I agree.

Engineering makes decisions all the time about trade offs. You can spend lots of money over engineering a structure so it lasts a very very long time. But then you can't spend that money on other projects.

Lately (in the last decade) there has been a big push by authorities to make smaller dams able to withstand 100 year floods. (Or may it's 500 year floods, I don't remember). I think with climate change this is a smart approach. But I know of two lakes this has impacted. One is on Goshen VA and the Boy Scouts had to spend millions to upgrade a dam. The other is NEPA where I have a relative who owns a house on a pond. The state drained the pond because there was no money to fix the dam. Now they live on a meadow full of ragweed and deer ticks with a small creek running through it.

http://www.penndot.gov/ProjectAndPro...s/default.aspx

2 year old info...
http://crossroads.newsworks.org/inde...ally-deficient

a map
http://crossroads.newsworks.org/inde...icient-bridges

But I also disagree.

Political leaders need to make decisions about what sorts of infrastructure should be funded.

Do you throw stupid money at a stadium to enrich the team owners? Fill potholes and repair crumbling concrete abutment? Build new roads? Expand an airport's capacity?

Engineering can tell you how much various projects will cost and how urgent a repair might be, but leaders have to decide what they want to prioritize.

They always build the stadiums, don't they?

Maybe not. In San Diego they actually put it to a public vote. And the vote lost bigtime, 57 to 43 against.

A few weeks later, the owner announced the San Diego Chargers will become the Los Angeles Chargers in 2017, as a new stadium is being built there for the team.

Good or bad for San Diego in the long run? ...who knows... it certainly isn't going to make LA any better...

~

Meanwhile the people in Philly are very happy to see funding come together for a "cap" over I-95, so the people of the eastern section of the city will have direct access to the waterfront, with a huge public park and grass and drainage and whatnot.

West Philly is still a shithole, but the cap will be glorious for the people who live in $1M townhouses in Society Hill.

PennDOT and its 6,000 structurally deficient bridges will be spending $100M for that cap

And we all say, well hey, if the cap makes Philadelphia into an even greater destination for the next 100 years, because instead of pedestrian bridges over the highway, we have a lovely park over the highway...? Isn't that an amazing investment in our future? More money later?

Mmmmmmmmaybe. But the reason this project gets big traction is because, in the last ten years, smart thinkers have come to the conclusion that highway access to central parts of cities has actually hurt the cities.

Those highways were the big money infrastructure projects 30-50 years ago, promising all the benefits etc. etc. so what happened? Now the big projects are having them be tunnels, or having them have ceilings.

...so couldn't we all just not have the big infrastructure projects 30-50 years ago and save two rounds of this stuff? ...who knows...

Paying the engineers is in the hands of the politicians.

Yes, leave it in the hands of engineering which it pretty much is. But engineers and their techs, can only do the inspections, calculations, and reports.

Then it goes to the politicians to acquire funding, including fighting with other states for federal money, allocate that money for a specific project, and award contracts to their campaign contributors and cronies.

Example- Right across the road from me they're spending a zillion dollars turning an abandoned rail line into a paved walking trail with a landscaped parking area. Yet the road going by looks like a WW I battlefield. That pisses people off.

Next you'll be asking the government to support time machines...

...but it comes back to campaign finance?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2402...?hc_ref=SEARCH

A high school friend is involved with this. They focus on Upstate NY but I'd guess there are similar organizations elsewhere looking for procurement reform.

Cold magic...

New take on the snack bar... :unsure:

Downhill ice skating :eek:

I want to see the world downhill ice skating track Zamboni competitions.

Will you settle for a Petroleum Institute cartoon from 1956?

Better bigger.

Nsfw

Thank you Dana, that was fun.:blush: It shows degenerates aren't new, nor all male.


I think we've seen this before, a camera mounted on the front of a streetcar in San Francisco. But a film archivist has cleaned it up, added sound, and nailed the date to April 14th, 1906, when driving was fun. :haha:

This is just fun to watch.

You puny little earthling...

That really was. When I was a kid, I loved to spray down the driveway...lol.

Tripping. BALLZ!!

WTF did I just watch?

I am all outta clues.

Which one did you just watch?
When you quote a post with a video that means when you open the thread the video has to load twice slowing the loading.

This is the way we clear the snow,clear the snow, clear the snow
This is the way we clear the snow, up on Donner pass.

I hate Facebook video links, but here I am posting one. I tried to find this on youtube, but failed.

a new boys pole vaulting record in the USA recently. In slow motion. It's astounding.
https://www.facebook.com/polevaults/...5776709887268/

They don't have worry about pushing the pole back so it won't hit the bar anymore. The bar looks like it's 4 feet higher than the length of the pole. :eek:

Yeah, I saw a cool video of a train in Owego, NY flying through the snow, but FB.

I've seen several articles on how to grab videos off facebook but didn't read them because I don't go there.

If this is the same video (19-something foot) I saw this morning on FB...

...the amazing part is the transfer of energy into motion: he propels nearly straight up, "jack-knifes" his lower body over the top of the pole, and then "snakes" that motion upwards, "whipping" his upper body out of the way.

In my searches on Youtube for a better version of the video I found a few pole vaulters with the same unusual last name. It's got to be a family thing. They probably have a practice setup in their back yard.

Maybe they're Coneheads from France. ;)

the first link is glatt's video of the polevault. click it, get the signup/login screen out of the way, and TURN OFF THE SOUND. Then press play, followed rapidly by clicking the second youtube link. Obviously, you'll have to click back to the tab with the fb polevaulter to watch him soar. Come on, come on!!!

video of the polevaulter, sound of Daft Punk. go on, try it, what have you got to lose? The timing's kind of important.

https://www.facebook.com/polevaults/...5776709887268/

Signup/login? Ain't nobody got time for that. Besides I already saw it on glatt's link. :p:

Jack is Back !!!!

90,000 matches. Went much slower than I would have imagined.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum... it would take more than one bottle to get me up there. :eek:

Like a visual nails on a chalkboard...

The first thing you're gonna wanna do is mute that awful background music:



Big boom at about 3:05.

At about 2:10 what looks to me like a piece of clothing appears on the left, makes me think it was a helicopter not a drone.

This is right on the mark as I see it, worth going to Vimeo to embiggen if you have to.
https://vimeo.com/209248444

Wow, Bruce that was awesome!

This is kind of groovy:

Worthy.

I'm your friend, xoB.

Goddamnit, I had removed the shit around the link so it wouldn't open. Must have done a self repair.

"There's only so much punishment a man can take in pursuit of punani."
I guess this fish has a high punishment quotient, or big desire for punani. ;)
Highly suggest embiggening.

Ha! good find Bruce.

This comes under the category of 'Well, ya learn a new thing every day ...'

I'm sure some of the tech savvy here will already know about it - and when Iread the title it rang a vague bell with me, so I've probably heard the name before.But I didn't know what it was.

And I do now. Thanks interwebz!

Building a dugout canoe in Latvia.

Like.

I'll get right on that.
04-01-2017, 02:41 PM #168
zippyt
LONG LIVE KING ZIPPY! per Feetz

Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Arkansas
Posts: 7,456

You know there will be people who will believe it, not watch to the end, or that will go right over there heads. :facepalm:

You're on a roll, Zip. :lol:

I'm putting this here rather than the good music thread, because it's the whole production of it that's impressive.

This must have been such a rush to see live.

Go full screen - and possibly worth a warning for the almost strobing light in a couple of places, for the seizure prone (don't know if it would actually be a risk)

That's impressive, each one of those drums was miked, I'd love to see the board.

that was cool!

the three quarter view of the drumline at the end kind of reminded me of a valve train. some moving up while others were moving down. Very cool, very cool.

Bob Ross on Acid...

I was going to put this in the Doctor Who thread, but then I thought, actually, this stands divorced from it's wider context, as just a powerful speech about war and beautifully delivered.

The set-up, as much as is needed anyway, is two commanders each ready to launch utter destruction on the other, with Earth's fate in the balance. A human commander and the commander of an alien force who have been hiding among us and have broken away from their original invasion force to launch their own revolutionary bid for power.


The Doctor, an impossibly old time travelling alien, has contrived to get both commanders in the room together. There are two boxes, each with two buttons. One button will destroy give them victory and the other bring about their own destruction.


Full scene only available in this little box, so take full screen. The scene gets giong about a minute in, but there's some nice set up.

"just the new cruel people"

When Doctor Who is good, it's so, so good.