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[upnorth]

Bungling Haringey jewellery shop robbers caught on CCTV

Andrew Elliott, 32, was seen ransacking trays of jewellery and struggling to flee Ital Gold in Haringey.

www.bbc.com

 

[Prorootect]

The USA is full of rules. Taxes and insurance and tips and … This is a country that has ruled itself into oblivion. It’s a great place to escape from. However, I have returned. I returned because I wanted to give my kids better opportunities for their futures and to give myself better access to what I need to advance professionally. I like my work — I want to go as far as I can with it. To do this I needed a globally central base of operations. I chose New York City.

But coming here hasn’t increased the smoothness of life. It’s actually done the exact opposite. My wife and I fight here more than anywhere else in the world. Put us out in the middle of nowhere with nothing and we’re fine. Throw us into the heart of our own country and we grind each other down — scraping and scraping until we hit bone. I’ve become a skeleton here, and I’m starting to fear that I beginning to look like everyone else out in the streets. I’m starting to blend in, becoming invisible.
But I’m appreciating the contrast. I’ve never lived like this before. It’s something new to log into the chronicle of life. And, for a traveler, new is always appreciated.
I also know that I being in NYC means traveling more than ever. I’ve had three international trips and a half dozen domestic jaunts so far. If February I’m set to give a talk in Michigan. In March it’s South Africa. In April it’s Ukraine.

I’m in the center of the world. Sure, it feels idle here, but I’m always just one jump away from the periphery — where the action happens....

Here on vagabondjourney.com: Life In The USA Is Just Like I Thought


...Northen lights above Kroshel, Minnesota.jpg


...Skyline New York City.jpg

...New York night lights nyc01.jpg

 

[SeriousHoax]

I'm from Bangladesh btw

 

[Prorootect]

Kobe Bryant is dead today. He was killed in a helicopter crash.

NBA great Kobe Bryant and daughter among nine killed in helicopter crash near Los Angeles

Kobe Bryant, one of the NBA's all-time greatest players and an athlete of global renown, was killed at age 41 on Sunday in a helicopter crash near Los Angeles along with his 13-year-old daughter and seven on board, officials said.

www.reuters.com

So your quote is from Sunday, Jan 26, 2020.

Found this YouTube video (3,369,702 views for now) from Jan 25, 2020:
LeBron shares his fondest memories of Kobe after passing him on all-time scoring list | NBA Sound

Published on Jan 25, 2020
After passing Kobe Bryant for third on the NBA all-time scoring list, LeBron James takes a trip down memory lane to share his best moments of Kobe.
From comments:
"I didn't realize until halfway through that this was the night BEFORE the crash. Heartbreaking."
"This interview will go down as one of the most "Eerie" almost premonition of death events in modern history."
"So this interview was before the news of Kobe dying, then he passes the next day? Wow...he spoke as if he already knew"

WWGQWGA on twitter:

-so what you has to say about, please...because I don't know what to make of all this.

 

[Prorootect]

When Is a Person Actually Dead?
Read on blog.drwile.com: When Is a Person Actually Dead? – Proslogion

A student recently sent me an article from Live Science that reports on a man who was declared dead by three doctors. Four hours later, as he was being prepped for an autopsy (the marks to guide the autopsy had already been put on him), he started snoring! As of the time the article was written, he was alive and in the intensive care unit of a hospital. The student asked how such a thing could happen. Was it incompetence on the part of the doctors, or is it difficult to tell whether or not a person is dead? I told the student that while I couldn’t address the details of this particular case since I wasn’t involved, I could tell him that there have been cases over the years where the experts were convinced that a person was dead when, in fact, that person wasn’t.
I first heard this kind of story when I was preparing for a talk about miracles. I ran across the case of Emma Brady. She had been declared dead after exhibiting no vital signs. She was placed in a body bag and taken to the morgue. When her children arrived about an hour later to say their goodbyes, they found her gasping for air. The administrator of the hospital said that after the family told a nurse about what they had seen: "Miraculously, the patient exhibited vital signs that were absent previously."

Over the years, I have kept my eye out for stories like this...
- read MORE on the link above...


Link to Dr Jay Wile blog: Proslogion – Thoughts from a scientist who is a Christian (not a Christian Scientist)

 

[upnorth]

Japan is building a 60-foot-tall, walking Gundam robot

The port of Yokohama will play host to a colossal, walking Gundam robot for a year starting this October. With 24 degrees of motion, it'll be the most advanced full-sized Gundam ever built, and the engineering challenge of making it work is enormous.

newatlas.com

 

[Lemon60]

 

[upnorth]

According to the American Beekeeping Federation, honey bees contribute nearly $20 billion each year to the value of U.S. crop production, and they play an enormous role in global food production. Without honey bees, dozens of crops, from almonds to berries to broccoli, would either vanish or produce significantly less food.

Bacteria Engineered to Protect Bees from Pests and Pathogens

AUSTIN, Texas — Scientists from The University of Texas at Austin report in the journal Science that they have developed a new strategy to protect honey

news.utexas.edu

 

[show-Zi]

Japan is building a 60-foot-tall, walking Gundam robot

The port of Yokohama will play host to a colossal, walking Gundam robot for a year starting this October. With 24 degrees of motion, it'll be the most advanced full-sized Gundam ever built, and the engineering challenge of making it work is enormous.

newatlas.com

Gundam is going to space

 

[upnorth]

 

[plat]

Well, all this discussion about butts, cigarette and otherwise , reminds me of a previous story I posted here, and I wish to bring a tiny bit of an update. First, an image:

Spoiler

The factory was wiped out and over 400 jobs lost, many thought permanently. Today an announcement: Marcal is rebuilding its toilet paper factory plus the huge neon Marcal sign (Northern New Jersey). Why I like this story? Marcal manufactures toilet paper using recycled product.

Image of the landmark Marcal sign--a beacon over route 80 in Northern NJ destroyed in the fire.

Spoiler

 

[Prorootect]

The Persian desert

Iran is similar to a large saucer. Its edge is a ring of high mountains, where the rain coming from the seas falls down, and its middle is one large desert, where not a single drop falls sometimes for years. The rivers running down the fertile highlands disappear here in the sand, or spread out in salt marshes and evaporate.

But the Persian desert is not dead. Drought-tolerant plants live on the salty sand, which serve as hiding places and food for a wide variety of animals. And where the wells drilled down to the underground water tables, and the several thousand year old underground channel system, based on them, makes it possible, villages, cities and caravanserais grow out of the ground, they irrigate the fields, they produce rice, saffron, pistachios.

In contrast to us Europeans, the Iranians do not consider the desert as a wilderness. The Indo-European names for this land, desert, Wüste, pustina, come from the Latin, Germanic or Slavic words for “abandoned, empty”, while the origin of Persian کویر kavir is the verb “surround, accept”, related to Latin capere. The Iranian city dwellers go on excursons and picnics to the desert with the same excitement and curiosity as we go to the mountains. And as to the relationship of the local farmers to the desert, the renowned Iranian photographer Nasrollah Kasraian writes this in the introduction of his recently published album کویرهای ایران Kavirhâ-ye Irân, “The deserts of Iran”:

“On my way from the Agha Ali Abbas sanctuary to Maranjab I sat down for a rest with a few Afghan day-laborers and a middle-aged, amiable Esfahani farmer. He grew melons on his small plot, and invited me to a cup of tea. I told him that I was taking pictures of the desert. He said he couldn’t read or write, but he regarded the desert beautiful. He had been to the Caspian Sea, where everything was green, and he found it monotonous. To him, every corner of the desert was of a different hue. There was so much to see. You may suddenly come upon a yellow hill, he said, and wonder who has sprayed so much color on that hillside. A little further you will also discover a silver band on the same hill. I had to agree with him. I could read and write, but those things were only useful for specific purposes. Here, I said, it is only the eye that counts and we both saw the same things. I have been after these scenes for the past thirty years or so, I continued, I just want to show them to others as well.”

...
- read More (and More images...) on Poemas del río Wang: The Persian desert

 

[oldschool]

Column: Inspired by Greta Thunberg, this 101-year-old takes a stand against climate change

Inspired by young climate activist Greta Thunberg, this 101-year-old activist rallies fellow residents to take action.

www.latimes.com

Column: Inspired by Greta Thunberg, this 101-year-old takes a stand against climate change

Senior living residents Marion Marx, left, and Marian Sachs, 101, were instrumental in getting meat removed from the menu one day a week at the Fair Oaks Assisted Living facility in Pasadena.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
By STEVE LOPEZCOLUMNIST
FEB. 1, 2020

5 AM
At first glance, it wasn’t a message that grabbed me.
“I am seeking publicity,” began the email from Marian Sachs.
She must have known I would roll my eyes.
“Stop,” she wrote. “Don’t delete this … please.”

I didn’t, fortunately.
“I am 101 years old and live in an assisted living facility,” Sachs wrote, saying that she was inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg’s activism on climate change.
“There is not much we seniors can do to help,” Sachs wrote. “However, I have thought perhaps we could observe one meatless day a week in our dining room. The proposal has met with remarkable acceptance by our residents.”
A little publicity might inspire other seniors to do their part, Sachs wrote.


“Can you help?” she asked.
Her timing couldn’t have been better, because I’d just met with two climate change experts to talk about the specific threats in California and what we can do about it. So before I tell you about my trip to see Mrs. Sachs at her home in Pasadena, let me tell you about my visit with the experts.
Bill Patzert, a former climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulson Lab, and Steve LaDochy, a semi-retired meteorology and geosciences professor at Cal State L.A, were both quoted in a Jan. 11 Los Angeles Times story by Paul Duginski about the decreased prevalence of tule fog in the midsection of the state.
“In the dry Central Valley, plants, especially native plants, love the extra water that this fog provides,” Patzert said in that story. And LaDochy explained that warming temperatures and a decrease in air pollution — which absorbs vapor — were to blame for the decrease in fog.
Over a cup of coffee with me in Sierra Madre, Patzert and LaDochy had a lot to say, and most of it was frightening.
That’s not surprising when the news is filled with horror stories about melting glaciers, rising sea levels, raging wildfires and killer drought-deluge cycles. Global greenhouse-gas emissions reached a record high in 2019, we just completed the hottest decade on record, and heat stored in the upper levels of oceans is at a record high.
With islands disappearing in the oceans and glaciers melting, it’s easy to overlook the effects in a place like Southern California. But, as Patzert and LaDochy explained, climate change is having a huge effect here, where population explosions and increased emissions have created so-called heat islands.
While the average global temperature has risen about 1.7 degrees above the 20th century average, Patzert said, it’s risen closer to 5 degrees in downtown Los Angeles.

“In August and September, it’s 8 to 9 degrees warmer than it used to be,” Patzert said, noting that, since the 1950s, California’s population has quadrupled while the nation’s has merely doubled.
“As you build a great megalopolis … you tend to generate your own heat with shopping centers, housing developments, blacktop,” Patzert said.
And then there’s the obvious. More people means more vehicles.
LaDochy drives a Prius. Patzert doesn’t fly as much as he used to. Everyone can find a way to make a contribution, they said. But the greatest tool for change, Patzert said — noting the unconscionable policies of certain so-called leaders — is the ballot box.
Marian Sachs isn’t waiting for an election to do her part. She had left her door ajar and called for me to come on in when I knocked. She did not look her age, and when she began speaking I wanted to check her birth certificate.
After more than a century on the planet, she’s still sharp, curious, engaged. She worked in nursing and then architecture; she and her late husband raised three kids, drove one of the first hybrid vehicles, collected rocks and shared a love of nature. She now aims her binoculars at nearby birds, follows the news closely, and is horrified by growing evidence of an overheated planet.
Her hero Thunberg, 84 years her junior, has stared down complacent world leaders and exclaimed, “How dare you … entire ecosystems are collapsing.” But Sachs — whose home is a gallery of the wildlife painting she took up as a hobby — did not want to talk politics.
“I’m rendered speechless,” Sachs said. “Don’t get me stirred up.”

She told me she recognized that she and her fellow residents couldn’t change the world on their own, but doing nothing is not an option. The meat-free menu was all she could think of, and her neighbor and friend Marion Marx embraced the idea.
They wrote up their proposal and circulated a memo to the 130 residents of the Fair Oaks, telling them that Thunberg had raised the consciousness of young people the world over, including “our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren.”
“As responsible seniors, we should give them our support in this climate crisis. We feel we can do our part by observing a meatless day once a week. It will be our opportunity to be of some help.”
Residents were asked to say yay or nay. A week later, the Fair Oaks climate change initiative won in a landslide, 44-6.
One resident who voted against added a comment: “God controls climate.”
Another resident wondered if the banned meats would include venison.
“I don’t think they’ve ever even served venison,” said Mrs. Sachs.
Sachs and Marx delivered the news to the chef, Rigo Arias, who said the plan was for Meatless Mondays to begin soon — no beef, chicken or pork for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Arias told me that, with tofu, pasta, eggplant and the new lines of plant-based meat substitutes, menus wouldn’t be hard to put together. And at the moment, fish has not been banned.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Arias said. “I was really surprised, in a good way, that in these kinds of places, there’s still an interest in supporting a cause.”
I followed Sachs to lunch — soup, tuna salad and ham sandwiches were on the menu — and she sat with her pals Marx, Shelley Gutman and Luretta Rideout, all of whom support the motion.
“We have to do something,” said Marx, “or we’re going to be in dire straits.”
Less meat means lower methane emissions, said Sachs. And if we don’t keep cutting down trees to clear space for grazing, that would help, too, said Marx.
A small weekly sacrifice at one retirement center won’t accomplish much, the women conceded.
But it’s better than doing nothing, Sachs said, and the idea might catch on at other retirement centers. If a teenager was able to start a movement, why can’t they?
Steve.lopez@latimes.com

 

[HarborFront]

In view of the Wuhan virus I have just completed watching

Contagion
Outbreak
Pandemic
Virus
Quarantine
Quarantine 2
Quarantine LA

 

[[correlate]]

Today's date is distinguished in terms of the similarity of numbers and will not be repeated.

 

[Digmor Crusher]

Its going to get ridiculous, people in the middle of Siberia or the Sahara Desert are going to be looking to buy face masks.

 

[[correlate]]

Its going to get ridiculous, people in the middle of Siberia or the Sahara Desert are going to be looking to buy face masks.

 

[Prorootect]

Do I need advice from "climate change experts", do you think? This is not my religion, and Al Gore is not my god...
For "lower methane emissions" you'd have to ask the volcanoes...

We of course don't eat meat every Friday, and in total we don't eat meat 4 days a week. We don't eat any frogs, bats, snakes, worms etc...but preferably chickens, turkey, and fish. Substitutes do not interest us fortunately.

If it's about cows, you would have to ask... yes yes this famous cow's expert, called AOC... I have a meme in My Pictures folder:
Stop global warming by stopping cow farts - AOC.jpg

And if we talk about cows...
Ancestral customs are weird sometimes: watch this video I've found about a Ethiopian woman, who blows into her cow's buttocks for a very good reason:
- on this page: Cette femme souffle dans le derrière de sa vache pour une très bonne raison: Cette femme souffle dans le derrière de sa vache pour une très bonne raison | seneweb.com
English translation:
Title: "That woman is blowing her cow's butt for a very good reason."

In Ethiopia, farmers are adopting a very special technique to boost milk production in their cows: blowing into their anuses.
We're not laughing. What may seem surprising to you is sometimes of unstoppable logic and wisdom. Such is the case with that person blowing into that cow's butt. The Nuer people of Ethiopia follow ancestral legacies to organise their lives. Both herders and farmers, the members of the tribe organize their lives in society by following the teachings of their forefathers.

And when a cow no longer produces milk, there is, as always, a solution. The air that escapes from her body, after blowing into her bottom, is a sensation close to childbirth. Thus, in addition to the urge to urinate and defecate, the cow, also solicited on the udder side, will start producing milk again.

Milk and urine are essential

While the method may leave one skeptical, it is indispensable. Even urine is a source of comfort in the desert areas of Africa, where water is an extremely precious commodity. It is used to wash children and to satisfy local customs, as well as to pigment women's hair with yellow-orange thanks to the chemicals it naturally contains.

The video comes from the Spanish documentary "Los Pueblos del Rift Valle" made in 2006. The Nuer tribe had to leave their homeland, Sudan, to flee the war. They went into exile in a refugee camp in Ethiopia.

So you see, it's interesting to surf some websites from distant lands, from different cultures...

 

[Prorootect]

...yes distand lands, different cultures - example from Switzerland (in self-adhesive pictures),
(You Can Only Find This In Switzerland): Bitte nicht im stehen pinkeln!

Take a seat please!.jpeg
Bitte nicht im stehen pinkeln! -- Please do not pee standing up!
Celui, qui s'assied ne se mouille pas les pieds! -- This one who sits down doesn't get his feet wet!


Bitte im Sitzen pinkeln! Take a seat please!....jpeg

Not pee here! Education through repression. Universal language.jpg


Please pee seated.jpeg

Bitte im Sitzen pinkeln.jpeg

Bitte im Sitzen pinkeln! -- Please pee seated!

...and similar natural action by dog, to smile a little:

normal peeing dog.jpeg

 

[upnorth]