March 17, 2013
VIDEO: Every Day New York City Caught In Slow Motion
We don’t stop to think about it often, but New York City really is a special place. Or as Huey Lewis put it:
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March 5, 2013
VIDEO: Wealth Inequality: The Viral Video Every American Should See
Occupy Wall Street focused our attention on growing wealth inequality in America. The Occupy movement may no longer be in the headlines, but inequality in America has not gone anywhere. The following video demonstrates this imbalance in easy to understand graphical form.
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February 21, 2013
FBI Raids The Scooter Store
So you’re telling me The Scooter Store, the company advertising free scooters for everyone, was committing fraud? Say it ain’t so! — I always thought the promises in those commercials were suspect. Now we know why.
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February 14, 2013
Electric Car Range Anxiety In Perspective, A Response To Tesla’s Musk vs. NYT’s Broder
A war has erupted between Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and New York Times columnist John Broder. Musk takes issue with Broder’s review of the Tesla Model S, and backs it up with data recorded by the test car. I’m not concerned with parsing the details of the feud. I simply want to address the issue of range anxiety. “As I crossed into New Jersey some 15 miles later, I noticed that the estimated range was falling faster than miles were accumulating,” said Broder. “At 68 miles since recharging, the range had dropped by 85 miles, and a little mental math told me that reaching Milford would be a stretch.”
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February 11, 2013
GeoCities: The World Wide Web Is Under Construction Again
Get ready to transport yourself back to a time when people used shiny plastic discs to listen to music — when connecting to the internet required a series of obnoxious squealing tones — and when it seemed everybody had an “under construction” web page on GeoCities. Ah yes, GeoCities, the now defunct service that allowed you to carve out your little space on the world wide web in one of many predefined “neighborhoods.” GeoCities users were official known as “homesteaders.” — It was such a quaint time in the history of the web.
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February 6, 2013
Boy Scouts of America and Mainstream Conservative Bigotry
We have one party in this country that has no problem with discrimination. On one hand Republicans say they don’t want to talk class or race or sexual orientation, on the other hand, everything they do and say shows their open support for bigotry within the ranks. As always, it needs to be repeated that not all conservatives and Republicans are bigots. But if a person is a bigot, that person is more likely to be a Republican.
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January 7, 2013
The Year Is Twenty Thirteen Not Two Thousand Thirteen. Got It?
Since the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2010 I’ve been wondering just how long it will take for people to realize that they should now revert back to the old way of saying the year. Since the year 2000 and through 2009 (and beyond for some), we have been saying the year in “thousands,” but up until that time we said the year in two distinct parts. In 1999, did you say “One Thousand Nine Hundred Ninety Nine”? No, I didn’t think so. And it certainly would have made for a less than catchy chorus in a popular Prince song. So why are you now saying “Two Thousand Thirteen” when you could say “Twenty Thirteen”? You realize it’s one less syllable, right?
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January 1, 2013
Happy New Year! – Happy Fiscal Cliff Dive!
We all survived the jump off the fiscal cliff! Well, at least the east coast.
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November 30, 2012
New Jersey Bridge Collapse And Train Derailment Leads To Chemical Spill
Unlike global warming, where no single storm event can be directly attributed to a warming planet, we can directly attribute infrastructure failures with lack of public and political will. No, we do not know the exact cause of today’s train derailment and bridge collapse in Paulsboro, NJ, but we do know that events like this will become more common if we continue to allow America’s infrastructure to deteriorate. The bridge collapse and train derailment resulted in a chemical spill of vinyl chloride into the Mantua Creek. Over 70 people received medical treatment due to the spill.
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November 24, 2012
Walmart Is The Corporate Embodiment Of America’s Growing Inequality
I have a secret to reveal. I used to regularly shop at Walmart. I live in the outer stretches of Philadelphia’s western suburbs, and Walmart happened to be the closest place to go food shopping. I was never enthusiastic about shopping at Walmart, and as my social and political views evolved, I grew even more uneasy with contributing my money to a company in opposition to my values. So nearly three years ago I stopped food shopping at Walmart, and in fact, I don’t think I’ve stepped foot inside a Walmart since then.
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