Made On Earth

Using squirrels as a power source (video)

Reinventing the wheel – and then some via NOTCOT. In the quest for alternative energy, thereรขโ‚ฌโ„ขs a source many may have overlooked. Not Narberth resident Bill McHugh, though. Heรขโ‚ฌโ„ขs been exploring it ever since he built and moved into his Sabine Avenue home 46 years ago. You could call it รขโ‚ฌล“squirrel power.รขโ‚ฌย

Beautiful overengineered tape dispenser

Beautiful overengineered tape dispenser

There’s a great thing that happens, every so often, when people have access to machine tools: They go a little bit nuts. They’re bumping along one day, doing what they do, and some mundane object crosses them for the last time. This or that thing never works as well as it should, or breaks too easily, or gets misplaced once too often, and it occurs to them: Hey, I could fix that–and not just for myself, for today or for the next couple of weeks or months, but for the rest of my natural life and possibly those of my descendants for the foreseeable future of the species. And something like this solid 6061 aluminum Scotch tape dispenser from Henry Herndon is the result. The sea may be vast, our boats may be small and constantly buffeted by the gales of an indifferent universe ruled by a howling demon of entropy, but that Scotch-tape-dispenser-problem is fixed now, by God. On to the next thing.