The English phrase about someone being “silver-tongued” clearly runs cross-culturally, as recently a set of mummies were unearthed in Egypt, and one was buried with a golden tongue.
The mummies date to the Greco-Roman period of Egypt after it had come under the thumb of the Northern Mediterranean following the conquests of Alexander the Great, and were found in gilded sarcophagi buried in rock-cut “wall-hole” tombs in the Temple of Taposiris Magna in the Classical-Era city of the same name.
Within these small chambers, the mummies were in a poor state of preservation, which highlights, according to a press release from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the characteristics of mummification in the Greek and Roman periods.
A gold foil amulet, shaped in the form of a tongue, was found placed in the mouth of a mummy in a special ritual to ensure their ability to speak before the Osirian court in the afterlife.
Osiris was the god of the underworld, and it would be considered vital for people to have a way to speak with him. It’s not clear, but the gold tongue might have been related to that idea, although Smithsonian brought up that perhaps the deceased had a speech impediment.
The two most important mummies were wrapped in golden bonds of papyrus. One bore decorations characteristic of Osiris, while the other wore an Atef crown, sporting horns and a coiled cobra around the head, and a falcon design on their chest to honor the god Horus.
The discovery was made by a joint Egypt-Dominican team, led by Dr. Kathleen Martinez.
They also discovered eight marble masks depicting faces of the Roman and Greco influence in the region with striking detail, and a near-body-length female funerary mask.
“In the last 10 years, the mission has found several important archaeological finds that have changed our perception of the Temple of Taposiris Magna,” read the statement on the Ministry’s website. “A number of coins bearing the name and image of Queen Cleopatra VII were found inside the temple walls, in addition to many parts of statues.”
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In concluding their expedition to Wolf Volcano on Isabela Island in the Galápagos, scientists have finished the first survey of the pink land iguana, a Critically Endangered species that lives nowhere else on Earth.
The survey used camera traps and involved 30 scientists spreading out over nearly 1,000 acres of the “most inhospitable places in Galápagos,” positively identifying 53 adult pink land iguanas, but no juveniles.
The effort which took place through early-to-mid August was led by Conservation Manager Jorge Carrión and Conservation Director Washington Tapia at the Galápagos Conservancy, who have overseen some remarkable close shaves at their hugely successful Giant Tortoise Restoration Initiative.
The pair recently reported on their expedition, and how with a little data, and a little hope, they believe they can rescue this quite recently-discovered species from the brink on which it was found teetering over.
“They are iconic as much for being recently discovered and limited to a small geographic area, as for the inherent challenges of managing the future of an animal of which we know very little about,” Carrión wrote, at the Conservancy’s website.
The challenges of conserving them are partly the terrain, as Carrión details, for Wolf Volcano is as unwelcoming as a wolf or a volcano. The iguanas nest at 5,600 feet above sea level, where there is little shade, and the temperatures can rise to 100 °F in the air and 160 °F at the level of the ground. At night however, the temperature plummets to 50 °F with a strong, constant and freezing wind.
The steep, mountainous ground is littered with cacti, and there are more ticks on Isabella than any other island. Finally, the iguanas can easily bite a finger off if they get the opportunity, so handling them is kept to a minimum.
“During the expedition, we documented never-before-seen behavior such as the symbiotic relationship with Darwin’s finches, which feed on parasites on the iguana’s body, and the unusual sight of an iguana seeking out the sun on a tree branch in an area where the sunlight couldn’t penetrate the dense undergrowth.”
Copyright Jorge Carrión/Galápagos Conservancy
The last juvenile was spotted in 2014, just five years after the species was first officially described as different from both the normal, and yellow land iguanas of the famous islands.
Iguana experts from around the world, at the behest of the Galápagos National Park Directorate, arrived for a brainstorming event on the data gathered during the expedition in late August. With their help, the Directorate and the Conservancy hope to craft the first action plan for saving the pink iguana.
(WATCH the video below.)
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Quote of the Day: “Life is like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.” – Jim Henson
Photo: Alex Litvin
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A hero schoolgirl who saved people trapped in a burning apartment raised the alarm after being inspired by a TV show about the emergency services.
14-year-old Lily Swanson is obsessed with the Disney+ show 9-1-1, so when she noticed a strong burning smell she immediately stopped to investigate.
She had been on a walk with her Rottweiler Isobel near her home in Leyland, Lancashire, but decided to try and find the source of the smell.
The quick-thinking teenager looked around and finally spotted black smoke billowing out of an apartment window on Hough Lane.
Lily ran home to wake her dad Mike Swanson and rang 999.
Mike grabbed his ladders and ran to the scene to help those trapped inside before the building was engulfed in flames.
Lily said, “As soon as I called the fire brigade, we ran back outside and we could see people hanging out the window.
“It had only been a minute or two since I first saw the smoke but as we were running over to help them, one of the windows blew off and fell into the street.
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“That’s when me and my dad saw the flames. I told my dad we should try and get everyone out of the other window above the barber’s next door.
“We have seen in the past that people can have lots of different reactions to seeing a fire but Lily showed maturity and calmness beyond her years to quickly and effectively notify us.”
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If only plants could talk, what tidings they could share! Fortunately for farmers, an agricultural company has ‘translated’ the biochemical signal related to certain plant behavior, allowing them to ‘listen’ to plants cries for water when they’re thirsty.
It has the capacity to reduce water use in any system, from a well-manicured lawn to a rural vegetable farm in North Africa, and compared to drip irrigation which is based on a similar idea, it can reduce water use by 30-50%, revolutionizing the science and methods of irrigation in the face of a warming climate, longer droughts, and water shortages.
Responsive Drip Irrigation (DRI) has designed a watering system that installs tubes under the earth filled with pore-like depressions. As plants begin to get thirsty they produce a certain chemical in their roots. The micropores in the tubes in turn detect this chemical and release a water drip that will continue until it detects the plants have drunk their fill.
In the United Arab Emirates near Abu Dhabi, farmers are growing vegetables in the desert, and DRI won the startup of the year 2019 at the Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture, while in Pakistan near the dry area around Islamabad, vegetables like tomatoes and bok choy were grown 81% faster and twice as large, respectively, than with regular drip irrigation.
In fact, DRI is established in 14 countries, from rural Zimbabwe to lawns in Utah and Los Angeles in the U.S.
The biggest hurdle stopping RDI from changing the industry is that existing methods of irrigation are already established and paid for. Convincing farmers to make the switch could be difficult, especially in certain areas, like California, where the irrigation systems have not only been around for decades, but link multiple farms and orchards like a spider’s web.
Yet “wherever there’s an issue with water scarcity and food security, we want to be there,” Jan Gould, founder of Responsive Drip Irrigation, told Fast Company.
IRRIGATE Your Chums’ Feeds With the Innovative News…
One Glasgow nightclub is working to sustainably harness the energy released from its partiers on the dance floor. The pioneering system at SWG3 could save the popular nightspot up to 70 tons of CO2 per year.
In the run-up to the UN’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow this November, BODYHEAT turns the energy from dancing bodies into a source for heating and cooling outlets.
A statement from the club says, “We’re hugely excited to reveal our plans to introduce a state-of-the-art renewable heating and cooling system to the SWG3 complex, transforming body heat from clubbers and gig-goers into a source of energy to be used again.”
The first of its kind to be installed in Scotland, BODYHEAT uses heat pumps and fluids to capture body heat generated by SWG3’s crowds, channeling their combined energy into twelve 150m-deep bore holes drilled beneath the venue.
This heat can then either be used immediately to cool the audience, or stored under the ground until it’s needed to heat the building.
Idly mingling, a human body radiates about 100 watts of excess heat, which can add up fast in confined spaces, and the enormous amount of heat that people dancing at clubs or gigs generate is currently ejected into the atmosphere as waste.
“With this new system in place,” says the club, “we’ll be able to utilize that warmth, consuming minimal electricity and gas on site, and in turn minimizing our carbon emissions”
“There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought huge challenges to the events sector around the world,” said Andrew Fleming Brown, Managing Director, “but it has also created a seismic jolt across businesses, underlining the need for a stable and sustainable future.”
“BODYHEAT is our innovative contribution to a global issue, and will help us to dramatically decrease our energy consumption, bringing us one step closer to becoming a carbon neutral venue in the not so distant future.”
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Sally-Sue has been waiting a long time to get adopted. The 11-year-old pit bull’s been sitting in a shelter for two years, hoping to find her furever home. Now one man is on a mission to see that she does—and in a minute, you’ll sense a theme.
Animal advocate Scott Poore’s company, Mission Driven Goods, is a pet-centric venture promoting products aimed at helping long-term shelter pets get adopted.
Poore recently took out a 30-foot billboard—located where else but Mission, Kansas—featuring Sally-Sue’s smiling face and a plea to potential pet parents to make room in their hearts and homes for the loving senior fur baby.
“On social media, we tend to promote the same story to the same people,” Poore told KMBC News. “A billboard, especially on I-35, it’s going to get thousands of views… All we need is that one right person to go by, make eye contact with the billboard, and we’re saving another life.”
Since the billboard is a rental, Poore is working to find the permanent funding he’ll need to keep long-term shelter pets large in the public eye. Right now, he’s taking a one pooch at a time approach.
“The dogs that’ll be on the billboard are the ones that have been homeless the longest,” Poore told KMBC.
“The goal is to find her not just a home, [but] the perfect home. As quickly as we do that, [we] move onto the next shelter pet that deserves to be up there.”
While a billboard might be an unorthodox approach to pet adoption, every time another dog finds a home as a result, we’ll count that as mission accomplished.
agricultre sunset scene L. Brian Stauffer university of illinois
L. Brian Stauffer/University of Illinois
The future connection between human waste, sanitation technology, and sustainable agriculture is becoming more evident. According to new research, countries could be moving closer to using human waste as fertilizer, closing the loop to more circular, sustainable economies.
A new study directed by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign civil and environmental engineering professor Jeremy Guest, characterizes the spatial distribution of human urine-derived nutrients—nitrogen, phosphorus. and potassium—and agricultural fertilizer demand to define supply-demand location typologies, their prevalence across the globe, and the implications for resource recovery.
“The total amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium largely remains constant in our bodies, once we stop growing,” said Guest. “Whatever comes in through food and drink must come out in our urine, feces and sweat. Knowing that, we can estimate how much of each of these nutrients is in a population’s bodily waste if we know their diet.”
Previous studies by Guest and others have assessed the potential for recovering the nutrients from human waste across the globe and identified locations with a surplus of human waste-derived nutrients relative to the local demand for agricultural fertilizers.
“The new study is the first to describe human waste-derived nutrient supply-demand location relationships using a single mathematical equation,” Guest said. “The quality of sanitation infrastructure varies greatly across the globe, as do people’s diets and the availability of land suitable for agriculture. Having the means to characterize and quantitatively compare a location’s nutrient-recovery potential can go a long way to better inform decision-makers when it comes to future sanitation and agriculture policy.”
The team performed extensive numerical and geographic analyses of dietary, population, sanitation and agricultural data from 107 countries to accomplish this quantitative characterization at the global scale. The investigation revealed three distinct supply-demand typologies: countries with a co-located supply-demand; countries with a dislocated supply-demand; and countries with diverse supply-demand proximities.
The United States and Australia, for example, fall under the dislocated supply-demand typology. They have intensive agriculture in areas far from large cities, thus the human waste-derived nutrient supply is far away from where it is needed, Guest said.
Even with advanced sanitation infrastructure in place, this means that nutrients would need to be transported over large distances, either as heavy fluids or converted into concentrated crystalline products.
Economically speaking, Guest said, it would make sense to work with a concentrated product to implement a human waste-derived fertilizer in these countries.
The study reports that in countries with co-located supply-demand typologies like India, Nigeria, and Uganda, human populations are more substantively in the proximity of agricultural areas, making local reuse possible.
In many communities with co-located supply-demand, however, there is a need for improved sanitation infrastructure. Guest said implementing a human waste-derived fertilizer program could be highly beneficial to sanitation and agriculture in these places.
Countries like Brazil, Mexico, China, and Russia exhibit a continuum of co-location to dislocation of nutrient supply and demand.
The study reports that policymakers would need to approach human waste-derived nutrient use with more regionalized strategies and a range of local reuse and transport approaches. “Higher income countries in this group may have the infrastructure and economic support for various technologies, but those with limited financial resources would require prioritization of resource-recovery technology in some areas,” Guest said.
The team was surprised to find the typologies corresponded closely to the United Nations Human Development Index.
“Higher HDI-scoring countries like the U.S., Western Europe, and Australia tend to fall in the dislocated supply-demand typology and lower HDI-scoring countries tend to fit the co-located supply-demand typology. Of course, there are exceptions, but we did not expect to find such a strong correlation,” Guest said.
The team hopes this research will help clarify the salient economic, sanitation, and agricultural characteristics of countries across the globe so that decision-makers can prioritize investment, policies, and technologies that will advance goals for a circular economy and the provision of sanitation to all, Guest explained. That sounds like good news to us.
Quote of the Day: “The road to success is always under construction.” – Lily Tomlin (turns 82 today)
Photo: Hayden Walker
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Back by popular demand: The Within Good bracelets, which many of you have been asking for, are back in stock and ready to be shipped. And, the face has also been updated so the message will shine through more clearly and withstand daily wear.
For those of you new to the brand, Within Goodwas started by GNN co-owner Anthony Samadani and Muhammad Ali’s eldest daughter, May May Ali. After staring at the word “Good” one night, Anthony kept seeing the word God become more pronounced. It was then that the phrase ‘Within Good, There is God’ was destined to be a wearable reminder.
The founders stress that it is not intended to be a religious bracelet. The concept was to go back to the basics of doing good for yourself and others, which connects us all. It is a universal message that can unite people of all faiths and backgrounds. This is why the second half of the statement, There is God, appears on the underside of the bracelet since the concept of God is personal to every wearer.
And, each bracelet comes in its own canvas pouch—ready to give as a gift without wrapping.
The logo evolved into an infinity symbol to spell the double “o” in Good, while interlocking the G and D. The rope symbolizes strength and the strong connection between Good and God that is within us all.
The unisex bracelets feature a casual yet classy styling and are made of nylon wax rope and zinc alloy with silver plating. Each one will come in its own canvas pouch.
“At the end of the day, God symbolizes peace, love, harmony, perfection, happiness, serenity, connectedness, purpose and any other word or feeling that makes you feel Good.”
The retail price is $29.99 but our loyal GNN readers will receive a 10% discount (with only California residents paying tax). Simply add the code GNN10, into the discount box.
The handsome bracelets are a great gift for yourself and others, a wearable reminder that the more good we do, the more we connect with God and each other.
“At the end of the day, God symbolizes peace, love, harmony, perfection, happiness, serenity, connectedness, purpose, and any other word that makes you feel GOOD”.
The Within Good team has been overwhelmed by the positive response and personal stories from their customers.
“Within GOoD is my go-to accessory this summer… I absolutely love it.” – Marjie S
“I received my bracelet and couldn’t be happier with it! I absolutely love the message and plan on wearing it every day. Today was my first day and every time I looked at it, it was a reminder to me that there still is good in the world, and it inspires me to spread the goodness through my actions, as well.” – Mandy R.
Remember that you can also find the bracelet on ourGood Gifts pagein the top menu of our homepage.
In the wake of Hurricane Ida’s devastating toll on New Orleans, the people of Houston are opening their Texas-sized hearts and providing Texas-sized relief to refugees. Not only are they sending trucks full of supplies, they’re opening their doors to provide beds for the displaced, including inside the massive Lakewood Church.
And, once again, Gallery Furniture’s “Mattress Mack”—Jim McIngvale—legendary for his past storm relief efforts—is leading the charge, and initiating his own collection drive.
“We did it during Katrina and, you know, people need a place to stay. They’ve been disrupted from their homes by this terrible hurricane, so it’s the least we can do. We’ve got lots of mattresses, lots of sofas and anybody needs a place to stay, come out to Gallery Furniture,” McIngvale told KPRC News. “It’s just the right thing to do.”
Any evacuee with a Louisiana ID will be offered shelter in the store. And, while Houstonians arrive hourly with cars full of supplies to send to Louisiana, McIngvale is scouting a location for a distribution warehouse from which to disperse the truckloads of relief supplies once they arrive.
Donations can be dropped off at the Gallery Furniture 6006 N. Freeway location through Wednesday, September 1st until 5:30 p.m. The items most needed are:
Non-Perishable Food, Bottled Water, Diapers, Baby wipes, Pet Food, Soap, Toothpaste, Toothbrushes, Deodorant, Hairbrushes, Shampoo, Feminine care products, Socks, Books, games, puzzles, and activities for families with children.
Christian groups are galvanizing to help
Houston’s Lakewood Church was also holding a 2-day collection drive that ended today, and has opened its doors to offer shelter for those who fled the hurricane.
“We are preparing to help the people coming from New Orleans and Louisiana… We want them to know that Lakewood is open if they need a place to stay. We’ll accommodate as many as we can safely,” Pastor Joel Osteen told KPRC.
Free Astros Tickets
The Houston Astros Foundation is also hosting an emergency drive at Minute Maid Park from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday, with all donations being shipped directly to Louisiana communities impacted by the storm.
The drive is only accepting these specific items: Bottled water, Bug spray, Brooms, Garbage bags, Mops, Cleaning supplies, Laundry detergent and bleach, Hygiene products (toothpaste, shampoo, soap), Baby products (food, diapers and wipes), Paper products, Plastic cutlery, and Pet food.
Curbside donations can be dropped off at Crawford Street at the Union Street entrance. For each donation, fans will receive two free tickets to the September 6 Astros game versus the Seattle Mariners. (Two tickets per vehicle while supplies last!)
Don’t live in Texas, but want to help? McIngvale has set up a GoFundMe campaign.
(WATCH the KPRC kindness news coverage below…)
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A bakery run by a Cambridge graduate is teaching ex-cons new skills, including providing bread to some of Scotland’s fanciest restaurants.
Freedom Bakery, in Glasgow’s East End, provides well-known eateries including Ubiquitous Chip with bread rolls.
The social enterprise was set up by Matt Fountain who grew up watching his stepfather struggle to establish a life after being released from jail in Kent—and who he had visited in prison, aged 12, and begged never to go again.
Matt enrolled in university courses in Manchester, studied History of Art in London, spent a year in Glasgow, and attended Cambridge.
He returned to Glasgow and had the chance to do a PhD at Oxford, but opted not to.
Instead he decided to invest his time and energy into helping people, including convicted murderers, reintegrate into society.
In 2014, he was granted permission to use a small kitchen in HMP Low Moss, Glasgow.
SWNS
Matt planned to make and sell bread and at the same time put those prisoners through a recognized qualification for the baking industry, SVQ Level 2 in Craft Baking.
By 2017 he was working with prisoners in notorious Barlinnie, and pairing them with qualified bakers in order to help them obtain a qualification.
Trainee bakers have a broad variety of backgrounds, and Matt’s employees are given training in self-defence due to working with prisoners.
There are currently 16 employees and a third were recruited from jails.
Matt said: “It’s a mixture of long term and short term sentences including drugs-related offences, fraud, and I’m afraid to say manslaughter and murder.”
Matt felt out of place in Cambridge and failed to find enjoyment in it. “By the end of it I was pretty worn out and because of my background, I felt like I was living a bit of a fake life.
After struggling to get a job after graduating from Cambridge, he felt at a loose end. “I thought if I had an Oxbridge degree it would help me in life,” he said. “I didn’t really know what to do.
“I came to the conclusion that I should be doing something useful and I set upon this idea to raise money for the charity Shelter by cycling around the UK.”
That led to the idea of starting Freedom Bakery.
Matt said: “The only ideal was to make sure it was really good so it would leave a lasting impression on the person eating it, so they would understand where it came from and maybe think more positively about who made that bread.
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“It is important our bread tastes great and for us to be really successful, our people need to be cared for and paid fairly and if those things combine it means the bread we make is really doing good.”
He described prisons as “a microcosm of humanity with both good and evil.”
Matt said: “For some, the odds have been stacked against them from the beginning, so they never had a chance. An individual contacted us who has been in institutions from childhood.
“He is completely institutionalized but he wants to get out and can imagine a life he can have that will be healthy and rewarding so that is what we are about.”
In October the bakery will move to a larger premises.
And it saw its sales increase by 12 per cent last year, despite lockdowns.
Matt added: “I really feel that it is important to help people, but at the end of the day they have to want to help themselves. In terms of the help we can offer, that goes quite far with us.”
It was the spring of 2016, and 17-year-old Beatrice de Lavalette was waiting for a flight when she got hit by the terrorist bombing at Brussels airport.
Along with serious burns and a spinal cord injury, De Lavalette lost both legs below the knee.
Yet she says she wouldn’t be the person she is today if weren’t for those events… and the person is she will be competing as part of the U.S. Para-Equestrian team at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
Riding is a passion not only for De Lavalette but for her family as well. She began riding at age 3 and by 12, she’d taken up dressage.
Getting back in the saddle was no easy feat in light of her injuries, but she was determined to do so as soon as she was able. Five months after the bombings, thanks to her grit, determination—and extensive regimens of rehab and retraining—that’s exactly where she was.
“I had no muscle, I was just skin and bones, so being back on the saddle with no sense of balance was really uncomfortable. But with time, I was able to build up the muscle and work on my balance, and it got easier with time,” she told CNN.
Of course, De Lavalette got a lot of help and encouragement along the way—from her family, her friends, the doctors and hospital staff—and from her beloved horse, DeeDee.
Unsurprisingly, De Lavalette was depressed as she tried to come to terms with her injuries. She admits to crying a lot in the hospital until an unexpected visitor turned things around for her.
“DeeDee saved my life,” De Lavalette said in an interview on The Doctors. “My mom had figured out a way to get … DeeDee into the hospital parking lot. I said, ‘Where’s my [wheel]chair?’”
“I went outside in the rain and as I got closer, she came towards me and put her head against my chest. That moment made me decide that I wasn’t going to give up on life.”
It’s taken a great deal of hard work for De Lavalette to get where she is today. Having to adjust to her body’s new normal was, in many ways, like having to learn to ride all over again.
But as her efforts began to pay off, the Paralympics seemed the perfect outlet to showcase her hard-earned skills.
After making her first appearance as part of the U.S. Para-Dressage team in 2020, De Lavalette set her sights on Tokyo, where she’ll be riding an “awesome” 14-year-old Dutch Warmblood named Clarc.
“The reason I’ve gotten to this level of recovery is because of my horses,” De Lavalette told News 4 JAX.
De Lavalette says, “I can’t change what happened, but I can succeed at being me. As I have said many times, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What else is there to say? There are no ‘What ifs.’ I have a new life in front of me,” she says on her website. “What’s important is that I’m alive and I feel that I will do something grand with my life.”
While the proper pronunciation of pecan remains a subject of debate, University of Georgia researchers have shown the tree nut can dramatically improve a person’s cholesterol levels.
Participants at risk for cardiovascular disease who ate pecans during an eight-week intervention showed significant improvements in total cholesterol, triglycerides and low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad” cholesterol, in a study conducted by researchers in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
“This dietary intervention, when put in the context of different intervention studies, was extremely successful,” said Jamie Cooper, a professor in the FACS department of nutritional sciences and one of the study’s authors. “We had some people who actually went from having high cholesterol at the start of the study to no longer being in that category after the intervention.”
Researchers saw an average drop of 5% in total cholesterol and between 6% and 9% in LDL among participants who consumed pecans.
For context, researchers referred to a previous meta-analysis of 51 exercise interventions designed to lower cholesterol that reported an average reduction of 1% in total cholesterol and 5% in LDL cholesterol.
“The addition of pecans to the diet not only produced a greater and more consistent reduction in total cholesterol and LDL compared to many other lifestyle interventions, but may also be a more sustainable approach for long-term health,” Cooper said.
“Some research shows that even a 1% reduction in LDL is associated with a small reduction of coronary artery disease risk, so these reductions are definitely clinically meaningful.”
Researchers assigned 52 adults between the ages of 30 and 75 who were at higher risk for cardiovascular disease to one of three groups.
One group consumed 68 grams or about 470 calories of pecans a day as part of their regular diet; a second group substituted pecans for a similar amount of calories from their habitual diet, and a control group did not consume pecans.
At eight weeks, participants consumed a high-fat meal to determine changes in blood lipids and the amount of glucose, or sugar, in the blood.
Fasted blood lipids showed similar improvements among the two pecan groups while post-meal triglycerides were reduced in the group that added pecans. Post-meal glucose was lowered in the group that substituted pecans.
“Whether people added them or substituted other foods in the diet for them, we still saw improvements and pretty similar responses in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol in particular,” said Cooper, who also serves as director of the UGA Obesity Initiative.
Researchers—whose work was published this month in the The Journal of Nutrition—pointed to the known bioactive properties of pecans for possible mechanisms driving the improvements.
Pecans are high in healthy fatty acids and fiber, both of which have been linked to lower cholesterol.
Quote of the Day: “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
Photo: Aziz Acharki
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Of course, the commentary of wise figures from TheLord of the Rings would be relevant for every day and every moment, such is the power of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings.
While Tolkien vehemently rejected that his fantasy masterpiece represented anything allegorical whatsoever, one might say that it has launched itself forward to stand among the principle allegories of our time.
I recently took to The Lord of the Rings trilogy books once again, as my lack of television has barred me from watching the films for two-and-a-half years, and I couldn’t help but measure everything I’ve seen since COVID-19 arrived to the circumstances of Tolkien and of his chief protagonist Frodo Baggins.
In the edition I read (which was not the edition my brother and I owned when we were young), a detailed foreword written by the author explained how the book came to be when he took up his pen in the waxing years of the turmoil that would become World War II.
In it I found something which Gandalf the Grey might describe as “an encouraging thought,” a feeling that struck me again as I read the innocence in Frodo’s voice as he realizes he must leave his home forever on a perilous quest from which he likely would never return.
Today, with warnings of waning immunity, fourth waves, and more, I thought an interview with Frodo, Gandalf, and their creator might make for a strong lesson in changing times, and our attitudes towards them.
Here’s to the future
Vincent Ma Janssen
The best stories are the ones which are told the best, with all those wonderful literary keystones fitted neatly together. They are the ones we learn of in creative writing: can we see ourselves in the characters, are they flawed, do they make the right choice or the easy one, can we relate to their difficulties?
Tolkien and his characters reflect, whether he would like them to or not, how the times during which one lives tend to vacuum them up, obscuring thoughts of the future or of the past. COVID-19 has been compared to many great crises, sometimes fairly, sometimes comedically, but we can learn from the great writer and his characters that the correct way out of a crisis is to never believe the current disaster is somehow unique in its dreadfulness.
Tolkien became a man in perhaps the worst single moment in history to do so, around 1914, at the dawning of World War I.
“In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly,” he wrote in a letter to his son Christopher later in life. “It was a nasty cleft to be in for a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage.”
He was a junior officer at the Battle of the Somme, one of the most tragic events in human history, notable for the sheer empty-headedness of it all. Catching trench fever, he was shipped back to England, after which nearly every young man in his battalion was killed. Talk about a Hobbit’s luck.
The Great War, described at the time as the “war to end all wars” was a singularity. Yet, as unbelievably calamitous as it had proved, twenty years later a new generation was set to do it all again.
“One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years,” Tolkien writes in his foreword.
He had not finished writing his iconic fantasy books upon the outbreak of the second ‘great war’ in 1939—and had not even finished the first part of the first book.
“In spite of the darkness of the next five years I found that the story could not now wholly be abandoned and I plodded on, mostly by night,” he recalled. His son was serving in the British Royal Air Force, a difficult situation for any parent. Thank goodness you plodded on sir, thank goodness.
From Middle-England to Middle-Earth
Now we come to Frodo. Like the hobbit, so many of us in March of 2020 suddenly had our collective “Shires” clouded over. News coming out of Italy, China, and a cruise ship off the coast of Washington had placed the Ring of Power atop all our mantlepieces. A long, hard journey lay ahead.
Among Frodo’s seminal strengths is one which shines during his encounter with the dark portents which Gandalf brings to him—that he must leave the Shire behind, perhaps forever. Rather than giving up or refusing to get involved, or feeling there may be no time for futures, he simply gets on with it, despite the fact that he admits he is very scared.
“But this [the adventure] would mean exile, a flight from danger into danger, drawing it after me. And I suppose I must go alone, if I am to do that and save the Shire. But I feel very small, and very uprooted, and well—desperate.”
“I should like to save the Shire, if I could,” he tells Gandalf. “I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.”
And without much deciding at all really, Frodo acts, reasoning the world will continue to turn, and that it would turn all the better if he can throw the Ring into the Crack of Doom in Mordor, and thereby save the Shire. This, his partner Samwise also notes after seeing Frodo in a moment of doubt: “A new day will come, and when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”
In a separate moment of weakness, Frodo wishes “none of this had happened,” something which many of us have said to ourselves over the last 18 months. Yet Gandalf responds, in one of the most wonderful things ever written in English, practically transposing Tolkien’s experience with the two World Wars and reminds Frodo:
“So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All they have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to them.”
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. ― The Return of the King (the final book in the trilogy)
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There may be a thousand ways to say, ‘Happy Birthday!’ but the sweetest of all may very well be a special chocolate message that was recently served up by an amazingly thoughtful restaurant staff.
Creating natal felicitations in warm liquid cocoa was nothing new at London’s Luciano by Gino D’Acampo restaurant, but for birthday girl Natalie Te Paa, who is totally blind, the best wishes were spelled out in Braille.
What gave the message an even greater meaning was that there was no advance planning involved. When the restaurant crew learned the dinner Te Paa was sharing with friend Claire Sara was a birthday celebration, they took it upon themselves to find and recreate the Braille translation that summed up their best wishes in well-chilled chocolate.
Te Paa could barely believe her fingertips as she traced over the raised confectionary dots.
“My mind was blank for a second and then I was like, ‘Is this in Braille?’” Ta Paa told TODAY. “I’ve never had anything happen like that before. It was wild. They just really did go above and beyond.”
Dinner companion Sara recorded Te Paa’s delighted reaction to what had become a very different kind of surprise party and posted the jubilant footage to TikTok.
While restaurant manager Giovanni Galluccio maintains the impromptu gesture was simply part of the customer service they strive to extend to all their patrons, clocking in with close to 16 million views to date, the internet judged the extraordinary act of kindness extra special.
As Te Paa told TODAY, “The fact that people have responded so much and so well to it just shows how much the world needs kindness right now, how much the world needs a message of hope, needs to see people doing things and going above and beyond for each other.”
“So take heart despite how broken the world is right now,” the viral video caption reads, “true kindness still exists.”
A year ago this month, former President Trump signed into law the Great American Outdoors Act, one of the largest votes of support for U.S. public lands system since it was conceived.
Now over 250 projects have already gotten underway in 40 states across America.
Passing with massive bipartisan support, the bill permanently authorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), a critical source of funding for public land maintenance, with $900 million in annual spending for parks, forests, lakeshores, campgrounds, roads and other infrastructure, down to the smallest playgrounds in your local neighborhood.
In Shoshone National Forest, a dilapidated bridge has been replaced; a scenic byway and drain culvert will be replaced in Umatilla and Malheur National Forests; National Forests such as Daniel Boone, Ozark St. Francis, El Yunque, George Washington-Jefferson, and all those in Florida and North Carolina, will be receiving new roads, wastewater treatment systems, campgrounds, trail restoration, bridges, and much more.
Devil’s Canyon campground on the Manti-La Sal National Forest has already received brand spanking new roads.
Montana got a hefty share of the $285 million war chest that was part of the first round of LWCF dollars distributed among 40 states to address 54 projects helping repair what needs fixing in spectacular wild places such as the Bitterroot Mountain Range.
In California, in the Sierra National Forest, several roads are getting a total makeover, as well as some of the campgrounds, while restoration of the mighty Pacific Crest Trail will be carried out across 25 National Forest easements.
That’s all in one year, and much can be hoped that next year will bring the same, and the one after that, allowing all those who enjoy the public lands in America to enjoy them as they should.
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While in America off-grid solar electricity is still fairly uncommon, around the world it gives power to 420 million people.
Furthermore, it’s created an entirely unlooked-for market worth more than $1 billion annually. It’s unlooked-for because—as the first and even second generations of solar panels are nearing the end of their lifecycle—renewable energy pioneers and advocates are hurrying to try and come up with ways to prevent them from inundating landfills with millions of tons of electronic waste.
The International Renewable Energy Agency reports that, by 2050, there will be only slightly more new panels installed per year than there will be panels being decommissioned—and they are predicted to grow to 6% of global electronic waste streams.
The solution to the problem of growing solar waste, is perhaps seeing that a degraded solar panel just needs a slight fix to make it nearly as good as new.
Since 2017, revenues from the off-grid solar industry continue to rapidly grow, increasing by 30% annually, report the World Bank, who add that 180 million off-grid solar panels were sold to people in countries including Nigeria, Pakistan, and Lebanon.
In nations such as these, reliable power for those outside the major cities is hardly the norm. Poor infrastructure and limited investment currently restricts electricity access to about one-ninth of the world’s population.
While perhaps not good enough to maintain government or industry-imposed standards for power generation at a Google campus, decommissioned solar panels are often just fine for meeting the needs of powering a house, or a water pump, or something equally small.
A little opinion piece in Bloomberg remarking on these recent reports noted that second-hand market shipments of retired solar panels in the several thousands are quite the normal.
In the Southern Hemisphere, merely an $11 billion investment at current market conditions would be needed to expand the second-hand solar trade to every unpowered inhabitant.
“The off-grid solar industry is instrumental for achieving universal electricity access,” said Riccardo Puliti of the report, the Regional Director of Infrastructure, Africa, at the World Bank. “We are scaling up our support to client countries by helping them leverage this potential through innovative and financially sustainable solutions.”
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This artist creates intricate sculptures of animals made completely out of trash including plastic spoons, old ping pong balls, and even unused catheters.
35-year-old Stephanie Hongo embraced trash art four years ago because at the time she could not afford art supplies.
Now Stephanie, who lives in Connecticut, has created over 100 detailed artworks of animals, sometimes screwing together hundreds of pieces of trash for one piece.
Stephanie appeals to friends and family for spare trash and also sources specific pieces from Facebook groups to complete her incredible sculptures of lobsters, octopus, and other animals.
She has used a Barbie leg to create a unicorn’s horn, unused catheters as the antennas of a lobster, and plastic forks for the feathers of an owl.
Stephanie, who creates her art under the name Sugarfox, explained that she turned to trash to make her artworks as she was strapped for cash after quitting her job as an artist-in-residence at grocery store chain Trader Joe’s in May 2017.
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She was inspired by Portuguese artist Bordalo II, who makes large scale installations out of trash.
She made a rule that she will never purchase plastics for her sculptures.
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“I won’t ever purchase plastic, I don’t like the idea of buying anything outside the paint and the hardware that I need,” She said. “I do ask for plastic tubing or old basketballs on community pages on Facebook.
Despite using recycled materials, Stephanie resists the label of ‘eco artist’ as she uses spray paint to complete her pieces.
“I do find it necessary to tell people that I’m not an eco artist. The recycling aspect of my art is something I’m very proud of but it’s not the driving force behind it.
The animal kingdom is Stephanie’s favorite subject and she likes how nailing trash together gives the works a sci-fi, steampunk look.
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She spends between ten hours and two weeks on each piece and has developed a knack for finding the perfect piece of trash to build her artworks.
“Ping pong balls are very commonly used in my art as well as a lot of extension cords, old telephones, old remote controls, and lots of plastic toys.”
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Stephanie, who shows off her artworks on her Instagram @sugarfox_art, said that her artworks start at $300 with her eight-foot long octopus going for $5,000.
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She hopes to one day sculpt a winged dragon measuring ten feet.
