But Quayside’s newsworthy for another, more encouraging reason: The plan is to build the place, not out of concrete and steel, but wood—and wood is looking good. A recent advance in wood technology should interest the neighborhood’s developers: Teng Li, a University of Maryland mechanical engineer, created with his colleagues wood that’s as “strong as steel, but six times lighter,” he said. Liangbing Hu, Li’s co-author on the study, added, “This kind of wood could be used in cars, airplanes, buildings—any application where steel is used.” Making it is just a two-step process. The scientists first boiled natural wood in a mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfite, to remove some of the lignin and hemicellulose, substances contained in the walls of wood cells (the former retard parasite and bacterial attacks, the latter cover and bind fibers). Then they put the wood in a hot press, which leads, as they say in the paper, “to the total collapse of cell walls and the complete densification of the natural wood with highly aligned cellulose nanofibres.” The result, they conclude, is a “low-cost, high-performance, lightweight alternative” to “most structural metals and alloys.”
Ring, Amazon’s crimefighting surveillance camera division, has crafted plans to use facial recognition software and its ever-expanding network of home security cameras to create AI-enabled neighborhood “watch lists,” according to internal documents reviewed by The Intercept.
The planning materials envision a seamless system whereby a Ring owner would be automatically alerted when an individual deemed “suspicious” was captured in their camera’s frame, something described as a “suspicious activity prompt.”
It’s unclear who would have access to these neighborhood watch lists, if implemented, or how exactly they would be compiled, but the documents refer repeatedly to law enforcement, and Ring has forged partnerships with police departments throughout the U.S., raising the possibility that the lists could be used to aid local authorities. The documents indicate that the lists would be available in Ring’s Neighbors app, through which Ring camera owners discuss potential porch and garage security threats with others nearby.
If this challenge is successful, it will create a precedent that will be extremely difficult to overcome; if Monsanto was legally unable to warn customers about the carcinogenic nature of glyphosate, how can they be held responsible for that? This of course does not address the basic issue of whether glyphosate can in fact cause cancer, nor does it address the decades-long campaign to discredit opposing research, but none of that might matter.
Up until now, shops were able to get away with removing the devices under the guise of them being for “race use only.”
However, the EPA certainly isn’t stupid. They are very aware that these “race use only” vehicles have been finding their way to the streets. Because of that, they have now deemed any tampering with the emissions devices will be completely illegal.
It’s hard to pin down exactly how many diesel shops have been hit. However, from what we understand, the EPA has been making its rounds. These rounds will restrain the shops from selling tuning devices that tamper with the systems. Just as an example, as a part of a recent settlement, one diesel shop was permitted from selling current tuning devices and will need to prove that their future tuning devices won’t violate the emissions standards.
I think it's stupid to enforce emissions limits in areas that are in-compliance with emission standards.
The basic concept of the mile originated in Roman times. The Romans used a unit of distance called the mille passum, which literally translated into "a thousand paces." Since each pace was considered to be five Roman feet—which were a bit shorter than our modern feet—the mile ended up being 5,000 Roman feet, or roughly 4,850 of our modern feet.
If the mile originated with 5,000 Roman feet, how did we end up with a mile that is 5,280 feet? Blame the furlong. The furlong wasn't always just an arcane unit of measure that horseracing fans gabbed about; it once had significance as the length of the furrow a team of oxen could plow in a day. In 1592, Parliament set about determining the length of the mile and decided that each one should be made up of eight furlongs. Since a furlong was 660 feet, we ended up with a 5,280-foot mile.
Gawd, I've always thought miles were a stupid throwback unit that us Americans use. I spend too much time converting 1610 meters into one mile, which is about a meter to long, but it's much easier to divide into a half mile at 805 meters and a quarter mile at 402 and a half meters. It would be nice to adopt the metric system.
You see this after following an abandoned and gated off old woods road from the Wilmarth Road, about 1000 feet.
Taken on Monday December 28, 2009 at Snake Mountain.
