MaxRedline

Recycling

Schmidt brewery in Saint Paul, Minnesota has been repurposed: the place quit brewing beer in 2002, and it is now "Urban Organics", an aquaponics center on a massive scale.

Aquaponics combines hydroponics—growing plants without soil in a water-based mineral solution—with aquaculture, otherwise known as fish farming. Poop-laden wastewater from the fish is pumped into the plant beds, where roots suck up the nutrients and help purify the sullied water before it’s recirculated back to the aquaculture tanks.

16,000 pounds of greens are harvested every week, and the tanks hold 100,000 rainbow trout and 100,000 arctic char. Once they’re full grown, they expect to reap about 7,000 pounds of fish each week, cycling in new fry to replace the harvested adults.

And there's another interesting recycler: Duedilatte. They take curdled milk, and in a multi-step process, turn it into fiber, which they then use to make fabric. They sell t-shirts made from milk for around $50.

 

Another One Bites The Dust

Payless ShoeSource is filing for bankruptcy again, and plans to shutter all of its 2,300 stores.

(Reuters) - U.S. discount retailer Payless ShoeSource Inc plans to close all of its approximately 2,300 stores when it files for bankruptcy later this month for the second time in as many years, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

Going out of business sales could begin next week. Probably a great time to pick up another set of kicks - there's a Payless just a couple of miles down the hill from our place.

 

BBB Scam Tracker

This looks like a useful tool, especially for those most often targeted by scammers - teens and older folks. Just ran across it a bit earlier, and thought I'd pass it along.

 

Panera Cares Stops Caring

Panera Bread has shuttered the last of its ideologically driven "pay what you want" restaurants. The socialist-tinged ventures were called "Panera Cares" and the higher-ups have finally figured out that "caring" is not synonymous with "viable business model." On February 15, the final Panera Cares, located in Boston, will close.

Under the model championed by the company’s founder Ron Shaich, the restaurant operated like a typical Panera, but offered meals at a suggested donation price, with the goal of raising awareness about food insecurity. You know who's probably suffering from food insecurity? The employees of Panera Cares who are no longer employed and no longer receive paychecks.

Heck of a concept there, Ron!

Failure was guaranteed; it just took them a while to figure that out. The "Democratic Socialists" are doubtless outraged by this development. But they're staying awfully quiet, for some reason.

 

Forget DNA Tests, Get A Cancer Test

Somewhere in Southern Israel, a first-of-its-kind venture trains dogs to locate early signs of cancer.

The name of the laboratory is "Dog Prognose". It allows a person to send a saliva sample (in a small plastic container), and receive an immediate answer as to whether they have cancer. The cost of the test is NIS 399, just a little over $100.

 

Uri Bakeman, professional dog trainer and owner of the laboratory, told Army Radio that "the most important issue is that this test detects the disease at its earliest stage, since the dogs can identify the characteristic signs of the smell of the disease. If the dog sits down after sniffing the sample, it means it is suspicious."

 

Early detection gives you an opportunity to have the issue addressed generally successfully and in any case, less invasively.

 

Some folks care about the ancestry - others care about their health. And this seems to be an inexpensive approach to early detection; beats the heck out of what your out-of-pocket cost would be for, say, an MRI.

 

Those things are really expensive.

 

Well, They Were Promised An Epic Cruise...

A video posted to YouTube shows the moment the vast Norwegian Epic cruise ship destroyed two mooring points on a pier as it maneuvered into the Port of San Juan, Puerto Rico on February 12. The incident followed sustained power loss by the Norwegian Epic during its current journey, Cruise Law News reported, causing it to divert on a go-slow to Puerto Rico.

Assuming they get things working again, they might make at least one of the stops on the itinerary. But the passengers are entitled to 50% off their next cruise, so there's that.

 

The Smell Of Sauce

Let’s throw back to 2002, that weird year when Nickelback was taken seriously for a minute, Ben Affleck was considered the Sexiest Man Alive, and Justin and Britney broke up for the last time. That was also about the time that the Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company very quietly closed its factory in St. Mary's, Newfoundland, leaving more than 100 vats of its only product behind.

Even the rats stay away from that place. It's that bad.

And the stink goes on, yeah the stink goes on. Dead fish rotting in the breeze

La di-de-dada-die, la-de-dada-dee.

 

Well Dang

Just got notice that we've been approved for a half-million-dollar loan, not that we really need it, but it seemed like a good idea to have an extra cushion to fall back on if necessary. So we can buy a different place that's NOT in Portland, and rent or sell the current one. Options are wonderful things.

 

Shaken, Not Stirred

It might seem like a line from an old James Bond flick, but stir/shaken is being implemented on cell phone networks.

T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint have either already started, or will soon begin, implementing the STIR/SHAKEN standards, which are protocols that verify if a call is real or if it comes from a computer. T-Mobile also has additional measures to protect you from these calls. The company built its own database of fake numbers. Anytime you get a call from these numbers, your caller ID will label the call as "spam likely."

As mentioned here previously, I use NoMoRobo on our land-line (yes, we still have one, primarily because it's great as an inexpensive first line of defense against spammers). But now they're targeting cell phones, and those companies are increasingly stepping up their game and fighting back.

 

 

The Tides, They Are A-Changin'

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction forbidding Texas from stripping Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funds Thursday, while stridently criticizing the abortion provider for its rhetoric and medical practices.

Center for Medical Progress (CMP), an anti-abortion group, had produced several undercover films at Plant Parenthood, which PP alleged had been doctored and selectively edited. Professional forensics investigators determined that no such alterations had occurred.

It's harder to beat science these days.

It may well ultimately turn out that abortion may not be a "right" after all.