Archive for the 'Go figure' Category

Busy week at the 11foot8 bridge

Sunday, June 28th, 2015

Monday morning, two trucks from Enterprise Rental crashed into the canopener. The first one at 7AM and the second one around 10:30 AM. In the second incident, the passenger was injured when his head hit the windshield, presumably because he did not wear his seat belt. So the fire department and EMS showed up and […]

The Sun

Friday, February 13th, 2015

Timelapse of the sun / Zeitrafferaufname der Sonne

How Many People Have Ever Lived On Earth? 108 Billion!

Thursday, January 29th, 2015

Interesting publication by the Population Reference Bureau. According to their estimates 6.5 percent of all humans who lived in the last 50,000 years were alive in 2011! Wie viele Menschen haben jemals gelebt? Die Wissenschaftler des Population Reference Bureau schätzen daß in den letzten 50 Tausend Jahren 108 Milliarden Menschen gelebt haben. Das bedeutet daß […]

It’s time to talk about mental illness …

Sunday, December 16th, 2012

One of the most insightful comment about the Sandy Hook shooting comes from the mother of a mentally ill 13-year-old:  I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am Jason Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And […]

Horse and truck problems

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

On the July 4th holiday, Laura and Julia went horseback riding in the morning. I had hurt my back at work, so I stayed home. They had been gone for a while, when Laura called me and explained that Cleo had a serious cut in her leg and I should call the vet while they […]

The Cardiff Giant

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

Turns out P. T. Barnum never did say “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” … this is the crazy story of the Cardiff Giant From 1866 until 1868 Mr. George Hull, of Binghamton, New York studied archeology and paleontology. Over this period of time Hull contemplated how to pull off a hoax. It seems that […]

Crazy horse

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

This horse is CRAZY! He’s a KILLER!! Seriously … a couple of weeks ago Wally attacked me and Laura. He tried to kick me, backing up to me and kicking in my direction and then he bit Laura! But why? Usually he’s a gentle soul, always trying to please. Sometimes he can be stubborn. But […]

Heatwave

Friday, July 29th, 2011

July was a scorcher. Today we hit another record high temperature of 104 Deg. F (40° C). Last week was even worse, due to the high humidity we had the heat index reach 115 Deg. F (gefühlte 46° C) . On those days you just could just go outside and stand there …  and sweat. […]

Colberthulhu

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

Thingyverse has a Colberthulhu: Wow. Weird … cool.

Ka-lunk

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

kalunkalunkalunk …. That’s what that truck said on Sunday. I knew it was a bad sound. Expensive. The sound of money down the drain. Well … this is the 1″x2″  hole where 5 grand of my hard-earned cash disappeared Sunday morning. My mechanic says it was a connecting rod that broke and punched that hole […]

Big John

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

Yeah – another one of those weeks were “challenging” was just not good enough. At work we have to re-build our main file server and so we’re shuffling Terabytes of data around the networks, checking file permissions, backing up data, bla bla bla … Julia had a viola recital today with all the other students […]

The UN supports Ouattara – now what?

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Not sure this is going to help resolve the crisis in Côte D’Ivoire: The UN Security Council has issued a statement saying that Ivory Coast opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara won the disputed presidential election. The statement came after three days of debate at the UN, in which Russia expressed concern that the UN was exceeding […]

Russia 2018 – Quatar 2022? Really?

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

FIFA just announced some interesting choices for the Worldcup hosts for 2018 and 2022 … Russia will host the 2018 Worldcup …  considering the  safety discussion around the Worldcup in South Africa, the safety discussion should be really interesting regarding the country with the worst hooligans and worst xenophobia problems in Europe.  And Quatar? Yeah […]

Funny Amazon product reviews

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

The internet has done it again. It has spawned yet another amusing way to waste huge amounts of perfectly good time: product reviews of some of the more absurd items on Amazon.com. Tuscan Whole Milk for $99??!! And … more than 1200 reviews for this product!! Or a $6,000-speaker cable … or a jar of […]

Hawking says: hush!

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

In a recent interview about his TV Show, Dr. Stephen Hawking questioned the wisdom of trying to make contact with alien civilizations. When one of the few bona-fide geniuses of our time weighs in an any debate, it is significant. And I think the debate over whether to send signals into space or just to […]

Truck with freezer crashes into 11foot8 bridge

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

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 […]

Trafigura settles with Ivorian toxic waste victims

Monday, September 21st, 2009

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 […]

Truck crash notoriety

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

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, […]

Decapitated boxtrucks on TV

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

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. […]

Boxtruck decapitated on Friday the 13th

Friday, February 13th, 2009

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 […]