Read it.

Notice how nobody ever tries creating stuff out of thick air. Wonder why that is.

Read it.

In their most recent article published online in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Eren and his co-authors from Southern Methodist University (Brett A. Story, David J. Meltzer and Kaitlyn A. Thomas), University of Tulsa (Briggs Buchanan), Rogers State University (Brian N. Andrews), Texas A&M University and the University of Missouri (Michael J. O’Brien) explain the flint knapping technique of “fluting” the Clovis points, which could be considered the first truly American invention. This singular technological attribute, the flake removal or “flute,” is absent from the stone-tool repertoire of Pleistocene Northeast Asia, where the Clovis ancestors came from.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

“It was risky and couldn’t have been easy to learn how to do this effectively,” Eren explained. “Archaeological evidence suggests that up to one out of five points break when you try to chip this fluted base, and it takes at least 30 minutes to produce a finished specimen. So, though it was a time-consuming process and risky technique, successfully fluted Clovis points would have been extremely reliable, especially while traveling great distances into unknown regions on a new continent. They needed points that would hold up and be used over and over again.”

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Stair-Climbing Wheelchair.

Wazer desktop waterjet cutter.

Ravin R9 Crossbow. Review here.

Kevlar Cut-Resistant Sleeves. I got yer knife fight, right here.

Read it.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Read it.

It means good eatin’, I can tell you.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Read it.

An international team of researchers are seeking 7500 euros to finance excavations sand specialized research at the Castle of Belvoir, located in northern Israel. The fortress was built by the Knights Hospitaller in the second half of the twelfth-century.

Anna Josephsson, one of the members involved in the project, explained that they launched the campaign “to extend and accelerate the work on the site (excavations, lapidary, architectural study and valorisation toward public ). We particularly want to progress in the 3D documentation and the planned full-scale reconstruction of the chapel (in collaboration with the Israel Antiquities Department and the National Parks authorities.)”

Read it.

Well, not really — just food and drink. Still….

Got some money to invest? These are the ones to buy.

Read it.

Keep an eye out for Richard Chamberlain.

Read it.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, helped Los Angeles Pierce College student Kevin Shaw file a lawsuit after he was told he could hand out U.S. Constitutions only in a tiny sector of campus. FIRE calculated the size of the free speech zone at Pierce College to be equivalent to an iPhone on a tennis court.

Last November, Shaw tried to pass out Spanish-language versions of the Constitution in an attempt to recruit new members for Young Americans for Liberty, a right-leaning student organization. As he was doing so, an administrator told him he could not hand out literature outside of the campus free speech zone—and that if he wanted to do it there, he would have to fill out a permit. He was also told he would be kicked off campus if he did not comply.

Read it.

And they didn’t even need to talk with a Scottish accent to do it.

“Heating the material above the softening point, around 100 degrees Celsius, melts the small crystallites, enabling the fracture surfaces to meld together and reform via diffusion,” said Dr. Mike Roland, senior scientist, NRL Soft Matter Physics. “This can be accomplished with a hot plate, akin to an iron, that molds the newly forming surface into a smooth, flat sheet with negligible effect on integrity.”

Ook Pro Picture Hangers

Read it.

Amazing how much impact a ‘social construct’ can have.

Read it.

Cue freak-out by the eco-Nazis.

Thousands of types of bacteria may live on plants; only dozens or maybe hundreds live inside. But the very fact that bacteria live inside plants is surprising. “It catches almost everybody off guard,” says Indigo CEO David Perry. And these bacteria that plants allow inside their roots, leaves, and stems can be beneficial, allowing them to, for example, capture nutrients from the air. Plants even pass along their endophytes via seeds, packaging their beneficial bacteria up into a convenient packet for their offspring. Because fewer bacteria live inside the plant than outside, endophytes also face less competition, meaning they’re more likely to be effective as a product for farmers.

Read it.

Scientists working at Queensland’s Griffith University have developed what they claim is the world’s first long term effective Malaria vaccine. If this new, cheap vaccine lives up to its promise, it will save millions of poor people who cannot afford Malaria drugs.

Read it.

Atsushi Shimizu is the inventor of the world’s first typhoon turbine—an extremely durable, eggbeater-shaped device that can not only withstand the awesome forces generated by a typhoon, it can convert all that power into useable energy. Shimizu’s calculations show that a sufficiently large array of his turbines could capture enough energy from a single typhoon to power Japan for 50 years.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Chop2Pot Foldable Cutting Board.

Ollie collapsible chair.

Foldable Step Stool.

Read it.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

Read it.

And about time, too.

Read it.

Assuming, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

Boffins poring over data from the Large Hadron Collider’s “Beauty” experiment are blinking in surprise, having turned up five new particles in one hit.

The “hiding in plain sight” articles in data from the “LHCb” are all excited states of the baryon Omega-c-zero, ?_c⁰, and the CERN boffins saw the five new particles from its decay states (?c(3000)0, ?c(3050)0, ?c(3066)0, ?c(3090)0 and ?c(3119)0, with bracketed numbers showing mass measured in mega-electron-volts).

Ever since ?_c⁰ was first observed in 1994, scientists have predicted states like the five now spotted by CERN, but they needed LHCb’s sensitivity to watch their brief life.

No word on when they’ll be available at the local WalMart.

Read it.

Read it.

For centuries, cellulose has formed the basis of the world’s most abundantly printed-on material: paper. Now, thanks to new research at MIT, it may also become an abundant material to print with — potentially providing a renewable, biodegradable alternative to the polymers currently used in 3-D printing materials.

“Cellulose is the most abundant organic polymer in the world,” says MIT postdoc Sebastian Pattinson, lead author of a paper describing the new system in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies. The paper is co-authored by associate professor of mechanical engineering A. John Hart, the Mitsui Career Development Professor in Contemporary Technology.

Cellulose, Pattinson explains, is “the most important component in giving wood its mechanical properties. And because it’s so inexpensive, it’s biorenewable, biodegradable, and also very chemically versatile, it’s used in a lot of products. Cellulose and its derivatives are used in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, as food additives, building materials, clothing — all sorts of different areas. And a lot of these kinds of products would benefit from the kind of customization that additive manufacturing [3-D printing] enables.”

Read it.

Ideal for beta males who are afraid to commit.

Read it.

There’s no pleasing some people.

(‘Right-wing joggers’ is a concept like ‘left-wing gun nuts’ — I need to see it before I believe it.)

Read it.

Well. There it is.

Read it.

Or you could just stick with sweet tea.

Read it.

Curry stains are notoriously hard to remove. The combination of oil and colourful spices can be enough to ruin any garment.

To solve this long-standing problem Panasonic has introduced a new washing machine for the Indian market which has a special “curry mode” especially designed to tackle the unique challenge posed by the dish.

The Japanese company introduced the curry button after a number of complaints from customers who couldn’t fully remove the food from their clothes using existing machines.

And about time, too.

Read it.

More than 61 percent of voters cast ballots in counties that gave either Clinton or Trump at least 60 percent of the major-party vote last November. That’s up from 50 percent of voters who lived in such counties in 2012 and 39 percent in 1992 — an accelerating trend that confirms that America’s political fabric, geographically, is tearing apart.

Of the nation’s 3,113 counties (or county equivalents), just 303 were decided by single-digit margins — less than 10 percent. In contrast, 1,096 counties fit that description in 1992, even though that election featured a wider national spread.¹ During the same period, the number of extreme landslide counties — those decided by margins exceeding 50 percentage points — exploded from 93 to 1,196, or over a third of the nation’s counties.

Pocket Microscope.

Instant Pot.

Check it out.

A site that uses the contents of your refrigerator to compose a menu for your meal.

It’s not quite a flying car, but still damned impressive.

Read it.

A French teenager’s sickle cell disease has been reversed using a pioneering treatment to change his DNA.

The world-first procedure at Necker Children’s Hospital in Paris offers hope to millions of people with the blood disorder.

Scientists altered the genetic instructions in his bone marrow so it made healthy red blood cells.

So far, the therapy has worked for 15 months and the child is no longer on any medication.

Premium Gear Kit car emergency preparedness equipment.

Read it.

Read it.

That would be nice. Maybe then the enviro-Nazis would STFU.

Read it.

Three types of potatoes genetically engineered to resist the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine are safe for the environment and safe to eat, federal officials have announced.

Read it.

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Read it.

Dallas-Fort Worth and Dayton Ohio have the least t traffic congestion among larger cities (urban areas) in the world, according to the 2017 Tom Tom Traffic Index. Dallas-Fort Worth had the shortest average all day delay, at 18 percent of the 43 cities with more than 5 million population. Dallas-Fort Worth also had the least average peak period traffic delay. This is the second year in a row the Dallas Fort Worth has had the best all day traffic congestion. Dayton had the best all day and average peak hour congestion among the 146 cities with between 800,000 and 5,000,000 population and tied with three others for the best in among all cities the least all-day congestion.

Read it.

Looking for a medieval castle but want to stay in North America? Consider Highlands Castle, situated in the beautiful Adirondack Mountains of New York State. Built in 1984 using 800 tons of stone, this castle comes with gatehouse, towers and secret doors.

Of course, you’d have to pay New York taxes….

Read it.

Leicester Cathedral has digitised and published the personal prayer book of King Richard III.  The original manuscript rests in Lambeth Palace Library with restricted access due to its fragile condition so this digital version will enable the public to view the book.

Hopefully this will encourage others to make such works available for digital viewing.

Read it.

President Trump’s new choice for National Security Adviser is Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster. McMaster is best known for his 1997 book Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, an examination into the disastrous Vietnam policies of Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara. In the book, McMaster not only attacks President Johnson, he also places blame on military leaders who refused to push back against abject leadership in the White House.

I have that book. I like him already.

Read it.

Well, it has to contain three times the ego. That costs.

But it will be in Chicago, which means that if necessary they can just steal the money.

Barton Hinkle has a way with words.

We’ll be able to thank both Republicans and Democrats for that, but at the moment the GOP has the first claim on the public’s gratitude. This is owing in no small measure to Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of Supervisors and immigrant-basher extraordinaire. Stewart is the kind of guy who responds to Donald Trump’s most outlandish behavior with: “Not bad. Now hold my beer and watch this.”

…

Across the aisle the Democrats are having a whale of a good time, too. Just as in last year’s presidential election, they expected their heir apparent to the nomination—in this case, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam—to cruise to the coronation by unanimous consent. Then Tom Perriello threw a wrench into the works. Or upset the apple cart, or whatever it is people do these days. (Note to self: Find Hipster, request advice regarding correct idiom.)

Check it out.

Just in case you were wondering.I know I was.

Of course, if you’ve watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier, you know all this.

Read it.

A word game, popular in the great households of late medieval England, had at its heart the creation of collective nouns. In the lists of these names, alongside the laughter of hostellers, the glossing of taverners, the promise of tapsters and fighting of beggars, were household references – a carve of pantlers (who looked after the bread), a credence of servers (‘credence’ was the process of tasting of ‘assaying’ foods against poison), a provision of stewards of household – and a hastiness of cooks. The pressures of the medieval kitchen, the precipitate hurry and the irritation of the cooks are all captured in medieval meanings of ‘hastiness’. The word embodied a further dimension, however, through word play: ‘hasta’ was the medieval Latin for a spit, and we see at once the heart of the fire that has aggravated the cooks, the profligate the use of fuel in roasting, a busy-ness and the hard work that was necessary to produce the finest foods for table. This book is about what that food and drink, from the finest to the commonplace, meant to people in the later Middle Ages and how they expressed meaning through it in their daily lives – and many of them would have been engaged in cooking, even if they were not hasty professional cooks. The premiss is that food and drink mattered for a whole host of reasons beyond simply providing the necessities of life.

Check it out.

Way cool.

Read it.

The county commissioners voted 9-3 to uphold an order from Mayor Carlos Gimenez that local authorities cooperate with federal immigration officials, in accordance with the law, and refuse to provide arrested illegal immigrants sanctuary. Gimenez issued the order after President Donald Trump warned he would strip so-called “sanctuary cities” of federal funds.

Another win for Trump … and reason. And I’m sure greed had something to do with it.

One commissioner characterized the vote as “just a financial decision,” saying it has “nothing to do” with immigration. “This is a country that opened arms to everyone, allowed opportunities to everyone,” Rebeca Sosa said before her vote. “I am so sad to see that people are afraid of something that has nothing to do with immigration. This was just a financial decision.”

It was just business. I always liked you.

After the vote, upset residents shouted “shame on you,” and threw pieces of paper and white carnations at the dais before storming out of the chambers, a local outlet reports. “May God have mercy on your soul,” one woman yelled. Others stood and shouted obscenities, according to Fox News.

How tolerant.