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Guerilla SK8 Park in Jersey City, Part 1

8 Aug

Sometimes people just go ahead and create what they need without waiting for the government to act. That’s what a bunch of kids and young adults did in Jersey City a few years ago. At least, that’s what I surmise after the fact. I don’t actually know what they decided, when, and why. I just know what they did. I know, because I walked into it by chance. Here’s that story.

It was in November of 2006, about a month or so after I’d become interested in photographing local graffiti. I was walking in the neighborhood, or perhaps I was in the car on the way back from my Sunday AM grocery run. One of the other, it doesn’t much matter. Anyhow, I spotted some color:

sk8 park.jpg

That’s the stuff, says I, that’s the stuff. When I got closer, I noticed a ramp against a wall:

one old ramp now gone.jpg

And then this:

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Someone was obviously using this site—the floor slab of an abandoned industrial building of some sort—as a park for skateboarding and BMX bike riding. See:

bikez3

I took this in July of 2007. Notice that the art on the walls has changed. It seems that some local, and not so local, graffiti writers used this site as something of an experimental gallery even as the skateboarders and BMXers used it to hone their athletic skills. Continue reading →

Under a Mound in Hiroshima: A City of Ashes the Size of Santa Fe

8 Aug

Behind twin curtains on either side of an altar, several dozen pine boxes, the size of caskets, were stacked, unceremoniously, from floor to ceiling. They hold the ashes of about 70,000 unidentified victims of the bomb. If, in an instant, all of the residents of Wilmington, Delaware, or Santa Fe, New Mexico, were reduced to ashes, and those ashes carried away to one repository, this is all the room the remains would require.

via Under a Mound in Hiroshima: A City of Ashes the Size of Santa Fe | The Nation.

“You Start with Bike Lanes” « One Jersey City

7 Aug

This is the way to think. A relatively minor, but critical, change that has broad ramifications. Like bikes!

Take bicycles. The advent of bike lanes in some American cities may seem like a big step, but merely marking a strip of the road for recreational cycling spectacularly misses the point. In Amsterdam, nearly everyone cycles, and cars, bikes and trams coexist in a complex flow, with dedicated bicycle lanes, traffic lights and parking garages. But this is thanks to a different way of thinking about transportation.

To give a small but telling example, pointed out to me by my friend Ruth Oldenziel, an expert on the history of technology at Eindhoven University, Dutch drivers are taught that when you are about to get out of the car, you reach for the door handle with your right hand — bringing your arm across your body to the door. This forces a driver to swivel shoulders and head, so that before opening the door you can see if there is a bike coming from behind. Likewise, every Dutch child has to pass a bicycle safety exam at school. The coexistence of different modes of travel is hard-wired into the culture.

This in turn relates to lots of other things — such as bread. How? Cyclists can’t carry six bags of groceries; bulk buying is almost nonexistent. Instead of shopping for a week, people stop at the market daily. So the need for processed loaves that will last for days is gone. A result: good bread.

via “You Start with Bike Lanes” « One Jersey City.

In Japan, A-Bomb Survivors Join Opposition to Nuclear Power – NYTimes.com

6 Aug

Aghast at the catastrophic failure of nuclear technology, and outraged by recent revelations that the government and power industry had planted nuclear proponents at town hall-style meetings, the elderly atomic bomb survivors, dwindling in numbers, have begun stepping forward for the first time to oppose nuclear power.

Now, as both Hiroshima and Nagasaki observe the 66th anniversary of the twin American atomic attacks at the end of World War II, the survivors are hoping that they can use their unique moral standing, as the only victims of nuclear bombings, to wean both Japan and the world from what they see as mankind’s tragedy-prone efforts to tap the atom.

via In Japan, A-Bomb Survivors Join Opposition to Nuclear Power – NYTimes.com.

Peak oil was thirty years ago — and civilization still perks along

5 Aug

Read the stuff I’ve put in BOLD at the end, then read the rest of it, or just click through to the original post, in full.

The Oil Peak that actually mattered was the peak in consumption per person, which took place back in 1980 at 5.3 barrels per person per year. Since then, consumption per person has dropped to 4.4 barrels per person per year. Given the growth of demand in Asia, consumption per person in the countries that were already rich in 1980 has fallen much faster. Meanwhile living standards have risen substantially[2], unconstrained by declining consumption per person of oil, and of energy more generally.

Oddly enough, most people who worry about Peak Oil are also environmentalists concerned about climate change. From this viewpoint, which I share, Peak Oil looks like good news rather than bad. But the optimistic interpretation is trumped by the spurious idea that there is a 1-1 relationship between oil (or energy) and economic activity. This fallacious idea is held both by Peak Oil fans and by the rightwing doomsayers who suggest that reducing emissions of CO2 will destroy the economy.

A particularly interesting subgroup of Peak Oil fans are those who see nuclear energy as the only possible solution, a view that was mooted by Hubbert himself. This part of the discussion is dominated by a belief in something called ‘baseload power demand’ which must be met at all times if disaster is to be avoided. The idea that demand responds to prices and market structures seems entirely foreign to this discussion.

One of the few upsides of the disastrous Fukushima meltdown is that it has allowed a perfect test of this theory. Following the meltdown, Japan has taken 38 of its 54 reactors offline. It’s now midsummer there, and the blackouts predicted by the scaremongers have not occurred. Instead, the reduction in supply has been handled by (mostly voluntary) efficiency measures.

via Peak oil was thirty years ago — Crooked Timber.

Money-Pile Conservation

5 Aug

View from a Mouse

4 Aug

IMGP1313rd

Tainted Water Well Challenges Claim of Fracking’s Safety – NYTimes.com

4 Aug

“I still don’t understand why industry should be allowed to hide problems when public safety is at stake,” said Carla Greathouse, the author of the E.P.A. report that documents a case of drinking water contamination from fracking. “If it’s so safe, let the public review all the cases.”

via Tainted Water Well Challenges Claim of Fracking’s Safety – NYTimes.com.

In Pennsylvania, Suspicious Erasing on State Exams at 89 Schools – NYTimes.com

4 Aug

We can’t have Truth and Tradition if the schools lie to themselves, to us, and to their students (our children and grand children, remember?) about how things are going.

Never before have so many had so much reason to cheat. Students’ scores are now used to determine whether teachers and principals are good or bad, whether teachers should get a bonus or be fired, whether a school is a success or failure.

Will Pennsylvania do what it takes to root out cheating? Few school districts have. Most inquiries are led by educators who are not first-rate investigators and have little incentive to make their own districts look bad.

via In Pennsylvania, Suspicious Erasing on State Exams at 89 Schools – NYTimes.com.

The Great Hiroshima Cover-up | The Nation

4 Aug

The suppression on which the nuclear industrial complex was built?

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan sixty-six years ago this week, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included vivid color footage shot by U.S. military crews and black-and-white Japanese newsreel film.

via The Great Hiroshima Cover-up | The Nation.

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