Shoes are bad for your feet? Vindicating the barefoot set!

By Cory Doctorow:

Adam Sternbergh's long investigative New York Magazine piece, "You Walk Wrong," makes a compelling case for shoes as inherently damaging to your feet and spine. I have very flat feet, which has always meant problems with my hips, knees and back, and I've work custom orthotic inserts since I was a teenage. Last year, I picked up a pair of Vibram Fivefingers "barefoot shoes" that do a pretty good job of simulating the experience of going barefoot without the tetanus and laceration risk, and I've done a lot of city and country walking in them, and I have to say, my back and knees and feet feel pretty damned good after a couple days in them.

At first glance, this seems like a sensible and obvious approach—to work with the foot, not against it. But it represents a fundamental break from the dominant philosophy of shoe design. For decades, the guiding principle of shoe design has been to compensate for the perceived deficiencies of the human foot. Since it hurts to strike your heel on the ground, nearly all shoes provide a structure to lift the heel. And because walking on hard surfaces can be painful, we wrap our feet in padding. Many people suffer from flat feet or fallen arches, so we wear shoes with built-in arch supports, to help hold our arches up...

Admittedly, there’s something counterintuitive about the idea that less padding on your foot equals less shock on your body. But that’s only if we continue to think of our feet as lifeless blocks of flesh that hold us upright. The sole of your foot has over 200,000 nerve endings in it, one of the highest concentrations anywhere in the body. Our feet are designed to act as earthward antennae, helping us balance and transmitting information to us about the ground we’re walking on.

But (you might say) if you walk or run with no padding, it’s murder on your heels—which is precisely the point. Your heels hurt when you walk that way because you’re not supposed to walk that way. Wrapping your heels in padding so they don’t hurt is like stuffing a gag in someone’s mouth so they’ll stop screaming—you’re basically telling your heels to shut up.

And your heels aren’t just screaming; they’re trying to tell you something. In 2006, a group of rheumatologists at Chicago’s Rush Medical College studied the force of the “knee adduction moment”—basically, the force of torque on the medial chamber of the knee joint where arthritis occurs. For years, rheumatologists have advised patients with osteoarthritis of the knees to wear padded walking shoes, to reduce stress on their joints. As for the knee-adduction moment, they’ve attempted to address it with braces and orthotics that immobilize the knee, but with inconsistent results. So the researchers at Rush tried something different: They had people walk in their walking shoes, then barefoot, and each time measured the stress on their knees. They found, to their surprise, that the impact on the knees was 12 percent less when people walked barefoot than it was when people wore the padded shoes.

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Now, this is interesting!

Airstrip in a box: 1938

Now here is something interesting:

In December 1938, Popular Science featured this fantastic, gigantic 12-ton "landing strip in a box" for converting cow-pastures to airstrips.

Rolling swiftly down highways on ten oversize balloon tires, a revolutionary airport-in-miniature for use by passenger air lines and military air forces now provides quick and complete assistance to stranded airplanes.
This curious “twelve-ton tool box” is the invention of Kibbey W. Couse, of East Orange, N. J.
It is capable of turning any level cow pasture into an airport complete with machine shop, repair parts, floodlights, and radio.

Toppy Times Seven

Cloned dogs to sniff out drugs:

Five cloned dogs, all sharing the same name: "Toppy", a combination of the words "tomorrow" and "puppy", look at a ball during their exercise at Defector Dog Training Center in Incheon, west of Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 24, 2008.

The country that created the world's first cloned canine plans to put duplicated dogs on patrol to sniff out drugs and explosives.

The Korean Customs Service unveiled Thursday seven cloned Labrador retrievers being trained near Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul. The dogs were born five to six months ago after being separately cloned from a skilled drug-sniffing canine in active service.

Due to the difficulties in finding dogs who are up to snuff for the critical jobs, officials said using clones could help reduce costs.

The cloning work was conducted by a team of Seoul National University scientists who in 2005 successfully created the world's first known dog clone, an Afghan hound named Snuppy.

The team is led by Professor Lee Byeong-chun, who was a key aide to disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk. Hwang's purported breakthroughs in stem cell research were revealed as false, but independent tests proved the team's dog cloning was genuine.

The seven new cloned male dogs are all healthy, though one was sent to a university laboratory a few days ago for a minor foot injury it received during training, according to training center head Lim Jae-ryoung. For now, the dogs all share the same name: "Toppy" - a combination of the words "tomorrow" and "puppy."

"They have a superior nature. They are active and excel in accepting the training," said Kim Nak-seung, a trainer at the Customs Service-affiliated dog training center.

In February, all seven dogs passed a behavior test aimed at finding whether they are genetically qualified to work as sniffing dogs. Only 10 percent to 15 percent of naturally born dogs typically pass the test.

If the cloned dogs succeed in other tests for physical strength, concentration and sniffing ability, they will be put to work by July next year at airports and harbors across South Korea, according to the training center.

The agency says the cloned dogs could also save money.

"We came up with the idea of dog cloning after thinking about how we can possess a superior breed at a cheaper cost," said agency head Hur Yong-suk.

Normally, only about three out every 10 naturally born dogs it trains - at a cost of about $40,140 each - ends up qualifying for the job.

Lee of Seoul National University said it cost approximately $100,000 to $150,000 to clone each of the seven golden Labrador retrievers.

He said the seven are the world's first cloned drug-sniffing dogs.

The university team did not ask for payment from the customs authorities because it created the clones for academic purposes with government funds, Lee said.

He said his team has so far cloned 20 dogs and five wolves.

On Thursday the dogs frolicked with trainer Kim, running together and chasing a red rubber ball he threw across a playground - a part of training aimed at bolstering their stamina.

"If I look at them very carefully, there are now some small differences in their facial features," said Kim, who has been training the dogs since they were born. "But it's still hard to tell."