The future of urban entertainment is green
Apparently I’m not the only one seeing more smart© cars on the road each day, if your not familiar with these adorable little things imagine a shopping cart mating with a Japanese motorcycle; that’s it, but smaller.
I really do like these things and if I didn’t need to travel more than a few miles everyday would probably consider buying one. But I don’t have that luxury, I do however have a confession for current owners. I want to push your car on its side. Bad. I know it sounds terrible and you must trust that I wont act on this impulse, but every time one of these little guys zips past I get the nearly uncontrollable urge to break into a sprint and just tackle the thing. I figured I must be the only one, really how many people could have this problem? Well it seems a few, a quick google search shows the earliest report of this new urban form of cow tipping dates back to spring of 2005.
I’m going to make a prediction here, that by 2018 car tipping will be so prevalent insurance companies wont cover righting tipped cars.
It’s like Police Academy but starring Dirty Harry
This is the sort of sophomoric, thin blue line bullshit that fosters distrust of authority within the general public. When it comes from the Chief of Police of the second largest city in New England, as opposed to the Sheriff in a small mid-west county, you’re pretty much screwed.
This may be difficult to comprehend if you never wore the uniform and pinned on the badge, but given the choice between the viability of a business and public safety, I will first and foremost address police officer safety.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
It seems as though each day that passes makes it slightly more difficult to discern which team I’m supposed to be rooting for.
From the Washington Times:
Maryland troopers spied on activist groups
Protesters added to database of terrorist suspects
Shaun Waterman UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Friday, July 18, 2008Undercover Maryland state troopers infiltrated three groups advocating peace and protesting the death penalty — attending meetings and sending reports on their activities to U.S. intelligence and military agencies, according to documents released Thursday.
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The activist was identified as Max Obuszewski. His “primary crime” was entered into the database as “terrorism - anti govern(ment).” His “secondary crime” was listed as “terrorism - anti-war protestors.” The database is known as the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA.
And from the Washington Post
WHAT HAVE we learned from the Maryland State Police’s undercover spying program targeting peaceable groups opposed to the death penalty and the war in Iraq, other than that the police are prone to ludicrous misspellings? Well, here’s a sampling of the “intelligence” gleaned during 288 hours of police surveillance in 2005-06, in reports unearthed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland:
· On Oct. 3, 2005, an undercover state police agent attending a meeting of activists ferreted out the fact that antiwar protesters were laying plans to distribute fliers at the Towson Town Center mall.
· On July 11, 2005, an officer attending an antiwar meeting held by “an activist named Bernie” and “five middle-aged women” discovered that in a protest held a week earlier at the National Security Agency, peaceniks shared cookies with NSA guards who issued them a citation for trespassing.
· On June 6, 2005, an agent who infiltrated an anti-death-penalty protest in Baltimore reported “no problems” at the event, attended by about 25 known and “currently unidentified recurrent death penalty protestors.”
We have a terrorist watch list that includes people who bake cookies for NSA guards? That’s the sound of Nero tuning his fiddle, folks.
May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008
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Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Motherfucker
Tits
so many pigs and so many dogs
Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer-except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs. Perhaps this was partly because there were so many pigs and so many dogs. It was not that these creatures did not work, after their fashion. There was, as Squealer was never tired of explaining, endless work in the supervision and organisation of the farm. Much of this work was of a kind that the other animals were too ignorant to understand. For example, Squealer told them that the pigs had to expend enormous labours every day upon mysterious things called “files,” “reports,” “minutes,” and “memoranda.” These were large sheets of paper which had to be closely covered with writing, and as soon as they were so covered, they were burnt in the furnace. This was of the highest importance for the welfare of the farm, Squealer said. But still, neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by their own labour; and there were very many of them, and their appetites were always good.
The worlds most useful bike seat
Swobo has been one of my favorite bike companies for quite some time. They’ve always made beautiful, simple and rugged urban bikes of the sort I like to think could get more people riding if they were exposed to them. Earlier this spring I was almost ready to buy one when I decided it would be more fun to build a new ride. The process has been slow due to laziness, but while ordering parts I was able to sneak in one little piece of Swobo goodness that makes me smile every time I look at it.
The cart saddle with built in bottle opener.
American ingenuity at it’s finest.
If I ever get around to finishing this bike (the wheels are finally in the mail) please consider me for any and all beer opening emergencies. And if you are interested in owning a beer opening bike of your very own these saddles come standard on all Swobo models.
Ride a bike.
Best of Worcester online
I don’t know this person, but her twitter feed and blog have been making me snort pretty consistently for a few weeks now.
So thanks AnnMarie, I hope the Lorazepam works out for you.
6 cities caught shortening yellow lights for profit
Here’s a nice round up of 6 American cities who have been caught shortening yellow lights at intersections where traffic cameras had been installed for increased profits. Worth noting is the presence of Dallas on this list, their camera system became news recently when they began shutting down systems which were no longer profitable.
Anyone who still says traffic cameras are about public safety is exactly the kind of person you should kick in the shins. Maybe a shin kicking raid on Council Chambers is in order? Do I need a permit for that?
Worcesters tax bill
Interested in where your federal tax dollars are headed this year, Worcester? The National Priorities Project of Northampton has already done the math for you.
The market is driving
One of the more interesting nuggets Zoback posted from last night’s City Council meeting was in regard to North Main St development. Apparently Councilor Smith was adding his two cents to the ‘what the hell are we going to do with all these old buildings’ conversation, to which Assistant City Manager Julie Jacobson replied “The market will drive what goes in [all the buildings,]”. While this is typically true, markets being what they are, the one aspect of North Main Street (all of Lincoln Sq really) which makes Jacobson’s statement false is the cost of energy.
If you look at the buildings in Lincoln Sq, most of them have a history of government funding or large subsidies, courts, schools, police stations ect. But if you talk to people involved with some of the private businesses down there, Tuckerman Hall for example, you start to hear a common complaint. The cost of energy in these old buildings makes doing business nearly impossible. So here’s my unofficial solution.
The owners of all the properties in Lincoln Sq, public and private, need to come together with the goal of building a small green grid that extends from the Gateway Park Project, up to the Art Museum, over to the old court house, up to the WHA building on Belmont and back down to Gateway. If you were to look at all the buildings in that square from above, like so:
View Larger Map
you would see right away there are an abundance of very flat roofs available for solar and wind power generation that would certainly take the edge off energy costs for all these properties, if not exceed their needs entirely assuming they were linked. Seems like everyone has a plan to turn the Auditorium into a marketplace or performing arts center or the court house into a school or mall of sorts; the only way this is going to happen is either oil prices drop to 1990’s levels or we start acting like a ‘green city’ as opposed to proclaiming we’re one. There are excellent subsidies in place to make such a project manageable if one was to create a corporate entity linking these properties for the purpose of creating, storing and sharing energy - the only reasonable way to power these amazing structures built without expensive energy being a concern.
If we don’t start thinking about how much it costs to heat and light these places, then yes, the market will decide their fate and they will be just as empty ten years from now as they are today.
