From time to time you might find yourself wanting to take half a pill as opposed to the whole dose. This tool simplifies the mechanical act of splitting a pill such that you obtain the best possible equal division with the least effort.

To that end, you will want a dedicated pill splitter as opposed to using your fingers or a knife. I’ve tried a number of pill splitters over the years and the best one I’ve found is the Apex Ultra, pictured above and below. It has a sharp blade that’s covered by a retractable piece of plastic when not in the process of cutting. Equally important, it has a nicely designed platform upon which to place your pill, with rubbery side guards next to the firm base, such that the pill is securely gripped before being cut.

Scored pills are best cut along the score line. Egg-shaped (more precisely, prolate ellipsoid) pills should be placed such that the long axis of the pill is perpendicular to the blade: this results in a shorter cut edge than if the long axis were parallel to the blade, and thus minimizes loss of pill material.

Occasionally you may wish to quarter a pill: this is trickier than dividing an intact pill because you’re working with a cut edge. The best result (most even division of pill half) will be obtained if you place the previously cut edge AWAY from the first contact point of the descending blade. If instead you advance the cut edge into the “V” of the platform, the blade will tend to fragment that edge as it divides the pill in half, leaving more of the pill’s contents on the platform.

By having the intact surface of the pill serve as the initial contact point for the blade, you’ll find the blade causes less of the pill’s substance to break off from the previously cut edge.

I had been using the previously reviewed Optical4less to purchase inexpensive prescription eyeglasses online, but I changed over to Zenni Optical two years ago. Zenni offers the same fabulous advantages of decent glasses for super cheap, but they are much faster to deliver, and have a much better selection, and their website is much easier to use and order. Reordering from the same prescription is a no-brainer, too.

Over the past two years I’ve ordered about 8 pairs of glasses from Zenni for different family members and myself, in all different strengths and styles, including sunglasses. The frame quality is okay (great for the price) and the optical quality is A+. My wife has extreme corrections, and I have a very odd combination of factors, while my daughter’s prescription is mild. I’ve ordered single, bifocals and progressives – and the results have all been good. A simple correction and simple frame can cost as little as $10, but our typical glasses will cost about $35. Still a fantastic bargain. Even if you are style conscious, these are great for backup pairs.

One detail you have to pay attention when selecting a frame online is the width of the frame, which varies between models. Pay attention to the size indicator. I once ordered a pair too narrow. Delivery takes only about 2 weeks to my home in California.

After 45 years of perfect vision, I began needing help to see up close. I have prescription glasses for writing long chapters at my desk, and I’ve stashed cheap reading glasses everywhere else in the house. But inevitably, when traveling around the planet, I have struggles with menus and bank documents and so on. A convenient pair of portable readers can be a blessing.

I started with one of those slim fresnel lenses, shaped like a credit card, in my wallet. They’re fine for emergencies but useless for comfortable or extended reading. An ideal solution would be a small pince-nez. But the cheapo versions – with a plastic nose-bridge – soon break, or they pinch and hurt.

What you want is for the bridge to be made of flexible metal, squeezing the two lenses against your nose with just the right pressure. They can slip off, if you’re sweaty, and there are (ahem) some places you do not want to let them drop-off. But the good ones can squeeze together so the lenses overlap and they fit into a tiny pocket pouch. It’s surprising how comfortable they can be, feeling so natural you forget they are there.

Alas, my first trio of pocket pince-nez all broke in the same place; where the metal bridge was riveted into the glass. I searched all over and finally found better ones from Pocketeyes. These have an improved, adjustable metal-to-glass attachment, a corrugated spot on each lens to help grip the nose, and a split pouch that lets you keep the lenses from rubbing against each other in your pocket. The keychain grommet is another plus.

They also have a fun factor. People do double-takes and even strike up conversations asking about them. They won’t help with driving or distance. But if all you need is readers to help while traveling around, this may be your answer.

I cook all the meals in my household and have worked in a bunch of manual jobs, from welding to construction, so I have a lot of experience with cuts, abrasions, and burns. After much experience and unwilling experiment, I highly recommend Band-Aid Tough Strips without exception or qualification.

Every other variety I have tried, including the plastic “waterproof” Tough Strips and the regular plastic and fabric Band-Aids, have, in a word, stunk. Why the fabric Tough Strips stay on through sweat and multiple soapings, I don’t know. The adhesive does seem to be of a different sort. But the fact is they do stay on through everyday and not-so-everyday abuse, and no other bandage I’ve tried comes close. Also they’re a little bigger than regular bandages, and the extra bit often makes the difference between not-quite and fully covering a wound. Be sure to apply them to dry skin while trying to avoid getting any antibiotic ointment on the sticky part as that stuff is like adhesive kryptonite.

I have 4 kids and we are outdoors as much as possible. One down side is my blonde kids can easily get too much sun. I have tried almost every sunscreen out there and these sunscreen towelettes are the best. They come in a “baby-wipe” style of dispenser, or as individually wrapped foil packets.

Each towelette has enough sunscreen to cover a person from head to toe. The kids no longer complain about it in their eyes or how cold the aerosol cans are. I also like it because it is fast to apply and easy to carry with us. It’s also easy to keep the pack in our car just in case.

[Note: I just discovered these a few weeks ago and agree that they make the normally greasy act of applying sunscreen far more pleasant. It's also easy to throw a wrapped towelette in your bag if you don't want to carry around a leaky bottle of sunscreen. -- OH ]

Having been in the the CrossFit community for a few years now, I’ve heard a lot about two dietary protocols: the Zone diet and the Paleolithic diet (Paleo for short). I had tried out the Zone diet for a bit more than a year, but never found the performance or feel-good gains compelling enough to stick with it strictly for more than a week or two at a time. After reading Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution and trying the Paleo diet for a few weeks I became a quick convert.

Robb’s book outlines the benefits of eating Paleo, the specifics of how to follow the protocol, the evolutionary basis for it, all while providing evidence found in scientific studies. Anyone who has read books like Gary Taube’s Good Calories, Bad Calories, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, or has seen Fathead or Food, Inc. will find that they appreciate Wolf’s explanation of the Paleo diet.

I started eating Paleo in early 2011 at the urging of folks from my CrossFit gym. My original intentions were not to lose weight or overcome any specific malady, but simply to feel and perform better. In short, it has fulfilled both of those goals extremely well.

At its core, Paleo intends to imitate an ancestral human diet, with a focus on foods that are available today including meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts, while specifically excluding grains, legumes, dairy products, salts, refined sugars and processed oils.

Since switching to Paleo, I have found I have considerably more stable energy throughout the day, and am able to perform better and to my fullest capacity in demanding CrossFit workouts. I am also happier with the things I eat. While it didn’t apply to me, I have no doubt that the nutrition prescribed by the book can be a powerful tool for weight loss and fighting numerous chronic illnesses. Robb’s book and Paleo websites everywhere are chock full of folks who struggled their entire lives with ailments from diabetes to chronic fatigue and irritable bowel syndrome until they discovered this diet.

Robb Wolf isn’t the only person proffering the eating like our Paleolithic ancestors: he follows closely on the heels of Loren Cordain, author of The Paleo Diet, and Mark Sisson, author of The Primal Blueprint, but I have found his work most accessible.

– Drew Stephens

[Editor's note: I asked my friend and personal trainer Khaled Allen, who I know has had some experience with the Paleo diet, to add his perspective to this review.-- OH]

The principles behind the Paleo diet are very sound and are reflected in other lifestyles that do really promote health. Traditional (but non-caveman) diets always reflected a low starch, low sugar approach. In The 4-Hour Body, Tim Ferriss writes about his experience helping clients lose weight, and he pretty much espouses the Paleo approach, though he isn’t so hung up on specific types of foods.

I got into Paleo through Mark’s Daily Apple. Mark blogs about his version of health, called the Primal Blueprint. Technically, I was eating Primal, since I eat yogurt and butter. However, the fact that all these health movements are going in the same direction suggests that its all legit to me.

I did try strict Paleo for about a month last spring. It went well, but I found it unnecessarily cumbersome, and the stress of trying to strictly follow the diet counteracted the health benefits.

The Paleo approach is handy because it keeps things simple. There is no calorie counting, and as long as you stick within the recommend food types, you can’t mess up (usually). When you start allowing some types of grains, or some kinds of dairy, most people get messed up, which is why the strict, no dairy, no grains approach of Paleo works so well. That said, it doesn’t account at all for individual variation in diet or culture, and people have a tendency to go nuts on the bacon and steak and ignore the fact that Paleo really is mostly vegetable. It doesn’t account for raw or fermented foods, which if you’re being true to Paleolithic eating was probably more significant than the types of foods being eaten.

I’d say as long as you understand the principles behind Paleo, you should be alright. No refined sugar, minimal starches, avoid hard to digest foods (modern industrially processed grains, dairy, and legumes). With this in mind, you could get away with fermented organic dairy such as yogurt, grass-fed butter, or even brown rice (which I save for days with a lot of exercise, since it is gluten free).

With all these caveats, it does work. People lose weight because they are keeping their insulin low, and by cutting out all the processed foods and chemicals, they get a lot of health and vitality returned.

– Khaled Allen

Permethrin is a man-made version of an insect repellent found in chrysanthemum plants. The molecule repels a variety of biting insects including flies, ants, chiggers, mosquitoes, ticks, etc. The company Insect Shield partners with manufacturers of work and recreational outdoor clothing to produce bug repellant gear: LL Bean, Buff, Carolina Manufacturing (bandanas), Eagle’s Nest Outfitters, ExOfficio, Outdoor Research, and REI.

Since deer populations have been exploding in many parts of the country, we have seen a corresponding explosion in the tick population. Some diseases carried by ticks can send you to bed for at least a week and may even have permanent effects (Lyme disease for example). Permethrin seems to be the best alternative for dealing with these pests and is a vastly superior alternative to DEET.

We were clued into this permethrin clothing treatment last year by Rob, a local farmer. He was finding about a dozen ticks a day after working in the fields. Rob started wearing permethrin treated socks, long pants secured at the ankle, long-sleeved shirts and a bandana; he stopped picking up ticks. I have shorts, an ExOfficio Bugsaway t-shirt, and several pairs of treated socks, and that seems to do the trick for me. There are also sprays for applying permethrin to your own clothing and camping gear (please read the warning labels carefully before using them) though I personally prefer pretreated clothing.

My favorite non-clothing use of permethrin is the Perky-Pet Ant Guard. It’s a small canister with hooks at both ends for hanging a hummingbird feeder. The canister separates into two parts held together with a central line; that central line is the only thing that’s treated with permethrin. Ants must crawl on the line to get to the feeder, thus minimizing any bird feeders over run by insects. Besides minimizing exposure to the environment, the treatment is protected from both sun and rain by the canister.

One thing to consider before using permethrin is that, as the Wikipedia article notes, permethrin is toxic to fish and aquatic life in general. This is why I dislike the use of permethrin backyard sprays as they seem like overkill, while any runoff can inadvertently damage local water life.

This is a new design of respirator which has advantages for mass distribution, emergency preparedness, and multi-ethnic populations. I’ve been using/testing it for 5 or 6 years in the Unorganized Borough in Alaska.

The respirator can be cut with scissors to fit faces properly. Because they are clear, fit is easily ascertained. A clear respirator may mean they are more acceptable culturally (the face is not hidden).

The filters are replaceable. They allow a lot of air to pass through so can be useful in bike riding and outdoor work. They also allow moisture to pass through; I haven’t found the exhaled moisture to be a problem except in subzero temperatures (quite a bit of condensation then).

Instead of storing respirators of every size, only one size needs to be stored for emergency use. One doesn’t need to check sizes before distributing the respirators. Respirators can be cleaned and re-used by the individual (replace filters). I have seen them be used for pandemics, volcanoes, dust, woodworking, and cycling, and I am hoping to continue testing them in Alaska where we have faces from many different populations.

– Pamela Bumsted

These filters show the build up of particulate in the mask’s filters after a bike ride through the various cities. — OH

There is nothing in this book that you don’t need to know. You don’t have to commit the book to memory but I would encourage you to know what’s in it and how to find it quickly. My first duty as a Scout leader is the safety and well-being of our Scouts at an age when they are poor judges of risk and have a propensity to overestimate their capacities. I need to know how to keep them safe and how to respond if they are injured or ill.

Medicine for the Outdoors is the work of Dr. Paul Auerbach, wilderness medicine pioneer and arguably the world’s foremost expert on the subject. He explains the how and why of responding to nearly every possible illness or injury one is likely to encounter in a concise, step by step manner that is intended to be used on the spot – but don’t wait for something to happen before you read the book.

Safety is not owning the right gear or having the right book. It is not having a well-appointed first aid kit. Safety is knowing how to prevent injury and illness and how to respond if it occurs. Get the book, read through it, make notes and practice the skills before you need them. I have a Kindle copy that I can carry on a smartphone, iPod or similar device. I also have a copy of the book that lives in our troop first aid kit.