Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 28, 1994 TAG: 9408180001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joel Achenbach
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A: Because we all believe that our good luck will hold. And because there aren't oil wells in Germany.
You see, early in the century, before oil was discovered in the Middle East, America dominated the oil industry. One of the things you get out of an oil well is helium. America essentially cornered the market on the stuff. The Helium Control Act of 1927 forbade the export of the gas because there was fear that other nations would build helium-filled bombers (in those days people were still a little freaked out about the new technology of flight).
In the 1930s, when the Germans were clamoring for us to sell them helium - the Hindenburg was actually designed to hold helium rather than hydrogen - the ban may have been enforced for selfish economic motives. We had heavier-than-air commercial aircraft companies aspiring to dominate trans-Atlantic air travel. The Germans, meanwhile, had perfected lighter-than-air travel with their zeppelins. Selling the Germans helium might have undermined American companies such as Pan Am, writes Harold Dick in ``The Golden Age of the Great Passenger Airships Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg.''
The Germans knew that hydrogen was dangerous, but they took the risk. For one thing, the Nazis loved the propaganda value of the huge airships in the 1930s.
Hydrogen also has advantages. It's cheap. Electricity passed through water can create hydrogen gas. Hydrogen is also lighter than helium. A thousand cubic feet of hydrogen weighs 5.61 pounds, compared to 11.14 pounds for helium and 80.72 pounds for regular ol' air.
So although the Germans took the risk of their zeppelins burning up, they also enjoyed the benefits of extra lift, one reason the 803-foot Hindenburg was able to have such luxurious passenger quarters.
The Hindenburg fire at Lakehurst, N.J., on May 6, 1937, was apparently caused by static electricity igniting a hydrogen leak. A freak accident. There have always been rumors of sabotage. It wasn't the worst airship disaster in history but it was the most beautifully photographed. Oh the humanity!
Any chance the Americans and Germans would merge their technologies quickly ended with the coming of World War II. The airship era was over.
Somehow the Fuji Film blimp isn't quite as impressive.
\ Q. Why do we get pimples and why do dermatologists insist we shouldn't pop them?
A. Only humans get acne. It's gross and it's unfair. On the other hand we have large brains, and thus unlike dogs we don't find it amusing to roll around in poop. It all evens out eventually.
About 85 percent of the population gets acne to some degree between the ages of 12 and 25. Simply washing your face a lot won't prevent acne. ``If washing faces really helped getting rid of acne, we would be home washing our faces instead of going to the doctor,'' says dermatologist Mervyn Elgart of George Washington University Medical School.
Teen-agers with raging hormones get enlarged sebaceous glands (among other things). These glands make (WARNING: discussion of non-solid and non-dry substances immediately to follow) an oily substance called sebum that coats the inside walls of hair follicles and makes the skin cells shed rapidly and stick together.
Humans don't have much hair, compared to other animals, and many of our hair follicles have only the most puny, invisible, vestigial hairs in them, and thus there's nothing much to keep the follicles open as all this glop is piling up in there. So the follicle gets clogged with broken-down skin cells and dried oil and bacteria. (FYI, the blackness of a blackhead isn't caused by dirt, but rather by oxidized skin cells.)
Then the body starts reacting. It senses the presence of bacteria. White blood cells charge to the rescue. They envelop the bacteria using a process called phagocytosis, from the Latin for ``scarfing down a mess o' germs.'' The white blood cells, in destroying the bacteria, release enzymes that have as a side effect the destruction of the walls of the hair canal, and inflammation.
``The body is trying to fight off the bacteria and in that process you're getting some destructive inflammation,'' says Alan Shalita, dermatologist at SUNY Brooklyn.
So why does popping a zit make it get better?
``If you remove the core of material,'' says Shalita, ``you are removing what is essentially a foreign body.''
But don't pop. So say dermatologists. If you're not careful you can squeeze those inflammatory enzymes and nasty bacteria and supergross dead skin cells and ultra-mega-disgusting dried-up oil nodules back into the tissues surrounding the lesion. Hence more inflammation, major facial acne disasters, and the possible need for, yes, amputation of the head.
``I always tell people not to squeeze pimples. That's the party line,'' says Elgart.
The dermatologist says you should, surprise surprise, see a dermatologist.
But then he 'fesses up: ``Most of us stand in front of the mirror and we squeeze anyway.''
Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB