2011 is off to a strange start with this story from Arkansas which reminds of last year’s TV series FlashForward, minus the blackout. (h/t THV 11 News)
Just before folks in Beebe rang in the New Year, many witnessed an uncanny resemblance to the Hitchcock movie “The Birds.” About 2,000 black birds fell from the sky off Windwood Drive, leaving quite the mess to clean up.
Folks Today’s THV spoke with initially thought the birds were poisoned because they are what they call a nuisance around this time every year, but they are surprised to hear it is more of a mystery.
Stephen Bryant recalls, “Millions, millions fly over every night. You look up at the sky and it’s just black and then last night at about 10:30 I came out here and saw a bird drop.”
In a matter of hours on New Years Eve thousands of birds fell from the sky to their death.
Melissa Weatherly says, “I immediately called mom because I had to go to work, I said you have to come get the kids and get the dog because I don’t know what’s going on.” She continues, “It was horrible; you could not even get down the road without running over hundreds. It was that bad.”
The mystery is unraveling like scenes from a movie, dozens of U.S. Environmental Services crews spent the day picking up the birds, walking between homes and climbing on roofs with protective hazmat suits and breathing masks,.
[..]
Officials with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission flew over the area and determined it’s a one mile stretch. There are a variety of dead black birds, mostly red winged and a duck was also found.
No one has been evacuated because the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) air test came back clean for toxins.
Weatherly is skeptical, “They’re walking around in masks and I’m wondering do we need the same thing because what makes that happen for them to drop out of the sky like that.”
Katherina Yancy with Today’s THV found one bird still living. It was confused, injured, continuously walked in circles and didn’t make a sound or attempt to fly.
Officials will confirm their findings when they get the test results, until then they are giving these possible scenarios: lightning, stress, high altitude hail or startled by fireworks, but neighbors just want answers.
This takes the cake for the strangeness as far as I’m concerned, and really this is the sort of story that, no matter what the officials eventually decide to blame (if they ever do decide to blame anything) there will be a dozen conspiracy theories which will seem more feasible.
I’m not going to pretend to have the faintest clue what actually caused this bizarre localised bird death, but I will say that I’m not in the least bit convinced that any of the officially speculated reasons are the cause.
Some days some ads bewilder me:
(click image to enlarge)
Sure, it’s probably a good strategy to name your business after the place in which it is located…this probably cuts down on confusion, but in terms of the location itself, I don’t really see what is so great about an industrial area which enjoys traffic jams every morning and night of every weekday, much more so than any other industrial area in Canberra.
If it was a military installation like HMAS Harman, remotely located on Canberra Avenue between Canberra and Queanbeyan, then I might understand why it would be considered a “strategic location”…but in this case, I think it’s just false advertising.
Senate candidate Lin Hatfield Dodds says she’s not environmentally irresponsible for owning a V8 Toyota Landcruiser.
[..]
Ms Hatfield Dodds told The Canberra Times that poor public transport options forced her family to buy a second car about two years ago. The other family car was a Toyota Echo. The 4WD was chosen to take the family on monthly camping trips.
”I’m not at all worried about driving a four-wheel drive I’ve always said I don’t fit the mould of what people often perceive a green to be,” she said.
Well Lin, that’s just because most Canberrans don’t realise that the Greens’ socialist utopia inevitably involves the almighty administrators living a much more luxurious life than the rest of the population. It’s sold as “being nice to the environment” and “equality”…but you and I both know that this is not the case.
Back to the point though…monthly camping trips? Really? Aren’t those campfires bad for the environment or causing global warming or something? And if the rest of us are supposed to give up our large vehicles, how come you can’t lead by example. There are plenty of places to camp which do not require a four wheel drive in order to access them.
This is exactly the sort of “do as I say, not as I do” mentality that led to the delays and blowouts in cost of the Gungahlin Drive Extension. Admittedly the Stanhope government shares the blame for this by ineptly not simply overruling the cuckoo activists when they had the chance…however the Save The Ridge mob, supported by the Greens and the Socialists were the main cause of the delays in construction, the resulting blowout in costs, and the necessity to increase overall costs further by making the second lane a “we’ll just have to do that at some later stage” proposition for the ACT government. How is this a “do as I say, not as I do” issue? Because the Save The Ridge nuts use the GDE.
We can’t allow these people to take control of our government. We can’t risk having proponents of large central government in power when they pretend to be interested in “fairness”, but really just want to increase their own personal power and thrust some delusional socialist doctrine upon us. If they can cause a GDE fiasco at a local level, imagine what chaos they could cause at a national level. If you thought the Building the Education Revolution disaster was bad…you ain’t seen nothin’ (to borrow a quaint phrase) until you’ve seen Bob Brown as Dear Leader.
By the way, I love how The Canberra Times (aka The Fyshwick Guardian) not only tries to justify Lin’s hypocritical use of a V8 4WD with details of her carbon offset program (memo Lin: offsetting is not the same as reducing) but also seems to think that the only members of the Legislative Assembly are Greens:
Of Canberra’s four MLAs, three drive a Toyota Prius and the fourth has a Smart Car
I’m sure life would be much more in-line with the ideological standpoint of The Fyshwick Guardian if this were the case…but unless I missed something, the Hare-Clark proportional voting system hasn’t extended itself to removing all but the representatives of the party with the fewest elected members. Do the journos know something about the plans of the Greens that we don’t?
(with thanks to Jeremy Hanson MLA for the link to the article…seeing as I’ve mentioned Jeremy’s name, I should probably point out that my views do not necessarily reflect his)
It’s interesting to me that almost everyone who lives to a really old age or keeps working until a really old age seems to have something to which they credit their longevity, and almost without fail it is something which you couldn’t imagine a scientist saying in a thousand years.
REDLANDS, Calif. — It wasn’t snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night that stopped Chester Arthur Reed from his appointed round. The mail handler just felt it was time to call it quits at age 95.
The fork lift operator retired Wednesday as the nation’s oldest postal worker, ending a career without taking a single sick day. It’s a feat he attributes to a healthy diet of watermelon, alkaline water and an onion sandwich with mayo every day.
“If everyone in the nation ate watermelons, they’d get rid of all the doctors,” Reed said.
Despite being partially deaf and walking with a stoop, Reed has worked for more years than many of his co-workers have been alive and has accrued 3,856 hours — nearly two years — of sick leave for not missing a shift in 37 years.
[..]
His military service, which included physical conditioning with pilots, is evident in the rigid discipline surrounding his health. It’s his favorite topic of conversation, said Reed’s co-worker Verna Ortiz, 50.
He believes in drinking alkaline water, to minimize acids that can damage digestive system, and eating sandwiches made “with a lot of mayonnaise and get a big slice of onion” because the vegetable is closely related to garlic, one of the healthiest foods you can eat, he said.
“He taught me to stay away from the two S’s: salt and sugar,” Ortiz said, adding she lost 10 pounds in six months by taking his advice.
In truth, I think that staying at work helps a lot of people to reach an old age happily and healthily simply by keeping active. Their eating habits certainly help, but I think an active mind has a lot more to do with it than we might realise.
The National Federation of the Blind and Virginia Tech plan to demonstrate a prototype vehicle next year equipped with technology
that helps a blind person drive a car independently.
The technology, called “nonvisual interfaces,” uses sensors to let a blind driver maneuver a car based on information transmitted to him about his surroundings: whether another car or object is nearby, in front of him or in a neighboring lane.
It seems that, not content with the already scary prospect of having cars which drive themselves, these researchers want to take a car which could in theory drive itself and have it pass its decisions on to a blind human as directions.
Virginia Tech first created a dune buggy as part of a feasibility study that used sensor lasers and cameras to act as the eyes of the vehicle. A vibrating vest was used to direct the driver to speed up, slow down or make turns.
The blind organization was impressed by the results and urged the researchers to keep pushing. The results will be demonstrated next January on a modified Ford Escape sport utility vehicle
at the Daytona International Speedway before the Rolex 24 race.
The latest vehicle will use nonvisual interfaces to help a blind driver operate the car. One interface, called DriveGrip, uses gloves with vibrating motors on areas that cover the knuckles. The vibrations signal to the driver when and where to turn.
Another interface, called AirPix, is a tablet about half the size of a sheet of paper with multiple air holes, almost like those found on an air hockey game. Compressed air coming out of the device helps inform the driver of his or her surroundings, essentially creating a map of the objects around a vehicle. It would show whether there’s another vehicle in a nearby lane or an obstruction in the road.
So let me get this straight, the blind human can’t see where they’re going in order to verify the car computer’s proposals, and would instead just be doing what the computer tells them to do, effectively adding a delay to the computer doing whatever it thinks is the right course of action, whilst also adding an extra potential point of error if the human inevitably ends up doing something which the computer didn’t request.
Quite frankly, the idea of cars driving themselves scares me enough given the fact that I have spent far too much time in my professional career and personal time troubleshooting why computers won’t do as they are expected. Admittedly, most of the time if the problem is truly due to “computer error” and not the operator pushing the wrong buttons, then the “computer error” is generally more accurately described as a “programmer error”. Traditionally, this isn’t a life-threatening problem…but when the error surfaces in the subroutine responsible for handling animals running on to the road at night in the wet when another car just veered in to your lane to avoid the animal and you’ve got a five zillion tonne petrol tanker tailgating you…how do you spell “catastrophe” again?
Once you add the delay of having a human merely follow the orders of the computer…do you see my point or should I find a way to spell “catastrophe” in a bigger way?
The argument which is often thrown back at me when I mention my issues with computers driving cars either directly or by proxy is that they’ve been flying aeroplanes for years. In many ways this is true, but aeroplanes also tend to operate in an environment where there is a much greater acceptable margin of error. On the road if a computer decides to accelerate harshly in traffic, it will be only moments before there is a collision. In an aeroplane, if a computer puts the aeroplane in to a nosedive, there is time for a human to assume manual control of the aircraft and avoid a collision.
Quite frankly, I would much rather teach dogs to drive cars manually than to have computers driving cars or (worse still) people, blind or otherwise, controlling a car at the pure behest of a computer. Dogs do, after all, possess some intelligence and an ability to learn…who knows, perhaps guide dogs could become chauffeurs for the blind. It certainly seems like a more sensible prospect than having a computer dictate every driving action to a person who has no way of knowing if the computer has even the faintest clue what it’s on about.
Police press releases are usually written in strange and peculiar ways so as to not influence court proceedings; I accept and respect this, but I can’t stand it when they enter the realm of the indecipherable. Yesterday the NSW Police Media Unit produced a perfect example.
Teenager critically injured after falling from moving car – Broken Hill
Sunday, 20 Jun 2010 03:44pm
A man has been critically injured after falling from a moving vehicle in the state’s far west.
Two male youths were consuming alcohol at a party in Duff Street, Broken Hill, with a number of other people overnight.
About 2.30am today, a 17-year-old male youth left the party in a green Daewoo sedan.
Witnesses have told police they saw a second 17-year-old male youth travelling on the back section of the vehicle.
A short time later, the teenager fell from the vehicle onto the bitumen roadway.
The teenager suffered critical head injuries and was taken by NSW Ambulance Paramedics to Broken Hill Base Hospital for emergency treatment.
He has since been transferred to The Royal Adelaide Hospital.
The driver of the vehicle – who failed to stop at the scene – was arrested at a residence in Ryan Lane, Broken Hill, and taken to the local hospital for mandatory blood and urine tests.
No charges have been laid at this stage and investigations are continuing.
Anyone who witnessed the incident and hasn’t already spoken with police is urged to contact Broken Hill Police Station via Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Right…did you get that? You can re-read it if you like, but I doubt it will help. I tried that and was left with even more questions. Let’s take it from the top.
Teenager critically injured after falling from moving car – Broken Hill
Sunday, 20 Jun 2010 03:44pm
A man has been critically injured after falling from a moving vehicle in the state’s far west.
A man? The title said “teenager”. The two aren’t mutually exclusive as two of the teenage years do coincide with adulthood, but still it is odd for the police to refer to adults as teenagers.
Two male youths were consuming alcohol at a party in Duff Street, Broken Hill, with a number of other people overnight.
Convoluted…how about “people consumed alcohol at a party in Duff Street, Broken Hill overnight” instead? As it happens, this line does lead to something, but it’s still a very strange line.
About 2.30am today, a 17-year-old male youth left the party in a green Daewoo sedan.
Witnesses have told police they saw a second 17-year-old male youth travelling on the back section of the vehicle.
OK, let’s call the first 17-year-old male “Male #1” and the other one “Male #2”. I immediately have to ask how Male #1 left in the Daewoo, as the driver or as a passenger? Normally the police will indicate if a given person was driving when they mention them in relation to a car.
A short time later, the teenager fell from the vehicle onto the bitumen roadway.
That would be Male #2, or so I’m inclined to assume.
The teenager suffered critical head injuries and was taken by NSW Ambulance Paramedics to Broken Hill Base Hospital for emergency treatment.
He has since been transferred to The Royal Adelaide Hospital.
The driver of the vehicle – who failed to stop at the scene – was arrested at a residence in Ryan Lane, Broken Hill, and taken to the local hospital for mandatory blood and urine tests.
“The driver”? But we haven’t established who, if anyone, from the rest of the story was driving (or alleged to have been driving, as the case may be).
No charges have been laid at this stage and investigations are continuing.
I suspect that this is the cause of the incomprehensible nature of the press release. The police haven’t charged anyone with anything and therefore can’t allege that anyone did anything in particular.
All that the press release really tells us is that two youths, possibly Male #1 and Male #2, were drinking at a party. Male #1 left in a car that he may or may not have been driving. Male #2 was on the back of the car, fell off and received injuries. A man, as opposed to a youth, may also have fallen from the back of a car and received injuries, but we really don’t know much about that.
By inference we can conclude that the arrested person, whom we know was driving the car from which Male #2 fell, probably passed their blood and urine tests as they would have otherwise been charged with drink-driving. It’s interesting that the police don’t make mention of this though. Surely they could say that the test was positive, negative or that the result had not arrived.
The real question for me though is why Police Media would produce a press release as ridiculous as this…a press release which is going to have the media interpreting it and drawing their own conclusions (the most likely one being that Male #1 is the driver…something which the police were careful to avoid saying) when they could have simply said, in a handful more words, that “a 17-year-old male fell from the back of a Daewoo sustaining head injuries, said male is in hospital, police request witnesses to call Crime Stoppers”? It would have made a lot more sense, avoided any potential legal problems, and said everything that it needed to say.
My theory is that they drafted it on the assumption that they would charge the driver with something…then didn’t charge the driver, and made a few quick alterations to the draft which removed problematic references but left a thoroughly perplexing story. Why the media unit then went ahead and released it is beyond me…but then again, so is the question of why I’ve dedicated almost 1000 words of a blog post to deciphering this nonsense.
These are the mysteries which keep me awake in the morning when I should be getting some sleep in preparation for a night shift.
I often look through the statistics for this blog to see what pages have been linking to here and what people are searching for in order to get here. The information generally informs me about what subjects interest people and often lead me to interesting bits of information on other websites. Today is no exception.
Yesterday somebody landed here after searching for information about a rumour about 2UE’s Stuart Bocking. I won’t mention the rumour because it is patently false and absurd, but the search query did interest me so I checked it out myself and, on the first page of results, found this gem from New South Wales Government Hansard from the 13th of May 2008, which had me in hysterics. Enjoy!
GOVERNMENT OPERATING SURPLUS
The Hon. GREG PEARCE: My question is directed to the Treasurer. Does the Treasurer recall the statement in the Stokes and Vertigan audit of New South Wales Government finances that:
The government should build an operating surplus of at least $1 billion to fund the State’s expanded Capital Works Program.
That was on page 8. Noting that the Government’s response failed to address this recommendation at all, what is the Government’s target operating surplus?
The Hon. MICHAEL COSTA: The honourable member has raised an important point and it is one that we will cover in the budget this year. Budget Paper No. 2 will give a full and transparent account of the state of the State’s finances. It is interesting that the honourable member has asked me a different question—it is not about fiscal targets this time. I suppose it reflects the fact he has now been lifted from 19 to 15 in the shadow Cabinet as part of the recent change that occurred when Peter Debnam decided that he could not support the Opposition’s backflip on energy policy. It is interesting that the movement from 19 to 15 has not helped lift his public profile. The other night there was a quiz on Stuart Bocking’s show on 2UE about who the shadow Treasurer was.
The Hon. Greg Pearce: Point of order: The question was very specific. It related to a recommendation of the Stokes and Vertigan report and the target operating surplus.
The PRESIDENT: Order! I ask the Treasurer to be generally relevant.
The Hon. MICHAEL COSTA: There was a quiz to name the shadow Treasurer of New South Wales. They sought an answer for 12 minutes. Thirteen people rang up and could not come up with his name. Some of the guesses were Stoner Anthony, whoever that is, Wayne Swan, Michael Egan, Julian Skinner, and two calls on Barry O’Farrell. The presenter had to suggest listeners think of Michael Costa’s opposite number in the Parliament as it should be etched in everybody’s mind. Of course it was not. They even asked a reporter who covers the State parliamentary round, Latika Bourke, who it was and her response was—
The Hon. Matthew Mason-Cox: Point of order: I ask you to interrupt the Treasurer’s diatribe and bring him back to the question. Let us have some relevance to the question.
The PRESIDENT: Order! I ask the Treasurer to continue to be generally relevant.
The Hon. MICHAEL COSTA: Latika Bourke covers the State parliamentary round but she said to the presenter, “Look, you’re killing me. I don’t know who it is. I thought it was Barry O’Farrell.” Then someone said maybe it’s Malcolm Turnbull. A guy named Tom rang in and said it was Mike Griffiths. Somebody else rang in and then Bocking had to give a hint. He said that his first name was Greg—so he gave the audience a hint about who the shadow Treasurer was. The next caller rang in and said, “Is it Greg Knowles?” Then it was “Greg Alpine”. Finally the presenter had to give in and tell them it was Greg Pearce. The presenter finished up by saying, “He’s missing in action. Where is this man? He’s been a member of the Legislative Council since 2000. I’d say, based on this, he hasn’t done a whole lot while he’s been there.” That sums up the career of Greg Pearce.
Some days I wonder why we even bother having Question Time other than to keep the parliamentary staff awake. Think about it…when was the last time that we actually found out anything useful in question time? Any question on-notice receives an incomprehensible answer from the responsible department, and any question without notice simply turns in to a mud-slinging match with bonus points for interjections.
What’s the point of Question Time when The Daily Telegraph can find out more information more quickly and present it in a more understandable and relevant format? Surely that hour each day of the already scarce amount of time allocated to sessions of parliament would be better utilised by the standard job of parliament…the act of governing by debating and voting on bills. At least then we might be able to work out why we’re paying these people, even if the majority of the general public can’t name the bloke that the opposition would put in charge of paying them.
In the middle of last month, the ACT Government introduced some new road rules which, for the most part, seem to be designed to make it harder to find a spot to park.
The changes to the rules surrounding parking in parking bays are enough to do your head in, especially the bit which tries to differentiate a carpark from a driveway:
This rule also applies in car parks which have internal access driveways that have the appearance of a street or road. If there is no street or road sign, the area is considered to be part of the car park and, as such, parking is allowed in parking bays only.
I’m sorry, but how would you legally define “internal access driveways that have the appearance of a street or road”? Does the driveway have to be a certain length, meaning that I have to get out my tape measure before parking there, and that I could find myself dealing with the even more complicated world of working out what constitutes a “length of road”?
For the purpose of this rule, a “length of road” is considered to be any part of the road between two neighbouring intersections or between an intersection and the end of the length of road.
Ummm, right. A circular reference in a definition. A “length of road” is everything between an intersection and the end of the thing which we haven’t defined yet. Uh huh, I see…good luck to the poor sod that the government send to court to try and defend that one when it gets challenged.
I’m also amused by the fact that it seems that anything I paint on to the surface of the road can be considered a “traffic island”. I would imagine that there is a law against me painting the road, but that doesn’t appear to invalidate whatever I paint, for as long as it remains painted.
A motorist may not stop or park a vehicle on an area that has stripes or chevrons (coloured markings) painted on the ground, or surrounded by a line or lines (whether or not broken). This only applies if the stripes or chevrons are in any colour that contrasts with the road or car park surface. Part of the surround may be kerb or structure.
Of course it is nice to know that if I take up horse riding, I can be immune to the traffic island rules as long as I don’t give the horse a motor. But seriously, who writes this drivel? How much do they get paid? And how do I get in on the act?
Just on the subject of the talking clock. George doesn’t always tick over properly at the time when daylight saving starts or ends. I sat up one night a few years ago and listened to George as daylight saving ended and he didn’t change to the correct hour. The next morning he was engaged for an hour or so while Telstra wound him back a bit.
I hope you guys get to enjoy the extra hour of sleep.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
***
They think it’s a bit sad that I’d sit up for changes in the talking clock. They’re probably right.
On that note, I’ve been thinking for some time of doing an hour as a talking clock myself just to see if I’d last. It might be worth a shot on Tuesday afternoon if I don’t get distracted by other things. If and when I do it, I’ll stream it live for the fun of it.
I had to do a double-take when I heard this one. It seems that the bacon is airborne and a highly contagious bout of sanity has broken out in South Africa. Students are protesting about a musician being let out of jail…yes, you read that correctly, they’re protesting about a musician being let out, not being locked up, but being let out.
Students in South Africa have thrown stones at police and a court where a musician accused of killing four school pupils in a car race was freed on bail.
Police fired water canon at some 2,000 protesters. Some threatened to burn the Soweto home of hip-hop performer Molemo Maarohanye, known as Jub Jub.
There were similar clashes at his initial court appearance on Wednesday, when police fired rubber bullets.
The judge said Jub Jub and his co-accused should move during the trial.
In granting bail of 10,000 rand ([USD]$1,360; £900), judge Andre Auret said he was aware that the safety of Jub Jub and fellow accused Themba Tshabalala was at risk.
“[But] I am convinced they have means to protect themselves in various ways – to name only one, they could resettle somewhere else until the case is finalised,” he said.
Apparently the members of the judicial system have some sort of natural resistance to this particular strain of sanity. I always thought that the judicial system was supposed to protect people, even those who have been accused of crimes…how this protects anyone, accused or protesters, is beyond me.
I also fail to see how a 900 pound bail is going to act as a deterrent to a wealthy musician to skip the country…but if I keep trying to apply logic to the decisions of the South African justice system, I’ll just make my headache worse.
Kevin Rudd, commenting on the similarities between his problems in making parliament do as he says, and Obama’s predicament in passing his agenda in the US:
“But he has health reform on his agenda on Washington. We have health and hospitals reform on our agenda here in Australia. He has a thing called a troublesome Senate.
“I have a troublesome Senate as well.”
Kevin Rudd was commenting on how he understands the reason for Obama’s delayed visit and how “Australia would fit in with the President’s timetable”. So does Kevin really think that bowing to Obama (that would make a change from Obama’s habit of bowing to everyone…maybe we can have a bow-off) and insulting his own Senate will make the Senate more likely to agree with him, or is his plan to somehow make Obama the new Australian Senate?
I’m not a big fan of air travel. I’m not what you would call a “nervous flyer” but I’m not really at ease on aeroplanes either. I just don’t like the idea of having that much distance between myself and the ground, and the air pressure changes annoy me along with the bits of turbulence…flying through cloud bothers me because it removes my ability to check that we’re still a reasonable distance off the ground, and then, well this will sound nuts, but there are no signposts at 40,000 feet, and so the lack of noticeable direction bothers me.
Anyway, with that in mind, you can probably understand how something like this disturbs me in more ways than I dare to count.
An investigation is underway after a child was heard giving instructions to a pilot from the air-traffic control tower at one of America’s busiest airports.
In a recording that has been confirmed as genuine by the Federal Aviation Administration, the child makes five transmissions from John F Kennedy International Airport — with the pilots in each case all responding enthusiastically to him.
The child is clearly under supervision and being fed lines, but even so, should not be in that position. Whilst the fact that a child was in a position to give orders to pilots is a concern unto itself, the fact that the child speaks, like most children, in a not-entirely-clear voice, is a bigger concern to me due to the increased likelihood of a misunderstanding.
This disturbs me too much to think about, so I’ll turn my attention to something more palatable: the TV news set in the video.
Admittedly at this size it doesn’t come up all that brilliantly, but it’s an interesting set due to the way that it’s designed to have many different angles which all look vastly different, unlike many news sets which are designed to look like you’re stuck in one corner of a room.
I’ve highlighted the important bits here. The Red box shows the female anchor who is presenting to the camera in front of her. The view has changed changed from the camera in front of her to this overview camera, and in a moment it will zoom in on the green box where a reporter is standing in front of another camera and is about to present to it. In the yellow box, a male anchor is standing by for his next appearance.
Given the shape of the set, it wouldn’t surprise me if off-screen there is another part of the set which is used as a backdrop for some other locally-produced program. It’s not uncommon for sets to be used for multiple shows, but it is fascinating to see a single set used for the one program but with a completely different “look” depending on the angle, and especially fascinating to see the overview of the set.
Or maybe I’m just easily distracted in an effort to not be disturbed by the news story.
And it’s not as if you even need to check the news or Exhibition Park to know it. It may be under new management, but it hasn’t attracted a less hoonish crowd. (As in previous years, I am not implying that all attendees are hoons or acting like idiots, so don’t even go there.)
The increase in buffoonery on the roads of Canberra…well the inner north at least, is quite noticeable. Dickson around lunchtime was pretty bizarre from what I saw, and when I took Nattie for a walk this evening, Ainslie Avenue and surrounds weren’t an awful lot better. Notably, the majority of people that I noticed doing bizarre and stupid things had interstate number plates.
A word to the foolish (because the wise don’t need words): the police have the power to confiscate vehicles and it really is a long walk back to pretty much anywhere from Canberra. I should know, given that I walked and hitch-hiked back to Canberra from Sydney in March last year.
That’s a headline you’d never see in New South Wales, but it’s the state of affairs in Arizona where the whole implementation seems to be so badly botched that the speed camera program may very well be axed.
PHOENIX (AP) — More than a year after Arizona became the first state in the country to deploy dozens of speed cameras on highways statewide, threats to the groundbreaking program abound.
Profits are far below expectations, a citizen effort to ban the cameras is gaining steam, the governor has said she does not like the program, and more and more drivers are ignoring the tickets they get in the mail after hearing from fellow speeders that there are often no consequences to doing so.
“I see all the cameras in Arizona completely coming down ” in 2010, said Shawn Dow, chairman of Arizona Citizens Against Photo Radar, which is trying to get a measure banning the cameras on the November ballot. “The citizens of Arizona took away the cash cow of Arizona by refusing to pay.”
The Arizona Department of Public Safety introduced the cameras in September 2008 and slowly added more until all 76 were up and running by January.
Supporters say the cameras slow down drivers and reduce accidents, but opponents argue that they are intrusive and are more about making money than safety.
[..]
The cameras led to more than 700,000 tickets to drivers going 11 miles per hour or more over the speed limit from September 2008 to September 2009, the most recent data available, according to the Department of Public Safety. The mandated fines and surcharges on all those tickets would total more than $127 million, but they had generated just $36.8 million through September, Lieutenant [Jeff] King [photo enforcement district commander for the Department of Public Safety] said.
Some of the people who got those tickets are contesting them in court and could end up having to pay the fine, but many of them have gone unpaid because drivers know they have a good shot at getting away with ignoring them. When people get tickets, they can pay without question, request a court date and fight the ticket, or simply ignore the ticket because law enforcement cannot prove they received it. The ticket becomes invalid if a violator who ignores it is not served in person within three months. It is nearly impossible to say how many people have ignored their tickets because courts do not track the figure.
Yeesh. Over here the authorities just assume that you receive the notice and suspend your licence if you don’t pay. It seems to me that this is the main cause of the apparent failure of the speed camera program. If the tickets were enforced, people would be paying them.
Somebody really stuffed the implementation of this program…I wonder who it could be?
While certain to increase, that $36.8 million in revenue through September will still fall far below the $120 million a year that former Gov. Janet Napolitano hoped to put in the state’s coffers when she ordered up the program in early 2007.
Oh…well that explains it. Janet Napolitano, the Obama administration’s National Security Nit-Wit (as Mark Levin so accurately put it yesterday)…the woman who said “the system worked” after a terrorist managed to get explosives on-board an aeroplane and use them on a flight in to Detroit on Christmas Day. The only reason many people didn’t die on that day is the heroic actions of other passengers.
Clearly Janet Napolitano’s definition of “work/worked/working” in the case of national security and for speed camera programs differs from the definition which can be found in English dictionaries.
When I was gasping in disbelief about how slow the Associated Press and other national news agencies were this morning in covering the Las Vegas courthouse shooting, I completely lost it and burst out laughing when I saw a particular story from AP on the CBS website which was about three and a half months late.
Yes, you read that right…three and a half months late!
On September 24 last year, the Sun newspaper in the UK ran a story about the people who live underground in Las Vegas which was subsequently picked up by The Drudge Report and led to an hysterical conversation between KXNT’s Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd:
Lost Vegas
From PETE SAMSON
US Editor
in Nevada
Published: 24 Sep 2009
LOVEBIRDS Steven and Kathryn share a well-organised home in bustling Las Vegas.
They have a neat, if compact kitchen, a furnished living area, and a bedroom complete with double bed, wardrobe and bookshelf featuring a wide selection including a Frank Sinatra biography and Spanish phrase book.
And they make their money in some of the biggest casinos in the world.
But their life is far from the ordinary.
Because, along with hundreds of others, the couple are part of a secret community living in the dark and dirty underground flood tunnels below the famous strip.
Rather than working in the bars or kitchens they “credit hustle”, prowling the casinos searching the fruit machines for money or credits left by drunken gamblers.
Despite the risks from disease, highly venomous spiders and flooding washing them away, many of the tunnel people have put together elaborate camps with furniture, ornaments and shelves filled with belongings.
Casey and Heather’s conversation about the “zombies” of Las Vegas was so amusing that the story stuck in my head quite prominently. So you can imagine how surprised I was when I spotted this story from AP on the CBS website this morning:
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 4, 2010 Las Vegas Tunnels a Refuge for Homeless
Hundreds, Many Struggling with Addictions, Live in a Pitch-Black World, Surviving Off the Excesses of the Strip Above
(AP) Underneath its glitzy casinos, far from the bright marquees, there is another Las Vegas, a pitch-black, dank underworld virtually unknown and unseen by those who live, work and play above.
About 300 people – mostly men battling demons of various addictions – live in the underground storm system built to protect the desert playground from the infrequent cloudburst.
There’s no sign or word of welcome down here. Drug use is nearly universal. Most people carry makeshift weapons and the police don’t often come unless they’re called.
But the denizens have found a haven in the labyrinth of concrete tunnels that snake beneath the city and its suburbs.
I suppose it’s possible that the Associated Press don’t believe in electricity and had to have the story sent from the UK by boat before they could consider running a similar story…but seriously, three and a half months to run a story? I don’t care why it took that long…that’s just late, so late that the late note from Mummy Associated Press just can’t be accepted.
