I am frequently asked about recipes to make Soap Flake Laundry Powder starting with bar soaps like Ivory Bar Soap. Here’s a great link (ignore the word “detergent” in the recipe titles, it’s just another example of how we use the terms “soap” and “detergent” interchangeably without thinking): Link Another place to find recipes is …
Couldn’t help myself. I won’t make too many off-topic posts, and I don’t know how long this link will last, but this is about what happened when Joshua Bell played his Stradivarius for 45 minutes in a Washington D.C. subway during rush hour. At the top of the article is a link to the audio …
Off Topic – Joshua Bell Plays Incognito in DC Subway Read More »
Dust, dust, dust Here’s a little tidbit from one of Bill Bryson’s books, In a Sunburned Country: “According to an article in the science section of the New York Times, every hour the average person ‘sloughs off’ 60,000 skin fragments, 160 million motes of dust, and 20,000 particles of clothing lint, among rather a lot …
I have been getting reports that Unscented Dove has been discontinued. Unscented Dove for Sensitive Skin may be a reasonable substitute, at least it used to be identical surfactant-wise. The only reason I did not recommend it was because it has several oils in it that the plain unscented does not have, including Sweet Almond …
I apologize for the perhaps less-readable look of the new blog, but I’ll keep working on it. I was not able to resolve the ad problems on VOX, so I had to switch, and just couldn’t figure out Blogger.com. WordPress.com was recommended by Alexis at http://www.ohdolly.com/slightlygranola/ and it’s ad free. The VOX ads were clearly …
Speaking of 22-year-old research papers… Here’s one that compared the reactions of patients in different subgroups to eight surfactants and distilled water. [Link][Pubmed Link] Conclusion? “The subgroup of patients with atopic dermatitis reacted more severely than the subgroup of healthy controls with respect to synthetic detergents. The alkaline soaps were tolerated relatively well in this …
Here’s an edited question and an edited version of an email I wrote in response. It covers a lot of topics I’ve been meaning to post anyway, so I have inserted headers to make it more readable. —A.J. Dear A.J. Just wanted to touch base to see if you had achieved any success in finding …
Occasionally I get letters that make me cry and celebrate at the same time. I received this letter shortly before Christmas — it was the best Christmas present I could have imagined. I hope this little boy has a normal life from now on: –A.J. Lumsdaine My name is Katrina Featherston and I have 2 …
I worked at Bell Labs one summer when I was a student. When I returned home, the first thing my mother said to me was, “The phone is broken — please fix the phone.” At first I thought she was joking. But no, from her perspective, finally my MIT education would pay off. If it …