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Big balloons have returned to Stevens, after Macys moved its events to Giants Stadium and Flushing Meadows.

The balloon is part of the New Jersey Festival of Ballooning.

The LADOT put out this one:

Besides the fact they they call momentum and energy the same thing, I hate this ad. The idea is good - I cringe when I see way bpeople ride against traffic - but the bug splatter analogy is bad. It reinforces the idea that car/bike collisions are the result of inevitable laws of chance, not a failure on the part of drivers and cyclists.

NYCDOT, on the other hand, delivers the same message in a much better way.

Drivers and cyclists have to pay attention, and the consequences of driving or biking irresponsibly are severe. (Though this anti-speeding ad from Ireland is the standard bearer for graphic ads. Not for those who get nightmares.)

By far, though, the best PSA is the one BikeSnob made for Bike Month.

'Cause I know everybody's been wondering, "what about those prisoners in the Philippines who staged the massive Thriller dance?"

Well, they had a tribute to him on Saturday.

After being told of Jackson's death Thursday in Los Angeles, the 1,500 inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center hit the exercise yard, practicing for nine hours Friday night — and into the wee hours of Saturday morning — for the show. They took breaks only to eat or when it rained, said professional choreographer Gwendolyn Lador, hired by the prison to teach the inmates the dance.

"I felt sad because we lost our idol," said inmate Wenjiel Resane, who plays the role of Jackson's girlfriend in the video.

Crisanto Nieri, 38, was feeling a little extra stress. He danced Jackson's part in "Thriller."

"Even as a kid, he was already my idol," said Nieri, who is serving seven years on drug charges. "I am happy that our video became famous, but I feel some pressure to perform well."

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Michael Jackson has died, reportedly while rehearsing at home.

I was hoping that we'd find out that this really was what happened to him:

From OregonLive
Cabinetmaker Bob Maddox, who has been tinkering with pulse jet engines for 10 years now, recently decided to bolt twin engines to Electra cruiser. Now, he's selling the bicycles, with their engines and polished-metal casing reminiscent of a 1950's sci-fi movie, on eBay for $8,500 a pop. It generates abour 100 lb of thrust, good for a ~75mph top speed (at about 140dB, so your neighbors might complain). That would speed up the commute considerably.

Between the snazzy detailing on the engine, his previous projects of building jet packs for skydivers, and pulse jets' prior incarnation in V1 rockets, I desperately want to find a copy of Rocket Ranger.

Oh, and by the way, that really is how the Federal Reserve creates "money."

It all started at The Stute years ago when I convinced Koptiw to run the headline "E-I-E-I-O-My"

Now I see even worse headlines in what once were reputable news sources (i.e. not the NY Post)

This morning I saw the Star-Ledger ran the banner headline "Obama, Take The Wheel" for the GM Bankruptcy.

Not to be beaten, MSNBC ran this: "Playboy CEO looks forward to multiple partners"

I love sexual innuendos on the Business page.

Bike sales were way down in the first quarter of the year versus the first quarter last year.

In the first three months of 2009, unit sales reached 2,598,793 – compared with the previous Q1 unit sales of 3,755,228.

The really shocking thing is that more bikes than cars were sold in the quarter.

of the California gay marriage debacle is that people are realizing that rights are not granted by the government - they belong to us because we are people. If rights are granted by majority vote or court decision, they can be taken away just as easily.

Now, if only the Libertarian Party could stop its endless internal fighting, they could use this to teach some principles.

165 years ago today, Samuel F.B. Morse sent a message from the Supreme Court chamber in Washington, D.C. to the the B&O Railroad's Mount Clare Depot in Baltimore, to officially open the first intercity telegraph line.

Although Morse patented the electromagnetic telegraph, much of the work to make it practical was done by Alfred Vail, including the dot-and-dash alphabet.

The workshop where much of the work was performed is preserved as Historic Speedwell in Morristown. I was surprised that the Morse Telegraph Club did not have an event there today.

In an attempt to make EPCOT as boring as possible, they're creating a new exhibit called the Great Piggy Bank Adventure that tries to teach kids lessons in personal finance.

...there is a noisy and colorful 3,800-square-foot space with interactive video games that seek to impart four basic lessons: setting goals, saving and spending wisely, staying ahead of inflation and diversifying investments. The video games star pigs who are learning the virtues of saving toward goals. A wolf who can raise inflation and take money away from the pigs is the villain in the games.

It might be more entertaining to watch Jesse Ventura put Elisabeth Hasselbeck in a sleeper hold, but not by much.

Say, Warden, we've got that "Take Our Kids to Work" day thing coming up. What do you suppose we should do as an activity?

How about we take some of the stun guns we use to keep the prisoners in line, and shock the kids a bit?

No, this isn't a joke - it really happened in Florida
Kids Visiting Prisons Get Stun-Gunned
Amazingly, three people were fired and two resigned. I guess the union thought better than to defend them.

My very own Sesame Street 12-Pinball Machine Clock


In the mean time here's a flash version.

If you're feeling nostalgic, here's the cartoon:

A Chicago couple has started a group that patronizes only black-owned businesses. Their "Empowerment Experiment" has some 4000 members on the website and is building a database of black-owned businesses.

Now setting aside that if a group pledged to patronize only white-owned businesses, they'd be cast out of normal society and be lucky not to face a FBI raid, the article is a good argument against all racist policies. The couple suffers a lower standard living due to their racism:

John had to suffer for hours with a stomach ache and Maggie no longer gets that brand-name lather when she washes her hair. A grocery trip is a 14-mile odyssey.

When we were a community of black folks who could not go to the white stores, our community of black stores flourished

Current Mood: amused

Stuff in the area:
Newton Cyclists—stop at the Newton
Green on May 12th between
6:30-9AM for a "coffee break" on your way
to work sponsored by ThorLabs.

Morristown Cyclists—stop at the Hyatt
Morristown on May 13th from
7-9AM to enjoy "breakfast" hosted by the
Hyatt.

Madison Cyclists—stop at the Madison
Bicycle Shop on May 14th from
7-9AM to enjoy "breakfast" hosted by
Whole Foods Market Madison.

They're also running some raffles for a bike, gift certificates and such.

Once again, Washington displays a complete inability to think through the implications of their policies. To "protect" consumers, credit card issuers are going to get restrictions on their ability set interest policies and change rates.

Great, people will no longer have to read the fine print of their contracts or worry that their interest rates will rise. But do you think that maybe, just maybe, the banks are going to lower credit limits for people who have less than perfect credit scores. Or that they will just charge penalty rates from day one for people with lower scores? You don't think that might put a crimp in the consumer spending that economists use as a leading indicator of recovery?

It's not all bad - excessive consumer spending fueled by cheap credit got us into the mess. Maybe strangling the consumer credit industry will get banks back into the business of lending to businesses that build capital and create jobs.

May. 5th, 2009 11:39 pm For mark_o_rama

The bankruptcy of the Phoenix Coyotes and the economic ignorance of Commissioner Gary Bettman made it to the Ludwig von Mises Institute's economics blog today. That's some shocking incompetence from a sports commissioner if he's getting posts on a blog with a stock-in-trade of marginal utility and monetary policy.