The Swiss Army Fieldmaster knife offers the classic Swiss Army knife functionality, without loading up the knife, and your pocket, with tools you don’t need.

Everyone who has used a Swiss Army Knife is impressed by the sheer cleverness of the seemingly countless tools.

BUT, which outdoor experience – camping, fishing, hiking — or indoor home and shop applications, which combination of tools makes the perfect Swiss Army knife is a matter of debate. 

But before we begin:

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A tip on giving knives: Don’t give anyone a knife.

According to the Irish, or the English — actually it was someone who told me who has a lot of Irish in them — it’s BAD LUCK to give someone a knife.

Instead you should always sell a gift knife for a penny.

This ensures that the person buying the knife will not cut themselves.

Well, that’s the legend, anyway.

At least they won’t cut themselves on your account.

The friend or loved one who receives a Swiss Army knife from you may still cut themselves, of course. Sharp knives do that.

But it’s their knife. They bought it from you. For a penny. So never give anyone a knife, sell it to them. And may they have the luck of the Irish.

The combination of tools in the Swiss Army Fieldmaster knife includes several classic tools. BUT,

The main reason to get the Swiss Army Fieldmaster knife is the saw.

A bit of History:  The Swiss Army knife saw was the precursor to the modern pruning saw. Aggressive teeth, pointed backwards so that you pull through the cut not push, defined the modern pruning saw decades before they became available.

The modern pull-action pruning saw really is a marvel of manufacturing. Anyone remember the old one-handed bow saw? The first time I tried the pull action of a modern, shark-toothed saw, I could not believe the cutting power. The Swiss Army knife was the first to offer an aggressive pull action saw, although I hear tell that Asian saws have pulled backward for centuries.

Here’s a modern pruning saw. Buy this, do not accept as a gift. See above for Irish reasoning on the subject.

Although it has the saw, CAVEAT, the Fieldmaster Swiss Army knife, although the father of the modern pruning saw, can no longer compete with an actual pruning saw.

Still, the Fieldmaster is a pocket knife. It can compete due to lack of competition, unless you happened bring a modern pruning saw on your fishing or hiking trip.

Hikers, especially hiker campers, are obsessive about weight, as they must be.

The Fieldmaster may not be for these payload freaks because it has some luxury tools that would be better exchanged for other payload. Like food!

Still, with the proper skills in the right terrain, a Fieldmaster’s tiny but effective saw could turn a light Space Blanket into a shelter made of leaning saplings.

Yes, you can cut down a tree with the Fieldmaster Swiss Army knife saw. I’ve done it. Another tree quickly took its place.

My opinion is that the Fieldmaster is an awesome set of tools for the wilderness and that includes the ocean. Take a look at the awl for sewing, and the hook, which I still have to figure out all the uses.

Now you might argue with this claim and say, “Wilderness? What’s with the three kinds of screwdrivers? I’m sure I will find lots of screws on a tree! The Fieldmaster is a city knife.”

Agreed. You would have a good point. There are no screws in nature.

Still,

• Most of us who venture out into nature take some gear. And some of that gear DOES have screws, of all sizes, and including Phillips head.
• Hikers do move through populated areas and may also need to deal with civilization.
• But touche’, the Fieldmaster has to sell you on the other tools that come with the saw.

This is going to sound like I’m abandoning you.

But the real case for the Fieldmaster is made by those who have tried one. Check out the reviews below and see where you come down on the great Swiss Army Knife debate.

Swiss Army Fieldmaster Knife and Why You Should Never Give a Knife originally appeared at Blogs News Reviews - WordPress tips, reviews, blog writing, SEO, superheros, humor

Neat kitchen gadgets spend most of their time in a drawer.  Here is a collection of high-end cooking gadgets beautiful enough for an art museum.

This kitchen gadget, the Alessi apostrophe  avoids citrus catastrophe. Clawing your way into oranges is so last century. If you enjoy peeling oranges and getting all the citrusy goodness up under your thumbnail, this beautiful gadget may not be your thing.

Alessi Apostrophe Orange Peeler

Only 2.2 inches tall, one inch wide, and 10 ounces of matte finish stainless steel.             Honey, this is for you. Simple and timeless, this Alessi honey jar and serving wand please the eye the way honey pleases the palatte. Simply pass the wand over biscuits, fruit or tea to taste the magic.

A truly space age kitchen gadget, the Alessi citrus juicer comes in two sizes, and comes with a citrus bonus (hint: it’s a punctuation mark).  

Main Squeeze? When it comes to citrus juicing, the Alessi My Squeeze is beautiful enough to be your new main squeeze.  Five inches by two and a quarter inches and made of sculpted stainless steel, the My Squeeze should last for centuries under ordinary conditions.

• Dimensions: 5″L x 2.25″W
• Mirro polich stainless steel
• For all citrus fruits

Let’s recap these gorgeous kitchen gadgets, experience a little sticker shock, keeping in mind that Italian works of art aren’t cheap.

Bonus Kitchen Gadget: Microwave Egg Cooker

Soft, medium or, if you like your eggs like your detective novels, hardboiled. This device cooks them fast and rarely blows up. Nordic Ware also makes a microwave popcorn popper that uses no oil and regular popping corn. Plus it’s not very expensive.

Looking for a low-end, thrifty, non-artsy version of the Alessi Apostrophe kitchen gadget? (So cheap it’s probably not gift appropriate)  Fox Run Orange Peeler, Set Of 2

Kitchen Gadgets as Art neat kitchen gadgets that happen to be beautiful sculptures originally appeared at Blogs News Reviews - WordPress tips, reviews, blog writing, SEO, superheros, humor

The best and strongest aircraft cable key ring is a simple loop of aircraft cable

Aircraft cable is a flexible plastic-coated stainless steel wire rope developed to manipulate control surfaces — flaps, ailerons, and tail rudders — on airplanes. Aircraft cable now finds uses in bike locks, exercise machines and sailboat rigging.

Why aircraft cable for a key ring?

With a tensile strength of 890 pounds, a 1/16 inch aircraft cable may seem over-engineered for holding keys.  The aircraft cable key ring was introduced in the 1970s.  Some key rings manufactured back then are still in service.

This aircraft cable key ring has been in constant use since 1976. Despite fading, cracks in the plastic coating, and some play in the clasp, this key ring still works perfectly.

Get the right kind of air craft cable key ring, the twisty kind

There are three kinds of key ring cable clasps:

• threaded carabiner-style — problem: fussy screw connector; can snag
• ball in socket — problem: streamlined but disconnects too easily
• twisty lock — fast, smooth, secure but you need to know how to use it

See this brief video on  How to use the twisty aircraft cable keyring

My personal recommendation comes after trying all three kinds of aircraft cable key rings.

Yes, the ball in socket type does disconnect when the ring is squeezed, if you are lucky, when the keyring is in your pocket.  The threaded variety also unscrew and are fussy. I have used a twisty lock aircraft cable key ring since about 1975.  In 1976 while visiting a fair booth in San Diego, I talked with the company rep about these amazingly strong and wear-resistant key rings.

When I showed the company rep my purple aircraft cable key ring, he offered to trade me a brand new red one

I was hesitant to part with my reliable key ring.  When he told me his company did research on wear and tear in used key rings, I agreed to the trade. That red aircraft cable key ring has been in my pocket every day since 1976.  Perhaps the company will offer to trade me a new one?  I suspect the cable was made by the Loos Company.

Will your aircraft cable key ring last for 37 years?  Get one now and start testing!

Or perhaps you need more aircraft cable, also known as wire rope?

Here are a couple of little gizmos to hang your keys in your pants and a folding knife the size of a key! Click on a photo to see they have quite a few fans. But let me recommend replacing the fingernail breaking split ring with an aircraft cable key ring!

Best Aircraft Cable Key Ring and Why Not to Get the Wrong Kind originally appeared at Blogs News Reviews - WordPress tips, reviews, blog writing, SEO, superheros, humor

The history of ancient life on Earth is written in its oldest rocks.  Paleontologists, detectives who track the ancient denizens of that early world, continue to gather fossil evidence of the earliest multicellular life, the Ediacara.

These mysterious creatures preceded the famous Cambrian explosion that began 541 million years ago.

The Cambrian, abundant with the fossils from the ancient ocean sediments, including the Burgess Shale in Canada, justifiably captures the popular spotlight.

Almost everyone has seen a trilobite, an animal that appeared in the Cambrian and roamed the ancient seas for 270 million years, right up to the Permian-Triassic extinction, the so-called “Great Dying” 252 million years ago.

Of course, even kids know the names of dinosaurs, which came to rule the Earth after the Great Dying until only 66 million years ago.

Ediacaran life has attracted much less celebrity

Beginning in the 1950s, a few fossils began to tell of complex animals that were not even supposed to exist prior to the Cambrian.

This pre-Cambrian time, the Ediacaran period, between 575 and 542 million years ago, followed the Marinoan glaciation or “Snowball Earth,” a period when the entire surface of our planet was frozen solid.

Not that long ago, the Cambrian was considered the boundary before which no multicellular life existed.  That’s all changed.

Simple one-celled life appeared on Earth about a billion years after the planet formed 4.5 billion years ago, a time punctuated by massive meteor bombardments, including a whopping collision with a Mars-sized planet that sent molten rock into space to form our Moon.

Life Begins

Within less than a billion years life appeared. Life on Earth may have gotten its start near deep-sea geothermal vents, still the home of extremeophile bacteria and the animals that feed on them.

Whatever process led to the emergence of life, soon single-celled plants began converting the Earth’s carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbohydrates, the stuff you sprinkle on your cereal.

The first oxygen was consumed by iron dissolved in the oceans which became iron oxide or rust, laid down as rich ore deposits later used to make your car.

The conversion of a carbon-dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere into oxygen may seem like a good thing to mammals like us.  But carbon dioxide traps heat much better than does oxygen.  Simple plants made too much of a good thing!  Oxygen cooled the Earth.

Our planet froze into a Snowball Earth.  Several times.

Why did ancient single-celled life dominate Earth for so long?

Appearing “only” a billion years after the Earth formed, single celled life took more than three billion years to begin forming more complex multicullular life forms during the Ediacaran Period about 600 million years ago.  See time line below.

Notice how quickly simple life appears 4 billion years ago, at the end of meteor bombardment of Earth. Yet, it takes a full 3 billion years and longer for animals to finally appear.  Then, in less than a billion years, animals conquer the Earth, with vertebrate animals only making land in about the last third of a billion, and mammals like humans showing up very, very late to the party.

Some scientists think that low oxygen levels in the oceans 1.8 to .8 billion years ago kept life simple. Others believe that Snowball Earths caused, ironically, by plentiful oxygen in the atmosphere, delayed the appearance of complex life. However, some paleontologists continue to push back the time of the first animals. perhaps even before the last “Snowball Earth.”  In any case, the Cambrian is no longer the first word in multicellular animal life.

Ediacaran Ancient Life Finally Gets Some Respect

These ancient critters now have their own explosion, the Avalon Explosion, a rapid increase in the diversity of Ediacara body forms that preceded the Cambrian Explosion by 33 million years.  If 33 million years doesn’t sound like much, it’s a quarter the length of the dinosaurs’ reign and half as long as the Cenozoic, the Age of Mammals.

A Sample Collection of Ediacaran Life Forms

Unless noted all photo credits:  Wikipedia

Dickinsonia

Dickinsonia grew as big as bath mats and apparently lay flat on the sea bottom, possibly grazing on microbial mats.  The segments of the soft-bodied Dickinsonia have been described as liquid-filled chambers, something like an air mattress. First discovered by Reg Sprigg in 1946 in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, apparently while eating his lunch, Ediacaran fossils were described in a paper submitted to, and rejected by, the journal Nature.

Charnia

Charnia was first discovered in 1957 in rocks in Charnwood Forest in central England by Tina Negus, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, but her geography schoolteacher ruled out the possibility of Precambrian fossils.

Later, a schoolboy Roger Mason, who later became a geologist, brought the fossils to the attention of scientists.  Charnia lived attached to the sea bottom, too deep for sunlight to allow photosynthesis, suggesting that they absorbed nutrients directly from the seawater.

 Charniodiscus

Also first discovered in Charnwood Forest, Charniodiscus was first discovered as only the circular base or holdfast that anchored the stalk and frond to the sandy sea floor. Similar to Charnia, the frond structure is different, although the source of nutrition for this an Ediacaran fossil was presumably similar. Two Charniodiscus forms have been found, one with a short stalk and fat frond, the other with a long stalk that held the frond 20 inches above the sea bottom.

Eoandromeda 

Eoandromeda has eight radial spiral arms, spiraling either clockwise or counterclockwise.  A few dozen fossils are known, ranging from 1 to 4 cm in diameter.  This specimen from Australia has longer, more tightly coiled arms compared to Chinese Eoandrommeda. Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/groups/complex_life/

Spriggina

Named for Ron Sprigg, this segmented Edicaran organism reached about 3-5 cm in length and may have been a predator. Two rows of tough interlocking plates cover the bottom, while one row covers its top.  Its front segments are fused to form a head, which may have borne eyes and antennae.

These are but a sample of a growing collection of Ediacaran organisms.  Below is an artist’s conception of an Ediacaran garden

The Ediacara appear to have become extinct before the celebrated hustle and bustle of the Cambrian.  Some suggest they are a “failed experiment” that left no descendents.  As objects of scientific study the Ediacara are an active field with a growing list of Ediacaran genera.

Here’s how the Earth’s continents changed from Ediacaran times.

Scientific Picture Book of the Ediacarans

Highly rated, with foreword by Arthur C. Clarke, The Rise of Animals by five respected authors is considered the best account of Ediacaran life.  Organized by fossil location, the book includes an Atlas of Ediacaran paleontology.

Take a Peek

Even if you are just curious, the “Look Inside” button at Amazon offers a generous sampling of the Ediacaran “zoo,” with fossil photos and interpretations of how these strange organisms lived.

Ancient Life originally appeared at Blogs News Reviews - WordPress tips, reviews, blog writing, SEO, superheros, humor

Disneyland, Disney World, and California Adventure will ban lone kids under 14 beginning on March 23, 2013.

Previously children of various ages were allowed in the Disney parks unaccompanied by an older person.

The policy will not be enforced based on government-issued identification cards, which youngsters under 14 may not have.  Instead, Disney employees will approach those who look young, and if the children are under 14, they will contact a parent or guardian, according to the Orange County Register.

The new policy for all Disney parks will be the same for Disneyland, Walt Disney World, California Adventure, which previously admitted solo children of varying ages.  

Children visiting any Disney park must be accompanied by someone 14 or older.

A Disneyland spokesperson said that the new rule followed a survey of guests and various child welfare organizations, and that age 14 is the minimum age recommended by the American Red Cross. 

The Orange County Register reported on March 15 that the Disneyland spokesperson said that the policy was not triggered by any specific issue with unaccompanied children in a park.

However, the policy comes within a week of the drowning death of a 13-year-old swimmer in a pool at Disney’s Pop Century Resort on the grounds of Walt Disney World, according to the U.K. Daily Mail and other news organizations.

The boy from Springfield, Missouri, was swimming at about 9:00 pm, March 10, in the hotel pool with a group of children including his little brother and a cousin. The tragedy was discussed on Dizboards. com beginning on Sunday, March 10 and the later drowning death on Tuesday, March 12 was reported by the Orlando Sentinel.  

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Disneyland Bans Children Under 14 Alone, Disney World, California Adventure, too originally appeared at Blogs News Reviews - WordPress tips, reviews, blog writing, SEO, superheros, humor