Favorite Links Friday Week of October 21, 2016

Panther MS Basketball:

Friday, 10/21 at Hydaburg, Girls game starts at 6:30pm, Boys game to follow
Tuesday, 10/25 home vs. Klawock, Girls game starts at 6pm, Boys tgame o follow

Potential Wrangell pot business applies for licenses

The Wrangell Assembly passed a zoning ordinance last week that made way for marijuana businesses in Wrangell. Now, Wrangell’s only proposed pot business, Happy Cannabis, is initiating its applications with the state, beginning the final push for construction to be complete.

About two years after Alaska voted to legalize marijuana, Happy Cannabis owner Kelsey Martinsen is in the final push towards opening day. He hopes to open the retail portion of his business in about four months and start growing and manufacturing marijuana into oils within the year.

“We just have to go finish some paperwork, but today, we’re going to initiate all three licenses with the state,” Martinsen said.

Martinsen is applying for three separate licenses, each for a retail shop, cultivation and extraction into oils. The cost of applying with the state for all three is $14,000. Once the process has begun, the state has 90 days to approve or deny an application, and Martinsen has that time to make sure everything is in place.

Martinsen said he is working with a Fairbanks grower to ship in products until he can harvest his first crop. There’s still some uncertainty if that will happen. The three closest testing facilities in Anchorage and Juneau are still not off the ground, but he said the two Anchorage facilities should be operating in time.

Martinsen plans to harvest six pounds each week, rotating various strains. Small samples of each batch is required to be mailed to a testing facility and tracked through the state’s metric system. [Full Source]

Duterte Announces Philippine ‘Separation’ from US

BEIJING — In what could be a serious setback for Washington and its pivot to Asia, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has announced his country’s “separation” from the United States, following high-level talks with Chinese leaders in Beijing.

“In this venue, your honors, I announce my separation from the United States, both in military, not maybe social, but economics also,” he said, speaking at a business forum late Thursday. His remarks to the crowd of business people and officials triggered a roaring round of applause.

“America has lost now. I have realigned myself in your ideological flow, and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world, China, Philippines and Russia. It is the only way.” [Full Source]

This is a big deal ladies and gentlemen. The empire that is America is coming to an end, if you want to know what is next just ask me and i'll let you know since it will mirror my birth place, the Soviet Union...

Globe cool, AK warm

Once again, Alaska is bucking the trend or leading the way. You decide.

The globe might have ended its run of record high temperatures in September, but the 49th state didn’t. While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the month of September brought to a close a 16-month string of record global warmth, Alaska was one of the odd spots out.

The Alaska Climate Research Center said the 49th state remained well above the historic norm in September, and thus ran its string of record warm months to 12 and counting still.

A La Nina watch remains in place, but the report concludes that in the near term a big pool of warm water in the Gulf of Alaska will trump the usual cooling brought by the northward flow of chilly La Nina waters.

“Sea surface temperatures in the North Pacific and along the coast of Alaska remain above average although these departures from normal in areas of the North Pacific have decreased some over the past month,” the climate prediction says.

“For Alaska, above normal temperatures are favored for coastal areas and is (sic) supported by above-average, near-coastal surface sea temperatures, trends in sea ice coverage, and dynamical model guidance.”

Coastal Alaskans can’t have forgotten what the influence of the warm water offshore meant last winter: Goodbye “Seward’s Icebox,” hello Seattle soggy.

The question now is will the streak continue, or will Alaska do what it usually does and simply arrive late on the national trend. A couple weeks ago, it was looking like the latter was sure to be the case soon. Even though Anchorage was still trending above normal, the National Weather Service was saying La Nina conditions brewing to the south might soon be felt.

La Nina sweeps cold waters along the coast of North America, and the result is usually cold in Alaska. In September, the three-month outlook was really hedging its bets, calling for warmer than normal conditions in Arctic Alaska, but putting most of the state in the “EC” category – “equal conditions” for temps above, below or at normal. [Read the Full Story here]

Beads Were Found in 3,400-year-old Nordic Graves That Were Made by King Tut’s Glassmaker

Cobalt glass beads discovered in Scandinavian Bronze Age tombs reveal some iconic trade links between Egyptians and Mesopotamia 3,400-years-ago, and even show the same signs of religious rituals.

This striking revelation occurred as elegant Egyptian glass beads were found in Danish Bronze Age burials dating back to 3400 years ago.

What’s more shocking is that these glass beads came from the workshop as those that were buried with the famous boy-king Tut. This finding proves that there were established trade routes between the far north and the Levant as early as the 13th century.

At the burial site, twenty-three of the 271 jewels found in Danish Bronze Age burials, to the archaeologists’ delight, were blue. This style of blue was a rare and worshiped color during ancient times.

Danish examiners believe the blue glass beads placed in the graves had religious meaning. Also, glass and amber seem to be closely related, in the North as well as in the South. The connection of the glass and amber was not accidental, the archaeologists believe.

These 23 blue glass beads were thoroughly inspected using plasma-spectrometry, a famously effective method that allows scientists to compare trace elements inside of the beads without damaging them.

This examination showed that the blue beads concealed inside of woman’s grave turned out to have originated from the same glass workshop in Egypt that ornamented King Tut during his funeral in 1323 BC.

Though the glass exchange halted around the 1170s BC, trading systems in the Mediterranean completely collapsed around 1200 BC. This was thought to have occurred during the war and economic recession. This collapse can has been traced back to the Nordic burials, as significantly fewer glass beads seem to have reached the north. [Read the Full Story]

Experts believe mysterious aluminium object dating back 250,000 years 'could be part of ancient UFO'

A piece of aluminium that looks as if it was handmade is being hailed as 250,000-year-old proof that aliens once visited Earth.

Metallic aluminium was not really produced by mankind until around 200 years ago, so the discovery of the large chunk that could be up to 250,000 years old is being held as a sensational find.

The details of the discovery were never made public at the time because it was pulled out of the earth in communist Romania in 1973.

Builders working on the shores of the Mures River not far from the central Romanian town of Aiud found three objects 10 metres (33 feet) under the ground.

According to tests, the object is made of 12 metals, 90% aluminium, and it was dated by Romanian officials as being 250,000 years old. The initial results were later confirmed by a lab in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Other experts who conducted later tests said the dates were far alter, ranging between 400 and 80,000 years old, but even at 400 years old it would still be 200 years earlier than when aluminium was first produced.

What puzzled experts is that the piece of metal has concavities that make it look as if it was manufactured as part of a more complex mechanical system.

Now a heated debate is going on that the object is actually part of a UFO and proof of visitation by an alien civilisation in the past. [Full Source]