Plastic

A young woman waits demurely in a stark room. Before her on a table sit scissors and one half of a pair of Crocs. For the next two minutes and 35 seconds, as a jaunty Cole Porter score plays, she takes scissors to shoe, shredding the rubbery yellow thing into sad little slivers. The slivers she pulverizes in a blender. A smile never leaves her face. The dismemberment, enjoyed by more then 60,000 people on YouTube, comes compliments of the folks behind Ihatecrocs.com, an Internet site dedicated to the elimination of Crocs and those who think that their excuses for wearing them are viable.

Like many gardeners, I spend a lot of my summer weekends staring at my tomato plants wondering what is going on. Lately they have been teasing me. They produced a couple of beauties, ripe luscious Cherokee Purples. Last week, I devoured them. But then, like a spurned lover, the tomato plants stopped delivering joy. They seem to hold back, waiting for me to make some move. Green fruit torments gardeners, but especially ones who have already tasted bliss. So as I cast about tomato literature looking for solutions to my reluctant plants, I came upon the red mulch tactic.

Just when plastic bags seemed to have won the contest for customer preference against their chief competitor, paper, a movement has sprung up in Maryland and around the country to disqualify the petroleum-based plastics on environmental grounds. Indeed, those ubiquitous flimsy shopping sacks are a scourge on the landscape, particularly in waterfront communities such as Annapolis and Baltimore, where officials are considering banning plastic bags largely because of the impact on waterfowl and marine life.

WASHINGTON -- Americans are throwing away billions of pounds of the clear plastic that soft-drink bottles and other containers are made of, even as demand for the recycled material soars. The plastic, polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, appears on grocery shelves and in vending machines as containers for soft drinks, water, shampoo, ketchup and other products on a list that gets longer every year. The most recent survey by the National Association for PET Container Resources, an industry trade group, shows that last year more than 5 billion pounds of PET was used in plastic containers.

Imagine life without the plastic development in the last 100 years -- from your nylon stockings to your contact lenses. The Greek word "Plastikos" means it plastic is the moleblages of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and other atoms are unwiedly chain or ring structures that can't be packed closely, so they are flexible. The first 19th-century plastics were cellulose-based: Bandaging material, billiard balls, false teeth, combs, shirt collars. New each year the world produces about 225 billion pounds of plastic -- press-on fingernails, hip-replacement joints, Spandex, packing peanuts, cheap explosives for terrorists.

Anyone with creaky knees or other painful joints may someday get repairs made with an injectable plastic that gradually grows replacement cartilage, scientists report.A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a plastic material containing living cartilage cells, designed for injection into troubled joints. The plastic hardens when subjected to ultraviolet light, providing a pliable "glue" that holds the cells in place while they grow.The basic idea is to replace or repair old, damaged joint tissue with slick new cartilage, smoothing the movement of limbs and erasing chronic pain.

Has there ever been a game more loved but less understood than electric football?You know the game, that flat sheet of metal attached to an electric switch that, when thrown, causes the whole contraption to shake like a volcano about to blow. And, of course, to make that distinctive buzzzzzzzzing sound that was a staple of Christmas mornings. Put a gaggle of plastic football players on top, throw a tiny felt football into the mix and you've got what the game's promoters swear is a tabletop version of the real thing.

I ran to the grocery store yesterday to find a cleaner for my dirty keypads. I asked the cashiers what they used, and two responded, "Alcohol." A man standing in line agreed. He said he once repaired typewriters and used it. All said to dampen cotton swabs in alcohol (don't soak them). Nothing should leak down. It worked. Cost: 81 cents.I disagree with the advice you got at the cash register. Because keyboards are made of plastic -- and often pretty cheesy plastic at that -- most experts warn against using alcohol, because it tends to pit the surface of keys and may eventually remove the letters for those who get fanatical about cleanliness.

Bo Brooks, serving steamed hard shells for more than 30 years, satisfies all of Charm City's gastronomic rules for classic crab houses.Rule One: The best crab houses are not fancy.Clearly, Bo Brooks scores on that front. The dining room is open and bright, like a cafeteria. There's lots of room to stretch out for serious crab eating. Plastic abounds, in the bright orange plastic chairs, molded plastic paneling and plastic buckets on the floor for shell overload. Tables are set in classic form, with brown DTC paper, wooden mallets and plastic knives for extracting those hard-to-reach crab bits.

Like any other job, reviewing albums has its perks. Each week, dozens of new albums turn up in the mail. It's a music-lover's dream! The downside, though, is that I spend several hours a week just opening CDs -- which, given how hard it can be to get the shrink-wrap off those suckers, is a music-lover's nightmare.Thank God for EZ-CD. A black plastic gizmo about the size of a large rubber eraser, it makes peeling shrink-wrap a breeze. Simply fit the jewel box into the channel on EZ-CD's bottom, slide EZ-CD along the edge, and it neatly and safely slices through the shrink-wrap.

Today's Not-So-Great-Depression has claimed a new victim: children's birthday party goody bags. And good riddance, too. I despise those little crinkly plastic bags full of $3-a-piece junk: the oddly fluorescent lizard made in China, the fake garnet ring with the finger-pinching gap in the back (isn't real garnet ugly enough?) or the ubiquitous rectangles of stickers, stickers, and more stickers. Yes, it's all junk that gets lost or tossed into piles in kids' bedrooms. Junk that is nonetheless a costly burden and time-stealer for overwhelmed birthday party parents.

If you spend any amount of time in the kitchen cooking, chances are you've experienced at least one trip to the emergency room as a result of a careless chop, slice or slip of the paring knife. It's a fairly common injury among experts and novices alike, in the food industry and at home. The Janet's World statisticians have a hunch that such accidents happen more often in the home, but they are too lazy to look it up just now. The fact is, the American home is quite a formidable place, with its rickety ladders in dark garages, toys strewn on staircases and uneven outdoor walkways.

Name: : Joby Gorillapod flexible tripod (original) What it is: : This plastic tripod has a clip that screws into a digital camera for easy locking between camera and tripod. But to call this a tripod is almost misleading. It's a kind of plastic "creature" whose legs can wrap around railings, chair backs, table legs - your imagination is the only limit. It's perfect for leveling your camera on uneven surfaces or, as I said, attaching in places where a regular tripod wouldn't have a chance.

Before you hit the stores, visit the Center for Health, Environment and Justice's Web site, where you'll find a printable wallet guide to steer you toward PVC-free art supplies, backpacks, lunchboxes and more. For example, the guide warns against paper clips and notebook spirals that are covered in colored plastic, which often contains PVC (polyvinyl chloride). Instead, stick to the plain metal clips and spirals. The center urges parents to avoid plastic items, in general, whenever possible.

There's no reason to leave your environmental ethic behind when you go to the beach. There are simple ways to take care of the sand and surf that don't require a lot of work. If you need some help thinking about what you can do before you go, while you're there and when you're heading out, here are some suggestions: Find eco-friendly accommodations. : Green hotels and B&Bs will do things such as recycle, collect rainwater, use low-flow toilets and alternative energy and use recycled materials in their decorations and uniforms.

Name: : Bamboo Pet Silicone Travel Bowl What it is: : An easily transported collapsible plastic bowl to accommodate pets when traveling. How it works: : The bowls, which come in 1- and 3-cup sizes in a variety of colors, collapse down to less than a half-inch. That makes them easy to pack or even store in the glove compartment. We tested the 3-cupper on two large German shepherds. The first time they saw it, they gave it the perfunctory sniff test before slurping away. They reported no problems.

Question: : I get terrible rebound headaches from anti-inflammatory drugs (both prescription and OTC). My doctors seem to not believe me; instead, they insist that anti-inflammatories are just what I need for arthritis. Have you heard of this, and do you know of any anti-inflammatories that don't cause headaches when you stop taking them? Answer: : Dr. Joel Saper is director of the Michigan Headache and Neurological Institute and past president of the American Association for the Study of Headache.

Name: : Wordlock luggage combination lock What it is: : A combination lock that uses letters instead of numbers, allowing you to set whatever four-letter combination (a pet's name, a profanity) you want out of about 10,000 possibilities. Because the Transportation Security Administration has a key that will open it, you can use it for domestic travel without fear of having it cut off if your bag is inspected. How it works: : You can spell any easily remembered word to use as a combination, which is much more convenient for the brain than a series of random numbers.

In Bolton Hill, the neighborhood pool is the summer social nucleus. In winter, there's the Soup Group. It began as an informal get-together of a few families over soup. The host would make the soup, and the guests would bring wine and other dishes. Adults would visit and eat, while the kids watched videos and ate pizza or some other kid-friendly food. Over time, the Soup Group became a well-coordinated effort that takes place every three weeks in the winter months. "I love having soup nights built into my winter social schedule," says member Jessica Dailey.

Anne Arundel County is expanding its recycling program to include several more plastics, papers and metals, as part of a larger effort to encourage residents to recycle half of what they dispose. Among the items now eligible for curbside recycling service are: plastic bags, plastic cups, plastic plates and plastic utensils, paper milk and juice cartons, and aluminum foil and pans. "There's no additional cost," said Richard Bowen, the solid waste recycling manager for Anne Arundel's Department of Public Works.