Month: October 2019

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Yellowstone National Park Is Going to Have Its First Woman Chief Ranger

Bravo!

For the first time in its 147 year history, Yellowstone National Park will see its first female chief ranger.

Photo Credit: Flickr

Sarah Davis, a National Park Service veteran for 20 years, will be the park’s 18th chief ranger, and the first woman to officially hold the top job (the park has had other women serve in an interim chief ranger capacity).

Superintendent Cam Sholly said, in a statement, “Sarah is an outstanding leader with a track record of high performance, strategic thinking, and collaboration.”

Davis’ responsibilities as chief of resource and visitor protection, includes overseeing 275 employees in the areas of law enforcement, search and rescue, emergency services, fires, special permits, trails. If visitors to the park experiences any problems, Davis and her rangers will be there to help.

Photo Credit: National Park Service

Before the Yellowstone assignment, Davis has been sharpening her chief ranger skills since 2012 overseeing Natchez Trace Parkway, which is a 444 mile long recreational road covering three states. In 2016, she was awarded the Southeast Region Excellence Award.

David has also acted as superintendent of the Vicksburg and Guilford Courthouse National Military Parks, held various chief ranger positions over Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, as well as a range of duties at Manassas National Battlefield Park, Independence National Historic Park, Assateague Island National Seashore, and Blue Ridge Parkway.

“It is an honor and privilege to be selected for this position,” said Davis. “I’m excited to join the Yellowstone team, and work together to protect our first national park and its visitors, and ensure the health, safety, and wellness of our employees.”

Photo Credit: National Park Service

Davis is a native of Lexington, North Carolina, and she graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, with a Bachelor of Arts in History. She later graduated from the Federal Bureau of Investigations National Academy in 2013.

Her history-making role starts with her relocation to Yellowstone, where she will take charge of one of the most beautiful national parks in the United States.

The post Yellowstone National Park Is Going to Have Its First Woman Chief Ranger appeared first on UberFacts.

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The Psoas Is the Important Muscle Where Your Body Stores Your Deepest Trauma

This is important information for EVERYONE.

Trauma affects people in different ways—physically and psychologically.

But did you know your body may be storing your trauma in a muscle you’ve probably never heard of?

It’s that pesky psoas (SO-az) .

Photo Credit: Pexels, Burst

Your body is built to react to traumatic experiences physically. Think of it as a basis for survival. Have you ever heard stories of how people acquire superhuman strength and can move a car to save someone? Yeah, like that kind of physical.

Even your very cells react to and store trauma.

If these physical responses remain “stuck,” they begin to cause issues. Animals and babies can easily release stress and trauma by literally shaking it off or by crying. But as adults, we learn to hold in our emotions, thus making the process of release much more drawn out and difficult.

View this post on Instagram

#psoasmuscle

A post shared by Daniele Zanoni (@danielezanonizana) on

How do the psoas muscles come into play?

Your psoas is the strongest muscle in your hip flexors, and it contributes to nearly everything you do— from posture to core strength to moving your legs pretty much at all. Back pain is often related to psoas tightness.

If you’ve ever done yoga, you know that almost everyone has tight hips, even people with flexible hips. Yoga teachers often focus on your hips because they believe, with good reason, that humans “store unexpressed emotions” there.

When you think about it, your hips don’t really move much throughout the day—in the course of normal activity, the rest of your body sort of ends up moving around your hips. That means the moving parts release tension, while the static parts don’t.

Since psoas muscles make up the core of your body, they are most affected by our need to survive (i.e. flight or fight). This is part of why after participating in a yoga or stretching session, we feel calmer and more relieved.

Especially if you spend most of your day sitting down, your psoas is not getting the stretching it needs to release all of the pent up emotion and anxiety of modern life.

Take a look at this video on the proper way to stretch this area.

As you practice, you may find your body shaking on different levels. This is okay, but try not to push too hard. Listen to your body. At times you might feel like a good cry is about to burst through, since your mind and body are open. Allow it to happen. This is the muscle releasing trauma.

The human body is an amazing creation, and we want to keep it that way.

Namaste.

The post The Psoas Is the Important Muscle Where Your Body Stores Your Deepest Trauma appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

The Psoas Is the Important Muscle Where Your Body Stores Your Deepest Trauma

This is important information for EVERYONE.

Trauma affects people in different ways—physically and psychologically.

But did you know your body may be storing your trauma in a muscle you’ve probably never heard of?

It’s that pesky psoas (SO-az) .

Photo Credit: Pexels, Burst

Your body is built to react to traumatic experiences physically. Think of it as a basis for survival. Have you ever heard stories of how people acquire superhuman strength and can move a car to save someone? Yeah, like that kind of physical.

Even your very cells react to and store trauma.

If these physical responses remain “stuck,” they begin to cause issues. Animals and babies can easily release stress and trauma by literally shaking it off or by crying. But as adults, we learn to hold in our emotions, thus making the process of release much more drawn out and difficult.

View this post on Instagram

#psoasmuscle

A post shared by Daniele Zanoni (@danielezanonizana) on

How do the psoas muscles come into play?

Your psoas is the strongest muscle in your hip flexors, and it contributes to nearly everything you do— from posture to core strength to moving your legs pretty much at all. Back pain is often related to psoas tightness.

If you’ve ever done yoga, you know that almost everyone has tight hips, even people with flexible hips. Yoga teachers often focus on your hips because they believe, with good reason, that humans “store unexpressed emotions” there.

When you think about it, your hips don’t really move much throughout the day—in the course of normal activity, the rest of your body sort of ends up moving around your hips. That means the moving parts release tension, while the static parts don’t.

Since psoas muscles make up the core of your body, they are most affected by our need to survive (i.e. flight or fight). This is part of why after participating in a yoga or stretching session, we feel calmer and more relieved.

Especially if you spend most of your day sitting down, your psoas is not getting the stretching it needs to release all of the pent up emotion and anxiety of modern life.

Take a look at this video on the proper way to stretch this area.

As you practice, you may find your body shaking on different levels. This is okay, but try not to push too hard. Listen to your body. At times you might feel like a good cry is about to burst through, since your mind and body are open. Allow it to happen. This is the muscle releasing trauma.

The human body is an amazing creation, and we want to keep it that way.

Namaste.

The post The Psoas Is the Important Muscle Where Your Body Stores Your Deepest Trauma appeared first on UberFacts.

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15 Funny Tweets from Parents Who Are Hanging on by a Thread

Parents: we support you 100%. Well, maybe not that much, but we sure appreciate your struggles and headaches.

We know some of you are barely hanging by a thread, and we’ve totally got your backs! Well, maybe not your backs. Your knees or something.

Bottom line: we’re in your corner.

Just look at these tweets.

1. That’s how it is.

2. Thanks, that’s a big help.

3. Peak and off peak.

4. Don’t ever say that.

5. Still learning the ropes.

6. Not this time…

7. Figure that one out.

8. That’s my boy!

9. Wrong cup, moron!

10. All of the above.

11. Doesn’t work that way.

12. They clearly prefer mommy.

13. They’ll never find me here.

14. A whole different level.

15. Perfect little angels, aren’t they?

Hang in there, moms and dads! You’re doing just fine!

The post 15 Funny Tweets from Parents Who Are Hanging on by a Thread appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

15 Funny Tweets from Parents Who Are Hanging on by a Thread

Parents: we support you 100%. Well, maybe not that much, but we sure appreciate your struggles and headaches.

We know some of you are barely hanging by a thread, and we’ve totally got your backs! Well, maybe not your backs. Your knees or something.

Bottom line: we’re in your corner.

Just look at these tweets.

1. That’s how it is.

2. Thanks, that’s a big help.

3. Peak and off peak.

4. Don’t ever say that.

5. Still learning the ropes.

6. Not this time…

7. Figure that one out.

8. That’s my boy!

9. Wrong cup, moron!

10. All of the above.

11. Doesn’t work that way.

12. They clearly prefer mommy.

13. They’ll never find me here.

14. A whole different level.

15. Perfect little angels, aren’t they?

Hang in there, moms and dads! You’re doing just fine!

The post 15 Funny Tweets from Parents Who Are Hanging on by a Thread appeared first on UberFacts.

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Sorry to Break It to You: Your Plastic Recycling Is Probably Not Getting Recycled

A lot of us spend time washing out plastic containers, squinting at symbols, picking off labels and smugly popping them into one of several containers to lug out to the curb on recycling day. Job well done. We deserve a (plastic) yogurt cup for our saintly efforts.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

But there is something you need to know: our plastics are likely not getting turned into new products. The American plastic recycling effort is largely mythical, reports Sharon Lerner for The Intercept.

Lerner writes:

The vast majority of plastic that has ever been produced — 79% — has actually ended up in landfills or scattered around the world or burned, but not refashioned into new products, which is what we hope for when we talk about recycling. For plastic bags, it’s less than 1% of tens of billions that are used in the U.S. alone. And so overall in the U.S., our plastic recycling rate peaked in 2014 at 9.5% so that’s less than 10%.

What about the story that the majority of our plastics were sold to China who happily took it and recycled it? Wrong. 1) it wasn’t always recycled and 2) the Chinese have been refusing to take Americans’ recycled plastics since 2017.

Here’s the thing, though – after we put our plastic in the recycling, we never see it again, so we continue cleaning, squinting, picking and sorting on curb recycle day, in guilt-free bliss.

Photo credit: Pxhere

Since the advent of single stream recycling, we’ve also been misled to think that all of our plastics are recyclable, so just chuck ’em in.

It’s not true though. If non-recyclable plastics weren’t pulled out manually at the recycling center, then they were refused by China upon their arrival. Discarded at the center or refused at port, both outcomes came at the taxpayer’s expense – and the plastic still ends up in the trash or in the environment.

Or is that the same thing.

Now that China has told the United States to quit sending our plastic to them, we are stuck sending it to other places (also mostly in Asia) that 1) don’t really want to be taking our refuse and 2) lack much of the facilities that would be required to do anything useful with it. And beyond that, the Chinese market for ‘recycled’ plastics was so huge that the gap hasn’t been filled yet (if it ever is), so a lot of American municipalities are just shipping everyone’s recyclables to the same landfill where the trash goes.

And most people have no idea.

Photo Credit: Pexels

Judith Enck, a former regional Environmental Protection Agency official and founder of Beyond Plastics, says the only way to get out of our (literal) mess is to be better consumers. That means changing our focus from recycling to reducing (the first R in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle).

So why have we been trying to recycle plastic since the 1970s?

Well, it’s not a bad idea, it’s just more expensive in practice than the market will bear. Plus the plastics industry is of course interested in staying in business, so they had to support and promote how good recycling is for the planet. It became a feel good marketing campaign that covered the fact that so few plastics actually get recycled.

But, the public bought it and recycling became our way of consuming plastics without feeling bad about it.

For anyone concerned about the plastic in the ocean, consider this: reducing the amount of plastic we use is, ultimately, the most effective way of fighting our growing garbage problem.

Photo Credit: Flickr

Enck says metal, glass and cardboard are still completely recyclable. For plastics, check for No. 1, No. 2 and No. 5. Those are recyclable. Black plastic is never recyclable. That goes into the landfill.

Use glass whenever possible. Fill up on bulk items in the supermarket with your own containers.

You can also try good old fashioned letter writing to manufacturers and local stores; ask them to reduce their reliance on plastics, and maybe they’ll listen.

There are alternatives available, and consumers still have power in their communities, as long as they exercise it.

Change is possible, and it starts at home.

The post Sorry to Break It to You: Your Plastic Recycling Is Probably Not Getting Recycled appeared first on UberFacts.

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A Flight Attendant Shared Why You Should Never Order Coffee or Tea on an Airplane

You may be tempted to get a nice, steaming cup of coffee or tea in your hands on your next flight.

Don’t.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Airplanes are very public spaces. Between people removing their shoes and clothes mid-flight to the ever present coughing and hacking, planes are pretty much petri dishes.

But even with all those germs floating around, there are other unsanitary concerns you may not have considered.

Flight attendant Jamila Hardwick spoke with Inside Edition about what you should know before you order any tea or coffee.

Photo Credit: YouTube

The water used for hot beverages is not from a bottle. It comes through water pipes on the plane which, apparently, are rarely cleaned. In fact, airlines are only required to flush and sanitize the lines four times a year.

And heaven forbid anyone clean anything more than required.

Flight attendants spend most of their time on these big birds, so they should know what’s good to order onboard. Watch the clip:

So, coffee’s out.

If you’re thinking about getting a cold soft drink instead, stay away from Diet Coke. Though it’s not any more germy than usual, Hardwick shared that the popular cola fizzes the most of all soft drinks and is a pain for attendants to pour. By the time it settles enough to pass over to you, they could’ve served several others and gone on to other duties.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

Flight attendants are hard working people so a little consideration goes a long way with them.

Perhaps the least known tidbit Hardwick shared is that flight attendants aren’t on the clock until the plane doors are closed. So if you request an attendant hoist your bag into the storage compartment above your seat for you, they will probably decline. If they get injured, they aren’t covered by their employers’—the airlines’—insurance. Any medical treatment they need would be out of pocket.

The most useful tip? Bring your own pillows and blankets. The airlines do launder blankets and pillow cases but not between flights. And the pillows themselves are likely never washed.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

What about the seat trays?

Yes, absolutely disgusting.

Hardwick recommends bringing antibacterial wipes and doing a thorough swipe of your tray before using it. She says cleaning crews don’t have time to wipe down every tray when turning an aircraft, so it may be worthwhile to take a few seconds to clean it yourself.

Flying is a great convenience of the modern world, but it’s also germy. Take note of this valuable information for your next journey, and maybe you won’t get so sick the next time you fly!

The post A Flight Attendant Shared Why You Should Never Order Coffee or Tea on an Airplane appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

A Flight Attendant Shared Why You Should Never Order Coffee or Tea on an Airplane

You may be tempted to get a nice, steaming cup of coffee or tea in your hands on your next flight.

Don’t.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Airplanes are very public spaces. Between people removing their shoes and clothes mid-flight to the ever present coughing and hacking, planes are pretty much petri dishes.

But even with all those germs floating around, there are other unsanitary concerns you may not have considered.

Flight attendant Jamila Hardwick spoke with Inside Edition about what you should know before you order any tea or coffee.

Photo Credit: YouTube

The water used for hot beverages is not from a bottle. It comes through water pipes on the plane which, apparently, are rarely cleaned. In fact, airlines are only required to flush and sanitize the lines four times a year.

And heaven forbid anyone clean anything more than required.

Flight attendants spend most of their time on these big birds, so they should know what’s good to order onboard. Watch the clip:

So, coffee’s out.

If you’re thinking about getting a cold soft drink instead, stay away from Diet Coke. Though it’s not any more germy than usual, Hardwick shared that the popular cola fizzes the most of all soft drinks and is a pain for attendants to pour. By the time it settles enough to pass over to you, they could’ve served several others and gone on to other duties.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

Flight attendants are hard working people so a little consideration goes a long way with them.

Perhaps the least known tidbit Hardwick shared is that flight attendants aren’t on the clock until the plane doors are closed. So if you request an attendant hoist your bag into the storage compartment above your seat for you, they will probably decline. If they get injured, they aren’t covered by their employers’—the airlines’—insurance. Any medical treatment they need would be out of pocket.

The most useful tip? Bring your own pillows and blankets. The airlines do launder blankets and pillow cases but not between flights. And the pillows themselves are likely never washed.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

What about the seat trays?

Yes, absolutely disgusting.

Hardwick recommends bringing antibacterial wipes and doing a thorough swipe of your tray before using it. She says cleaning crews don’t have time to wipe down every tray when turning an aircraft, so it may be worthwhile to take a few seconds to clean it yourself.

Flying is a great convenience of the modern world, but it’s also germy. Take note of this valuable information for your next journey, and maybe you won’t get so sick the next time you fly!

The post A Flight Attendant Shared Why You Should Never Order Coffee or Tea on an Airplane appeared first on UberFacts.

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When America’s first rocket scientist…

When America’s first rocket scientist, Robert Goddard, theorized that rockets could reach the moon, the New York Times harshly criticized him and wrote that he “lacked the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” 49 years later, Apollo 11 succeeded and the NYT published a retraction.

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Ice is a mineral just as much as Quartz….

Ice is a mineral just as much as Quartz is. Ice is a naturally occurring compound with a defined chemical formula and crystal structure, thus making it a legitimate mineral. Its only limitation, in comparison to all other minerals, is that it is not stable at room temperature.