June 9, 2011 archive

The Rules of the Road in NYC

We don’t need no stinking rules:

3-Way Street from ronconcocacola on Vimeo.

By summer 2010, the expansion of bike lanes in NYC exposed a clash of long-standing bad habits – such as pedestrians jaywalking, cyclists running red lights, and motorists plowing through crosswalks.

By focusing on one intersection as a case study, my video aims to show our interconnection and shared role in improving the safety and usability of our streets.

3-Way Street by ronconcocacola

h/t Watertiger at Dependable Renegade

Republicans Go All Rolling Stones

Well, you’ve got your diamonds and you’ve got your pretty clothes And the chauffeur drives your car/ You let everybody know/ But don’t play with me, ’cause you’re playing with fire

(I wrote about this two days ago posted on another board and today its making headlines. Just goes to show that the bloggers are way ahead of the game.)

Cartnoon

Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid

Network 23 Is On The Air!

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

20 minutes into the future

The world is ruled by an oligarchy.  Even the government functions primarily as a puppet of executives, serving mainly to pass laws – such as banning off switches on televisions – that protect and consolidate their power.  Technology has advanced to the point that people’s physical movements and communications can be monitored at all times, almost all non-security technology has been discontinued or fallen into barely functional disrepair.

The only real check on them are the people who regularly expose their unethical practices and allies both inside and outside the system who assist.

Truth, paranoia, or a dramatic introduction to more Meta?

Six In The Morning

In Saudi Arabia, Royal Funds Buy Peace for Now



By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – As one nation after another has battled uprisings across the Arab world, the one major country spared is also its richest – Saudi Arabia, where a fresh infusion of money has so far bought order.

The kingdom is spending $130 billion to pump up salaries, build housing and finance religious organizations, among other outlays, effectively neutralizing most opposition. King Abdullah began wielding his checkbook right after leaders in Tunisia and Egypt fell, seeking to placate the public and reward a loyal religious establishment. The king’s reserves, swollen by more than $214 billion in oil revenue last year, have insulated the royal family from widespread demands for change even while some discontent simmers.




Thursday’s Headlines:

Gaddafi faces new ICC charges for using rape as weapon in conflict

Civilians flee for border as Assad forces advance on rebel town

Chinese execution a warning to newly rich who abuse position

Drone sorties continue to rain down death

How Estonians became pioneering cyberdefenders

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.

–ConfuciusConfucius



Basket 9

Late Night Karaoke

The First Drive In Theater

Adapted from On This Day in History at The Stars Hollow Gazette

In 1933, eager motorists parked their automobiles on the grounds of Park-In Theaters, the first-ever drive-in movie theater, located on Crescent Boulevard in Camden, New Jersey.

History

The drive-in theater was the creation of Camden, New Jersey, chemical company magnate Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr., whose family owned and operated the R.M. Hollingshead Corporation chemical plant in Camden. In 1932, Hollingshead conducted outdoor theater tests in his driveway at 212 Thomas Avenue in Riverton. After nailing a screen to trees in his backyard, he set a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car and put a radio behind the screen, testing different sound levels with his car windows down and up. Blocks under vehicles in the driveway enabled him to determine the size and spacing of ramps so all automobiles could have a clear view of the screen. Following these experiments, he applied August 6, 1932, for a patent of his invention, and he was given U.S. Patent 1,909,537 on May 16, 1933. That patent was declared invalid 17 years later by the Delaware District Court.

Hollingshead’s drive-in opened in New Jersey June 6, 1933, on Admiral Wilson Boulevard at the Airport Circle in Pennsauken, a short distance from Cooper River Park. It offered 500 slots and a 40 by 50 ft (12 by 15 m) screen. He advertised his drive-in theater with the slogan, “The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are.” (The first film shown was the Adolphe Menjou film Wife Beware.) The facility only operated three years, but during that time the concept caught on in other states. The April 15, 1934, opening of Shankweiler’s Auto Park in Orefield, Pennsylvania, was followed by Galveston’s Drive-In Short Reel Theater (July 5, 1934), the Pico in Los Angeles (September 9, 1934) and the Weymouth Drive-In Theatre in Weymouth, Massachusetts (May 6, 1936). In 1937, three more opened in Ohio, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, with another 12 during 1938 and 1939 in California, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Texas and Virginia. Michigan’s first drive-in was the Eastside, which opened May 26, 1938, in Harper Woods near Detroit.

Early drive-in theaters had to deal with noise pollution issues. The original Hollingshead drive-in had speakers installed on the tower itself which caused a sound delay affecting patrons at the rear of the drive-in’s field. Attempts at outdoor speakers next to the vehicle did not produce satisfactory results. In 1941, RCA introduced in-car speakers with individual volume controls which solved the noise pollution issue and provided satisfactory sound to drive-in patrons.

Immigrants For Sale

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Prisons for profits, with our tax dollars

Immigrants For Sale

Immigrants are for sale in this country. Sold to private prison corporations who are locking them up for obscene profits!

Here are the top 3 things YOU need to know about the Private Prison money scheme:

The victims: Private prisons don’t care about who they lock up. At a rate of $200 per immigrant a night at their prisons, this is a money making scheme that destroys families and lives.

The players: CCA (Corrections Corporation of America), The Geo Group and Management and Training corporations-combined these private prisons currently profit more than $5 billion a year.

The money: These private prisons have spent over $20 million lobbying state legislators to make sure they get state anti-immigrant laws approved and ensure access to more immigrant inmates.

Exposing The Immigrants For Sale Scheme

Georgia is the latest state to pass an anti-immigrant bill like SB1070, with Governor Deal having signed it on Friday. Georgia is ALSO home to the largest private prison in the country.

It’s hardly a secret that private prison corporations like Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO group, along with right-wing lobbying group ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and a few pocketed state legislators like Russell Pearce in Arizona, have been at it-deliberately promoting and designing laws aimed at incarcerating immigrants and turning the prison system into an incredibly lucrative business.

Just last year the private prison industry secured close to $5 billion through state and government elicited contracts of which an increasing percentage is attributed to migrant detention facilities and bed spaces. An NPR report outlined how CCA aims to translate the anti-immigrant rhetoric and political void into a long-lasting cash drive-believing that immigrants will provide a fresh influx of ‘guests’ in their less then onerous ‘hotel’ cells. Even worse, CCA founder Tomas Beasly once called his scheme ‘more profitable’ than selling burgers or cars-a clear indication that any sense of justice in the prison industry will be forever trumped by cash flows and profit margins.

It is clear that for CCA, along with the GEO Group and Management and Training, immigrants are a product-one that is for sale to the highest vendor. They view locked-up immigrants as the next big share jump, stock option, bonus incentive, or any other motive that tickles their multi-billion dollar fancy. They have no shame admitting so-every year the private prison industry gets together for a major convention to essentially design strategies that will fill the more then 150,000 bed spaces they currently own.

Recall For AZ Russell Pearce Gains Momentum: 18K Signatures – Twice What Is Needed

We’ve been tracking the recall campaign against Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, author of SB1070, because he insisted on playing his nativist fiddle in the Senate while Arizona’s economy burned to the ground. It probably hasn’t helped that he’s become belligerent whenever anyone brings up his role in the Fiesta Bowl scandal, either.

Of course, Greta Van Susteren knew better than to ask Pearce any such tough questions last night on her Fox show. She mostly lobbed out the news of the day – the fact that the people leading the recall had filed more than twice what they needed, some 18,000 signatures – and let him swing away.

But Pearce looked scared, and he should be:

In a celebratory display of unprecedented organization, a bipartisan group of activists poured into the Arizona secretary of state’s office yesterday with more than 18,300 signatures to demand the recall of State Senate president Russell Pearce. The filing of the petitions marked the culmination of a campaign that has defied expectations, and a watershed moment for the beleaguered state. Once the state and Maricopa County recorders verify the legal requirement of 7,756 signatures from the traditionally conservative and Mormon-founded Mesa district, Pearce, who is considered by many as the de facto governor and motivating force behind the state’s notorious blitz of extremist policies on education, health, guns and immigration, will become the first State Senate president in American history to be recalled.

h/t Crooks & Liars

My Little Town 20110608. Ma

Those of you who read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I rarely write about living people except with their express permission, but may make an exception or two here because it might be important to talk about some of her decedents who still breathe.  None of those references will be derogatory.

Ma was my maternal grandmother.  I shall explain the origin of her name in due time.  Elsie Roberts was born 19030628 near Hackett, Arkansas.  Think about this for a minute.  She was born before the Wright Brothers made the first aeroplane flight!

Bilderberg St Moritz

Extremely evil men and women who make up the world’s power-elite have cleverly cultivated a virtual pasture so grass green that few people seldom, if ever, bother to look up from where they are grazing long enough to notice the brightly colored tags stapled to their ears.

Just started so no coverage yet other than a newly erected “security barrier” which consists of a white plastic sheathing designed to block the view of increasing spectator/protesters.

Happy Anniversary to us.  Just noticed the date of that and the annual Bilderberg fest coincide.

AO Hell Huff Post merger crashes and burns like MySpace.  Good!  No let up in the “recession”, actually a depression, more control efforts to limit your ability to move yourself or your money and wider destabilization of the entire Middle East.  Forget Palin, watch Texas governor Rick Perry.  More news as the meeting unfolds.

Other stuff up today.

Is your job on careerbuilder and craigslist?  Mine is.  Yes, the job I work at now, or rather for a “temp” company has advertized on craigslist for, my job.  At a lower rate of course.  Now you might ask if I suck at my job at the paint drying factory or perhaps I don’t get along well with people.  Ok, the work is “different” from the 22 years of experience I have at doing what I did but I also refuse to drool upon myself by enthusiastically discussing American Idol with coworkers.  Military contract work is really all about training grunts to do specific paint watching tasks the same way each and every time.  No thinking, no improvising and certainly no improvements on the prescribed mil spec methods signed sealed and delivered by the proper authority, his high certificated self.

Totally unsure about this summer’s backwoods spiritual retreats in July and August which counter my family and myself for yet another year of unfolding evil crap from Bohemian Grove.  We will surely miss the detox of breathing pure air, the Lost Lake of Narnia, the evening fires and laser pointing “my” NSA surveillance drones.

“Conspiracy” stuff aside though how has your life exponentially sucked in the past few years.  Do you favor air travel less these days.  Do you find lamestream news offensive yet?  Working beneath your potential?  Not as healthy as you used to be?  Sick of the wars, financial crap, verizon phone tree Hell or the decreasing relevance of 911 truth.

SupercorpofascistOrwellexpialidocious!

Update

Almost as good as the conclusion of Bilderberg comes the admission that al-CIA-duh and the wars of error is a government contrivance.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com…

Dupree’s Paradise

From A Perfect Stranger