Many pencil users are in disbelief about O'BON claiming that our pencils don't break. Now, we are not saying that they never break, but it is damn hard to break the lead in an O'BON pencil. We ask you to do the SMASH test.
The SMASH test involves taking a sharpened O'BON pencil and a wood pencil in one hand. Make sure they are sharpened. Then smash both the pencils on the edge of a table. Don't hit the point, but the body of the pencil. Smash it repeatedly - hard. I mean hard. Now wiggle the point. Still intact, probably both pencils seem to be ok. Now sharpen them.
Test Results:
The O'BON pencil lead is not cracked and works fine. The other pencil lead is cracked and the point wiggles and easily come out when pulled.
How is this possible?
Many think that the O'BON doesn't break because it is cushioned by the newspaper. This is not the correct answer. The O'BON pencil is made by wrapping old newspaper 36 times around the graphite. The graphite is sealed in - airtight. There is no air gap inside, so when the pencil is smashed on the table or drops on the floor, there is no vibration inside the barrel. Wood pencils are made with two slates of wood, grooved for the lead and glued together. There is always an air gap - an air grap allows vibration inside the pencil against the fragile graphite. So, snap, crackle, pop!
Another reason why we claim our pencils are "the world's greatest pencil."
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Do Trees Feel Pain?
I grew up on a 500 acre Virginia farm. So, to heat our log cabin, my brother and I would spend most of the fall weekends cutting wood for our 2 fireplaces and one cook stove. It was fairly arduous work, and we spent a lot of time with chainsaws, two man saw and axes in our hands. My brother thought it was quite funny to raise the specter of trees feeling pain. He would mimic their cry of pain as we felled an old oak. The howl he made was quite chilling, and because it bothered me (I thought it could be true, “Trees feel pain,”) Being only 10 years old when he discovered my uneasy with his chilling scream, he never let it drop. While most weekend lumberjacks would just yell “Timber,” my bro loved to let out his blood curdling, deep throated, vampire-like scream, “Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.” His pain sound was unique to each tree and although it didn’t drive me home in tears; it almost did.
By the time I took biology in school and learned about nervous systems, it was too late for me to have any logical, scientific basis for the pain denial argument. I had chosen my answer to this question as my brother’s scream was too real, too embedded. Luckily for me, I didn’t hear the carrots scream when I forked them or the broccoli didn’t gasp their last when I chopped and mashed them up with my molars. No, the hypothetical question about trees and pain was only reserved for trees and didn’t transfer to other plants, shrubs, vegetables and flowers.
Now as an adult, I have a different take on this question about our trees. Although I can intellectual accept that a particular tree doesn’t feel pain when it is chopped down, I submit everything else surrounding this tree does feel the pain. Their pain is real. The orangutan, the tiger, the birds, the chipmunk, the snakes, spiders, moles, beetles…..the list goes on, all feel the pain. They don’t just get a bloody nose or a backache; they die. The death isn’t to one animal, one plant, one fungus or one bacteria…the death now results in massive extinction. Malaysia has lost almost all of the world’s oldest rainforest in the 30 years. Since the mid 70s, over 60% of Malaysia was covered with rainforest. It is now less than 20% and dwindling fast. The thousands of species wiped out which we will never find, never know about. The cure for cancer could have been in those wiped our rainforest. But it is not just Malaysia or the Tropics that has suffered so much. Take America, in less than 400 years we have wiped out our forests…with a bare 4% left. Most of these remaining forests are in our National and State Parks (of which, we still allow logging).
The pain of rainforest and other forest destruction is real. Listen to it, “owwwwwwww.” Global warming is a direct result of this painful destruction of our forest. Even though the poor and now pitiful Polar Bear, couldn’t care less about a tree and probably never has even seen one, now starves to death and near extinction looking for a solid sheet of ice to rest. Often these giant, beautiful creatures drown from their exhaustive search for solid ice….a clear painful scream we can all hear and feel. Their painful death is directly attributed to the destruction of our forest. As you watch these majestic creatures struggle to climb a tipsy piece of ice, you can hear their unmistakable scream of a panic death.
So, I thank my brother for teaching me a valuable life lesson. Trees do feel pain, and we can hear and feel pain easily if we listen. The scream can be heard in the Antarctica, Brazil, Vietnam and America. It can be heard loudly in countries where we don’t regulate logging, but it can be heard also in countries that aren’t actively restoring what has been killed.
By the time I took biology in school and learned about nervous systems, it was too late for me to have any logical, scientific basis for the pain denial argument. I had chosen my answer to this question as my brother’s scream was too real, too embedded. Luckily for me, I didn’t hear the carrots scream when I forked them or the broccoli didn’t gasp their last when I chopped and mashed them up with my molars. No, the hypothetical question about trees and pain was only reserved for trees and didn’t transfer to other plants, shrubs, vegetables and flowers.
Now as an adult, I have a different take on this question about our trees. Although I can intellectual accept that a particular tree doesn’t feel pain when it is chopped down, I submit everything else surrounding this tree does feel the pain. Their pain is real. The orangutan, the tiger, the birds, the chipmunk, the snakes, spiders, moles, beetles…..the list goes on, all feel the pain. They don’t just get a bloody nose or a backache; they die. The death isn’t to one animal, one plant, one fungus or one bacteria…the death now results in massive extinction. Malaysia has lost almost all of the world’s oldest rainforest in the 30 years. Since the mid 70s, over 60% of Malaysia was covered with rainforest. It is now less than 20% and dwindling fast. The thousands of species wiped out which we will never find, never know about. The cure for cancer could have been in those wiped our rainforest. But it is not just Malaysia or the Tropics that has suffered so much. Take America, in less than 400 years we have wiped out our forests…with a bare 4% left. Most of these remaining forests are in our National and State Parks (of which, we still allow logging).
The pain of rainforest and other forest destruction is real. Listen to it, “owwwwwwww.” Global warming is a direct result of this painful destruction of our forest. Even though the poor and now pitiful Polar Bear, couldn’t care less about a tree and probably never has even seen one, now starves to death and near extinction looking for a solid sheet of ice to rest. Often these giant, beautiful creatures drown from their exhaustive search for solid ice….a clear painful scream we can all hear and feel. Their painful death is directly attributed to the destruction of our forest. As you watch these majestic creatures struggle to climb a tipsy piece of ice, you can hear their unmistakable scream of a panic death.
So, I thank my brother for teaching me a valuable life lesson. Trees do feel pain, and we can hear and feel pain easily if we listen. The scream can be heard in the Antarctica, Brazil, Vietnam and America. It can be heard loudly in countries where we don’t regulate logging, but it can be heard also in countries that aren’t actively restoring what has been killed.
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