One of the quickest and least expensive ways to upgrade the looks of your home—indoors and out—is by adding a handsome planter box or two. These three designs shown here are built from redwood. California redwood is an excellent choice for planters. It boasts the unbeatable combination of natural beauty and good durability. Redwood is resistant to decay and to attack by insects.
To determine durability against such attack, redwood is graded by its color and other factors. The reddish-brown heartwood from the inner portion of the tree contains extractives, which render it durable. The cream-colored sapwood that develops in the outer growth layer of the tree, like most whitewoods, doesn’t have the same degree of resistance to decay and insects as the heartwood does.
When building a planter, choose one of the all-heartwood grades. There are also grades available containing some sapwood, which will be a bit cheaper.
The story of the American pandemic has unfolded in three chapters. The first began last January when the coronavirus emerged and the world was plunged into uncertainty about how COVID-19 could be treated, how the virus spread, and when it might be defeated. The second started on the morning of November 9, 2020, when Pfizer-BioNTech announced the extraordinary efficacy of its vaccine. Those results made clear that this pandemic would end not through infection but vaccination. Our goals shifted from merely slowing the spread to beginning immunization as quickly as possible. In America, much of the past half-year has been devoted to administering vaccines and gathering evidence on how well they work in the real world.
Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ushered in the American pandemic’s third chapter. The agency announced that vaccinated people could go without masks or social distancing indoors and outside, in crowds large and small. It carved out a few exceptions—for hospitals, public transportation, and the like—and noted that people still needed to obey federal and local laws. But the broad message was that vaccinated Americans could resume their pre-pandemic lives. The C.D.C. is an agency known for caution, and its new guidance shocked many public-health experts; just two weeks earlier, it had issued far more restrictive recommendations. During the same period, a survey of nearly six hundred epidemiologists found that more than three-quarters of them believed that indoor mask-wearing might remain necessary for another year or more. Still, immediately after the announcement, a number of states lifted their mask mandates. Others will surely follow, as the pressure to return to normal grows. America is now moving swiftly toward reopening.
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The pandemic’s final chapter will come to a close not through official decree but with a gradual realization that COVID-19 no longer dominates our lives. Illustration by Jeremy Leung
San Antonio, officially the City of San Antonio, is the seventh-most populous city in the United States, and the second-most populous city in Texas with 1,547,253 residents in 2019. Founded as a Spanish mission and colonial outpost in 1718, the city became the first chartered civil settlement in present-day Texas in 1731. The area was still part of the Spanish Empire, and later of the Mexican Republic. It is the state’s oldest municipality, having celebrated its 300th anniversary on May 1, 2018.
The city’s deep history is contrasted with its rapid growth over the past few decades. It was the fastest-growing of the top ten largest cities in the United States from 2000 to 2010, and the second from 1990 to 2000. Straddling the regional divide between South and Central Texas, San Antonio anchors the southwestern corner of an urban megaregion colloquially known as the Texas Triangle. The Greater San Antonio and Greater Austin areas are separated from each other by approximately 80 miles (129 km) along Interstate 35. Both metropolitan regions are expected to form a new metroplex similar to Dallas and Fort Worth.
The city of San Antonio serves as the seat of Bexar County; San Antonio is the center of the San Antonio–New Braunfels metropolitan statistical area. Commonly called Greater San Antonio, the metropolitan area had a population of 2,550,960 based on the 2019 U.S. census estimates, making it the 24th-largest metropolitan area in the United States and third-largest in Texas. Wikipedia
Most people have heard it by now: Our meat habit is bad for the world. Polling suggests that tens of millions of people are taking this message seriously: One in four Americans said they tried to cut back on meat in the last year, and half of those cited environmental concerns as a major reason. The popular food site Epicurious recently announced they’ve stopped publishing recipes with beef in them, because of beef’s climate impacts, setting off the latest round of discussion on meat’s effects on the environment.
Cutting meat consumption is as smart an idea as advertised. Industrial farming — the source of 99 percent of the meat Americans eat — provides the world with cheap meat, but it does so at a terrible environmental and moral cost.
Where it gets complicated is when people decide which meat, exactly, they’ll be cutting back on. Often, it’s beef that loses out in that calculus. And often, the messaging is that we can save the world by switching out our beef consumption for chicken.
Did Nazi scientists, eager to devise a weapon that could throwback advancing Allied armies, create a time-traveling UFO to win World War II? Almost certainly not. Nevertheless, the legend of “Die Glocke” (“The Bell”) persists in conspiracy and UFO circles.
A new video from military historian Mark Felton included below, explores the bell-shaped device that Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary organization purportedly developed. However, sci-fi writers and hoaxers may have actually concocted the machine, plying the postwar reputation of Nazi scientists being capable of almost any technological feat.
Even though the Nazis lost World War II, they emerged from the war with an almost mythical reputation for high-tech weapons. Nazi tanks were often technically superior to Allied tanks; the Luftwaffe flew fighter jets in combat before the Allies did; and the V (for Vengeance) series of terror weapons, including the V-1 cruise missile and V-2 ballistic missile, made for terrifying, though strategically questionable, weapons.
Nevado Sajama ([neˈβaðo saˈxama]; Aymara: Chak Xaña) is an extinct stratovolcano and the highest peak in Bolivia. The mountain is located in the Oruro Department, Sajama Canton. It is situated in Sajama National Park and is a composite volcano consisting of a stratovolcano on top of several lava domes. It is not clear when it erupted last but it may have been during the Pleistocene or Holocene.
The mountain is covered by an ice cap and Polylepis tarapacana trees occur up to 5,000 meters (16,000 ft) in height. Wikipedia
The Harvard astrophysicist who first suggested that the interstellar object (ISO) ‘Oumuamua was a ‘light sail sent from another civilization in space now suggests there may be a link to the mysterious space object and the US government’s upcoming report on UFOs
In an op-ed for Scientific American, Loeb, who is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard, theorizes that ‘Oumuamua could have ‘been meant to scan signals from all viewing directions,’ looking for sensors that a yet-to-be-discovered predecessor put into Earth’s atmosphere.
‘A predecessor to ‘Oumuamua could have been a craft that deposited small probes into the Earth’s atmosphere without being noticed because it visited before Pan-STARRS started its operations,’ Loeb wrote in the op-ed.
Imagine yourself at home on the open road: There’s nothing tying you down, and a world of adventures is ahead of you. Now imagine that you can make that life not just feasible but comfortable, with everything you need to work and play right at your fingertips. This is van life.
In late 2018, my fiancé and I began planning our foray into elective nomadism, leaving behind offices and apartments for work, play, and life on the road. We spent six months living happily in our van, seeing sights and visiting friends. And although the pandemic cut our trip short, we’re looking forward to restarting our van adventures once that crisis is fully behind us.
The community of “van lifers” is only growing, filled with adventurers who see the vast expanse of living potential in that middle ground between lumbering RVs towing golf carts and bare-bones minivan mattresses. But how do you even get started? You can spin your wheels for a long time mixing and matching creature comforts and practical realities, but there are a few major paths people take.
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.