Stannous Flouride's Book of Truthiness

If we don’t bury ourselves under the mountains of plastic we’ve already created this coul be GREAT!

Marc A. Hillmyer and colleagues developed an efficient method to make a sugar-derived rubbery polyester compound called poly(β-methyl-δ-valerolactone), or PMVL, that can be used in new chemically-recyclable polyurethanes.

I’m sure you’ll recognize it from this illustration:

Using this new polymer, the researchers made flexible polyurethane foams that were comparable in performance to commercial analogs. To test whether the foams could be recycled, the team first added a catalyst, then heated the materials to a high temperature. Through this process, the researchers recovered up to 97 percent of the starting β-methyl-δ-valerolactone (MVL) monomer in high purity.

The researchers then used what they recovered to re-make PMVL with essentially identical properties.

Source: Recyclable, sugar-derived foam — a renewable alternative to traditional polyurethanes? – American Chemical Society

I just applied this cool metal flake sign to the window at the oldest restaurant on Haight St.

The sparkling doesn’t show well in photos but here’s a couple of pics:

It cost $57.00 (slightly more expensive because it is metal flake and 2 colored)
Pretty easy to attach if you’re careful and follow the explicit instructions included with your sign.

(I changed the last word to Café to make it fit better)
Check out http://www.signspecialist.com
They have an almost overwhelming selection of colors and fonts.

“You want to know what this was really all about?” Nixon aid John Ehrlichman told journalist Dan Baum in 1994, according to an article published in Harper’s Magazine in 2016. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

The DEA denied a petition to reschedule again in 2011, citing a lack of available research specifically on smoked marijuana in the U.S.

Researchers say this represents a classic catch-22, as the paucity of research is the direct result of a federal blockade on such research by the DEA and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Researchers note that about two dozen countries including Israel, Canada and the Netherlands as well as several legalization states such as California and Colorado, have reams of scientific data on the safety and efficacy of smoked cannabis as well as other formulations. While NIDA’s primary work focuses largely on studies involving drug abuse and addiction, the organization does fund some research on therapeutic uses for THC as well.

Many physicians are also frustrated by the DEA’s apparent intransigence in the face of mounting evidence and interest. In 2009 the American Medical Association recommended the DEA review marijuana’s Schedule I status.

In 2014 lawmakers blasted DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart on the floor of Congress for failing to reply to questions about whether or not heroin was more or less dangerous than marijuana, which is also often used to treat pain. Both are Schedule I—yet cannabis has no obtainable lethal overdose threshold whereas 19,000 Americans died from prescription opioid overdoses in 2014 alone. Earlier this year a researcher at The Brookings Institution called for emergency rescheduling of cannabis to save American lives. All 2016 presidential candidates have vowed to either honor state-level medical legalization, reschedule cannabis or unschedule it entirely. “I think the federal government has forfeited any claim to credibility around cannabis,” Martin Lee, author of Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana.

Source: The Science behind the DEA’s Long War on Marijuana – Scientific American

Mammals are about ¾ water and it shows:

Okay, a mammal wannabe

And a genuine news item from the Great White North:
Christopher Hiscock, 33, got only a year’s probation after his guilty plea for trespassing on a ranch in Kamloops, British Columbia, in September–because it was a trespass with panache:

Since no one had been home, Hiscock fed the cats, prepared a meal, shaved and showered, took meat out of the freezer to thaw, made some coffee, started a fire in the fireplace, did some laundry, put out hay for the horses, and even wrote some touchingly personal notes in the resident’s diary: “Today was my first full day at the ranch.”  “I have to remind myself to just relax and take my time.”

“I don’t feel alone here, I guess with 2 cats and 3 horses it’s kinda hard to be alone. Last night I had a fire in the house. It was so (peaceful). I slept like a little baby.

“I saw a picture in the basement on the wall of a man holding and weighing fish on a boat. Looking at him I realized we look a lot alike, but I think I’m more handsome.“

The Nova Scotia man pleaded guilty Monday to possession of stolen property and being unlawfully in a dwelling house stemming from a bizarre incident north of Kamloops.

Provincial court heard the residents of a ranch in Little Fort on the Yellowhead Highway returned home after a night out last week to find a stranger sitting on their couch with a cup of coffee.

“She found the accused in her home watching TV,” Crown lawyer Mike Wong said.

In court, he apologized.  “I made a lot of mistakes.”

“Beautiful ranch.  Gorgeous.  I was driving [by] and I just turned

in.  Beautiful place.”  [Kamloops This Week via National Post, 9-

30-2015]

It’s flippin’ everywhere!

My pal Jett turned me on to these images of the Haight Street Market parklet that randomly include me:

I’m in the orange shirt and leather suspenders (that I made).

A second picture also includes a picture of me that was taken before I lost between 45-50 lbs (21Kg):

I am simultaneously proud of and embarrassed by the picture.

One year after snow surveyors stood on a dusty mountainside in California and reported that snow-water content was just 5 percent of normal, the situation in the Sierra Nevada range is much improved.

But it is still not normal. The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) reported on March 30, 2016, that snow cover in the mountains was 87 percent of the long-term average.

This page has one of those cool slidey things so you can compare the two images:

Source: Sierra Nevada Snowpack is Better, but Not Normal : Image of the Day