A n d r e w s G u m W o r l d

 Last Friday’s Hospitality Magazine website in Australia reviewed a biodegradable stain removal product, Lift Off, invented by chemist Gregg Motsenbocker for removing stains, including the ongoing challenge of discarded gum.

As the magazine notes, the product has no ammonia or solvent smell and “…it can be used on any surface without damaging or degrading the surface or the environment.”

There are three different varieties available, but when it comes to gum, it’s the second variety that you want:

Lift Off 2 removes oil and petroleum-based stains such as oil, grease, labels, chewing gum and candle wax, all of which will disappear from areas such as metal, plastic, wood, glass (labels), hair (chewing gum), carpet and fabric.

 The Basingstoke Gazette reported on Test Valley Borough Council’s efforts in Andover to cut the number of people spitting out their gum where it doesn’t belong, part of Britain’s and the Chewing Gum Action Group’s nation-wide efforts to reduce discarded gum on the pavements of the cities, towns and villages of that country.

To highlight the need in Andover (which last year spent 15 days and £13,500 [US$24,000+] removing gum from its streets), the Council set up a “grime scene” to make its point.

Here’s how it worked:

On Monday two demonstrations aimed at showing people the effect of gum being left on pavements were set up in Andover High Street.

A grime scene’ - where each piece of gum was marked with a ticket - aimed at showing people that dropping it was a fineable offence; while each blob of gum in an area of pavement near the Guildhall was highlighted and circled with chalk.

 William Bothwell’s (that’s him above) “Angles ’n’ Attitudes” in Ontario’s Orangeville Citizen newspaper recently took on the subject of chewing gum in a column titled “A sticky business” (AndrewsGumWorld has noted before that puns run rampant in gum reporting in the media).

Bothwell is, perhaps, arguably a gum curmudgeon, as the opening lines of his editorial below will note, but he also managed to fit, in one column, details on everything from new antioxidant-laden Bonus gum (reported on earlier here), the Alamo, Mexican General Santa Ana’s banishment to Staten Island, gum flavors, Thomas Adams and his role in the invention of gum, the introduction of pepsin powders to gum and the creation of “dentyne” gum, the Greeks, Socrates and more. The entire piece is, truly, an education in the history (past and current) of chewing gum. Check it out, including these opening lines:

 This writer has eschewed chewing gum for longer than he can remember. It is an abstinence to which he intends to stick. One remembers how, coming in from recess at school, it was not unknown to stick a wad of gum under the desk to await future use. Sometimes it remained there until summer holidays came. By then its ‘best-before’ date was long past and the custodians had extra work to do.

All of our teachers thought that if we concentrated on the assigned work we would have neither thought nor need for gum. None of us was as yet able to argue that chewing something other than the tip of a pencil might aid concentration, reduce the stress of the teacherpupil relationship and facilitate the learning process. Anyway, nobody that I can remember was ready in Runnymede Public School to argue with Miss Scott or Mr Hambly. They, by the way, eventually married and, one assumes, had their own tensions to contend with.

Poster Credit: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

As reported earlier this week on the site firstscience.com, the latest “Molecularium” movie will hit Imax theatres this fall, and its producer is Richard W. Siegel, a research scientist and professor from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The film, “Molecules to the MAX,” has taken three years from conception to completion, and uses molecular modeling and simulations to examine various objects, including on that you might guess. Here’s how the article from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute describes AndrewsGumWorld’s favorite part of the yet-to-be-seen movie:

And so far, the reception of Siegel’s grandkids and the children of colleagues to the latest exploits of Oxy, Hydro, Hydra, and other Molecularium characters as they get an up-close-and-personal view of the molecular landscapes of snowflakes, chewing gum, a penny, among other environs, has been outstanding.

AndrewsGumWorld has visited Croydon in the UK before for the efforts by its Business Improvement District (BID) to rid the town of the “scourge” of gum — a process which has led to the cleaning up of at least 4 million pieces of gum over the past year.

According to this morning’s Croydon Advertiser, the BID has launched a new phase of the effort (incidentally, pictured above are golden gum fighters Phillipa Trixter and Bevan Allen at the BID launch), with the town mayor, Jonathan Driver, passing out gum wraps for gum disposal. Additionally, gum spotters are giving £10 gift vouchers to those “caught” properly disposing of their gum, and the £75 fine for spitting out gum remains in effect.

According to Ros Morgan, manager of the Business Improvement District, all of these efforts have a positive end result for the town, as today’s article reported:

“We will be closely monitoring the campaign at ten locations in and around the centre.”We will be checking during it and when it ends to see what effect it has had on the amount of gum on the streets.”

She added: “We have spent a lot of money on power washing the streets but clearing up gum is considered by businesses to be very important.

“It is all part of making Croydon a safer place and ensuring people enjoy themselves when they come here.”

“There is no point in organising events like fashion and food festivals to get people in, if they find the centre is unattractive when they arrive.

“We want to raise people’s awareness of the problem and alert them to their responsibilities”, Ms Morgan said.

And while we’re visiting the Pacific Northwest we’ll linger above ground with the Seeleys of Clatskanie, Oregon, who produce 25,000 pounds of pure peppermint oil from the 450 acres of mint on their family run farm.

They’re third generation mint farmers, and one end-use for the byproduct of all of those mint plants is a byproduct dear to our hearts and mouths, as yesterday’s article from The Daily News in Longview reports:

As the mint cooks, the oil also turns into steam and is carried off through gooseneck pipes into a tall metal container akin to a grain silo.

“There we have cooling water that we pump around that, and we condense that into a mixture of oil and water,” Mike said.

That combination runs into receiving cans that look like giant coffee cans with narrow tops.

The oil flows to the top, leaving behind its watery counterpart. The Seeleys skim it off and siphon it into 55 gallon drums.

Because the oil is pure, it goes a long way, Mike (Seeley) noted.
“A pint of oil is a pound the world over, and a pint of it flavors 45,000 sticks of chewing gum,” he said.

You, faithful reader of AndrewsGumWorld, may not only chew gum, but also own a lawn that, well, is occasionally struck by an onslaught of moles that you may not with to be in (or underneath, actually), your lawn.

You are in remarkable luck, as it turns out, according to Cordell Vail (“The World Famous Gardener”), from Gum Guy’s home state of Washington, that even though you can no longer order his Mole Bate Sticks (they are no longer manufactured due to the expense involved), you can deal with moles and not have to rely on traps (as one of AndrewsGumWorld’s friends has done), garden hoses, car exhaust (which seems complicated), poisons or antifreeze.

But you do need gum, as his website explains.

Juicy Fruit™, in particular, seems to work best, and there are also worms and discarded plastic milk jugs involved:

TRADE SECRET YOU WILL WANT TO KNOW:
Now here is the a little secret to help you make your home remedy mole bate mole treatment more effective. Find an empty milk carton and cut the side out of it. Then open the chewing gum and put the chewing gum sticks into the milk carton. Then catch a few earth worms or night crawlers and put into the milk carton with the chewing gum, being careful to take the gum out of the wrapper without touching it with your fingers.

Now shake it all around until all the chewing gum sticks are covered with a coating of worm substance.

This way, when you put the chewing gum in the mole holes it will cause the moles to be more anxious to eat the bate. Worms are one of their main foods. Putting this coating on the gum will be very effective in getting the moles to eat the gum. It is the gum that kills the moles. When they eat it, it clogs up their insides and they die.

Once again, you can find all five steps, more photos, and a case studies (with photos) of how the procedure works can be found on the Moles Be Gone website

Yesterday’s Jamaica Gleaner featured a piece on the various powers of cinnamon in our diet, ranging from its usefulness as an antioxidant, an anti-inflammatory food and an aid to those with diabetes.

And it helps boost your memory (which is where the chewing gum comes in; see Wrigley’s Big Red), as the article notes:

There is much to say about the odour of this spice in boosting brain activity. Research has shown that chewing cinnamon-flavoured gum or just smelling cinnamon-enhanced products improved brain function improving attention span, visual-motor speed and memory.

in the sky, originally uploaded by knutsch (tranquille le chat).

AndrewsGumWorld continues to feel as though it should be in a public service mode and, in turn, acknowledges that our readers may not simply want advice on how to clean up gum (from streets, from everything else), but some may still need to learn how to blow bubbles (incidentally, the amazing bubble gum shot above is from a French photographer on Flickr who goes by the screen name Knutsch.

A cousin to Wikipedia, WikiHow, has an article that offers minute details on how to do just that, including these initial steps (incidentally, there are three final crucial ones to be found on the WikiHow site, as well as some crucial tips and warnings):

1. Buy gum that is specifically made for blowing bubbles.
2. To begin with, use one piece of bubblegum and work it around your mouth until it is soft. Then roll it into a ball with your tongue and using the roof of your mouth to lean on. Then move this ball of gum so that it is right behind your front teeth, and use your tongue again to flatten the ball into a small, flat, circle. Push it against the back of your teeth to flatten it.
3. The gum should now be behind your front teeth in the flattened shape. Using your tongue, push through this flat piece of gum until your tongue is covered by a thin layer of gum - be gentle, don’t just poke your tongue right through! Then take your tongue out of the layer. If it does burst, you must go back and re-roll the gum and then flatten it out against your teeth again.