Blog #9: American Geosciences Institutes

We see many things in our world’s ecosystem being destroyed by things like deforestation, global warming, and other things that leave our landscape looking like a different planet than it was before. We can see this for our own eyes with images and videos of places with ash all around or a map of how big Antarctica used to be compared to its size now. This massacre of our land is also happening because of mining metal over all the continents of our earth. For all metals, no matter where they are extracted from, there comes tradeoffs between actually having the metals to use and how they affect the environment around them. These can be categorized into physical disturbances to the landscape, soil and water contamination, air contamination, and public safety.

In the physical land, the most detrimental part to the land is the sites where temporary offices and waste rock disposal areas are. After the area is done being mined, these areas are just destroyed, causing more physical damage than underground mining would. While it is now illegal to dump mining waste into places it could erode into, these conditions still exist in old or abandoned sites. Metal mining waste sites may eventually contaminate water, which may be neutralized by rocks and minerals, but could definitely remain in the water and possibly be used for farming or for drinking water. If seepage from tailings are not stopped by placing an impermeable barrier at the bottom before tailings disposal, “the acidic and metal-bearing waters from tailings can impact stream habitats and ground water.” Some mining sites in the past used smelting methods that released gases and other emissions that were a cause for concern of public safety. Old sites that mined lead-zinc have nearby populations whose blood levels have higher amounts of lead. One of these gases being sulfur dioxide as something that could be bad for a population because it reacts with atmospheric water vapor to make acid rain. Because of many possible human dangers from being around an old or abandoned mining sites, many times they are restricted from the public and in extreme cases only allowed access to with special permission by the government. In some cases, old mining sites have become a home for bat colonies and those are allowed to be closed off to only allow bat access as well as it serving as their protection, only for the benefit of the bats, especially the endangered species.

American Geosciences Institutes

Blog #8: The Yellow Pages

In High School Musical 3, the very special Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) and Chad Danforth (Corbin Bleu) have an entire song in a junk yard. They pretend to drive rusty cars and jump all around the big pieces of metal that are just left lying around. Places like these are not everywhere, but they are scattered around throughout big cities. But, in places like Pullman, Washington, I did not think that a lot of them, if any, would be around here, so I googled it. There were a couple places in Washington but they were too far, so the ones in Idaho would be closer. To my surprise, there are actually some within an hour of Pullman. There are three permanent locations for recycling and salvage places, as well as many more in other nearby cities in Idaho and Washington. Some of these places are actually willing to buy the metal that you decide to bring so just like recycling plastic, you would get money for recycling. There are also companies that offer to drive to you to pick up used junk cars and scrap metal. So along with getting money and rid of your stuff, recycling metal helps the environment. Big pieces of metal that are allowed to be donated, can all be put together and can be metaled down to be reused completely.

The bigger picture being the fact that smaller cities in more rural areas like Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho even have metal recycling areas. Making those in these areas see just how important places and companies like this are. Seeing as though smaller areas like this care about the impact that not recycling could have on the environment, makes us feel as though we should truly do our part. This is makes us feel personally responsible for those less fortunate in foreign countries that work hard to extract the metals we use in our everyday lives, only to just forget about the big hunk of metal when you’re done with it. To forget about all the time and effort that went into making the individual locks, keys, parts for your bike, wires for your TV, and whatever else may be on the technological spectrum. These small pieces of our world make up such a large part of our lives, making it absolutely essential that we reuse the metal that we constantly use, for the benefit of our society and our planet.

The Yellow Pages

Blog #7: United States Minerals Commodity Summaries 2016

The United Stated government is in charge of many things, such as the NSA monitoring our everyday lives through our cell phones and making sure that no top-secret information regarding area 51 is released into the public. They also must deport all the immigrants that have a sad tragic back story as well as making sure all the players in the NFL are standing during the National Anthem. But, besides all of these very, very important daily activities, the US government has been deeply involved with the environment in the last few decades with the quickly industrialized world. They monitor our extraction and recycling of metals and other things that impact the environment inside and outside of the United States, as well as items that those items are used in. This is done for the most common metals used in our everyday lives, as well as minerals. Metals in general are used for various things in the United states such as cars, planes, trains, and other larger pieces of technology. Yet, every year the summary changes depending on placed destroyed by war, weather conditions, and new regulations for the environment in the year. These summaries go into detail concerning how this mining affects the world and what things can substitute for the specific metal. But the fact that time and effort is still put into this even though it will most definitely be very different the next year, is evident that our government among others, care a lot for the safety of our renewable resources.

As of 2016 the countries that produced largest amounts of nickel and silver, the two metals combined to make many keys (including the ones for our dorms here at WSU), were the Philippines, Canada, Russia, Mexico, China, and Peru. For neither nickel nor silver is the United States one of the top three producers of the material, which is wildly ironic for the superpower of the world. These metals have to imported here in order to be used for items such as locks and keys among various other things. So, while these metals can be recycled to produce more locks and keys, the cost of transporting them in and out of the country as well as the materials needed to recycle it. This is all in the report that is put out every year by the United State government that allows people to know the specific amounts of metal produced in the world, if one were to ever need to know which countries were at the top of their game for an essay that required a section regarding metal recycling.

US Minerals Commodity Summaries 2016

Post #2: The Key to Metal Recycling

Cold and rock hard. What do these words describe? Abs? Captain America’s emotions? Metal? For now, I am going to ignore the non-alcoholic six-packs that lie on beautiful men’s abdomens and focus on the thing that is metalworking. Historically comprised of people called Blacksmiths, in today’s world metal is used and created by other metal after being mined from somewhere in a poorer area of the world. According to the United State Geological Survey from 2015 countries that are commonly leading producers of metals ranging from aluminum to zinc, are China, Russia, and Australia. This is still primarily done by slaves or poorly paid workers, while is does in turn still give people jobs after thousands of years. According to freetheslaves.net (whose logo is ironically a lock), slaves are still highly sought after for dangerous jobs like metal mining in dangerous areas of the world. But back to the main focus, the lock and key.

Both a key and a lock are made with different types of metal, such as nickel silver, titanium, aluminum, copper alloys and other mixture of metals. They can be made using pure metal elements or more commonly, metal alloys, making the material stronger, therefore less likely to break under pressure. This prevents breakage from violent key turning or jiggling in the lock. In addition, it may be possibly used as a box opener or a make-shift weapon in dire self-defense situations. These actions and others are things that occur all the time, but still need the key to function for its intended use when that event is over.

The good thing about metal and counterparts metal alloys is that they are all able to be melted down and used again to remake the same product it once held. While all metal is technically able to be recycled because it can be melted down, the problem that many manufacturers run into, is picking out all the small parts. Like how in a phone there are super small parts made out of different types of metal so if they are all melted down together then, it would be a big alloy that could not be advertised as pure and therefore would not be able to be combined with other pure metals to make strong alloys. Thus, it would not be worth the effort to pick out all the small parts of metal out of things like electronics unless there was an easier way to classify and sort them. But for larger electronic items like cars or mass amounts of keys, then recycling plants are more willing to put it all in there to reuse the material again. For just iron and steel, probably the most common metals today, just under 50% of that metal was recycled. So applying this to all the other metals we can imply that these numbers would be less.

Because metal melting can be dangerous, it is mainly done by machines when melting down large amounts of the metal, like aluminum or stainless steel. This means that not that many jobs are produced from metal melting facilities, thus it is not necessary for there to be many workers than to make sure the machines are functioning correctly and to handle other human interactions like deliveries. Therefore, there is not a lot of slave labor in the actual melting of metal, but more so in the sorting of it. There are metal recycling facilities over all of the main 6 continents in the world and more in the surrounding areas of more populated countries in continents like South Africa in Africa or Brazil in South America. And since developing countries do not have as much of a need for locks and keys as other first-world ones might, there are less metal recycling facilities because they are not as likely to be recycling things like aluminum soda cans or large metal scraps from cars. On average, poorer countries do not use as much metal therefore have no need to recycle it like we would.

Blog #12: Chinese Proverb

There is a Chinese proverb that reads like this “A lock that opens with any key is a bad lock, but a key that opens any lock is a master key.” While this is true, this is just another thing that locks and keys are representative of things that fit together perfectly and are meant to be together, as well as things that prevent access to certain places. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with this proverb, but the way that it became popular was by applying it to another misogynistic comment floating around the internet. The part that famously prefaced the proverb was “Why is it that a woman is called a slut if she sleeps with a bunch of men, but if a man sleeps with a bunch of women he is called a stud?” This floated around the internet for a couple months offending women everywhere who have some sort sense of gender equality. The sad part is that not only is it out there on the internet, but men genuinely believe things like this. Funny quotes and images like this just fuel the misogynistic tendencies in the world today, making it harder for women to find equality in the world. Similarly, this makes men normalize words like “slut”, “whore”, “bitch”, and more. In the world, women call each other these names which leads men to believe that it is okay for them to call women by these words or even worse. This results in the belief that women who sleep around like men cannot be treated the same as the men who sleep around. Considering the fact that many women in other countries cannot even show their faces in public, this may not seem as important, but men comfortable with calling women, degrading names allows them to further their masculine egos.

The astonishing part is that something as simple as a lock and key can be a metaphor for something as complicated as gender stereotypes. The small pieces of metal that control our lives are used for many examples like having sex, two soulmates, and gaining access to a locked area. Yet, the topic at hand will most definitely determine which of these if any are applicable for the situation. The whole point being that this Chinese proverb is just one of many sayings that use locks and keys as place holders for much larger ideas.

Blog #11: Love Lock Bridges

In Paris and other cities around the world have been bombarded by millions of locks placed on multiple bridges. These locks are placed by lovers hoping to capture their love in the lock and throw the key away to prevent it from being opened and escaping. Doing this is similar to the superstition that twisting and turning your body a certain way even after you have let go of the bowling ball will change the outcome, even though we know it would not. This feeds into the idea that this superstition is similar to the one that is throwing the key to a lock bridge away. These bridges are a symbol of love to see far and wide across the city even though it is based on a lie. But we still choose to believe in the lie that adding a lock will bring us eternal love, rather than accepting the truth that we may never find love in our lifetimes. These symbols have cause us to knowingly choose a lie over the “impossible” truth, but what if the locks failed us again? We yet again placed our trust in these locks that we should not even fully trust protecting our houses, much less our fragile hearts. But what does that really say about us as humans? We would rather be disappointed with our lives in the end over the possibility that something that we blindly put our trust in is wrong. While they may be pretty to look at, this is not the only problem with having the love locks in our society

Because the practice of placing a lock on a bridge and throwing away the key has become so common, the bridges that have been affected are actually starting to buckle under the weight. The amount of locks combined with the weight of all those solid pieces of metal truly does result in a heavy bridge and a concerned public. There is a group in Paris and its surrounding area that is called “No Love Locks” and they are concerned with the structural safety of these bridges. The government has actually had to replace parts of the bridge with new bridge panels covered by Plexiglas to prevent more love locks being added, all because of the social influence received from this group. The point being that these locks were such a big issue that it started a group dedicated to stopping it which eventually lead to the government actually having to take action.

Blog #10: Hotdog in a Keyhole

While I was in middle school and still friends with a girl named Denim (yes like jeans) we watched a show called “The Carrie Diaries”. Looking back on it now it really was not that great, which is probably why it did not get renewed after its second season. It was the television series prequel to the “Sex in the City” movies and TV shows that we all too popular from the late 1990’s to the 2010’s. It was Carrie Bradshaw as a budding writer still not knowing what to do with herself in high school. Set in the 80’s it depicted the views of the general populations distaste for gays and abortion. Carrie and her friends have their first encounters with sex and for one it did not go so well. Carrie’s best friend Mouse (yes like the rodent) describes her first time like “putting a hot dog in a keyhole”. Now besides that sounding highly uncomfortable for both parties, this goes against the assumption about body parts and sex.

Most assume that genitalia come in different sizes and have other various factors that determine their niceness and accessibility, but it is always assumed that they will all fit together. No matter the size and shape, every key has its keyhole as its counterpart. But in most cases, this is not a guarantee. The hot dog may not fit in the keyhole and the key may not fit in the hot dog bun, and hell even the hot dog may not fit in the hot dog bun or the key may not fit in the keyhole. But idea is that sex is not like the key and keyhole analogy that everyone makes it out to be. Because not only does that exclude the two keyholes that are banging next door, it dismissed the possibility that something could possibly go wrong during sex. We all assume it goes perfectly and that the only difficulty is finding a room that locks and making sure you didn’t forget the condom, but all the other things about awkwardly moving around trying to find the right angle, all the awkward noises that come out, and everything else in between has just gone out the window because we have let movie and TV show sex scenes determine how all our sex lives should go. This is not realistic when accounting for the fact that these people have been paid to look good while having fake sex. So, put your hot dog in the keyhole (as long as they give consent) and know that you don’t always have to look or be like the key and keyhole in the media.

Post #3: Love, Locks, and Lost Love

A single key can unlock the secrets of a hidden mystery or it could just be the dead end that can never be solved in a case. Yet, a lock and key has become something more than just access to something. The duo also stands for a perfect match, the yin to its yang, the key to its lock. This is all fine and dandy, but how has this shaped our culture today and the perception that when something is locked up it is safely secured. In addition, how does the idea of lock and key play into today’s attitudes and assumptions about sex and love?

Love. True love. Who is capable of true love? Soulmates? What are soulmates and do they actually exist? Are soulmates the lock and key equivalence of people in the world? Many say that their lover has the key to their heart, as if their heart was a locked box that held the nuclear codes of all of North America in there. But our hearts are not truly that way so why do we say this? Do we think that entrusting the right person to “hold” your heart will reward us with true love? Why do we still believe in love if our heart has to be locked away like the gold in Fort Knox?

Our keys are the most commonly lost or misplaced item over the first world countries that commonly used locks and their respective keys, yet some of us are just willing to throw them away. In Paris there once stood a bridge that had railings covered in locks with hearts and lovers’ names written together. This was supposed to be a symbol of their love for each other and how their love would be strongly locked away as soon as they clicked the lock closed on the bridge and threw the key away into the Seine river below. This tradition soon became a public safety concern since so many locks began to accumulate on the bridge, the weight of them combined was basically the same as twenty elephants, which obviously the bridge was not intended for. Before it was taken down in 2015, the locks on the bridge had created such a panic in people it gathered enough attention that a group called No Love Locks was having people sign petitions for the locks to be removed for the safety of the bridge. Not only do these locks detract from the beauty of the scenery around, but it brings about pickpockets and gypsy vendors who sell locks to couple strolling by, making the atmosphere even more uncomfortable. While it is understandable and perfectly logical to want to prevent the bridge from falling apart, this angered many who had locked their love away on that bridge. So why do these locks have such a strong emotional connection with people. It is not like these locks are actually trying to protect something and most people cannot actually believe that “locking” away your love would actually work and now that it’s gone, the love is gone as well. So why do they continuously allow these small pieces of metal to chain them to emotional burden of needing something physical to declare their love.

Speaking of physical things, sex jokes or innuendos that imply sticking a key in a lock is representative of sticking a male’s genitalia into a female’s, but there is also another take on the whole in sex things fits perfectly. The Carrie Diaries is a television show loosely based off of the main character in Sex in the City’s, Carrie Bradshaw’s, teenage experience in the popping 1980’s. This does include many references to sex, one including from her best friend Mouse, “It was like putting a hotdog in a keyhole.” This is comedic in the sense that unlike most sex jokes that involved keys and locks, the joke takes the assumption that all sex goes perfectly and flips it on its head. Imagine actually sticking a hotdog in a keyhole, especially a small keyhole. That poor hotdog. While this is comedic, it makes a good point as to how everything may not exactly fit how one wants it to when it comes to sex. It also generally references at how a hotdog would usually not be a good key to open a lock with, which should be self-explanatory to most people who encounter locks every day and need to use the keys that they keep on them. But, not all things can be summed up to “it will fit” or “it will not fit”. Not everything has to be black and white.

The perfect match would be between the lock and the right key. But finding that key and being able to use it would be very difficult if just handed a box full of keys. Speaking of boxes full of keys, if many attempts were made to open a lock by many different keys, but none of them worked, it would be considered a successful lock. Yet, if the lock opened with every key that it came in contact with it would be considered a weak lock. On the opposite side, a key that only opens one lock is not seen as useful as one that would be able to open all locks, like a master key. This is the thought of the ancient Chinese proverb (attached below), as a comparison as to why women are whores if they sleep with a bunch of men, but men are studs if they get multiple women in bed. The “perfect fit” that is the lock and key became the basis for yet another sexist double standard. “Jokes” like these have unintentionally placed the idea degrading women using language like this is acceptable. While this is supposed to be seen as comedic, many can see this as an acceptable social standard when it comes to sex differences between men and women. Yet, this is just one of the many societal factors that have made keys and locks more than just pieces of metal that keep us safe.

In Class Guided Writing

What is the most interesting thing you’ve learned about your tech?

Within tumbler locks there are set of pins of varying lengths that need to match up with the set line in order to twist the lock to unlock the lock. Now usually, most of these pins are in a normal cylindrical shape, like a toilet paper roll. Therefore, when breaking in, one can just normally pick it by using the chosen tool at any angle or direction or strength desired. Knowing this some manufacturers have made differently shaped pins to prevent this. It is still cylindrical, but there are also circular blocks at the top and bottom of the pins. This makes it especially hard to pick these types of locks because the pins would have to be individually picked in order to not get stuck on the shear line.

 

Surprise the reader with the same information you were interested in.

Wooden lock and keys were around as early as 4,000 B.C.E. and were sometimes used by the ancient Egyptian. Now, we have dozens of different types of keys and lock makers and the practice of foraging a key does not even require a person anymore. One can go into their local Walmart or Home Depot and use the machines in there that make a copy of the key you put inside of them. This is remarkable seeing as though a blacksmith was once required to melt the key into roughly the right size and then shape it.

 

Describe your tech in a list of facts that are true but not how one would usually describe it.

These small pieces of metal have been used to kill people, most often in self-defense. Also, because of their sharpness, they have accidentally caused self-injury even when not using them for their purpose. Just by sitting on them or catching them the wrong way, they have made many people bleed. As for their counterparts, they are the weaker of the two. Many know how to avoid the barrier that it poses both mentally by not knowing the actual combination, but being able to guess and fidget with it, or by just slamming it hard enough that the metal snaps or the wood being the door snaps. Yet, at the same time, these things have also unintentionally killed people because they prevent them from accessing safety from someone, something, or the elements of nature. So, while potentially dangerous separately, when used together these pieces of technology can be used for the greater good of humanity.

What if your tech took over the world.

Many things that were once not secured now have many layers of security on them. Take our phones for example. When first invented they were just pick up, dial, and talk. Now with our cell phones, we need a password or thumbprint to unlock them, but that is not even the end. In some cases, we need that same form of password, just to be able to change some of the settings on the phone. There are now apps that can be downloaded, that require an additional password even after unlocking the phone as a whole, just to be able to access social media websites like Facebook or Twitter. The point in all this being that people care about the security of what is on their phone like there is no tomorrow, but they could care less about the lock on the door that prevents serial killers from their precious children.

What if you woke up tomorrow and your technology was just completely gone?

People would die. No, seriously. Think about if all the locks in prisoner holding cells just disappeared and they could all just walk out the front door after slaughtering all the guards. We would have Ted Bundy’s and George Manson’s walking around everywhere? And what on earth would we use to protect ourselves, because it sure as hell wouldn’t be locks because they disappeared. As easy as they are to break into, locks provide a sense of security and the illusion of a sealed door even if that is not true. We really do not need more murderers and people who drive drunk back out in the world. Yeah, the door is still there, but it is not that hard to turn the door knob.

Who may not be able to use your technology?

Even those who are blind or hard of hearing would be able to open a locked door, if given the right key. Even those who are physically handicapped in a wheel chair would be able to unlock something unless it was way up high, which sometimes even fully functioning people like myself (take that with a grain of salt), are not able to reach high enough with help. People who cannot hear well

Are the consequences of the making of your technology worth it, or could it be changed to make it more ecofriendly, or better for the people making it?

Most keys are made out of brass or silver nickel, either way and in 99% of the time, they are metal, are least for physical locks that require a physical key, not a password that can be kept inside one’s mind. Therefore, even when a lock would not be used anymore, it can still have a purpose and be melted down, to help form a new lock or key. Also, the only thing that melting down metal requires is a strong heat sources while can come electronically or naturally with a wood or charcoal fire. Therefore, reusing the material is only possibly a pollutant of the environment. The only thing that may go to waste would be the plastic packaging material that would come with each lock and key combination, but that too can be recycled.

Post #1: How Keys Shaped Society

The lock and key has shaped society to believe that they have a greater sense of security than before, when this is in fact not true. In time were keys and locks did not exist, one’s security came from depending on people to protect people from other people. Good examples of this would be like a hunting tribe would expect their neighbors not to steal from them, or to catch or call out someone who was seen stealing from someone. Or in the case of royalty, like Cleopatra, soldiers would be expected to protect someone from harm’s way. In this case, humans were more reliable than a solid piece of metal to ensure the safety of people, but this is not the case now.

In today’s standards, it would be considered ludicrous to have someone constantly protecting someone else unless you are the leader of a country or there was just a threat against your life. It is inefficient when one could just be placed behind closed doors and locked away, but how safe is that actually? If you were Cleopatra and you had 6 guards protecting you, the person or people trying to get to you would have to kill or incapacitate 6 people in order to reach you. Assuming that they get that far in the first place, one would have the guilty conscious of hurting or murdering someone. This is compared to today’s security breaches of picking a lock or breaking pieces of metal. I think the debate between what’s worse, murder or breaking metal, would be solved in an instant.

On the other hand, there are certain tradeoffs that come with people versus metal. In the days of ancient Egypt, one could just evade people and find a different entrance to their desire location. Now we enclose things in cube-like rooms with one easily accessible way in. One uses a key in a lock to open a door, or one could go the hard way and break through the drywall, but the seal of security would be broken until fixed. In addition, supplying jobs in the security realm of things would certainly be beneficial to many economies at the moment, but it is impractical to believe that a large part of the population needs this kind of protection. The other part to consider is how the locks and keys were and are made. The blacksmiths that once used to make one of a kind masterpieces have now been replaced by machines found in your local Walmart.

Now back to the point of security. As I continued to research “How to pick a lock” for my own amusement to see if I could accomplish it with paper clips (I can’t), there was a common thread between many of them. Once I noticed it in one video, I began to see it all over (I’ll give credit to the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon to that). To those who were able to easily pick a lock, they claimed that the idea of a lock just gave many people the perception of security, not that they were actually safe. And after seeing how easy it was for them, and how many people actually took the time to make a video detailing how to do it to teach more people, I was convinced. Locks and their false sense of security have lead us to believe that we are in a safer place than we were when humans were using hieroglyphs. This is not the case, seeing as though one can enter a door by picking the lock, using a bump key, or many other different methods. So why do we rely on them to protect the most precious things in life?