James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

.

Protesters in Dearborn, Mich., earlier this month. Credit… Nick Hagen for The New York Times

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

https://www.nytimes.com

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Scientists in Scotland have revealed a remarkable discovery of a “very strange” 240 million-year-old “Chinese dragon” fossil.

The international team from National Museums Scotland revealed their discovery — found in Guizhou Province in southern China — of the Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, a 5-meter-long aquatic reptile from the Triassic period dating back an estimated 240 million years.

“With 32 separate neck vertebrae Dinocephalosaurus orientalis had an extraordinarily long neck that draws comparison with that of Tanystropheus hydroides, another strange marine reptile from the Middle Triassic of both Europe and China,” scientists said announcing the discovery.

“Both reptiles were of similar size and have several features of the skull in common, including a fish-trap type of dentition,” officials continued. “However, Dinocephalosaurus is unique in possessing many more vertebrae both in the neck and in the torso, giving the animal a much more snake-like appearance.”

Scientists say the reptile was “clearly very well adapted to an oceanic lifestyle,” as indicated by the flippered limbs and “exquisitely preserved” fishes in its stomach region.

“Despite superficial similarities, Dinocephalosaurus was not closely related to the famous long-necked plesiosaurs that only evolved around 40 million years later and which inspired the myth of the Loch Ness Monster.”

.

Scientists in Scotland have revealed a remarkable discovery of a “very strange” 240 million-year-old “Chinese dragon” fossil.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Here’s an inexpensive, concrete thing you can do to cut your personal carbon contribution: Stop eating meat—or cut down dramatically. Right now.

This is 100 percent not as easy as this blasé, sanctimonious pronouncement makes it sound. There are countless personal, cultural, and economic factors that put this protein at the center of so many diets and lives. And yet, if you can swing it, it’s hard to find an easier way to reduce your individual emissions contribution. That’s not just limited to food. For most of us, it’s easier to stop eating meat than it is to swap out your gas-powered car for an EV, change how you heat your home, or get your utility to generate electricity from cleaner sources. 

It makes a huge difference. According to the University of Colorado, cutting meat out of your diet for one day a week can save more than 20,000 gallons of water and reduce your personal carbon contribution by more than 400 pounds per year. Imagine these numbers at scale. What does a million people practicing Meatless Mondays for a year look like? It looks like taking 348,000,000 car-miles worth of emissions out of the atmosphere, which is huge. What if those million people added another day? What if they didn’t eat meat at all? (696,000,000 car-miles and 2.4 billion car-miles, respectively. Also huge. In fact, huger.)  

Humans will create emissions no matter what we eat, so we can’t fixate on perfection. Farmed vegetables still need to be farmed, which means tractors and trucks burning fossil fuels. Even the act of tilling soil releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and while advances in agriculture can reduce our impact, all of it incurs environmental costs. Our civilization relies on food that we don’t have to forage. Go ahead and @ me, if you disagree — then head out to your trap line and see how many squirrels you’ve got for dinner.

Squirrels notwithstanding, we should all start questioning whether we need meat with every meal. This small, personal moment, that occurs only in our own heads, is a beginning. We’ve been taught that no dinner is complete without animal protein, but that’s dangerous misinformation for so many reasons.

Consider: Raising any kind of meat is incredibly land-intensive. In addition to the physical space the animal occupies, you also need to grow its food, which takes up its own acreage. You have to process that feed, which incurs emissions as you harvest the crop and prepare it.

.

Clara/Adobe Stock

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

I’ve been reluctant to jump into the Sonos game because I know just how addictive it can be once you’ve crossed over — like Pringles, I know I won’t stop at just one. It’s hard to keep resisting deals like the one we’re seeing at Woot today, though. Now through February 29th (or while supplies last), you can buy a two-pack of Sonos Era 100 speakers with a 90-day warranty for $409.99, which is about $90 off the price if you were to buy two speakers separately.

I’m eying the Era 100s as starters for building out my dream home theater, which I intend to pair with something like the Sonos Arc and Sonos Sub. Each Era 100 features two tweeters and a built-in woofer for drivers, which makes it a powerful speaker on its own. While the allure of Sonos is wireless audio, each Era 100 also supports line-in through an optional $19 USB-C dongle for devices that can’t connect over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. They don’t support the Era 300’s spatial audio, but for the money, they sound great by themselves or in stereo, and they remain our favorite starting point in the Sonos lineup for music around the house.

The LG C3 OLED is one of the best TVs you can buy no matter your viewing needs, and thanks to eBay’s ongoing Presidents Day promo, you can currently buy one cheaper than ever. Now through February 19th, you can grab a 48-inch C3 for $817.59 ($200 off) or a 65-inch model for $1,309.59 ($330 off) via Electronic Express when you use promo code PRESIDENT20 for 20 percent off.

It’s hard to go back once you’ve experienced the deep contrast, satisfying color, brightness uniformity, and wide viewing angles afforded by modern OLED TVs. I started with the LG B1 and upgraded to the LG C2 a couple of years ago. The C3 has visuals similar to the latter (only it’s a bit brighter), and I can say without a doubt that most people would be happy with it.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

.

Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity have been proven to be true time and again in the more than 100 years following their publication.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

But this is no dream device. According to a research paper just published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Optica, these lenses are very real. They are the invention of Laurent Galinier, an optometrist who developed an acuity measurement system that he sold to the international optical giant Essilor in 2000. Galinier got into a series of ventures after that and, while working on contact lenses for patients with corneal pathologies, his intuition made him stumble upon this extraordinary discovery.

“Remarkably, he observed that certain deformations brought about specific focusing characteristics,” Bertrand Simon, one of the paper’s coauthors, explains over email. “This led him to devise spiraling the diopter [the measurement that represents the optical strength of a lens] of the lenses to achieve multi-focusing.”

Translated: Galinier developed a spiraling contact lens that could replace progressive lenses.

How the spiral magic works

.

[Photo: Laurent Galinier]

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________