- Lay off, resident of Burlington, Vermont’s Ward
2. Don’t you people have any self-control when it comes to recycling? These
enviro-do-gooders are taking the whole concept of protecting the planet and
conserving resources a little too seriously and the evidence is in the
overflowing bins at the neighborhood’s recycling center. Ward 2 Councilman Max Tracy is well-aware of the
problem and amazingly, this elected official actually has an idea for how to
address the problem. “We see more and
more people recycling more and more,” Tracy said, adding that the 15-gallon
bins at the recycling center are too small. Whatever the cause, Burlington’s
Old North End is overflowing with to-be-recycled junk and residents are angry
about it. “I just feel like the biggest problem is debris,” said Judy Klima.
“It gets blown down the street, and it gets run over by cars.” Tracy knows that
recyclable material that drops out of the bins and makes its way back into the
world is just another piece of trash to be dealt with. “At that point, it
becomes trash because it's covered with all kinds of other stuff,” Tracy said.
He explained that multiple-tenant buildings with small bins are the root of the
problem and when those bins overflow, they exacerbate the problem. “Folks
really do want to recycle, they to do want to the right thing, but in order to
do that you need four, five, sometimes six bins in some cases,” he added. The
issue came up at a council meeting Monday night and Tracy offered up a decent
solution: Require landlords with three or more units to buy 60-gallon wheeled containers
that are not only larger, but come with a lid. For every three additional units
in a building, another bin would be required to contain all of the recyclable
material…….
- When New York Jets rookie quarterback Geno Smith
says his relationship with Mark
Sanchez is fine even though he didn't attend his teammate's passing camp in
California, he is probably telling the truth. "Me and Mark are cool;
there's no hard feelings or anything," Smith said of the relationship with
the Jets’ incumbent starter. "He's up there getting work with the guys.
I'm down here getting work." Down her is Florida, where Smith is training with
receivers including Antonio Brown of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Greg Little
of the Cleveland Browns and former West Virginia teammates Tavon Austin
and Stedman Bailey, both now with the St. Louis Rams. Sanchez, in turn, hosted
"Jets West,” a camp at Mission Viejo High School that was attended by 12
skill players, including receivers, tight ends and running back Chris Ivory.
Smith did not attend, which makes sense because he’s attempting to take Sanchez’s
job and probably will at some point. Smith said he's approaching the
competition against Sanchez "very seriously, preparing myself to be a starter,
as I've said all along." Sanchez added that he did not have any issue with
any of the players who chose not to attend the camp. "I don't hold it
against any of the guys who can't make it," Sanchez said Friday after a
two-hour practice. "There are no hard feelings about anything like [that].
Despite being consistently lackluster as a starter, Sanchez has repeatedly said
he expects to be the Jets' starter. When pressed on why he didn’t attend Jets
West, Smith theorized that the media was just doing its job by hyping up his
absence. "They got to create a hot story. They got to keep the fans
interested, so they're going to put whatever they want out there," he
said. Just imagine what the media will do with the story when the Jets start
1-4 and Smith comes off the bench and thieves Sanchez’s starting gig…….
- So…..is a serious water leak inside an astronaut's helmet
while he is walking around in space a problem? It seems like it could be an
issue and it befell European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, who last
week became the first Italian to walk in space, during a spacewalk Tuesday
outside the International Space Station. Parmitano reported a buildup of water
inside his helmet about an hour into an excursion with U.S. astronaut Chris
Cassidy. The water initially pooled in the back of Parmitano's helmet behind
his head and eventually floated into his eyes. Mission officials believe the
H20 came from Parmitano's drinking-water bag and once they realized what was happening, flight directors on
Mission Control quickly called an end to the outing. NASA mission commentator
Dan Huot insisted neither of the astronauts was in danger. "The team down
here in Mission Control is taking the cautious path," Huot said. Parmitano
was directed to head back into the U.S. Quest airlock and Cassidy was close
behind. Inside, it was discovered that the water leak caused the communication
system in Parmitano's suit to fail, meaning he could not hear questions about
his condition. "Squeeze my hand if you're fine," Cassidy told
Parmitano. "He looks fine. He looks miserable. But he's OK." U.S.
astronaut Karen Nyberg and two Russian cosmonauts — Pavel Vinogradov and Fyodor
Yutchikhin — worked to remove Parmitano's helmet once he was back inside the
station and used towels to soak up water blobs that floated from the helmet. "Great
job getting those guys out of their suits in a timely manner," Mission
Control said. "It was a great team effort." Mission Control also had Nyberg
to take photographs of Parmitano's spacesuit and document the condition of the
suspect water bag. The water leak turned what was supposed to be a 6-hour, 15-minute spacewalk into a
92-minute affair that allowed the two astronauts just enough time to get some
maintenance work done outside the station. Cassidy and Parmitano also ventured outside the station July 9 and performed myriad
maintenance tasks, but Monday’s mission didn’t go nearly as well. If anyone is
going to be in such a tense situation, it definitely should be a former test
pilot like Parmitano and a a former Navy SEAL like Cassidy. During the rest of
their stint in space, the current crew will lay electrical power and Ethernet
cabling to the juncture between the U.S. and Russian sides of the outpost,
eventually extending the cabling to a Russian multipurpose module that will be
launched late this year from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan……..
- Bob Dylan has been making music for more than
five decades. Along the way during that amount of time, an artist is bound to
accrue a fair amount of unused material that was good, but not good enough to
make it onto an album. For a man who has released 35 studio albums and
countless other projects, that pile of forgotten music should be sky high.
Thus, Dylan
will release a new album of rarities and previously unheard recordings next
month. The project, titled “The Bootleg Series, Vol. 10 - Another Self Portrait
(1969-1971),” will drop on Aug. 26 and contain 35 tracks recorded during the
1970 studio recording sessions that resulted in Dylan's 10th and 11th albums “Self
Portrait” and “New Morning.” The two-disc set will cover plenty of ground, but
anyone who feels like nearly three dozen extra Dylan tracks isn't enough, a deluxe
version will also feature an extra disc with a recording of Dylan's 1969
performance at the Isle of Wight festival. Dylan has remained surprisingly active
in touring and recording for a 72-year-old dude and despite the fact that his
singing voice has often been maligned and many have poked fun at his
distinctive, mumble-esque style, few artissts have ever had the storytelling
skill that he possesses. In between now and the time he shuffles off this
mortal coil, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him release another collection of
rarities and B-sides or two. Then again, so many artists have previously
unreleased material drop after they pass away that there could be a slew of Bob
Dylan releases waiting to happen……..
- The sh*t just got real in Panama, where a North Korean
cargo ship was stopped near the Panama Canal and searched on suspicion of drugs,
only to be found to contain the apparent parts of a surface-to-air missile
system, hidden inside containers of brown sugar. The ship was on its way home
from Cuba at the time it was stopped and the Panamanian State Department said
any shipment of arms or related material aboard the freighter would violate at
least three U.N. resolutions. Something was clearly amiss when customs
officials boarded the ship to begin their search and the captain attempted to
kill himself. Independent defense analysts confirmed that the equipment
appeared to be a radar control system for surface-to-air missiles and the
crew’s reaction once officials began their search seemed to confirm that the
equipment was being shipped covertly. A few cynics have pointed out that
regardless of the intent of the crew or nature of the cargo, the real takeaway
from the incident is that North Koreans were able to smuggle dangerous
equipment into the hemisphere. Panamanian officials confirmed that their
customs agents initially seized the ship on suspicion of drugs as it headed for
the Panama Canal, along with detaining 35 members of the crew. President
Ricardo Martinelli also posted picture of the weapons equipment on Twitter “so
that the world knows that you can’t transfer non-declared, war-like material
through the Panama Canal.” It was some grade-A political smack talk via social
media and el presidente was clearly feeling good about himself because he added
a tweet that, “The Panama Canal is a canal of peace, not of war.” The picture
appeared to show a radar system for surface-to-air missiles — specifically an
RSN-75 Fan Song fire-control radar system for a family of missiles known as
SA-2. The SA-2 is a Soviet-era system in Cuba since the 1960s and was the class
of missile used to shoot down American pilot Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane over
the Soviet Union in May 1960. It is possible that Cuba was sending the
equipment to North Korea for an upgrade and included the sugar as
payment, but there is also the possibility that the equipment might have been on its way
to North Korea to fortify the country’s existing air defense network……..
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