The Consequence of Matters

Today is the birthday of the greatest Texan who ever lived, Molly Ivins who once said, "The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion." Molly Ivins was born in Monterey, California in 1944 and raised in Houston, Texas. Molly Ivins once said: "I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substi tution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives." She went to Smith and to Columbia's School of Journalism and spent years covering the police beat for the Minneapolis Tribune (the first woman to do so) before moving back to Texas, the setting and subject of much of her life's writing. In a biographical blurb she wrote about ...

A mystery solved. I've wondered over the years what the rubbing means in rubbing alcohol. Does anyone actually rub with it? I mean regular rubs, not the old rub and tug. And then I forget again but today I remembered to look it up. People once rubbed with it, as a liniment for treating muscle pains, but it wasn't quite the same thing. The stuff was created in the 1920's, sometimes with ethanol and sometimes with isopropanol, but they were perfumed and had a number of other ad ditives, notably methyl salicylate. Methyl salicylate, when rubbed on the skin, causes a heating sensation similar to what happens with a product like Bengay (which, incidentally, is an Anglicized version of the French inventor's name, Bengue'). I have a hard time believing that a chemically induced sensation of heat is anywhere near the same thing as actual heat from a heating pad. It doesn't involve actual heating of the muscle tissues, just activation of heat sensitive neurons. I g...