed for the most part, by the very things which, year after year after year, were supposed to destroy us all.

We're a hearty bunch, we humans.  It's going to take a lot more than some calendar on a rock to kill all of us off.

In fact, my money is on the sun going red dwarf on all of us.

In about 6 billion years.

So sleep tight until then.

And seriously, don't sweat the Mayan stuff.

See you all in the morning (well, most of you...)

To worldwide calamities! The alarmists' version of a parent's empty threats!

Hand Dryers

Hey everyone.  How have ya been?  Good? You look well.  I like that shirt.  It really compliments your eyes.

Now I feel like I owe a bit of an explanation... We took the last few weeks off for finals.  It didn't feel right to rest solely upon our amazing ability to recall details and just slack off while the rest of our classmates were busting their humps studying. Plus, you know, we're kind of lazy.

So, with that out of the way...

Hand dryers.  You know the ones.  The ones that sit in the bathroom, mounted on the wall? The ones that sound like a jet plane taking off every time you push that chrome button?  Yes.  Them.

*click* Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

They're worthless.

Yes.  I mean it.  Worth. Less.

Why?  Simple.  They don't work.  When was the last time you used one of these suckers and didn't end up just wiping your hands on your shirt/pants and calling it a day?

You know how I use these things?  I dry my hands on my shirt and then use the dryer to dry my shirt out.  Works like a charm.

But just using the hand dryer for the purposes of drying your hands?  Time-consuming and worthless. The average hand dryer takes 45 seconds to get hands completely dry. 45 seconds.  I try to get in and out of restrooms in less time than that.  I don't want to spend nearly a minute huddled around some miniature jet engine like a hobo huddled around a steel 55-gallon drum for warmth all in the name of not having wet hands.

Notice I said nothing about sanitary hands. The goal of washing your hands, generally accepted, is to remove harmful bacteria and blah blah blah.  Well, air dryers take that goal and drive it into the ground like a Russian-made commercial airliner.  How?  Because these things, contrary to logic, don't sanitize hands. If anything, they make your hands dirtier after you wash them than they were before you washed them. According to a study conducted by TÜV Produkt und Umwelt, using paper towels to dry ones hands after washing led to a bacterial decrease on the hands of 24%, whereas the hot-air dryer  led to an increase of 117%. This is like using a bug spray to fumigate your house leading to a 117% increase in the infestation. Or a food that made you 117% hungrier after eating it.  These things are bacteria traps.  One study even found that the air comes out so rapidly that the bacteria could actually be blown off the hands of person A, and become airborne, possibly contaminating every other person in the restroom.  That's jacked up.

This isn't to say hand dryers don't serve a purpose.

I mean, just go on YouTube and search for "hand dryer fun" and see all the junk that comes.

p.s. There aren't any videos of people legitimately drying their hands.

Because hand dryers are worthless.

So, here's to hand dryers... they're like paper towels that burn fossil fuels!

-DW