Diy App Blog

Posted By Erin Carbaugh on April 23, 2013

Don’t get bugged

“Start using insect repellent the moment you step off the plane in order to build up protective residues,” says Dr Ron Behrens, consultant at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London. And avoid wearing aftershave, which acts as a magnet to thirsty insects.” Ward off bugs by rinsing the remains of that Cornetto off your chin and using Jungle Formula Insect Repellent (£7.35 for 175m1), as recommended by the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.

The morning after

One too many sangrias last night? “Your hangover will be much worse in the heat, as you’ll be dehydrated from sweating,” says nutritionist Jane Scrivner. “Sink two pints of water and jump in the shower, alternating between hot and cold to stimulate your lymphatic glands and cleanse your system.”

Then down a pint of chocolate milk with two raw eggs and a pinch of salt mixed in. “The sugar will give your metabolism a kick, the milk will soothe your stomach, the salt will replace lost minerals, and the eggs contain the amino acid N-acetyl-cysteine (NAG), which helps the body deal with damaging free radicals – by-products of breaking down alcohol.” If you need to speed up your metabolism, you can use Coconut oil. Or you could always try Iraqi goat’s-head soup, as recommended by hangoverguide.com.

Press your point

Even after a full day’s sunbathing, your outer layer won’t have acclimatised. “Your skin will keep burning for up to an hour after you first see or feel any sun damage, so keep testing it,” says Dr Richard Turner, a skin specialist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. “Press a cold can or bottle against it, and if it stays white for more than a second, get out of the sun and stay out for 24 hours.”

Flag it up

Before launching yourself headfirst into the briny, gen up on international beach safety. Red flag? Don’t even think about it.

Show what you’re made of Stung by a jellyfish? Splashing on vinegar or – delightfully enough – urine will alleviate your pain. “You need alkali to counteract the acid from the sting, which can be stronger than battery acid,” says Dr Larry Goodyer, head of pharmacy at De Montfort University.

Hit the juice

Keep your beach picnic bug-free by packing frozen juice cartons around it. “Food left out for just a couple of hours may look and smell fine, but can contain dangerous bacteria,” says Catherine Collins, dietician at St George’s Hospital in London. “By lunchtime your juice will be perfectly defrosted to accompany your chilled lunch.”

An itch to scratch?

If you’re losing the bug battle, alleviate mosquito bites by applying a little toothpaste. Or try a Zanza Click (E5.99 from Boots). This little gizmo produces a tiny electrical current that stops histamine reaching the bite – the physical cause of itching.

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Posted By Erin Carbaugh on April 19, 2013

Last year Saudi Arabia acquired 60 per­cent control of the production facilities of the Arabian American Oil Company, which de­veloped and operates most of its oil fields. The government aims at eventual 100 percent ownership. Aramco’s American participants —Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, and Standard Oil of California—now seek new roles in partner­ship with the Saudi Arabians to build and op­erate new petrochemical industries.

Arabian American Oil Company

The scent of profits has encouraged literally hundreds of other U. S. companies to bid for supply contracts, construction jobs, or joint ventures: Marcona to build a steel plant; Bechtel Inc. to design Riyadh’s new airport; Gulf, Dow Chemical, and Shell to put up new petrochemical complexes.

Americans should be well positioned. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers administers contracts for nearly eight billion dollars’ worth of military construction, while U. S. Government teams work on a joint economic commission with the Saudi Arabians to pro­vide technical assistance.

But other nationals jam Riyadh’s hotels—Germans, French, Japanese, British. One American grumbled: “The Japanese send 40-man delegations; they stay awhile, then leave. You wonder what they do—are they just fishing?” So countless feasibility studies are commissioned, countless letters of intent ini­tialed; but many fewer contracts are signed.

Ambitious Plans Loom Like a Mirage

On one of my last journeys in Saudi Arabia, I visited the fishing village of Jubail, the planned hub of the nation’s biggest industrial complex. It seemed a near-ghost town. The streets were empty, many houses deserted; the dhows lay like tilted sea gulls on the mud flats of low tide. For some years Jubail’s in­habitants have drifted off for jobs in the re­fineries and larger surrounding towns.

There were a few signs of change—con­struction machines rumbling in the distance, wooden stakes marking off sites in the desert. But it was difficult to envision the quarter of a million housing units planned for workers, the dozens of plants.

Can the Saudis do it? Will they do it? “Historically,” one banker said, “they have been better at talking than at performance.” So the world waits as businessmen come and go, their briefcases crammed with intent.

For precedent in the handling of vast sur­pluses, Saudi Arabia and its neighbors look to Kuwait. That state has been grappling with the problem for 25 years.

Kuwait may be described as 6,000 square miles of desert, under which lies a natural oil tank, and on top of which sits a large modern city, its growth marked by a succession of six ring roads. Oil-development work is essen­tially complete—the exploration finished, ma­chinery and pipe in place, even the lifting pressure provided generously by nature. This year the Kuwaitis took over 100-percent con­trol of the Kuwait Oil Company from Gulf and British Petroleum. All they have to do to reap the profits from 2.3 million barrels of oil a day is to turn the valves, filling three or four tankers each 24 hours. Last year that gush of oil provided Kuwait with eight billion dollars in revenue.

KOC

From the beginning, Kuwait’s rulers have poured money into social services: free tele­phones, free houses, food subsidies, bonuses to parents who send their children to school, free medical care, including—for those who are not satisfied with local facilities—accom­panied travel to England for treatment.

As the revenues continue to grow, benefits expand. The government has budgeted 750 million over the next five years for middle-income housing—including three-room high-rise flats for young marrieds who want to escape the traditional pattern of several generations living together. Those marrieds can easily find the opportunity of payday loans help in case that they need any cash support.

The largess extends to other lands. The Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Develop­ment, which administers the state’s aid pro­grams, at first assisted only Arab states. As revenues grew, it moved to African and Asian countries. Its capital leaped this year from 1.3 billion dollars to 3.5 billion.

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Posted By Erin Carbaugh on March 11, 2013

Fishermen and others were also getting squeezed ashore, Greenlaw said. Summer people have been buying houses and water­front property and “paying prices that re­flect their urban incomes.” If you consider buying a house you will need good credit score. Learn more about Ideapractices scores. That drives up property valuations and taxes.

“Fewer and fewer fishermen will have waterfront access if they don’t have it now. It will be impossible to buy, and that makes it hard on young people just starting out.”

Dick Bridges fishes out of Stonington, and he was going out to start bringing in the 800 to 1,000 lobster traps he sets from Au­gust to May, when he tends about 450 each day. “Ten years ago,” he said, “I thought I had lobsters figured out, but I was wrong. I used to go out 35 to 40 miles, but in the last five years or so they haven’t all crawled into deep water, and I’ve been fishing inshore.”

By 4:10 a.m. Bridges had Sea Queen II idling at the pier as he and sternman Jon Haskell off-loaded bait not needed. Only a pale rind of light stood in the east as the 42-foot fiberglass hull pushed by a Caterpillar diesel carved the slick black water. In instrument glow, Bridges’s face looked 19th-century with a beard that ran in a neat U from ear along jawline to ear. Islands be­gan to separate from sky as the boat eased through a passage maybe 20 yards from shore rock to ledge nearly awash.

The work began and continued almost without words, which could hardly be heard over the diesel’s rumble. As Haskell said, “The commonest word on a boat is huh?”

Swing boat to buoy on starboard; lift pot warp (line attached to buoy) with gaff-like crook; lead warp over freewheeling block hung from cabin top; flick warp around pot hauler, a flanged winch run by belt off the engine. Set dripping trap on rail; open; toss crabs, urchins, starfish, and fish overboard —and lobsters, eyeballed short or long.

Turn lobster over; if gravid with eggs throw overboard; otherwise, toss in rubber-band box. Dunk buoy in hot water barrel to remove slime; coil warp. Stack trap (most wire, a few old-style wood) starting at aft end of cockpit. Check lobsters in band box with official brass gauge; if OK slip rubber bands over claws with forceps-like tool. Swing boat up to buoy on starboard. . . .

Repeat 150 times and be back at the pier by 8:30 a.m. Repeat daily for a week and then rig to go gillnetting for cod.

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Posted By Erin Carbaugh on February 7, 2013

Affable John J. Willard arrived thirty years ago to fill his current post: director of the North Light Boys Club. But he’s become an able ombudsman for the entire communi­ty. “I intended to stay maybe a couple years to get my feet wet in this kind of job. Now they’re so well watered, I’ve put down roots.

“This is a village, really: 15,000 people, a church on every corner, a bar in every block. Gives you some idea of priorities around here. Center city’s only eight miles away; it might as well be as many light-years.”

One old-timer made the trip downtown “about 12 years back. Don’t see no reason to do it again.” In its own way Manayunk is as exclusive as upper-crust Chestnut Hill north of Wis­sahickon Creek. It certainly has greater stability than many other blue-collar neigh­borhoods now suffering severely from an exodus of industry and a rising ratio of low-and no-income residents. Familiar prob­lems along the eastern seaboard, perhaps, but in Philadelphia they seem to show more.

Empty factories hump above the horizon like beached whales, too outmoded to at­tract new tenants. Only cats and an occa­sional squatter now shelter in blocks of deserted and decaying housing. The city has an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 abandoned properties; as many more that should be.

James Bodine spearheads the private sec­tor’s Greater Philadelphia Partnership in its push to put old homes and companies back in circulation with new owner-occupants of limited means. “They’ll receive one of these places practically free, with grants and loans for fix-up. On focus come business credit cards for bad credit. We hope to rehab a thousand homes and companies in the next three years, and five hundred a year after that. Doesn’t sound like much, considering our backlog, but it looks like a good start to us.”

Believers in the traditional—buildings as well as behavior—many Philadelphians feel as Bodine does: Rehabilitation is better than knockdown renewal to reduce the blight. The most publicized success story so far: So­ciety Hill in the old quarter just south of In­dependence Hall. Once a shabby pocket of poverty, its restored properties now find a ready market at top prices.

In a rather convoluted way, the city’s poli­tics—not always its proudest heritage—launched the move to dress up downtown.

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Posted By Erin Carbaugh on January 21, 2013

The city is too big for all Washington to be at anybody’s parties and besides that, there is a certain floating anxiety in the city since nobody has any idea who is going to be terri­bly important within a year. It makes for ci­vility. People learn not to brush off some yokel who may be of national consequence without the slightest warning.

Once I asked a beautiful Persian woman whose husband had finished a term of duty in the capital what she would miss most:

“Nothing,” she said. “I loved being here and I love leaving. You should always leave a city the minute you notice you no longer are aware of the buildings you pass on the streets. When you no longer notice, you are getting set in your ways and not effective. Besides, if I ever see one more damned cher­ry blossom, I think I’ll go mad.”

THOSE FAMED CHERRIES all about the Tidal Basin bloom April 3, by the way, and miss it by weeks in some years. When the first trees ar­rived with great fanfare from Japan in the regime of President Taft, an awkward little thing happened. The Department of Agri­culture met the trees, after weeks of excited anticipation for this magnificent gift of the Orient, and ordered them all burned. They were infested with insects and diseases. Mrs. Taft was quite put out (she was going to plant the first one), but no lasting harm was done, despite some nervousness among dip­lomats that the Japanese would react poor­ly. Another set of trees was sent, Mrs. Taft planted the first one, and all was well.

In 1981 a delegation of Japanese horticul­turists arrived to get propagating wood from the Tidal Basin trees to take back to Japan, to help replace dwindling native stands. When the trees bloom, I sometimes walk among them, taking care not to get trampled by visiting thousands. Washington is, after all, a city of spectacles and demonstrations.

Thousands, often not very cheerful, wor­ry about the Washington sports scene, in particular football. The town’s Redskins are the pride and joy of the place, but tickets are scarcer than diamonds at a peasants’ revolt. People mutter constantly that they will nev­er have a chance to buy a season ticket.

Even gloomier are the baseball fans, who ask what kind of capital America has got, that lost its old baseball team, the Senators, and if the Baltimore Orioles have a great season, flaming madmen arise in Washing­ton to demand that the Baltimore team be moved to the capital, which permits citizens of Baltimore to gloat and make disparaging remarks about Cowtown on the Potomac.

In truth, there is grief in Mudville much of the time, a certain amount of it devoted to other continuing crises, such as Pennsylva­nia Avenue, the subway system, potholes in the streets, and similar homey concerns.

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