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10 Most Amazing Ghost Towns
The Kowloon Walled City was located just outside Hong Kong, China during British rule. A former watchpost to protect the area against pirates, it was occupied by Japan during World War II and subsequently taken over by squatters after Japan’s surrender. Neither Britain nor China wanted responsibility for it, so it became its own lawless city.
Its population flourished for decades, with residents building labyrinthine corridors above the street level, which was clogged with trash. The buildings grew so tall that sunlight couldn’t reach the bottom levels and the entire city had to be illuminated with fluorescent lights. It was a place where brothels, casinos, opium dens, cocaine parlors, food courts serving dog meat and secret factories ran unmolested by authorities. It was finally torn down in 1993 after a mutual decision was made by British and Chinese authorities, who had finally grown wary of the unsanitary, anarchic city and its out-of-control population. null
Wow, Kowloon looks like something out of Blade Runner. Kind of like the alleys of of Shinjuku if you turned the power off!
Reports: Crandall Canyon doomed by poor design, inadequate oversight - Salt Lake Tribune
MSHA levied $1.6 million in fines against mine operator Genwal Resources, Inc. for a series of violations it characterized as highly negligent and showing reckless disregard. It also fined the company's engineering firm, Agapito Associates Inc., $220,000 for showing reckless disregard in its design. Assistant Labor Secretary Richard Stickler said it is the largest fine the agency has levied in a coal mine disaster.
Gee. Kill 6 people, get a $1.8 million dollar fine? That's all? Let's see what happens in the wrongful death lawsuits... Tort reform! Tort Reform! Go screw.
A second Federal Communications Commission Democrat voted against Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.'s plan to buy XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., leaving the merger's fate to the sole undecided Republican.
Democrat Jonathan Adelstein, who voted against the $3.5 billion merger today, said in an e-mailed statement that the combination would create ``a monopoly with window dressing.'' Fellow Democrat Michael Copps already voted no.
Two Republican commissioners, Chairman Kevin Martin and Robert McDowell, have backed the merger, leaving the outcome to the agency's fifth member, Deborah Taylor Tate, a Republican who has yet to vote. A telephone call to her office wasn't returned. Reuters reported Tate is nearing a ``yes'' vote, without saying where it got the information.
``Commissioner Adelstein would only cast a dissenting vote once it was fairly clear that Commissioner Tate would support the deal,'' Paul Gallant, a former FCC official and Washington- based analyst with Stanford Washington Research Group, said in an interview. He continues to predict approval.
Commissioners, who face no deadline for a decision, vote electronically at the time of their choosing.
Traditional radio companies led by the National Association of Broadcasters oppose the merger, saying it will create a harmful monopoly. Sirius and XM, the only two pay-radio companies, told regulators their union would bring consumers more programming at a lower cost.
``a monopoly with window dressing?'' These are pay services... I don't understand what the squib is all about!
Marc Ambinder (July 22, 2008) - McCain Disputes Obama Account Of The Surge
Couric: Senator McCain, Senator Obama says, while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response to that? McCain: I don't know how you respond to something that is as-- such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane [phonetic] was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others.
Waitawhataminute? Because of the surge we what? Oh, you mean this guy? Yeah, we did a great job protecting him.
Let's get the facts straight. First, one of the primary generators of the "Anbar Awakening" was that they were pissed off about the Al-Q in Iraq types not caring who they blew up, Sunni, Shiite, US troops, didn't matter. Part two was us giving them cash, guns and ammo without strings to police their own area, and we cut our actions in the area down to going after the Al-Q in Iraq types. That had ZERO to do with the surge.
Second, if anything the surge has HURT that movement by redirecting the money and troops out of Anbar and into Baghdad.
Third, the point of the surge was to buy time and improve stability for the Iraqi government to get their shit together and take over their own immediate security. On that level, the surge has been a complete failure. The casualty rates hit a marked decline in October of last year, but those are US casualties, not Iraqi casualties for which we can't get numbers. In the meantime, there has been little to no motion from the Iraqi government, except for some no-bid contracts given to Exxon, Shell etc. for maintenance on oil facilities that aren't safe to go to. In the meantime, we can't get agreement on what happens after the end of the year when the UN mandate we used to go in expires.
In the meantime, we're losing the war in Afghanistan. Casualty numbers there are up, the Taliban is in resurgence, and the real Al-Qaeda is in full swing.
Between this, the Irag-Parkistan border comment the other day, Czechoslovakia, the repeated lack of knowledge on who is supporting whom in Iraq (then getting corrected and screwing it up again), getting pretty much everything backwards on the economy, the gas tax holiday, drilling expansion that won't change the price of diddly squat, the birth control/Viagra thing, and god only knows what else, I'm starting to wonder if we're looking at Alzheimer's. He gets told one thing and something else comes out.
This is not an "age" question. This is someone who no longer appears to have command of his mental faculties.
From the fine folks that brought us "get perpendicular" about perpendicular magnetic recording for hard drives, here's a piece about how big a terabyte is.
Lisdexamfetamine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lisdexamfetamine (L-lysine-d-amphetamine) is an inactive molecule prodrug (brand name Vyvanse) consisting of the psychostimulant d-amphetamine coupled with the essential amino acid L-lysine. Lisdexamfetamine was developed so that the psychostimulant is released and activated more slowly as the prodrug molecule is hydrolyzed—consequently cleaving off the amino acid-during the first pass through the intestines and/or the liver. Essentially, this makes lisdexamfetamine an extended-release formulation of d-amphetamine; however, the release characteristics are integral to the molecule itself, rather than simply the pill construction.
Adults should keep the phone away from the head and use the speakerphone or a wireless headset, he says. He even warns against using cell phones in public places such as a bus, because it exposes others to the phone's electromagnetic fields.
What alarmism! Give me a BREAK. I'm not a physicist, but isn't there something called the Inverse-square law of light/EM intensity that would protect the other passengers of the bus? Or are we all so allergic to the EM we've been exposed to for about 100 years now that a tiny dose of EM from several feet away is going to hurt us?
Costa Rica is not known for offering tremendous size in its waves, but rather, consistent head-high surf at any time of the year. Many people think that the best way of surfing in Costa Rica is to rent a car and try to follow the surf. This, with very few exceptions, is the best way to spend a lot of unnecessary time in your car and miss the waves. Costa Rica's surf areas are defined by location and seasons which make surfing in Costa Rica very user friendly.
Op-Ed Columnist - ROGER COHEN - Karadzic and War’s Lessons - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
After covering a war, a friend said, buy yourself a house. I did. I came to this French village where church bells chime the rhythm of the days, married here, raised children and parked Bosnia somewhere in a corner of my mind. ... Nermin Tulic, an actor, his legs blown off by a Serbian shell on June 10, 1992, telling me how he wanted to die until his wife gave birth to their second daughter and his dad told him a child needs his father even if he just sits in the corner.
I took that away from the war: the stubbornness of love.
Amra Dzaferovic, beautiful Amra, telling me in the desperate Sarajevo summer of 1995 that: “Here things are black and white, they are. There is evil and there is good, and the evil is up in the hills. So when you say you are just a journalist, an observer, I understand you, but I still hate you. Yes, I hate you.”
I took that away from the war: the fierceness of moral clarity.
Pale Faruk Sabanovic watching a video of the moment he was shot in Sarajevo and saying: “If I remain a paraplegic, I will be better, anyhow, than the Serb who shot me. I will be clean in my mind, clean with respect to others, and clean with respect to this dirty world.”
I took that away from the war: the quietness of courage.
Ron Neitzke, noblest of American diplomats, handing me his excoriation of the U.S. government and State Department for “repeatedly and gratuitously dishonoring the Bosnians in the very hour of their genocide” and urging future Foreign Service officers to be “guided by the belief that a policy fundamentally at odds with our national conscience cannot endure indefinitely — if that conscience is well and truthfully informed.”
I took that away from the war: the indivisibility of integrity and the importance of a single dissenting voice.
