Last Thursday around lunchtime a truck with a huge industrial freezer crashed into the Gregson St railroad trestle – the “truck guillotine”  as some are calling it. This time I was there and I had my camera with me, so in addition to the actual crash footage I also shot some footage of the crash [...]

Not sure if this is good news or bad news: Trafigura, the company responsible for the Probo Koala toxic waste scandal 3 years ago, settled with the lawyers representing the Ivorian victims for $46 Million – that’s a little over $1,500 per person.
Yes, that’s real money for most folks in Cote d’Ivoire – a bit [...]

Coming back from West Africa, I found some excellent truck crash footage, which I proceeded to post to my YouTube channel. Turns out that one of the trucks had some furniture on it that belongs to a guy who writes for Gizmodo and he posted the crash video on said website. Since the post appeared, [...]

So, as I said earlier, the camera I set up at Brightleaf caught several trucks crashing into the railroad trestle across the street. A couple of weeks ago I got an email from TV producer who was interested in my videos. First I was suspicious – but after a few Google searches he looked legit. [...]

About a year ago I installed a camera to record the traffic outside my office in dwntown Durham. Over the course of that year, that camera recorded several boxtrucks crashing into the railroad trestle crossing Gregson St. Here is the newest one:

There’s more on my YouTube Channel.
The fundamental problem here is not so much [...]

As of yesterday, days will be getting longer again on this side of the globe. Of course here, in the Old North State that’s not that big a deal, anyway. But I did start paying more attention to sunrise/sunset this fall. When I bike to work and back home, I prefer to avoid the bad [...]

… accidentally. In the night from Wednesday to Thursday, 170 armed Swiss troops crossed into the tiny neighboring Principality of Liechtenstein. They got lost in bad weather in the Alps during a training exercise and strayed a mile into the unarmed principalities sovereign territory. Scrambling to prevent any escalation, both countries immediately launched diplomatic efforts [...]

Since I received my greencard ten years ago, I had very little interaction with the US immigration services – basically I showed my greencard to the friendly officers at the airport once in a while. So when my greencard was about to expire, I requested a new one. I payed the $270 (!) fee and [...]

Oops – apparently the harddrive fried on the server that hosts my website, this blog and my email server. So I was without email (at least non-work email) for two evenings, which was a bit disconcerting. And I was a bit nervous about the provider’s ability to restore all services and files and databases. I [...]

Tom Philpott (Grist) questions entomologist and biofuels skeptic extraordinaire David Pimentel (Cornell) about why crop-based energy won’t work. Interesting interview, but Pimentel does need to get out a bit more. And I wish Philpott had been a bit more probing on some of Pimentel’s assertions – like this one:
Pimentel: Conserve! One word. And no [...]

Mexico’s presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (or AMLO), unlike Gore or Kerry, is not about to give up his fight for democracy and justice in his country. In light of evidence of blatant ballot-stuffing by the ruling party PAN, and considering that nearly one million votes have not been counted, the PRD’s candidate has [...]

Philips is working very hard these days to piss off consumers, as acknowledged by one one of their recent patent applications. Odd thing, you think, for a consumer electronics company to create technology to disenfranchise and piss off consumers? Seems disingenuous? Yet, this seems to represent a new industry trend. Consider the recent whooping Sony [...]

… at least not when it’s time fo my triple bypass, because you’d increase my chance of experiencing complications during recovery by seven percentage points, according to a recent study:

Percentage of Patients Having Complications After Surgery:
52% – Patients who were receiving prayers and did not know this.
52% – Patients receiving no prayers and not being [...]

Last night I watched “Team America” and laughed my butt off. They make fun of Osama BinLaden, Kim Il Sung, Hollywood and America. They depict Michael Moore as a suicide bomber who blows up Team America’s headquarters. They don’t depict, or poke fun at, the Prophet Mohammad (pbuh). Maybe that’s because Islam’s holy prophet [...]

I am really torn when I ponder the pre-holiday sellout by Germany’s ex-chancellor Schröder to Putin’s little racket Gazprom. Which is the bigger scandal? His cynical, middle-finger-in-your-face exit from the public arena? Or is it even worse that it is apparently perfectly legal to conduct foreign policy for the German people for seven years while [...]

The cold fact that Governor Schwarzenegger refused to grant clemency to Stanley Tookie Williams was predictable and consistent with the cruel spirit of the death penalty. The practice in this country to terminate the lives of convicted murderers is irrespective of any subsequent redemption or repentance. It is thus quite remarkable that the Governator’s decision [...]

Old Europe is in a tizzy over finding out more and more details of how the CIA used European airspace and airports to shuttle abducted terrorism suspects to and fro for “innovative interrogation” in what some call a “gulag-like” system of “black sites” – secret prisons. Well, the GULAG it ain’t, but a scandal [...]

Worried yet about the bird flu? At least the Feds are on the job, now, right? There are competent public-health experts hammering out plans for a response to a flu pandemic, right?

Meet Stewart Simonson. He’s the official charged by Bush with “the protection of the civilian population from acts of bioterrorism and other public [...]

The Council on Foreign Relations held a conference on Nov. 16 in New York where a number of high-powered panelists discussed the threat of a flu pandemic and the status of avian flu preparedness in the U.S. and around the world. The intensity and complexity of the problem, as laid out in the discussions, is [...]

Kanzlerin Pestbeule is ready to lead Germany … in circles probably. On the surface a national consensus government may seem like a good idea to accomplish needed but painful social reforms in the next four years. That would be the case if this was 1) a government with a mandate, and 2) a government with [...]