discovery

They have found a boat! A really old boat that is and once again we hear claims that it is Noah’s ark:

From the article:

A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers say wooden remains they have discovered on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey are the remains of Noah's Ark.

The group claims that carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old, meaning they date to around the same time the ark was said to be afloat. Mt. Ararat has long been suspected as the final resting place of the craft by evangelicals and literalists hoping to validate biblical stories.

Yeung Wing-Cheung, from the Noah's Ark Ministries International research team that made the discovery, said: "It's not 100 percent that it is Noah's Ark, but we think it is 99.9 percent that this is it."

Wait…

They used carbon dating to figure out how old it is? Would this be the same carbon dating that proves caveman lived tens of thousands of years before God created Adam and Eve? I thought that kind of witchcraft was frowned upon by the church!

This is so cool:

IBM researchers on Tuesday said they have discovered a way to make Earth-friendly plastic from plants that could replace petroleum-based products tough on the environment.

The breakthrough promises biodegradable plastics made in a way that saves on energy, according to Chandrasekhar "Spike" Narayan, a manager of science and technology at IBM's Almaden Research Center in Northern California.

Almaden and Stanford University researchers said the discovery could herald an era of sustainability for a plastics industry rife with seemingly eternal products notorious for cramming landfills and littering the planet.

"This discovery and new approach using organic catalysts could lead to well-defined, biodegradable molecules made from renewable resources in an environmentally responsible way," IBM said in a release.

Imagine how much our petroleum usage will decrease if it wasn’t needed for plastic. Think of how much less space will be wasted in landfills by the never-degrading current plastics.

But the best part is who discovered this – IBM. There’s a lot less chance of the oil industry trying to silence them and hide the discovery than if it was some little lab no one ever really heard of. That means we stand a chance to really see this become a reality.

OK this is scary:

Police in Las Vegas, Nevada, are investigating the discovery of what they said is the deadly poison ricin in a hotel room.

Authorities were called to an Extended Stay America hotel around 3 p.m. PT Thursday after a man brought a bag with a small container to the manager's office. The man said he found it while retrieving items from a hotel room.

The substance is "100 percent ricin," said Capt. Joe Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. "We don't know who [the ricin] belongs to or why it would be here at this time."

It will be interesting to see where this story goes. Was it for some planned terrorist attack? If so then the whole "we have been so safe since 9/11" argument gets debunked a little more.