Robot Roll Call

I cannot be 100% sure but I feel that I am one of the first, if not the first, person to review a hand dryer.

Now I realize that statement may seem odd, crazy even, but I must declare my love of the Dyson Air Blade.

If you are not familiar with this product I am sure you know the company’s name from their line of high end vacuum cleaners.

Imagine if you will, you’re in a public restroom and you have just completed you’re business now on to washing your hands.

This is always a point of contention for me, do the facilities have paper towels, a hand drier or those wall mounted rolls of thin cotton cloth that feed into itself (which on a side note you do not see much of any longer). Paper towels while they are sanitary are not eco friendly, sometimes the previous occupant has even dripped water all over the paper, particularly if said towels are stacked on a surface in the lavatory. The towels do the job and quickly I might add but they make a mess and like I mentioned above they are not eco-friendly. Next we have the old school hand dryer, a fixture in restrooms since forever, they are loud and very slow to actually assist in drying ones hands. Plus they take a huge amount of power to run the motor and heating element. Usually they take two cycles to even get your hands from wet to moist. Additionally they tend to be the victim of vandalism, as a kid I can remember the restaurant which my mother was employed had a hand dryer in the men’s washroom. If you can recall the driers had instructions listed on the face of the machine, such as

1. Push Button
2. Rub hands vigorously under warm air
3. Stops automatically.

The hand dryer at Harry’s restaurant had been defaced to read

1. Push Butt
2. Rubs hands vigorously under arm
3. Stop auto at ally.

In my years I have seen many variations of this list and even more changes via scratches with a knife or some variety of blunt instrument (as shown above). For some reason this alteration in public facilities has haunted me to this day, but I digress. The final option is the roll of cloth which feeds into itself, which was my previous favorite as it was quick and easy like the paper towels but minus the waste. However sometimes the roll was not replaced but rather just flipped and you found yourself attempting to dry your hands with a damp and germ infested piece of nasty.

This brings me to the Dyson Air Blade, a complete rethinking of how a hand dryer operates and how one interacts with a hand dryer.

Number one it does not have a blower mounted to the face of the machine rather it is in the shape of the letter U, the plastic face allows one to insert their hands into the top opening. This in turn activates a sensor which turns the machine on, no button to push for operation, the air flows from both sides of the U. All you do is insert your hands until they are completely inside the U and you slowly pull your hands up. The air is forced out of two very thin openings which act like a blade and a blower, kind of like the air blowers at the car wash. The pressure is significantly higher than the standard hand drier but in no way it is painful or dangerous. The whole process take about 15 seconds from wet hands to dry sanitary hands. The best part is that this machine actually uses less power than the old hand driers since the air is forced through such a small opening the pressure does most of the work additionally the machine does not heat the air which means less energy usage. This is an amazing machine and I strongly encourage you to ask your employer to install these in place of any other type of hand drying apparatuses. Take a moment to see the rad flash movie of the machine in action at Dyson’s web site.

When I first heard Health I dismissed them as current blog darlings which I would never hear of again; once their debut album was released. This is what happened to the L.A. foursome, however somehow they managed the impossible in this day. They made a follow-up album which not only pushes their sound forward but also takes a huge musical leap. Get Color is a fully formed release with complete ideas unlike their debut which had the stink of happenstance. They still like noise, a lot, but they also have found silence and mood to be important touch stones. When you’re pounding away on tracks like “Severin” it nice to have a break to not only appreciate the silence but to digest the audio attack which your ears have just taken part. Another factor worth mentioning is the length of Get Color, coming in just over half an hour is perfect for an album of this nature. You don’t need 70 mins of noise to get your point across, I tell this to anyone who will listen and somehow musicians still think that if a CD hold 72 minutes then I should make 72 minutes of product. This is an antiquated concept and may go the way of the dodo in this MP3/digital music world since the CD is on life support. With the advent of autumn I cannot think of a new release better suited for the declining day light and brisk mornings than Health’s “Get Color” out now on Lovepump records.

Review By Paul ‘Space-Motown’ Heintz

About a month ago I was at Dominick’s, Chicago’s version of Safeway - a grocery store - and I heard I’ll Wait by Van Halen. Just as a side note, ever notice the similarities between the names Van Halen and Led Zeppelin? Both are 2 words. Anyhow, I’m in an indie bedroom psyche group called Midstates and the Choir of Ghosts and I have very sensitive ears. Usually grocery stores play songs that make me want to leave, and when I heard the opening synth lines to I’ll Wait, not fully realizing what the song was, I had a similar feeling.

Then David Lee Roth began to sing. That guy can sing. As the person who sings in my group and more importantly as a fan of great music, I can tell you unequivocally that Roth is one of the greatest vocalists in our lifetime. But all that aside, I’ll Wait has been stuck in my head for weeks now.

Usually to get a song out of my head, and if i don’t own it (that particular song was on an album (and by album I do mean vinyl) that my sister Mary had when I was a kid), I would scour the internet: youtube, pandora, last.fm, etc. The studio recording of I’ll Wait (aside from fan versions and live versions) could not be found. Desperate, I finally succumbed to watching a live version shot in Philly on the last.fm site but sourced in from the youtube.

I have no idea when this video was shot, but judging from the length of David Lee Roth’s hair, I’m thinking it might be fairly recent. And yes, he still can nail that song. The most interesting thing about this song is that it has relatively little guitar. Someone told me that Eddie Van Halen was originally a concert pianist before turning into a shredding guitarist, and that he played all the piano/synthesizer parts on their songs (Jump comes to mind.)

20 years or so later, David Lee Roth can still sing and Van Halen has a great song that is based around a synthesizer melody and not electric guitar.

Paul ‘Space-Motown’ Heintz

for more magical goodness check out
Midstates and the Choir of Ghosts

Photo by PRI’s the World

Today the New York Times has an Op-Ed Article by Enrique Krauze titled “The Mexican Evolution”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/opinion/24krauze.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

The opinion piece is about how the U.S and Mexican media has been focusing on the violence and drug trafficking occurring in small regions of the country. And how this has caused the U.S. state department to issue a statement that Mexico along with Pakistan are on the verge of becoming a failed state. Krauze’s argument is that Pakistan is much more likely to fail than Mexico, he even goes so far as to make a laundry list of the differences between the two countries. Comparing religious issues, foreign policies, Guerrilla groups and how the country has changed from the one party political system which had a strangle hold on the country for more than 70 years.
These are all very valid points and I understand the point of the opinion piece is to show Americans that Mexico is not a “failed” state as so many others are quick to point out.
Perhaps Mexico is not a failed state however, it is dealing with an enormous plague of crime. The almost overwhelming number of murders, kidnapping and random violence is so large that it eclipses almost everything else. Mr. Krauze’s article barely hints at these issues. While his opinion piece may be focused on the positive aspects of Mexico, to glide over the violence and to blame the media for only covering the brutal aspects of Mexican news makes his article seem very misguided. Of course we all tire of yellow journalism but to ignore the countries problems and then to seemingly push the blame on to the news gathers is achingly naive and ignorant. Of course like all opinion pieces this article has a goal, and that goal is to give Mexico a much needed positive P.R. push. I am sure it is no accident that the vacation season is just around the corner. Of course I doubt anyone will be visiting Juarez Mexico this summer as last year this city of 1.5 million which occupies 72.6 sq miles had 1,600 murders in 2008, this year the city has already had 200 murders as of late February. This is not something one sugar coats with finger pointing and smoke screens in the guise of nationalism. Mexico may not be in the same realm as Pakistan when it comes to failed states, but when one is comparing predicaments on these levels the point almost seems moot.

For some more information about the situation across the border I recommend these two videos. The first is merely a recent news story about Juarez Mexico and the second is a troubling piece by Current TV for their Current Vanguard Series. The Current video titled “Narco War Next Door” is one of the best pieces I have seen on Current.

Videos
http://www.ktsm.com/local/murder-numbers-quickly-approaching-300-juarez

http://current.com/items/89845362/narco_war_next_door.htm#comments