Number 5. Discover Wildlife dot com. Electric butterflies create a charge.
Static electricity: Rip open a plastic bag, and pieces of the material stick to your hands. Shuffle across a carpeted floor in your sock feet and shock the next person you touch. Static electricity is everywhere, and now we have found it in butterfly wings.
Butterflies can flap their wings up to 700 times per minute, which, for you gun nuts, puts it in the same ballpark as the cyclic rate of a full-auto M4, the military version of the dreaded civilian AR-15 Scary Black Gun. All that wing-flapping, it turns out, has a purpose besides merely moving from point A to point B.
Butterflies, like moths, bees, hummingbirds and other small winged critters, pollinate flowers and other green growing things. When the wings flap, static electricity is generated, and just like the plastic ribbon being attracted to your fingers, pollen is attracted to the insect, during the fly-by.
A Dr. England from England (I am not making this up) has found that butterflies can extract pollen without actually touching the flower. Not far; maybe only from a few inches away, but it makes the pollen-gathering much more efficient. I’m not sure what happens next; the gathered pollen has to be released somewhere else, but I think I zoned out during that part of the 6th grade discussion.
There is some likely pun here about the butterfly being “charged” with the job of pollinating flowers, but the lexemic legerdemain eludes me at the moment, and the ANR publication deadline approacheth.
But really: Flapping the wings creates static electricity which is a force-multiplier for the butterfly drawing the pollen, and thus makes the ecosystem work more efficiently. Who thought THIS up???
Oh yeah. God did. That must have been on the third day of creation, right?
I suppose this was to be expected. A Hong Kong researcher has developed soft, breathable, thermally insulated material that can keep a worker in a hot environment from over-heating.
Firefighters, and laborers who work in very hot environments, are the likely consumers of clothing made thus.
It seems that pigeons have shown us the way. The bird, featured in most spy movies when a guy in a trench coat, sitting on a park bench, tosses bread crumbs their way while waiting for his contact, has a unique on-board system to insulate themselves using feathers. When the temp drops, the feathers are fluffed up. This traps a bubble of air around the critter’s body, thus protecting from the cold.
If this can be done for cold, Dr. Dahua Shou from Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University theorized, it could also work in reverse. His team embedded packets of low-boiling-point fluid in textile fabric. When the person’s body heat increases, the fluid boils, turning to a gas, which creates expansion of the textile matrix. This protects the wearer from the external source of heat.
In the extreme, this means an environment of 250 F is reduced, for the protectee, to 200 F.
Okay, that’s still pretty warm, but Dr. Shou is… following the right thread. See what I did there?
Number 3. Fox Business dot com. Avon Products files for chapter 11.
And another one bites the dust.
In an ever-expanding sign of the times, the legendary beauty brand has declared bankruptcy. The article does not give numbers as to the loss of profit or sales, but Avon’s condition was certainly not helped by lawsuits over eye makeup linked to cancer.
Cancer of the eyelid?? Give me a good case of leukemia any day.
This story caught my eye, so to speak, because in about 1980 I was head-hunted for a territory sales manager position with Avon. (That was back when others thought my career might actually hold some promise.) The money was right, but I could not see managing a predominately female sales force selling exclusively female personal care products.
I shudder.
Too bad for Avon, but the cheerful “Avon calling!” greeting is a thing of the past. Nobody cold-calls door-to-door anymore. Some gen Z-ers are downright afraid of the doorbell (one called it “creepy scary”) and most expected guests will simply text “here” when they arrive.
I suspect we are approaching the same avoidance with telephone calls. Personally, I have quit answering calls from numbers not in my cell phone contacts list. They can leave a voice mail; there are too many scammers. (A tech expert has counselled me thus: No reputable vendor — like Amazon, Best Buy, Paypal, your bank, etc — will call or text. They will send you a U.S. Mail letter if they need your attention.)
Number 2. New York Post dot com. Lemonade stand of the future with cashless payments.
Nine-year-old Kyrei, intrepid young lady that she is, has made $7,000 from her lemonade stand in the last 3 years. Admittedly, Kyrei is probably set up at a convenient location in a good neighborhood, but her secret is the cashless point-of-sale transaction.
Kyrei’s mother reports, “at the end of each day, we probably only have $20 in cash.”
Fewer and fewer grown-ups carry change in pocket or purse, or even folding money in the wallet. If you want to make the sale, you’ve got to reduce the friction. A cashless wallet option for a credit card, a Venmo transaction, Paypal… that’s how it’s done.
Several pre-teens in this article are featured with their own innovations. One has a website where visitors can order bottled drinks. A sixth-grader has talked with a convenience store about setting up in their parking lot, and has applied for a local sales permit. He also has a million views on Tik Tok.
As it happens, Kyrei is a young stroke survivor. She has had successful brain surgery, and now, like any good entrepreneur, she has literally made lemonade from the lemon that life handed her. Her business is called Stroke Survivor Lemonade & Co. A quarter of her profits go to her local hospital, and all the tips on her tablet pay system go to Children’s Hospital Colorado.
I wonder how I could capitalize on this? Maybe hire a 9-year-old to front my cashless lemonade stand for me?
Number 1. People Magazine. Oreo and Coca-Cola team up for soda and cookies.
These are probably things I will never try: Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Oreo soda, and Oreo Coca-Cola cookies.
I don’t even think it SOUNDS good, but the manufacturers are committed to both products.
Oreo Coca-Cola sandwich cookies feature Coca-Cola syrup flavor and logos from both companies. The cream layer fizzes, somehow.
The soda drink is said to combine a “smooth fusion of a refreshing Coca-Cola taste with flavorful hints inspired by Oreo cookies.” Whatever that means.
Both products are promised to be available for pre-sale at Walmart in time for your Labor Day cookout.
Maybe you can hardly wait. I certainly can.
Thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, August 16, 2024. Patronize your local lemonade stand and get to know the young proprietor. The way things are going, he or she may be the next property developer in your neighborhood, and may actually hold your mortgage before you know it! Enjoy your weekend!
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