Cellphone Courtesy at the Table

Sometimes a family meal just looks wrong. I'm not talking about the food. Rather when you look at the table and see everyone holding cellphones and no one talking to each other. Now we have to be magicians to get our smart phones to become "dumb." Enter the phonekerchief. This innovative, service-blocking hanky made with silver fibers effectively blocks incoming calls and texts. "My phone is off for you," it says.


The Phonekerchief fabric is conductive because it is partially made up of silver fibers. When the fabric creates an unbroken enclosure (when it is wrapped tightly around a phone without any gaps), it creates a phenomenon that is known in science as a "Faraday Cage". This means that any external static electrical field, such as a phone signal, will cause the electrical charges within the conducting fabric to redistribute themselves so as to cancel the field's effects on what is inside. In order for the Phonekerchief to work effectively, the fabric must be wrapped tightly around the phone and create an unbroken enclosure.


Napkins at our dinner table just got a bit more interesting ...

Playing with playlists

Consider this an interactive post all started when, during the long (long) drive from Detroit to Florida, my daughter piped up from the back seat, "hey, got any music from this century?" She was right to ask. Between my iPod filled with 70's classics and The Bridge on Sirius/XM we should have been driving in an Olds Custom Cruiser station wagon. In all fairness I did sprinkle in a few current tunes. And our family playlist competition spanned 50 years worth of music. Unfortunately I finished last.


To my mighty throng of readers I ask for one recommended song to add to my music collection. Only rule is that it must have been released in the past two years.


Move over Steely Dan, I can't wait to blast the "new stuff."