Random News Items

[iHeart]

yikes

https://www.tmz.com/2021/05/20/diego-maradona-death-7-people-charged-with-homicide/

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/san-jose-ca-shooting-05-26-21/index.html

The mass shooting is the 232nd incident in which a minimum of four people were shot in the US so far this year, according to a tally by the Gun Violence Archive.

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/bettor-cries-foul-over-playnow-odds-turnover-574497352.html

[JCon]

2 hours ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/san-jose-ca-shooting-05-26-21/index.html

The mass shooting is the 232nd incident in which a minimum of four people were shot in the US so far this year, according to a tally by the Gun Violence Archive.

Goddamn it Biden!

[FrostyWinnipeg]

JERUSALEM — A diverse coalition of Israeli opposition parties said Sunday that they have the votes to form a unity government to unseat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader and its dominant political figure for more than a decade. Under the agreement, reached after weeks of negotiations spearheaded by centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid, former Netanyahu defense minister and ally Naftali Bennett will lead a power-sharing government.

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

JERUSALEM — A diverse coalition of Israeli opposition parties said Sunday that they have the votes to form a unity government to unseat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader and its dominant political figure for more than a decade. Under the agreement, reached after weeks of negotiations spearheaded by centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid, former Netanyahu defense minister and ally Naftali Bennett will lead a power-sharing government.

Not all good news- Bennett is apparently even more hard-right than Bibi.

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/02/churchill-downs-suspends-bob-baffert-for-2-years-as-kentucky-derby-winner-medina-spirit-fails-2nd-drug-test.html

🏇 + 💉 =

Edited June 2, 2021 by FrostyWinnipeg

[iHeart]

I love how her name sounds (isn't Mountbatten the name of the friend of Charles that died?)

 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

2 hours ago, iHeart said:

I love how her name sounds (isn't Mountbatten the name of the friend of Charles that died?)

 

Think that's his grandfathers last name.

Hey it rained last night! ⛈️ 🥰

[Tracker]

 

 

                                     

[FrostyWinnipeg]

 

[Tracker]

Keystone XL Pipeline Sponsor Abandons Project After Biden Permit Block

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The sponsor of the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline said Wednesday it is pulling the plug on the contentious project after Canadian officials failed to persuade President Joe Biden to reverse his cancellation of its permit on the day he took office.

Calgary-based TC Energy said it would work with government agencies “to ensure a safe termination of and exit from” the partially built line, which was to transport crude from the oil sand fields of western Canada to Steele City, Nebraska.

[SpeedFlex27]

Kenney wasted $1.5 billion dollars of AB taxpayers dollars on this pipeline & he needs to be held accountable. The dummy asshat should have waited until after the election & not made that decision before. Especially when the province is supposedly broke & he wants to cut healthcare & education. What a maroon of a politician.

[Tracker]

Noah’s Ark Replica Faces Biblical Fines For Return Voyage To Holland!

The UK coastguard has “arrested” a 230-foot (70 meter) Noah's Ark replica ship in Ipswich, England. Without the correct paperwork and “anti-fouling paint” to deem it seaworthy, the $3.6million (3-million-Euro) vessel is going nowhere, fast.

Noah's Ark was the vessel in the Genesis flood narrative through which God spared Noah, his family, and two of each of the world's animals from a world-threatening flood.

Now, “Aad Peters Ark” has been impounded by the UK coastguard and cannot sail from England because it does not have the “proper” paperwork. Sounds bizarre doesn’t it? But the story of this enormous floating museum, full of sculptures of biblical characters, that was detained after being towed across North Sea, is in some ways as bizarre as the original story.

The Dutch Noah’s Ark Replica: A Floating Biblical Museum
Every crazy story has a central character, generally with more than a flash of color, and in this case it is Sir Aad Peters, a Dutch TV producer. Sir Peters is “failing” in his quest to return his  Noah’s Ark  replica to the  Netherlands. He has been unable to get a license because the ship lacks the correct paperwork.

Experts Uncover Rare Mosaics Showing Biblical Scenes in Ancient Synagogue in Galilee
Ancient Greek Vase Artists Painted Images of Biblical Figures Noah and Nimrod Over 2,000 Years Ago
While his predecessor, Noah, sailed after banging a few nails into timbers, Aad Peters's vessel has now been impounded by the UK coastguard and cannot be moved because it does not have the appropriate paperwork.

Mr Peter is the owner of this remarkable and huge  floating museum  that is currently full of sculptures of characters in  Biblical scenes . The bespoke version of the famous Biblical ship was detained after being towed across the North Sea from the Netherlands.

According to a report in the  Daily Mail , Mr Peters negotiations with coastguard officials “have reached a stalemate.” What that means in real terms is that this incredibly expensive vessel has been docked for almost 18 months atIpswich and doesn’t look to be going anywhere soon.

An interior view of Sir Aad Peter’s Dutch Noah’s Ark replica ship. ( Ceinturion /  CC BY-SA 3.0 )

Daily Ark Fines Could Prove Disastrous for Sir Peters
The vessel measures just under half the size of the Biblical ark, which the  good book  says, “measured 300 cubits,” (510 feet; 155 meters). Noah had his own troubles getting to sea before the deluge, but one thing he didn’t have to deal with was complaints from angry land lubbers.

Dockside residents in  Ipswich have publicly “condemned” the replica ship as they have called it “a floating eyesore which blocks out sunlight and spoils the view from local homes,” according to the Daily Mail article.

In the Biblical Book of Genesis the mountains of Ararat is the term used to designate the region in which Noah's Ark comes to rest after  the Great Flood . The great thing with ancient Ararat, compared with modern Ipswich, is that there were no docking fees.

Mr Peters is estimated to have stacked up port fines “of £500 (709 dollars or 582 Euros) a day since April 1 when a deadline to move it was missed,” according to an article in the  BBC. 

The Biblical story of Noah’s Ark has a “happy ending” on top of a mountain in Ararat and no paperwork was required. Noah’s Ark replica ship may not be so fortunate. ( JavierArtPhotography / Adobe Stock)

A Biblical Vision Frozen By UK Load Line Certificate!
The British Maritime and Coastguard Agency told the BBC that they cannot release the ark until it has a “load line certificate.” According to  My Sea Time  load line certificates certify that vessels comply with the load line conventions. Load line conventions applies to ships of more than 79 feet (24 meters) in length and stipulate that basic limits be met for the ship’s minimum freeboard for buoyancy, plus a reserve addition to cover extreme circumstances.

[Tracker]

[FrostyWinnipeg]

4 hours ago, Tracker said:

Sounds like an episode of Seinfeld.

Edited June 12, 2021 by FrostyWinnipeg

[FrostyWinnipeg]

US Army Special Forces veteran and his son plead guilty to charges that they illegally helped former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn flee Japan hidden in a box aboard a private jet in December 2019. https://nbcnews.to/2RTDkXb

[FrostyWinnipeg]

NSFW?

Spoiler

https://ktla.com/news/california/report-driver-charged-in-deadly-crash-into-san-jose-bar-was-having-sex-at-the-time/

 

Edited June 17, 2021 by FrostyWinnipeg

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/erick-wildman-arrested-rcmp-1.6070817

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/we-re-not-going-to-let-it-go-community-working-to-rebuild-historic-interlake-church-following-vandalism-1.5476304

[Tracker]

Scientists say spider silk could teach us how to replace plastic

For all our scientific and technological might, humans struggle to manufacture materials as tensile as a spider's silk. Five times as strong as steel, spiderwebs are a testament to the ingenuity of nature — and particularly to the millions of years of evolution that endowed arachnids with the power to make such miraculous strands of silk. Chemists and engineers have studied spider silk for years to figure out if it could be adapted in developing novel materials. Now, an intriguing new paper has a remarkable proposal: use a biodegradable spider silk-inspired material to replace plastic. Such a concept would have incredible utility in reducing plastic pollution on Earth, which causes myriad health, environmental and ecological problems.

The new article in question, published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, reveals that Cambridge researchers have managed to create a sustainable material that could theoretically replace plastics but is made from plants and sustainable.

As Professor Tuomas Knowles, a chemistry and biophysics professor at the University of Cambridge, wrote to Salon, spider silk is extremely strong even though its molecules are connected together by comparatively weak bonds. The looseness of the molecules makes the molecules more dynamic, and they can be packed together in dense quantities.

From a material standpoint, Knowles says spider silk is unique in that spiders create it with protein that can "naturally untangle and restructure" itself, a process known as "protein self-assembly." Knowles and his team followed the same principle.

"These interactions are formed in large part through contacts involving the backbone of the molecules; this is the part that all protein molecules have in common," Knowles explained. "As such, we found that it is possible to take molecules which are unrelated to silk, but find conditions where they too can assemble into dense arrays which are held together by backbone interactions."

Knowles hopes this knowledge could, quite literally, save the world.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.

"This technology has significant potential to replace plastics in a wide range of applications," Knowles explained to Salon. "Plant-protein materials are high performance, and have a perfect end-of-life.  Unlike fossil fuel based materials, no chemicals can be released when the materials degrade. And unlike most other potential replacements for plastic, our materials are 100% natural, with no chemical modification or cross linking."

Knowles believes in the new material so much that he and his team have founded a company called Xampla, which plans on launching products based on it in the real world, including a micro plastic application (fabric softeners' fragrance capsules) and a plastic film application (wrappers for dishwasher detergents).

"By 2025, we envisage that these materials will be found widely in homes, in personal care, homecare and food packaging applications," Knowles wrote to Salon.

If Knowles is correct, the invention will come not a moment too soon. There is a growing body of evidence linking chemicals known as "endocrine disruptors," which are found in many widely-used plastics, to dropping sperm counts among men. Plastic pollution has also seeped into our food and could be causing widespread illnesses like cancers. Large quantities of disposable plastic have found their way into the ocean, bringing considerable suffering to aquatic life and hurting the livelihoods of many low-income individuals. The pandemic has only exacerbated these trends by increasing demand for single-use plastic products and making it cheaper to create new plastic.

These are serious problems — but, as Knowles tells Salon, not ones that he had initially set out to solve when he began studying the webs woven by our eight-legged friends.

"When we started this research, our goal was to understand the fundamental nature of protein self-assembly," Knowles explained. "We asked the question, 'How does for example a spider make silk so strong?' And as we developed, we realized that that fundamental understanding could be applied to many other proteins as well and thus address one of the principal environmental challenges of our day."

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/lego-bricks-recycled-bottles-testing-1.6076982

Quote

Danish toymaker Lego has presented its first building bricks made out of recycled drinks bottles — an experimental project that if successful could eventually go into production.

In a statement Wednesday, the group said the prototype uses plastic from discarded bottles from the United States.

On average, a one-litre bottle provides enough raw material for ten Lego bricks with two rows of four studs...

This is fantastic and I hope it gets the green light to produce these.

[bustamente]

 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

New York court suspends Rudy Giuliani's law license after a disciplinary panel finds he made false comments about the 2020 election.

apne.ws/8bmYxeX

Edited June 24, 2021 by FrostyWinnipeg

[TrueBlue4ever]

18 minutes ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

New York court suspends Rudy Giuliani's law license after a disciplinary panel finds he made false comments about the 2020 election.

apne.ws/8bmYxeX