Last year we gave away some very nice kitchenware. If you’d be interested in another giveaway, please comment on Facebook. Yes, we’ve barely done anything with our Facebook page in years, but we’re gauging interest.
This is only open to USA residents who are capable of Liking the page.
For many people, the riskiest part of the day is driving a car. About 33,000 Americans die each year in motor vehicle accidents.1 That’s just deaths, not including injuries like brain damage, broken bones, and lost limbs. As the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) puts it: “Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death in the U.S. More than 2.5 million drivers and passengers were treated in emergency departments as the result of being injured in motor vehicle crashes in 2012.”2
When driving, you are at the mercy of other people’s driving skills–or the lack thereof. No amount of “defensive driving” can prevent a reckless driver from driving six inches behind you on the freeway.
After an aggressive driver rear-ended Ann’s car and seriously hurt her neck several years ago ringing up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills, we decided we needed a change.
But how would we change the behavior of other drivers to reduce the risk of another collision?
BACKGROUND
What is white noise, and why does white noise help people sleep?
White noise is a consistent noise evenly distributed throughout all human-hearable frequencies. However, some noise is better than others. Humans tend to pick up higher frequencies better to the point where plain white noise can sound hissy and unnatural. White noise that has been tuned to deliver more low-frequency noise is called pink noise. And below pink noise is brown noise, which stresses those low frequencies even more. Pink and brown noise are perceived by human ears as being flatter, with less hiss.1
With another baby on the way, it was time to buy more breast milk storage bags. We used mostly Lansinoh bags last time, but Ann didn’t like how flimsy they felt, so we looked at more brands this time.
The problem? There’s surprisingly little information out there about breast milk bag materials. (And as for sturdiness, reviews are contradictory, with lots of fans and detractors for each major brand.) The easily-available information is as follows:
THE COMPANY
In 1897, Clarence Charles Hobart started the Hobart Electric Manufacturing Company (Troy, Ohio). The company sold motorized coffee mills, meat grinders, and (starting in 1908) stand mixers for commercial bakeries.
In 1919, after World War I, Hobart formed the KitchenAid division, which produced smaller-scale stand mixers for residential customers. Hobart continued to sell non-residential products under the Hobart brand. The overall company remained profitable and independent for decades, occasionally adding new product lines to the KitchenAid brand, such as dishwashers.
BACKGROUND
Iwatani Corporation of America is a subsidiary of the Iwatani Group of Japan, a conglomerate of over 250 companies employing 11,000 people worldwide.1 Iwatani is the market leader in Japan for liquefied petroleum gas, hydrogen, and helium, so they know their gases well.
Iwatani sells various consumer, commercial, and industrial products. On the industrial side, Iwatani makes gas valves, hoses and pipes, heat-resistant paints, piezoelectric igniters, oxygen sensors, etc. Some of Iwatani’s well known consumer/commercial products include the Iwatani butane cooking torch CB-TC-PRO (which uses the same 8-ounce (227g) butane canister/cassette size as the stove) and the Iwatani ZA-3HP Portable Butane Stove Burner, which is the subject of this review. (NOTE: as of 2020, it’s been cosmetically redesigned and renamed the Iwatani VA-30 butane stove; still performs the same and is still made in Japan.)