"Raw Amber"?

When I was in Pushkar, Rajasthan in 1991, one of the street hawkers convinced me to buy some "Raw Amber" in a carved box from him. It is beautifully scented, and supposed to be used in perfumes. It smells like a cross between Sandalwood and Vanilla.



The street hawker said it was the raw form of the sap/resin that the gemstone, amber, comes from, but I've never been too sure he was telling the truth.



There is a lot written on the internet about amber, and various saps and resins used in perfumery, but I'm a bit out of my depth.



Can anyone help me work out what this stuff actually is?



Pics below.

Prince Andrew (Allegations of Famous People Engaged in Bad Sex Part 57)

Prince Andrew has been accused of and denies having sex with a minor in the US in a court case:

Quote:

Buckingham Palace has denied "any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors" by Prince Andrew, after he was named in US court papers. A woman named him in documents she filed in a Florida court over how prosecutors handled a case against financier Jeffrey Epstein. She claims that between 1999 and 2002 she was forced by Epstein to have sex with the prince when she was a minor. The palace said it would not comment in detail on the legal proceedings. But a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said: "This relates to long-standing and ongoing civil proceedings in the United States, to which the Duke of York is not a party. "As such we would not comment on the detail. However, for the avoidance of doubt, any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue".

I hope we can pool our formidable critical thinking skills to resolve this allegation.

IEA: Solar could be dominate electricity by 2050

Forget the commonly-held notion that cheap oil will disrupt the development of renewables, the solar juggernaut is unstoppable

Quote:

(Reuters) - Solar energy could be the top source of electricity by 2050, aided by plummeting costs of the equipment to generate it, a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the West's energy watchdog, said on Monday. IEA Reports said solar photovoltaic (PV) systems could generate up to 16 percent of the world's electricity by 2050, while solar thermal electricity (STE) - from "concentrating" solar power plants - could provide a further 11 percent. "The rapid cost decrease of photovoltaic modules and systems in the last few years has opened new perspectives for using solar energy as a major source of electricity in the coming years and decades," said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven.

Meanwhile, in the United States 36 states will achieve solar grid parity (i.e. the cost of generating solar power will be competitive with drawing solar from the grid):



http://ift.tt/1xh21cV

Quote:

Every time fossil fuels get cheaper, people lose interest in solar deployment. That may be about to change. (...) The chart below shows how far solar will come out ahead in each state in 2016, assuming a worst-case scenario of lower tax credits. The blue bars show the anticipated cost of solar energy (assuming a conservative 20-year lifespan for the panels) minus average electricity prices. Positive numbers indicate the savings for every kilowatt hour of electricity.

And the reality that scares the crap out of the fossilocracy

Why does Venus still have an atmosphere?

I'm curious on this. Venus is roughly the same size as Earth. Our planet has a strong magnetic field helping to shield us. Venus has a very weak magnetic field, one that is caused by the solar winds itself. Mars has no magnetic field and has lost nearly all its atmosphere. Mars is smaller than Earth and Venus of course.



If Mars had an atmosphere and lost it due to the solar winds, why hasn't Venus? I am obviously missing something obvious, but my reading of the various Wiki articles and my Google-Fu hasn't found an answer I'm terribly happy with. I'm probably sorely misunderstanding something.



Anyone care to point me in the right direction? I know that Venus has a LOT of CO2 in the atmosphere, probably formed early on during its development, which lends it some extra protection from the solar winds. Maybe that is why it's atmosphere survived and Mars' didn't? I'd think that by now being as close as it is to the Sun that it would have had a lot blasted away by the solar radiation though.



Help a curious guy out please. :)

Harper Collins: Arabs really do want to wipe Israel off the map

http://ift.tt/1rK7DeQ

The Tablet's story about the the Middle East Atlas, which shows Jordan and Syria extending all the way to the Mediterranean Sea, was widely reported and caused an international outcry. Collins Middle East Atlases were sold to English-speaking schools in the Muslim-majority Gulf, and publicity about their existence has embarrassed the publishing giant.



[...]



Earler, Collins Bartholomew, the subsidiary of HarperCollins that specialises in maps, had told The Tablet that including Israel in the Middle East Atlas would have been “unacceptable” to its customers in the Gulf and that the amendment incorporated “local preferences”.

Stay classy, Arabia.

Is there a legitimate reason to question the official narrative*?

* = Official narrative being the 9/11 Commission Report, the 2002 Joint Congressional Investigation Report, the F.B.I.'s investigation, NIST's reports, etc etc other government sponsored reports and/or investigations as well the statements of government workers and the leadership.



So, in your opinion, is there a legitimate reason to question the official narrative?





1. Yes

2. No

3. Undecided

climate change deniers...

What makes the atmosphere so special?



Humans have destroyed many things. Rivers, inland seas, mountaintops, the list is endless.



So what makes the atmosphere immune to humans?