MaxRedline

  MOUNT VERNON , Wash. - West Big Lake Blvd in Mount Vernon is closed following a flash flood like incident Friday night. Skagit County officials say they believe the flash flood occurred after a beaver dam failed.  Had them in the stream behind my last house; never a problem with them. They built a solid dam back there, which attracted ducks, geese, and other wildlife. I miss them since we moved, but the traffic on the road out front of the old place became unbearable.

  US wildlife researchers have discovered that two California condors, a critically endangered bird, gave birth without any male genetic DNA. The discovery that condors are capable of virgin births - formally called parthenogenesis or asexual reproduction - surprised scientists. The peer-reviewed findings from San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance were published this week in the American Genetic Association's Journal of Heredity . The researchers describe how routine genetic screenings of captive birds led to the discovery that two male chicks hatched in 2001 and 2009 were related to their mothers and had not inherited DNA from any father bird. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59097703   Science is all about finding surprises.  

  One dairy cow burps the same amount of emissions as a car. Seaweed can cut that in half.  At Straus Dairy Farm on the California coast north of San Francisco, there’s a long history of sustainability. Cow poop is turned into electricity that powers the farm, including an electric truck that delivers cattle feed. The family farm, which aims to be carbon neutral by 2023, launched the first organic creamery in the country, and was also the first make a “carbon farm” plan, working with university researchers to study the climate benefits of techniques like adding compost to soil. This summer, it also became the site of the first commercial trial of a new solution: adding red seaweed to cattle feed to help reduce emissions from cow burps. In the trial, emissions of methane—a potent greenhouse gas—dropped by an average of 52%. For some cows, methane emissions from burps fell by as much as 90%.  “We’ve developed a scalable, replicable cultivation system that makes...

  The Skokomish River is home to an annual salmon migration, but it's also the most flood-prone river in Western Washington. There's a road nearby (the river)," says hydrologist Brent Bower with the National Weather Service in Seattle. "So basically what's happened is (the salmon) are trying to go up the river. But when the river floods, they don't necessarily know what's the actual river channel, and what's not, so they just follow the water. And sometimes that water takes them across the road."   Salmon are crossing W Skokomish Valley Rd, north of Shelton in Mason County. The fish are coming from Skokomish River. The waters are above the flood stage & there is a river flooding warning in effect until early Saturday morning. Some folks are out here trynna catch dinner. https://twitter.com/i/status/1453855049260486656  It's a nearly annual phenomenon. Do check yesterday's Twitter link, above!  

  Paris (CNN) France has detained a British fishing vessel and announced it will close nearly all of its ports to trawlers from the UK, a major escalation in its ongoing spat with the country over post-Brexit fishing rights. "Aside from a few exceptions, all French ports will no longer be accessible to British boats," France's European affairs minister, Clement Beaune, said in an interview on French TV station CNEWS, referring to vessels that offload fish and produce.   https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/28/europe/france-uk-fishing-boat-intl/index.html?  "This is not a war, but a fight," Girardin told French radio station RTL Thursday morning. A second series of French retaliatory measures is being prepared, a government statement said, adding that, "in this context, France does not exclude re-examining the supply of energy provided to the UK."   If I recall correctly, the UK buys natural gas from France.  

JEFFERSON COUNTY, Wash. - Two men were arrested after state officials said they were caught cutting chunks of wood from a bridge with a chainsaw in Jefferson County .   Officials said this happened behind a locked gate and the lock was broken off. Officials said the officer discovered two men cutting chunks out of the cedar logs that form the base of a bridge .  The two men were arrested and booked into Jefferson County Jail. Their car and equipment were recovered and held as evidence.   According to the DNR, the cedar chunks would be sold on the black market for mill owners to turn them into shake and shingles.    Some guys'll do anything to get quick cash. Next time, maybe they should use hand-saws. They're a lot quieter than chainsaws....    

                   PETA is asking Major League Baseball to stop using the term "bullpen" to              describe the area where pitchers warm up and instead use the term “arm barn.”   "Bullpen" is cited as disrespectful of male bovines. It's always something, with those folks.   

  Activity from an underwater volcano has brought two dozen 'ghost ships' to the surface of the Pacific Ocean, decades after being sunk during WWII. The ships were involved in the bloody Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, wh en they were sunk by US forces.  

  The Pew Research Center survey , conducted Sept. 13-19, found that the share of adults who now say spending on policing should increase has risen to 47%, up from 31% in June 2020. And 21% of those say funding should increase a lot, while just 11% said the same last summer.  The results come amid a mounting public concern over violent crime nationally, with 61% of adults in July 2021 saying violent crime is a big problem in the country, while just 41% said the same a year prior. An FBI report released last month found that homicides were up nearly 30% in 2020, the biggest one-year increase on record, while cities from Philadelphia to Portland, Oregon, to Jackson, Mississippi, are approaching or surpassing homicide records in 2021.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-share-of-americans-who-want-more-police-spending-is-growing-poll-says/ar-AAPYUg0 Although we rarely see police around here, it's good to know that they're close by. https://news.wsu.edu/p...

  If you’ve heard of “zombie deer,” you’ve heard of the horrors of chronic wasting disease . CWD causes infected animals to stumble through the forest, sometimes drooling and becoming aggressive towards humans they once feared. They lose weight. They’re listless. The spookiest thing about it, though, isn’t its resemblance to zombie-dom—it’s the fact that it’s an incurable prion disease.  Prions are misfolded proteins that are somehow infectious (we’re still not really sure how or why) and for which we have no treatments or cures.  Right now, CWD appears limited to deer, moose, and elk. But University of Minnesota researchers warned local lawmakers this week that we should be taking action now to prevent the potential spread to humans. Michael Osterholm, director of the university’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Prevention, testified that “It is my best professional judgment based on my public health experience and the risk of BSE transmission to ...

  A 26-acre Forensic Anthropology Research Facility (FARF) in San Marcos, Texas, is a site where researchers study human decomposition. In July 2014, researchers left a body in a wooded part of FARF. They wanted to learn about how different scavengers leave their marks on human remains, so they set up a motion-sensitive camera to see who would stop by. In this part of Texas, it’s not unusual to see foxes, turkey vultures, raccoons, coyotes, and other carrion-gobblers picking at a corpse. But after a few months, someone new came to the table. On January 5, 2015, the camera caught a glimpse of a young white-tailed deer standing near the skeleton with a human rib bone in its mouth. Then it happened again on January 13—the camera caught a deer with another rib sticking out of its mouth like a cigar. It’s not clear whether it was the same deer in both cases, but it’s certainly possible first one came back for seconds. This is the first known evidence of a deer scavenging h...

  Apparently, this is the new hot illegal game right now. The Ministry of Public Health is investigating a valid coronavirus access pass QR code issued in the name of Adolf Hitler . A cybercriminal created this QR code as proof that he can make valid access passes under any name, RTL Nieuws reports. They told the broadcaster that they could make QR codes from France and Poland, which can also be used in the Netherlands as they are European codes. The Dutch Health Ministry is trying to figure out exactly how this QR code was created. There are various possible scenarios, including that the culprit works for the health service in Poland or France. But according to RTL, the Ministry is mainly concerned that the secret keys of the French and Polish QR codes were stolen. If that happened, all the QR codes from those countries would have to be reissued.  https://nltimes.nl/2021/10/27/covid-access-pass-qr-code-issued-adolf-hitler-ministry-investigating

  HOUSTON – The family of the woman accused of abandoning her three children and leaving another child dead in an apartment for nearly a year, is now speaking out. “I have seen the news article about the kids. You know, when you see things like that, you think like ‘wow,’ you know. But I never thought it was her,” said Christie Smith, a cousin of the mother.  https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2021/10/28/family-members-said-they-had-no-idea-children-were-living-in-apartment-with-their-brothers-decaying-body/   The relatives said they think Gloria was paying for the rent at the abandoned apartment with money she was receiving from the government.  Some "people" shouldn't be permitted to exist.

  More people are considering giving up their dogs for adoption since coronavirus restrictions were lifted, according to a dog welfare charity. The Dogs Trust said it had seen a 35% increase in calls related to giving up dogs in the last few weeks. It said that people were reconsidering owning a pet as their circumstances changed post-lockdown.   Owen Sharp, the charity's chief executive, said: "Following the boom in pet ownership during the pandemic which saw millions of us delighting in the companionship of a dog, today's figures have sadly come as no surprise to us. "As owners' circumstances change, puppies grow into boisterous 'teenagers' and the country unlocks, many owners are being forced to reconsider the place in their lives for their pet."  Earlier this year, the Pet Food Manufacturers' Association said a total of 3.2 million households in the UK had acquired a pet since the start of the pandemic. And a lot of those Brits are ...

 . The Biden administration is rolling out a new coordinated strategy it hopes will slow the menacing rise in drug overdose deaths. According to the latest preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 100,000 people in the U.S. died from overdoses over a 12-month period, a massive surge from a year earlier. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said the overdose epidemic has grown so severe that new measures are needed to keep people with addiction alive. New federal research also shows that more people in the U.S. have been using drugs during the pandemic, putting them at high risk of overdose and death.   A major focus of the Biden administration's plan is on expanding federal support and coordination of harm reduction strategies for people actively using dangerous drugs. "If you can't prevent someone from becoming a user, then at least prevent them from harming themselves to the point of death," Becer...

(CNN) The need for liver transplants because of heavy drinking soared during the pandemic , researchers reported Tuesday. They found the number of people who got a liver transplant or were put on a waiting list due to alcoholic hepatitis was 50% higher than what was forecast based on pre-pandemic trends.    The results published in JAMA Network Open showed a positive correlation between the increase in the number of people on the waiting list for a liver due to alcoholic hepatitis and the increase in retail sales of alcohol during the pandemic.   Researchers on this study noted alcohol sales increased sharply starting in March 2020 and stayed at about the same elevated level for the rest of the year.  How NOT to deal with Covid-19.

  They served the nation on distant and often hostile shores, putting their bodies and minds in harm’s way for their country. Now, in the twilight of their lives, the residents of Napa County’s Yountville Veterans Home are asking for the option  to end their lives if they are terminally ill, in peace, at home, in their own bed. The 625 residents and their spouses are denied access to the state’s aid-in-dying law. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/10/24/californias-veterans-forced-to-leave-homes-to-seek-aid-in-dying/?  Life-ending medication is also off-limits to the other 2,000 aging and disabled veterans and spouses at the state’s facilities in Fresno, Barstow, Redding and other cities. That’s because California’s End of Life Option Act conflicts with federal law – so the state’s veterans agency bans it, fearing the loss of millions of dollars in federal funding.  “I’ve watched three of my friends die here, who were in pain and suffering. It’s unacceptable...

 THREE RIVERS, Calif. (AP) — In the wake of California wildfires , upwards of 10,000 trees weakened by fires, drought, disease or age must be removed, work that will keep a nearby highway closed to visitors who seek the world’s two largest sequoia trees. The highway is closed due to the KNP Complex blaze, which was 60% contained after burning 138 square miles (357 square kilometers) of forest, and will remain blocked off to visitors after the fire is out while saw crews cut down trees and trim branches. Cooler weather has helped slow the flames and the area was expected to see rain starting Sunday. The highway connects Giant Forest, home to the General Sherman Tree, which is considered the world’s largest by volume, and Grant Grove, home to the General Grant Tree, the second-largest tree in the world. The trees along the highway include sequoias, pine and conifer trees, said fire spokeswoman Kimberly Caschalk.  https://local21news.com/news/nation-world/after-calif...

(CNN) Brian Laundrie, who authorities had said could help fill in at least some of the blanks about what Gabby Petito's final days looked like, has been confirmed dead. Laundr ie's remains were f ound Wednesday in the Florida reserve authorities had been combing through for more than a month. Over the summer, the couple embarked on a cross-country road trip, from which Laundrie returned to their North Port, Florida, home alone on September 1, police say. On September 11, Petito's parents reported her missing. Laundrie, without talking to authorities during Petito's disappearance, left his home September 13 and was not seen again, his parents later told police.  https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/24/us/gabby-petito-death-investigation-answers/index.html?  I think it's safe to say that Laundrie did the deed. Then he likely killed himself.

(CNN) When you think of Florida, beaches and palm trees come to mind. But what if those palm trees were slowly replaced with other trees? That could happen over time because of climate change , and communities in South Florida are trying to save the world from the climate crisis, one tree at a time. "Palm trees do not sequester carbon at the same rate as our native canopy trees and do not provide shade, cool down streets and sidewalks to help counter the urban heat island effect that canopy trees do," said Penni Redford, the Resilience and Climate Change Manager for West Palm Beach.    Scientists are working on solutions to capture and safely contain atmospheric carbon. One approach is called "terrestrial sequestration" -- which is essentially planting trees. A tree absorbs carbon during photosynthesis and stores it for the life of the tree.   Kristine Crous, a senior lecturer at Western Sydney University, explains that palms don't produce wood, so t...

  Half a millennium before Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic, the Vikings reached the “New World”, as the remains of timber buildings at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Canada’s Newfoundland testify. Now scientists using a new type of dating technique and taking a long-ago solar storm as their reference point have established that the settlement was occupied in AD1021 – all by examining tree rings. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/oct/20/vikings-settled-north-america-1000-years-ago-solar-storm

Save $170: As of Oct. 22, the 11.6-inch Acer Chromebook Spin 311 is nearly 57% off at Walmart, dropping the price to $129 plus free shipping. The laptop, originally $299, is down to $129.The laptop, originally $299, is down to $129. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/a-new-acer-chromebook-with-a-touchscreen-can-be-yours-for-dollar129-at-walmart/ar-AAPQ5pc.  Small, but seems reasonably powerful - and should be easier to stuff in her backpack. As well: Sixteen- to 19-year-olds are employed at higher rates than have been seen in decades, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics; as of July 1, the youth unemployment rate was 9.6%, down from a pandemic peak of 32%. https://qz.com/2085943/teens-are-filling-in-gaps-left-by-the-labor-shortage/? And older folks today are getting into pot: ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Marvin Yeoman, 74, had tried cannabis as a young adult, but for his wife, it was new. “I never, never, ever even thought about marijuana when I was growing ...

  Cows are responsible for about 40% of global methane emissions.  Methane is the gas passed or belched by the world's 1.4 billion cattle. In Scotland, cattle can be found grazing on the lush green pastures.   Some environmentalists believe that when it comes to  global warming , meat, especially beef, is among the worst foods that can be eaten.  According to scientists, the methane cows belch out while turning feed into food is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than even the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. Just don't let them start driving, too.

  A shooting on the New Mexico set of the  Alec Baldwin  movie  Rust  left one person dead and another in critical condition Thursday. At 1:50 p.m. MST, Santa Fe County Sheriff's deputies responded to a 911 call that someone had been shot where the movie was filming at Santa Fe's Bonanza Creek Ranch. According to a news release, investigators reported that two individuals were shot when a prop firearm was discharged. As of late Thursday, they were still working to determine exactly what happened. A 42-year woman was taken by helicopter to University of New Mexico Hospital, where she later died. ( Deadline  reported that she was a member of the crew.) A male victim, also 42, took an ambulance to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, where he is receiving emergency treatment. I imagine that after he recovers the guy will be able to describe exactly what happened.

  The “ something ” that Florida authorities found at the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park on Wednesday has been confirmed to be remains that most likely belong to Brian Laundrie, the boyfriend of deceased 22-year-old Gabby Petito. During a press conference hours later around 4:30 pm, FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael McPherson announced the finding of “remains” and named Laundrie “a person of interest in the murder of Gabby Petito.” “As you’re aware, the FBI and the North Port Police Department and our state and local law enforcement partners have been searching the area of the Carlton Reserve for Brian Laundrie, a person of interest in the murder of Gabby Petito,” he said. https://www.bizpacreview.com/2021/10/21/parents-under-new-suspicion-after-fbi-confirms-human-remains-brian-laundries-backpack-notebook-found-1151795/? Here’s my theory which I don’t throw out lightly: his parents knew where he was. They helped him. Then suddenly lost contact with him and decided to go l...

  Home Depot, Costco and Walmart resort to private charters in push to stock shelves for holiday shoppers   

  Australia is rolling out a chlamydia vaccine trial among koalas in the country. About 400 koalas will be vaccinated as part of the trial, and  researchers told Reuters that they hope the vaccine will help the animals survive longer as a species. The vaccine trial is being led by the University of the Sunshine Coast. Peter Timms, a professor of microbiology at the school, told The Guardian that the vaccine had already been tested in 250 koalas in eight smaller trials. He said that the vaccine is safe and that it can reduce infection levels. "You can't really easily give antibiotics to koalas," Timms said. "People do, but it upsets their gut bacteria, and they need their gut bacteria to digest eucalyptus leaves." "Unfortunately 10 or even 20% of animals that go through the [Australia Zoo] wildlife hospital come back to the hospital," he added. ...

So far, in 2021, Portland Police Bureau has reported 969 shooting incidents and 307 people who were injured from shootings. The city of Portland has now passed its previous record for the number of homicides reported in a year, not counting officer-involved shootings.   

According to a recent poll released by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a majority of poll respondents from Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties believe the quality of life has worsened in recent years.   More than 70% of poll respondents say the quality of life in the Bay Area has gotten worse in the last five years and more than half (56%) of those polled plan to move out of the region in the next few years, citing a high cost of living and increasing housing prices as the top reasons for moving. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/majority-of-bay-area-residents-plan-to-move-out-of-region-in-next-few-years-new-poll-reveals/? They have some of the highest housing prices in the world, but the quality of life just isn't there these days. 

  California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom continued his radical progressive moves by mandating that large retailers with more than 500 employees must provide a gender-neutral aisle for children’s toys. The new law, which Newsom signed on Saturday, requires large stores to maintain a gender-neutral section or area with children’s items and toys. Stores must display “a reasonable selection” of items “regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys.”  I guess he's solved all other problems down there, so now he's tackling one of the most important "issues". 

  People will have to get used to higher food prices, the boss of Kraft Heinz has told the BBC. The cost of ingredients such as cereals and oils has pushed global food prices to a 10-year high, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. Kraft Heinz has increased prices on more than half its products in the US, its home market, and Mr Patricio admitted that is happening elsewhere too. During the pandemic, many countries saw production of raw materials, ranging from crops to vegetable oils, fall. Measures to control the virus, as well as illness, limited output and delivery. As economies have restarted the supply of these products hasn't been able to keep up with returning demand, leading to higher prices. Higher wages and energy prices have also added to the burden for manufacturers. Customers in the UK bought more Heinz Baked Beans, while customers in the US bought more Kraft Mac & Cheese.  https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58847275   Yep, even t...

  The city of Seattle, Washington, recently established a vaccine mandate for all city employees, which includes police, with a deadline of October 18th – or face possible termination of employment. These clowns could end up losing nearly half of the cops there -- just what the town really needs. It should be interesting to watch from down here (a safe distance away). But hey; voters up there elected the clowns, so they can evidently pay for the result. Of course, they'll probably blame the remaining cops.... Seattle's just been overrun with Leftists for quite some time, so it's not going to get any better, as near as I can tell. And since their city council has voted to make it worse, that pretty much guarantees their outcome.  

  Woody Harrelson decks man atop DC’s Watergate Hotel snapping pictures of actor and his daughter Woody and his daughter were on the rooftop deck at Watergate. But as an Important Guy, it seems a safe bet that  he'll skate on the assault.  

  Moderna’s vaccine appears to be the world’s best defense against Covid. Poor countries are struggling to get it. Reportedly, that vaccine is their only product, and they're raking in a whole lot of cash on it.  

  The way that's done is, instead of just building a single laser at 50 kilowatts or 100 kilowatts or something like that, we are actually taking individual fiber-lasers and combining the outputs of the beams into a single high-power beam, and we do that using a technique we call Spectral Beam Combination... Fundamentally, what we did was we took something, if you're familiar with wavelength division multiplexing in telecommunication—how to break up the spectrum that's available to you into many different laser-lines and send all that light down a fiber to increase your communications bandwidth. So, all of a sudden, we took a large number of fiber-laser channels, all closely spaced in wavelength or in frequency, and then by reflecting those beams off an object. We could call it a grating, or you can think in your mind of it like a prism, the beams all combine into a single output beam.  Think of it as a mainframe computer breaking up into a supercomputing clust...

  A new, deadly variant of bird flu with a 50% fatality rate has been described as as a “serious threat” by China ’s Centre for Disease Control.  The World Health Organisation ( WHO ) says a recent spike in the number of human cases of H5N6 bird flu in China is cause for concern and requires “increased surveillance”. While only 48 people have been infected with H5N6 bird flu since the first reported case in 2014, a third of those confirmed cases were identified in China’s Guangxi province during the past 3 months alone. While infection numbers so far are low, the severity of the disease is a significant worry. Half of the people who are confirmed to have caught the virus have died, and the remainder have all suffered serious illness.  

  Rod Crawford has some very bad news for people who don’t like spiders. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/sorry-seattle-area-arachnophobes-spiders-arent-really-coming-inside-for-fall-theyve-been-there-all-along/ It may seem, around this time of year, that spiders — usually giant house spiders — are running inside to take refuge in your warm home, but they’re actually year-round tenants. This time of year, they start making their way out of the crawl spaces, wall voids and storage areas they live in most of the year, to look for mates. In the late summer and early fall, the males become sexually mature, said Crawford, the curator of arachnids at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture. “That means their life is almost over and they have to spend the rest of it looking for females,” he said. Because of its size, it’s usually the giant house spider that most people seem to see in their homes, but it’s really just the most visible ...