Month: May 2008
Magic mulch
Of Grasshoppers
Student: I’d like to be something more than I am.
Master: I’d like to be less.
Take off your pants!
The first Friday in May is always "No Pants Day"! And judging by the gallery, guys love it! (and a couple of women)
Allow digital billboards with caveat
Give the city state or county the ability to push messages to the billboards.
Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterz.
Replies. mp3
Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterz.
I like digital billboards
A good friend of mine and I disagree on this topic. There is a digital billboard at Lovell Road and I think it is far more attractive than the traditional billboards. That said, I think billboards in general are eye sores and blemishes to the landscape; however, they serve a purpose. Without billboards, the alphabet game would take forever! Without billboards, South of the Border would be just another Mexican restaurant. Without billboards, who would buy pecans at warehouses with plantation like facades?! If we aren’t going to make billboards disappear altogether, and I wish we would, let’s give them some utility.
I have a vision for billboards that is in conflict with my normal anti-big brother stance. My vision is right out of Minority Report. If all our billboards were digital, when an Amber Alert happened, every billboard could instantly change to be the same message showing the abductor’s picture, the child’s picture, and a description of the car. If you were driving down the interstate and saw such a message extending from horizon to horizon I think you would be much more aware of that car on the road. The abductor would certainly be moved!
Additionally, I think if cities approve digital billboards, that they should come with an easement that gives the city the right to scroll traffic alerts on the bottom or top of the billboard. We have expensive digital signs across our interstates that warn of traffic times, congestion, detours and so forth. But how many times have you passed the sign to ask your passengers, "Did you catch that?" With an easement on the digital billboards the same message could be presented for miles upon miles and the expense is already being made by the billboard company. I believe it is very win-win!
See also Knoxnews: Digital billboards get several endorsements and Knoxviews:Scenic Knoxville Needs Your Help to Stop Digital Billboards and Knoxvoice:Lights On.
Update: Digital billboards in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina push Amber Alerts but are so bright that they are blinding and damage night vision. Sounds like a road hazard to me but also sounds correctable through standards for brightness or perhaps color choices. Thanks Brettbum!
Don’t yield right of way
Safe driving is predictable driving. Right of way establishes rules for predictability.
Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterz.
Replies. mp3
Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterz.
Web Design as a Pie Chart
Wheeeee!
Oh! Babies bounce! Watch the right side of your screen at second 0:07.
Muslims in western India have been observing a bizarre ritual – they’ve been throwing their young children off a tall building to improve their health. [Source, Reuters, Indian baby dropping ritual]
This makes the hand game look tame!
Rude people
Blogger Party at VS
D.C. Madam “suicide” – Don’t these people watch movies?
When you heard that "[a] court had recently found Deborah Jeane Palfrey guilty of money laundering, racketeering and mail fraud in connection with a high-end prostitution ring operating in Washington D.C." [Source, Truemors], didn’t you just immediately wonder which senator was afraid of having his or her super kinky dungeon fantasies revealed?
Suicide notes were found near the body in a small storage shed next to a mobile home…Palfrey, 52, was reportedly staying at the home of her mother…Prosecutors estimated the sentence she would have likely received would have been…about six years…She argued it was a legitimate, legal escort service. [Source, CNN, ‘D.C. Madam’ found dead]
The low budget spy thriller writes itself.
Obstruction
Your misfortune brings our fortune
I just got solicited by an honest to goodness ambulance chaser! They had their phone number as "private" and even introduced themselves in such a deceptive away as to imply that they might be with one of the insurance companies. I should have responded to her inquiry about my well being with "I’m dead! I saw the light and I just couldn’t go yet. Now I’m stuck! Help me! My family can’t hear me when I talk to them and they look right through me. I can’t touch them. Help me cross over! I don’t belong here!"
I-40 is closed! Stay at home!
Gas is now more expensive than milk and I am tempted to see if my van runs better on whole or 2%.
That’s right! Interstate 40 is closed at downtown Knoxville for 14 months! This could be reason enough for me to stay at home. I highly encourage telecommuting and shopping from home
Traffic Cameras provided by TDOT SmartWay (per linking policy)
View the many other cameras.
I-40 runs the width of the United States starting in my birth town of Wilmington, North Carolina and running all the way to Barstow, California with the most miles of I-40 running through Tennessee. When I lived in Germantown, Tennessee (Memphis) I-40 had a peculiarity, it dead ended at the Memphis Zoo (specifically Overton Park). A roughened road would audibly warn you that the Interstate was coming to a stop and suddenly you were at a traffic light. You’d travel a few blocks on local roads then get back on the interstate again. I even remember discussion of running a tunnel under the zoo. Apparently the northern loop of I-240 (the Memphis bypass) has now been redesignated as I-40.
In Memphis, I-40 was originally intended to go through the city’s Overton Park toward downtown. Several miles of interstate were actually built within the I-240 loop; this portion of highway still exists and is in regular use as Sam Cooper Boulevard, reaching the eastern end of Chickasaw Country Club. Environmentalist opposition, combined with a victory in the United States Supreme Court by opponents of the Overton Park route … forced abandonment of the original plans, and the road never reached the park. For over 20 years, I-40 signage existed on the dead-end route toward Overton Park. Eventually, the northern portion of the I-240 loop was redesignated as I-40. [Source, Wikipedia]
I remember I-40 ending at Raleigh, North Carolina. It took 4 hours to drive a two lane road the rest of the way to Wilmington. In the 1980s, I-40 was extended all the way to Wilmington, that travel time is cut in half. I remember using those 2 extra hours as an excuse to not visit my grandparents.
Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything. [Source, Wikipedia, Charles Kuralt]
Les Jones has wonderful pictures of I-40’s construction through Knoxville in the 60s! The photos are out west toward West Hills and Lovell but they are fascinating to see this monstrosity of concrete plowing through people’s farms. I found the pictures intriguing in considering what structures were at the junctions then and now. Redmondkr, in a Knoxviews comment, provided a wonderful areal photograph he took in the 70s which is in sharp comparison to how malfunction junction appears in today’s GoogleMaps.
This Saturday our family will experience the SmartFix as we have to travel out Strawberry Plains way for dog school. I am sure we will Twitter, Flickr, and Utterz our experience the whole way! Knoxviews calls this SmartFIX40: The Apocalypse. So far the TDOT traffic cameras don’t show traffic as that bad.
If you are interested in saving the latest wilderness of the Southeast, dislike seeing needless billions of dollars spent, and want to make a difference, please visit stopi-3.org!
Update: Read what others are saying about Smartfix40!
