Monthly Archives: January 2013

Watts Up With That?: Oooops! (at least they didn’t name it ‘robust’)

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Well, who would expect a wind turbine to stand up to wind?

The £250,000 tower, which stood as tall as a ten storey building, was hit by gale force gusts of 50mph.

The structure then collapsed at a farm in Bradworth, Devon, leaving a “mangled wreck”.

Margaret Coles, Chairwoman of Bradworthy District Council, said hail storms and strong winds have hit the area and the turbine, installed just three years ago, simply could not withstand the wind.

“The bolts on the base could not withstand the wind and as we are a very windy part of the country they [the energy company] have egg on their face,” she said. “There are concerns about safety.”

The Bradworthy Parish Council, who opposed the turbine, expressed concern that there was “nothing exceptional” in the speed of the winds.

Installed by renewable energy company Dulas it was supposed to have a life expectancy of 25 years.

via Oooops! (at least they didn’t name it ‘robust’) | Watts Up With That?.

Teen killed1 week after attending Obama inauguration | FOX 32 News

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A week after attending presidential inauguration festivities in the nation’s capital and with dreams of a summer trip to Paris swirling in her 15-year-old imagination, Hadiya Pendleton was shot and killed Tuesday afternoon in the South Side’s Kenwood neighborhood.

Police say Hadiya was shot in the back at a neighborhood park about 2:30 p.m. in the 4500 block of South Oakenwald. A teen boy was shot in the leg and taken to Comer’s Children’s Hospital in serious condition.

“As usual, the bad guy aims, but he never hits the other bad guy . . . He hits the one that hurts the most to lose,” said Chicago Police Officer Damon Stewart, 36, Hadiya ‘s godfather. “I changed her diapers, I played with her growing up. My heart is broken.”

via Teen killed in Kenwood 1 week after attending Obama inauguration – Chicago News and Weather | FOX 32 News.

The Truth About Guns: Illinois Concealed Carry Bill Revealed: No Chicago Carve-Out

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HB0977 puts the Illinois State Police in charge of the permitting process and turns The Land of Lincoln into a “shall issue” state. To wit: “The Department shall have the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that the applicant would pose a danger to the applicant’s self, another, or public safety, or would use a firearm unlawfully, if granted a license to carry a concealed firearm under this Act.” Did Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel just throw up in his mouth a little?

via Illinois Concealed Carry Bill Revealed: No Chicago Carve-Out | The Truth About Guns.

Washington Times Communities: Reagan’s home could become a parking lot for Obama’s library

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You know, I almost want them to do this. Then we can visit the parking lot and ignore the Obama museum.

A new Cold War is brewing here in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood and it has nothing to do with the frigid temperature.

The apartment building at 832 E. 57th Street was once the Chicago home of a boy who would become a President.

No, it’s not Barack Obama of Hawaii. It was at the apartment’s first floor window that a young Ronald Reagan looked out upon the world.

But some powerful Chicagoans are planning to demolish Reagan’s historic home. Is it politically motivated? Is Mayor Rahm Emanuel behind the move?

Reagan as a child.

It was a different world back in 1915. Reagan’s family had moved here from Tampico, Illinois. His father had gotten a job at the famed Marshall Field’s – now only a memory. A coin-operated gas lamp was the only home’s only source of heat.

But it didn’t stop a young “Dutch” Reagan from dreaming.

via Reagan’s home could become a parking lot for Obama’s library | Washington Times Communities.

Global Post – Mali: Life under Al Qaeda

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The amputation of Suleiman Traore was agonizingly slow, bloody and painful.

The 25-year-old truck driver was living in northern Mali when, in March, a coalition of tribal Tuareg separatists and Islamic militants overran the town of Gao.

A month later, Traore was at home in the afternoon playing with his 3-year-old daughter as his wife prepared soup for dinner, when two pick up trucks packed with masked, armed militants flying black flags pulled up outside.

They rushed into his compound, firing shots into the air and shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest).

“That’s how everything started,” Traore said.

via Mali: Life under Al Qaeda | GlobalPost.

Teachers flip for ‘flipped learning’ class model – Yahoo! News

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When Timmy Nguyen comes to his pre-calculus class, he’s already learned the day’s lesson — he watched it on a short online video prepared by his teacher for homework.

So without a lecture to listen to, he and his classmates at Segerstrom Fundamental High School spend class time doing practice problems in small groups, taking quizzes, explaining the concept to other students, reciting equation formulas in a loud chorus, and making their own videos while teacher Crystal Kirch buzzes from desk to desk to help pupils who are having trouble.

It’s a technology-driven teaching method known as “flipped learning” because it flips the time-honored model of classroom lecture and exercises for homework — the lecture becomes homework and class time is for practice.

“It was hard to get used to,” said Nguyen, an 11th-grader. “I was like ‘why do I have to watch these videos, this is so dumb.’ But then I stopped complaining and I learned the material quicker. My grade went from a D to an A.”

via Teachers flip for ‘flipped learning’ class model – Yahoo! News.

City Journal: Beware the Mickelson Effect by Tom Gray

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Jerry Brown is occasionally nuts, but less nuts than he could be.

Thanks to a tax increase, California’s supermajority Democratic legislature has access to roughly $6 billion per year in new revenue. Now along comes the governor—who did more than anyone else to cajole voters into approving that tax hike—telling legislators not to spend the money. “We have promises to keep,” Jerry Brown said in his annual State of the State speech last week. “And the most important is the one made to voters if Proposition 30 passed: that we would guard jealously the money temporarily made available.”

Brown retold the Bible story of Joseph’s counsel to Pharaoh, who had a dream in which seven lean cows devoured seven fat ones. Joseph explained that the fat cows represented seven years of plenty and the lean cows seven years of famine that were certain to follow. His advice: Set aside grain. Brown’s was to “pay down our debts and store up reserves against the leaner times that will surely come.”

He may be asking the impossible, and if the legislature can’t restrain itself, he will need to take much of the blame. The governor had stumped all over the state to win passage of Proposition 30, which sharply raised tax rates on high-income individuals for seven years and modestly raised sales taxes (by a quarter-cent) for four. Brown now takes pains to point out that the taxes are temporary, and that lawmakers should assume that voters won’t renew them. But it may be a little late for fired-up liberals to accept fiscal discipline. Brown is like the father who gives his 17-year-old son the keys to a 400-horsepower Corvette and tells him to drive the speed limit, forgetting that he’s the adult and the kid is a kid.

via Beware the Mickelson Effect by Tom Gray – City Journal.

DCXposed: Seattle Gun BuyBack Gets JACKED!

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I predicted this would happen:

Police stood in awe as gun enthusiasts and collectors waved wads of cash for the guns being held by those standing in line for the buyback program.

People that had arrived to trade in their weapons for $100 or $200 BuyBack gift cards($100 for handguns, shotguns and rifles, and $200 for assault weapons) soon realized that gun collectors were there and paying top dollar for collectible firearms. So, as the line for the chump cards got longer and longer people began to jump ship and head over to the dealers.

John Diaz, Seattles Police Chief,  wasn’t pleased with the turn of events stating “I’d prefer they wouldn’t sell them,” but admitted it’s perfectly legal for private individuals to buy and sell guns, FOR NOW. Mayor Mike McGinn said at a news conference the private transactions are a loophole that needs to be closed. “There’s no background checks, and some (guns) could be exchanged on the streets that shouldn’t be in circulation.”

But Schuyler Taylor, a previous gun retailer attending the event in hopes of buying weapons, asked “Why not offer them cash versus a gift card? I’m still taking the guns off the streets; they’re just going in my safe.”

People were reportedly, at one point, jumping out of vehicles  whilst sitting in traffic – making on the spot deals with the gun buyers.

But the BuyBack wasn’t a bust. On the contrary – their $80,000 supply of gift cards didn’t last but 2 hours, and by 11:00 am they began attempting to issue IOU’s at which point the entire crowd responded by turning and marching toward the gun dealers, forcing the police officers to pack it up for the day.

via Seattle Gun BuyBack Get’s JACKED! Turns Into a Damn Gun Show! LOL | DCXposed.

Los Angeles’s School Nightmare: Another Sex-Abuse Scandal – The Daily Beast

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The LA school district is probably the most risky place for sexual abuse in the country. What about keeping our kids safe from these teachers?

Fifty-seven-year-old Robert Pimentel, who taught at George De La Torre Jr. Elementary School in Los Angeles, has so far been charged with 15 counts of sexual abuse and lewd acts on a child. Prosecutors allege that he inappropriately touched students under and over their clothing from September 2011 until he left his job in March 2012. Before that time period as well, Pimentel had been the subject of parents’ complaints.

Just last year, in a scandal that set off an avalanche of lawsuits, another veteran teacher of the Los Angeles Unified School District, Mark Berndt, was accused of feeding his students spoonfuls of semen as part of a twisted ritual he called a “tasting game.” He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

“We are stunned here,” LAPD Detective Gus Villanueva tells The Daily Beast in the wake of the latest arrest. “We are dumbfounded. It just doesn’t stop.”

via Los Angeles’s School Nightmare: Another Sex-Abuse Scandal – The Daily Beast.