A vegetarian who wears leather boots. Yoga in the morning and shots at night. Self-reliant, easy-going, self-assured, resourceful, forceful, competent, exacting, lazy on Sundays.
 I've never seen these before. It's not surprising that HD doesn't showcase these bad boys. Photo of the 1905 Harley-Davidson above is from.The Early Harley-Davidson Motorcycle, showcased with other Harleys from 1905 to 1975. You can see the evolution of a motorized bicycle into the motorcycle it is today. |
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On Monday Venice, Italy experienced the deepest flood in almost twenty-five years. This is just one of the amazing pictures taken. See the rest here.
Found via Xoost.
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Oto-Shigure, a high-tech umbrella that functions as a personal audio speaker system, gives music lovers a reason to dance in the rain. Developed by Keio University and IT company Toa Engineering, Oto-Shigure looks like an ordinary traditional Japanese umbrella made of bamboo and oiled paper, but the entire object emits sound when connected to an iPod or other portable audio device, thanks to a tiny built-in amplifier and four small vibrating motors mounted along the periphery, which effectively turn the canopy into a large speaker cone. The umbrella produces a highly localized three-dimensional sound space audible only to the people underneath, so it can be used in public without disturbing the peace.
After filing a patent application for Oto-Shigure last September, inventors Yusuke Kamiyama and Mai Tanaka worked with Toa Engineering to complete a prototype earlier this year. They are now showing it off to the public to gauge user interest. If the response is positive, they plan to begin selling the audio umbrella next year for under 10,000 yen ($100).
[Source: Asahi]
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Here’s
a great article on Prop 4, and why Californians should vote No.
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_10112616?nclick_check=1
And here’s why I am voting No.
I am absolutely and unshakably convinced that this will do a lot more harm than good—and I have doubts that any good would come out of passing this measure. Girls already go to their parents; obviously, since teen pregnancy is such a problem. It’s not as if they can hide a late-term pregnancy, not to mention birth. Those who couldn’t or wouldn’t go to their parents for whatever reason, imagined or not, could very well take it into their heads to try something dangerous. I remember what it was like to be thirteen, fifteen, seventeen years old, seeing or hearing about another girl becoming pregnant.
When I was in junior high school an older girl was voted “High Tower Queen” (a junior version of the prom). She was eight months pregnant at the time. This was obviously high profile for a bunch of twelve- to fourteen-year-olds, who talked it over endlessly: “What would you do if it was you?” There were hot debates about whether you should run away, try to get married first, and how you would “get rid of it”. We would’ve thought the baseball bat mentioned in the article a fantastic idea. From running away to punching yourself in the stomach every morning and evening (or having your friends do it), surely the most idiotic idea was that of jumping in front of a car. We actually argued about how fast the car should be moving, how high off the ground it had to be, and when the best time to jump out into traffic was to survive—and be sure that it worked. No one talked about abortion.
When I was in high school, there were a few pregnant girls, two or three every year, who would either drop out or continue classes until birth. Either way, we all heard about it. And while the stories weren’t quite as idiotic as the ones we had when we were younger, we told each other stories about homes for pregnant teens where our parents would never be able to find us. All you had to do was give a false name. We talked about street kids—the homeless kids we saw in Hollywood. They were so glamorous and cool. They were safe because they were together. Again, no one talked about abortion. Almost no one, anyway: any mention was dismissed because we were all positive the doctor would tell our parents, and paying for it ourselves was out of the question. Who had hundreds of dollars? Some of us thought it was probably more expensive than breast implants.
Is this just teenage drama? You bet. But teenagers do stupid, stupid things all of the time. Scared teenagers are even more likely to lose their heads and do something brainless. The ones that instinctively trust their parents will tell them. For those who can’t even imagine trusting their parents, no law will force them to. You won’t be doing them any favors with this law.
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The Institute for the Future's new game, 'Superstruct,' posits that humanity may be extinct by 2042 and that only stories submitted by players can mitigate the dangers of five so-called superthreats.
(Credit: Institute for the Future)If you knew the human race was facing imminent extinction, what would you do?
For the folks at the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based think tank, creating a fictional scenario in which five "superthreats" have coalesced in 2019 to augur the end of the human race by 2042 became the basis for a new alternate-reality game (ARG) in which players the world over have been weighing in with ideas for staving off disaster.
The game the IFTF created, known as Superstruct, launched October 6, and is the first of what could be many so-called massively multiplayer forecasting games. The idea behind Superstruct and others that could follow it is to leverage the wisdom of the crowds to come up with solutions to complicated problems and do so in a fun, challenging, and entertaining way that encourages people's participation.
The five superthreats include "quarantine," which involves "declining health and pandemic disease," "ravenous," which deals with the world's collapsing food system, "power struggle," which revolves around declining energy and the fight over remaining energy resources, "outlaw planet," which focuses on the erosion of civil rights and "generation exile," which looks at the worldwide "diaspora of diasporas," or a worldwide refugee epidemic.
And it may be working. Already, the game--which ends November 17--has more than 5,000 players from across the globe who have contributed hundreds of ideas, in the form of stories, intended to mitigate the coming faux-disaster.
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Florida Clergy for Fairness, a group of clergy from several denominations, charge that Amendment 2 is mean-spirited and an infringement upon the religious freedoms of all Floridians.
Said Rabbi Jack Romberg, of Temple Israel in Tallahassee: ''To pass Amendment 2 is to use religion to demonize another human being,'' he said. ``That is simply unjust and immoral.''
Convention delegates also could consider a referendum to allow "direct initiative" — a mechanism for citizens to bring issues directly to referendum in the future.Opponents of the SC ruling are hoping that voting in such a measure will lead to a ban being written into the state's constitution. That won't be easy, and may not even happen, depending on which delegates are elected to the convention.
Amending the constitution would also require a statewide vote. Dys said such a vote should take place next year, when no legislative seats are up for election, so "no politician should fear displacement from their current position, should that be of any concern," his letter said.
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Hah! I love this site’s ads. Find the rest of the phases here. And don’t miss 10 Reasons it Would Rule to Date a Unicorn.
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