tivoli_mike
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Posts posted by tivoli_mike
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The real question I have is this: why are the powers that be so set against the monorail?
From day one most powerful people around town have been shooting it down and thats why we've had four votes to build it and it h hasn't gotten anywhere while, by contrast, we've voted no on two stadiums that have gotten built. Why are we moving forward on light rail, but not the monorail - is it really an inherently bad idea?
Yes, some say that an elevated line is ugly and they note that Fifth Avenue has suffered from the impact, but hey: a monoral line doesn't block traffic and isn't it much cheaper per mile than light rail? Yes, Ballard to West Seattle may not be the most heavily travelled route in the city, but won't the light rail serve or potentially serve SE and NE Seattle so a line serving NW and SW portionsof the City would seem to compliment that, right?
It seems to me there are plusses and minuses here, but we're not talking about them. It's not about whether the little guy gets screwed when land is condemned -- as we have been discussing here, and I don't think it is about whether the financing package is no good -- as we've been discussing in the media. What are the real issues? Do we really think the monorail board has been incompetent while Sound Transit has been well run?
Nope, its about one transit agency protecting its incumbency and salivating other the taxing capacity that is currently tied up in an unpstart agency. Oh and the Mayor wants his own little trolley to Lake Union. Ding Ding.
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Yep, I am staring at my excise fee for an October renewal right now....
<sigh>
Now we can watch the scramble for the excise taxing authority...can you say viaduct?
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Now it looks like "Brownie" was doing such a "heck of a job", he was pulled off the hurricane recovery efforts and brought back to D.C. ...
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Ah this the "spray" forum, I am sorry you were confused.
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Discuss
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By Brian Thevenot
Staff writer
Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.
"Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated," he said. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."
Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.
"That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."
He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.
"There's an old woman," he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. "I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death," he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.
Brooks and several other Guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40 more bodies in the Convention Center's freezer. "It's not on, but at least you can shut the door," said fellow Guardsman Phillip Thompson.
The scene of rotting bodies inside the Convention Center reflected those in thousands of businesses, schools, homes and shelters across the metropolitan area. The official death count from Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana was 71 as of Monday evening, but that included only those bodies that had been brought to a make-shift morgue in St. Gabriel.
Nearly a full week after Hurricane Katrina, a rescue force the size of an invading army had not yet begun the task of retrieving the bodies Sunday. What's more, officials appeared to have no plan.
Daniel Martinez, a spokesman for FEMA working on Interstate 10 in eastern New Orleans, said plans for body recovery "are not being released yet."
Dozens of rescue workers questioned Monday said they knew of no protocol or collection points for bodies; none said they had retrieved even one of the many corpses seen floating in neighborhoods around the city as they searched for survivors.
Scores of rescue workers this week repeated the same mantra, over and over: We can't worry about the dead; we're still trying to save the living.
But as rescue teams across the city said they had checked nearly every house for survivors, the enormity of the death that lay in Hurricane Katrina's wake came into sharp focus even as the plans for taking care of the dead remained murky.
Mayor Ray Nagin, addressing the potential body count for the storm for the first time, said the storm may have claimed more than 10,000 lives.
In a news conference Monday morning, Deputy Chief Warren Riley said his department was "not responsible for recovery."
"We don't have a body count, but I can tell you it's growing. It's growing," he said.
As the rescue missions covered more and more ground but yielded fewer survivors, New Orleans Police Deputy Chief Steve Nicholas said that the time has come to start dealing with the dead.
"I know we're still rescuing people, but I think it's time we start pulling out the bodies," he said.
The highest concentration of casualties from Hurricane Katrina likely will come in the Lower 9th Ward, St. Bernard Parish, areas first inundated on Aug. 29 with floodwaters that engulfed second story homes in minutes. New Orleans also will likely see mass casualties, New Orleans Police Capt. Timothy Bayard said.
"We're going see a lot more bodies out of New Orleans East than we anticipated," he said.
In just one subdivision, Sherwood Forest, survivors who showed up to the Convention Center on Monday said police told them roughly 90 people in the subdivision had died.
In St. Bernard, 22 bodies were found lashed together. Officials surmised the drowning victims had tried to stay together to keep themselves from being washed away in the storm.
Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu said "more than a thousand" people had died in St. Bernard. "When the death toll comes out, it's going to be a jolt for everybody," he said. "I'll be surprised if the casualties in St. Bernard are less than a thousand."
Even Uptown near the river, one of the few spots of dry land, a body lay in front of a white wooden shotgun double at 4732 Laurel St. The body of an older woman lay under a gray blanket, pinned down at the corners by brick and slate, adorned with a plastic-wrapped flower bouquet. Above her, a yellow cardboard sign quoting John 3:16 had been taped to the window.
Alcede Jackson
Rest in Peace
In the loving arms of Jesus
Given the length of time many had been dead, and in the water, some of the bodies already might be unrecognizable, and some may never be recovered.
Many trapped by flood waters in shelters found their own ways of dealing with those who died in their midst.
Near an elementary school at Poland and St. Claude avenues, Dwight and Wilber Rhodes, two brothers, said they had tried to save a middle-aged man and woman at the Convention Center who appeared to have drowned.
"We performed CPR on them, but they were already dead," Dwight Rhodes said. "So we took the food out of the freezer and put the bodies in."
Of the four bodies that lay just inside the food service entrance of the Convention Center, the woman in the wheelchair rattled Brooks the most. When he found her two days before among the sea of suffering in front of the Convention Center where one of the last refugee camps evacuated, her husband sat next to her. He had only one concern when Brooks and some of his comrades carted her away.
"Bring me back my wheelchair," he recalled the man telling him.
One of the bodies, they said, was a girl they estimated to be 5 years old. Though they could not confirm it, they had heard she was gang-raped.
"There was an old lady that said the little girl had been raped by two or three guys, and that she had told another unit. But they said they couldn't do anything about it with all the people there," Brooks said. "I would have put him in cuffs, stuck him in the freezer and left him there."
Brooks and his unit came to New Orleans not long after serving a year of combat duty in Iraq, taking on gunfire and bombs, while losing comrades with regularity. Still, the scene at the Convention Center, where they conducted an evacuation this week, left him shell-shocked.
"I ain't got the stomach for it, even after what I saw in Iraq," said Brooks, referring to the freezer where the bulk of the bodies sat decomposing. "In Iraq, it's one-on-one. It's war. It's fair. Here, it's just crazy. It's anarchy. When you get down to killing and raping people in the streets for food and water … And this is America. This is just 300 miles south of where I live."
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You know the sadest thing? Louisiana will again vote for the idiot republican that runs in '08 despite getting the major shaft from this administration.
battered state syndrome
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The poor are the people who are used to taking orders, not giving them. All the people who ran New Orleans, who made the everyday decisions, were able to evacuate by car. The ones left were the ones lacking initiative. I don't think anyone should be surprised.
Uh, actually they lacked means.
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He sent out an email spewing his normal stuff
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I can see the flood of inundating insurance premiums coming.
I doubt it. Floods are never covered under standard homeowner's insurance.
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Ah, yes, but you aren't poor or infirm. Florida at least sends in county buses to evacuate those without cars, here was a free-market evacuation
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From a moon landing to guy in the shuttle tapping on the fuel gauge. We've come a long way baby!
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That's Chimacum Rock. It's on private land, but there aren't any no-tresspassing signs and it's climbed on often by locals. There are several bolted routes, ranging from 5.6/7ish to 5.veryhard. Access is via Anderson Lake Rd. Park near a big gate on a logging road.
I like going out there to practice sometimes after work. I'd be happy to partner up if anyone is interested in going sometime. Definitely not a destination, but if your in the area and looking for an after hours diversion...
14/03/2005: International
Woman rescued after hair becomes tangled in rock-climbing gear
CHIMACUM -- A Port Townsend woman in her early 20s was freed with the help of firefighters after her hair became tangled in her climbing gear Saturday while rappelling down Chimacum Rock.
Crews from Jefferson County Fire District 1 went to the scene after the woman's friends had tried for 20 minutes to solve the problem and summoned help with a cell phone.
A duty chief from Jefferson County Fire District 6 also responded.wh
Fire district spokesperson Michele Lalboda said the team of four had been rappelling down the rock's 120-foot face when the woman's hair became entangled in her harness.
Firefighters used a trail on the rock's other side to get to the top and direct the other climbers.
A safety rope was lowered to the woman, who was hanging 35 to 40 feet above the ground.
She clipped into the second rope, relieving the pressure on her primary line and harness.
Then she untangled her hair, and firefighters lowered her to a waiting paramedic.
The woman said she was uninjured and refused treatment and transportation to a hospital.
Firefighters did not release her name. The rescue took about 40 minutes.
Chimacum Rock, accessed off of Anderson Lake Road, is a popular rappelling site.
Firefighters said the incident underscored the wisdom of carrying a cell phone during recreational activities.
Source: peninsuladailynews.com
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Was up at Port Townsend a few weeks ago, and I noticed from the road about 15 miles sout of PT, that there was a cliff/dome structure off to the West. Maybe access from something called Anderson Lake road? Any ideas, Just a few glimpses of it.
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Hmm. Gay marriage and slab climbing.
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After August 1 dogs are no longer allowed in the Seattle Flagship store.
Why is that a bad thing?
Customers couldn't tell the difference between some of the REI branded gear and the steaming piles...
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Hmm. maps.google puts that in Point Defiance park somewhere...
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One of three missing hikers found on Vesper Mountain
02:56 PM PDT on Wednesday, June 22, 2005
KING5.com and NWCN Staff reports
SEATTLE - Searchers in Snohomish Co., Wash. have found a woman, one of three overdue hikers at the Vesper Mountain trailhead, east of Granite Falls on the Mountain Loop Highway.
She was cold wet and hungry but otherwise okay.
All three climbers are in their 20s.
The woman told rescuers she last saw the two men at about 4 or 5 p.m. Tuesday. She stopped and they continued to climb.
Deputy Rich Niebush of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Department said the three apparently left for a day hike at around 5 a.m. Monday.
They left a note inside their car asking that authorities be called if they had not returned from the hike by 8 p.m. When they did not, a friend placed the call and a search started.
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Oregon climber still missing on Mt. McLoughlin
"That shows you that they took some precautions," said Niebusch. "That very well may speak for their experience level."Vesper is considered a technical mountain, meaning expert climbers are needed to perform the search.
Niebusch said about 15-20 members from the Snohomish County Sheriff's Search and Rescue and the Everett Mountain Rescue were looking for the hikers.
Deputies were not sure what kind of outdoor gear the three hikers, said to be from Issaquah, Wash., were carrying.
"Temperatures are obviously warmer this time of year, although you get pretty wet out there," said Niebusch. "It was pretty miserable last night."
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Curious if anyone else has experiences they like to share. As a kid growing up in Frankfurt, there was a fair share of old subway stations, abandoned houses, and factories to run around in. One neat place by Alt Ginnheim, was an old estate from the 1800s ( has been razed since I was there ) with a great old mansion that was mostly burnt out ( although a squatter family did live there ) the surrounding grounds were pretty fun to wander around, with its family graveyard, algae covered swimming pools , and overgrown topriary.
Cool Position of the Sun photos...Analemma
in Spray
Posted
From spaceweather.com
If you took a picture of the Sun at the same time each day, would it remain in the same position? The answer is no, and the figure-8 traced out by the Sun over the course of a year is called an analemma:
The analemma above was created by Iranian astronomer Mohammad Reaza Noroozi. Using a single piece of film, he painstakingly photographed the sun on 45 mornings spanning two years, 2003-2005. The picture was completed with a single exposure of the foreground, a beautiful building in Tehran.
The upper and lower tips of the "8" represent the solstices--the longest and shortest days of the year. Midway between the tips are the equinoxes--when day and night are of equal length. The autumnal equinox, marking the beginning of northern autumn, was yesterday, Sept. 22nd.