MaxRedline

Hops History

Hops harvesting in Oregon

Did you know that Oregon has been at the center of hops production almost as long as it’s been a state?

The crop was first introduced in the 1850s, and by the late 1860s, it was being grown commercially. In the early twentieth century, there were 1,500 hops growers in the Willamette Valley, and Oregon produced more hops than any other state in the country.

https://tigardlife.com/history/hops-growing-in-the-tigard-area/

 

Buckled Roads

Different kinds of roads behave very differently under heat. In the US, roads are typically made of one of two materials — asphalt or concrete. “You can’t design for everything. Some things just break your infrastructure.” “It’s just sort of wait for something to break and then fix it when it breaks.”

And that's what happened across the Pacific Northwest - the extreme heat not only buckled roadways; it killed hundreds of people. Many were simply not expecting it to be so hot for so long, and air conditioning is relatively uncommon here. Many who died were at home, with no A/C. Our climate is generally mild, so residences are built more to withstand strong winds and the occasional cold snaps.

“That’s why Phoenix isn’t falling apart — it’s not Armageddon there because it’s hotter.”

The problem is that when some of these roads in Washington state were being designed, using those materials or design techniques would have been overkill — the area doesn’t normally get as hot as Phoenix, so there was no need to build with extreme heat in mind.

 

 

Better Than Expected

Disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti had a tearful day in court on Monday as he was sentenced to 30 months in prison for attempting to extort footwear giant Nike to the tune of possibly as much as $25 million.

I'd assumed that, being a lawyer and all, he'd be allowed to simply walk. Apparently, not so. That's good; prison seems like a good thing for him - although he still should have received a longer sentence, it's still better than expected.

 

 

The Unaddressed Question

A Portlander needs to earn $86,833 a year to afford a home in the metro area, a number that increased 7.5% since last year, according data from HSH.com.

That puts the city at No. 11 among the most-expensive metro areas in the U.S., according to the mortgage data provider.

But...why would anybody want to buy around here now?

 

South Of The Border

Down Mexico way...

MEXICO CITY is sinking at an alarming rate, according to new data.

Scientists think the problem is largely unstoppable because some parts of the city are now too low to save.

They probably shouldn't have built in on a lake, but that's where the Spanish chose to start their ball rolling. Mexicans just kept adding onto their problem.

Mexico City is the densely populated capital of Mexico.

It's built on a lake bed which has been growing increasingly dry due to centuries of water drainage.

Cracks are now forming in the cities foundations, putting infrastructure at risk of collapse.

 

Coming Back To Oregon

The initiative's aim, which could begin as early as this upcoming fall, is to create a "nonessential experimental population" in the Pacific Northwest — where the birds haven't lived in the wild for a century.

Up here, they mostly died from lead poisoning, although now laws have been changed to reduce the incidents. So it's "welcome back, buzzards!"

 

The Roman Way

That servant seems to have been spared, but many others had their "bowels torn asunder" by the eels. And that's just one of the many horrific ways the ancient Romans devised to kill those who displeased or offended them, from crucifixions and feeding people to wild beasts, to setting slaves on fire, and assassinating Julius Caesar on the Ides of March. Historian Emma Southon covers them all in her wittily irreverent new book, A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome, showing us how the people of ancient Rome viewed life, death, and what it means to be human.

I guess they were fun-loving folks, in their own way.

But then, death-spectacles were sort of a way of life, in those days.

 

It Still Seems Rather Odd

It's been a number of years, but it still seems curious. I don't follow football at all, but it does seem odd that a team from the Midwest plays for a team on the Pacific Northwest.

 

Second-Hand Stonehenge

Mike Parker Pearson, a professor of British later prehistory at University College London, told the Guardian: “I’ve been researching Stonehenge for 20 years now and this really is the most exciting thing we’ve ever found.”

The evidence backs a century-old theory that the nation’s greatest prehistoric monument was built in Wales and venerated for hundreds of years before being dismantled and dragged to Wiltshire, where it was resurrected as a second-hand monument.

It seems like rather a lot of effort, but the evidence appears incontrovertible: the edifice was first constructed in Wales and stood there for centuries - until the Brits decided to take it.

An ancient myth about Stonehenge, first recorded 900 years ago, tells of the wizard Merlin leading men to Ireland to capture a magical stone circle called the Giants’ Dance and rebuilding it in England as a memorial to the dead.

As it happens, that part of Wales was, at the time, Irish territory. Odd times....

 

Italy Plans To Renovate The Country's Oldest Entertainment Venue

As Jonathan Hilburg reports for the Architect’s Newspaper, Italian authorities say the restored version of the floor will feature replicas of trapdoors, lifts and other mechanical elements used in Roman times.

The original floor was planks covered in sand, and the Romans used the venue for four centuries. The staging was at once ingenious and grisly. A lot of blood was involved.

Beneath the floor was a complex network of tunnels from which gladiators and wild animals emerged to fight to the death before thousands of spectators. The tunnels are still there.