Sycamore Gap Legacy, Eco-Friendly Plastic, and a Restored Camaro

0:03 Callaroga Shark Media. Hey shohnny Mack with five good news stories. Let'll tell you this show's so much fun to do. Puts me in a good mood today. I'm recording a bunch of these in one big session, and one of the stories I just read for their previous episode just as a big smile on my face. It was fun okay for today. In Western Syria, archaeologists believe they have unearth evidence of the earliest use of an alphabet in a well preserved tomb remarkably unlooted, dating from the early Bronze Age. Six skeletons were found alongside grave goods and four small perforated clay cylinders. On the clay cylinders seems to be a form of alphabet, but carbon dating revealed the clay to be around five hundred years older than the previous olded recorded alphabetic script. Glenn Schwartz is a professor of archaeology at Johns Hopkins. He said alphabets revolutionized writing by making it accessible to people beyond royalty and the socially elite. Alphabetic writing changed the way people lived, how they thought, and how they communicated. This new discovery shows that people were experimenting with new communication technologies much earlier and a different location than we'd imagined before. Previously, scholars thought the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt sometime after nine hundred BCE, But our artifacts are older and from a different area on the map, suggesting the alphabet may have an entirely different origin story than we thought.

1:24 Some good news. Remember some jerks cut down the Sycamore Gap Tree. The two hundred year old tree had become one of the most photographed in Britain. It was chopped down illegally by vandals in twenty twenty three. The National Trust announced in September it would create a legacy for the tree by gifting forty nine saplings, one for each foot of the sycamore's height. The charity received more than five hundred applications for the saplings. Some of the winners include the Tree Amigos. They are some teenagers who set up a sanctuary to nurse trees damaged by vandalism back to health. They say this special tree will be planted next year among the other other lost trees in our care, serving as a beacon to inspire respect, understanding, and a sense of responsibility. Towards all trees. Also getting saplings are a prison and a cricket club. Good news, Japanese researchers may have figured out environmentally friendly plastic that dissolves in seawater that would solve all kinds of problems, including seawater pollution.

2:21 The scientists claim that it's just as tough as existing plastic, despite taking ten hours to break down in seawater. When placed in soil, the material disappears within ten days, leaving behind phosphorus and nitrogen. Lead researcher to Kuzo Aida says, with this new material, we've created a new family of plastics that are strong, stable, recyclable, could serve multiple functions, and importantly do not generate microplastics. Boy, that would be great if they figured that out. Once a police dog, always a police dog, a retired police dog has rescued a missing person on his first walk since having major surgery. Bear the German shepherd had retired, and he found them in dense underground while being walked by his owner, Julia, who's a former police officer herself. Bear the dog was out celebrating his twelfth birthday and immediately went into work mode after sensing the lost individual and started indicating towards an area of dense undergrowth. Julia says he then dragged us to it, where he located and alerted us to a vulnerable man. The man was confused, wet, cold had fallen over was unable to get up. I'm not sure he would have survived the night, as it was extremely cold and almost dark at that point with no one else around. Unbeknownst to us, the man was a vulnerable missing person who officers had been searching for without any success.

3:34 Last summer, Bear needed an emerging the MRI and surgery to treat four herniated disks in his spine after he lost the use of his rear legs. He then had more surgery to remove two tumors two weeks before locating the man on his first walk back. Did police say Bear is a true hero out of Texas. Earl and his son Jared have always bonded over cars and through the years. The one thing they talked about was the nineteen sixth seven Chevy Camaro that Earl used to own. Jared said, anytime we saw Camaro, he would bring it up. It'd be a recurring theme and a recurring story. The joke was that I had to sell this car for your diaper money. Dad was only half joking. He said, you got to build a nursery fund, a crib at a cradle, and it was time to settle down and raise the family. So in nineteen eighty three, it was bye bye Camaro, Hello Mini Van. Jared knew Dad missed the car. He spent three years scouring the internet for parts and putting it together piece by piece. Then on Dad's sixty fifth birthday, he was given a restored Camaro, Jared said, and it hit him. He was just overcome and he just wrapped his arms around me. It was the best. And those your five good news stories for today.

4:41 I like that last one. I have a big smile on my face in real life. Yet, as I said at the beginning, I like doing this show. It is a lot of fun. Hopefully it brings you some happiness. I appreciate you listening. Please share the program with someone else, hopefully they will like it too. And if you would like the program without commercial interruption, there's a link in the show notes that explain you how that works. Alright, you have an awesome day,