White Walkers promoting ‘Game of Thrones’.
Month: July 2017
Best Countries Rankings 2017
The overall ranking of Best Countries measures global performance on a variety of metrics.
The study and model used to score and rank countries were developed by Y&R’s BAV Consulting, specifically John Gerzema and Anna Blender, and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, specifically Professor David J. Reibstein, in consultation with U.S. News & World Report.
Dangerous Countries
Las Vegas in the early days
The Mighty Vegas Strip today.
The Beginnings…
Las Vegas started as a stopover on the pioneer trails to the west, and became a popular railroad town in the early 20th century. It was a staging point for mines in the surrounding area, especially those around the town of Bullfrog, that shipped goods to the rest of the country.
With the proliferation of the railroads, Las Vegas became less important, but the completion of the nearby Hoover Dam in 1935 resulted in growth in the number of residents and increased tourism.The dam, located 30 mi (48 km) southeast of the city, formed Lake Mead, the largest man-made lake and reservoir in the United States.
The legalization of gambling in 1931 led to the advent of the casino hotels for which Las Vegas is famous. Major development occurred in the 1940s, “due almost entirely” to the influx of scientists and staff from the Manhattan Project, an atomic bomb research project of World War II.
American organized crime figures such as Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky managed or funded most of the original large casinos. The rapid growth of Las Vegas is credited with dooming the gambling industry development of Galveston, Texas; Hot Springs, Arkansas; and other major gambling centers in the 1950s.
Striking Skyscraper in Chicago
Aqua is an 87-story mixed-use residential skyscraper in the Lakeshore East development in downtown Chicago designed in the Modern architectural style.
Aqua was designed by Jeanne Gang, principal and founder of Studio Gang Architects, and it is her first skyscraper project. This is the largest project ever awarded to an American firm headed by a woman. Loewenberg & Associates are the architects of record, led by James Loewenberg.
The building contains 55,000 square feet (5,100 square meters) of retail and office space, in addition to 215 hotel rooms (floors 1-18), 476 rental residential units (floors 19-52), and 263 condominium units & Penthouses (floors 53-80). Aqua is the first downtown building to combine condos, apartments and a hotel.
The name ‘Aqua’ was assigned to the building by Magellan Development Group LLC. It fits the nautical theme of the other buildings in the Lakeshore East development, and is derived from the wave-like forms of the balconies; the tower’s proximity to nearby Lake Michigan also influenced the name.
Sustainability was also an important factor in Aqua’s design. Gang and her team refined the terrace extensions to maximize solar shading, and other sustainable features will include rainwater collection systems and energy-efficient lighting. The green roof on top of the tower base will be the largest in Chicago.
| Construction started | 2007 |
|---|---|
| Completed | 2009 |
| Cost | US$300 million |
| Owner | Aqua Realty Holdings LLC |
| Height | 261.8 m (859 ft) |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 87 1 below ground |
| Floor area | 1,990,635 sq ft (184,936.0 m2) |
| Lifts/elevators | 24 |
Imagine having cocktails on the 75th floor balcony. One hell of a view. And drinking a few cocktails is the only way I would walk onto that balcony.
Vacuum Cleaner Crazy Kid.
Kyle Krichbaum, a 15-year-old boy from Adrian, Michigan, has been fascinated by vacuum cleaners since before he could talk. His passion stuck with him through adolescence, and he’s now known as the world’s youngest vacuum cleaner collector, with a collection of around 200 vintage devices.
Most teenagers don’t have that strong of a relationship with vacuum cleaners, or any other cleaning gadgets, for that matter, but Kyle Krichbaum doesn’t like anything more than using, fixing and collecting all kinds of vacuum cleaners. His mother, MaryLynn, remembers that when Kyle was only a baby in his little baby seat and she would start vacuuming the house, he would be mesmerized by it and follow her everywhere around the house. “Vacuum Boy” got his first vacuum cleaner at age 1, and when he was 2-years-old he dressed up hot Halloween as a Dirt Devil…
One of his former teachers remembers Kyle Krichbaum was vacuuming around school, during recess, when he was just 6 years old. It’s not that he didn’t like recess as much as the other kids, vacuuming was just his favorite pass-time. He would vacuum one side of a classroom one day, and finish the other side the next, and has even vacuumed the principal’s office.
Now, at just 15 years of age, Kyle is a Member of the Vacuum Cleaner Collectors Club and has one of the largest and most valuable collections in the world. He has all kinds of vintage Hoovers, Electrolux’s, Kenmores and Kirby’s and the most valuable item is a functioning Hoover 0, from 1908, worth over $10,000. The kid stores his vacuums all around the house and uses many of them to actually clean carpets and floors. Kyle Krichbaum’s father says he normally vacuums a couple of times a day, and even four times, during the summer. As much as they like that he keeps the house squeaky clean, his parents say they’re going to have a big vacuum cleaner sale, when he goes off to college.
Unusual Baseball Team Names
Now here is a league with interesting team nicknames. T-Bones, AirHogs, Wingnuts, Saltdogs and Goldeyes. I don’t know if I would prefer to be a T-Bone or Wingnut.
| American Association of Independent Professional Baseball | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Division | Team | First Season | City | Stadium | Capacity |
| North | |||||
| Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks | 1996 | Fargo, North Dakota | Newman Outdoor Field | 4,513 | |
| Sioux Falls Canaries | 1993 | Sioux Falls, South Dakota | Sioux Falls Stadium | 4,500 | |
| St. Paul Saints | 1993 | Saint Paul, Minnesota | CHS Field | 7,210 | |
| Winnipeg Goldeyes | 1994 | Winnipeg, Manitoba | Shaw Park | 7,481 | |
| Central | |||||
| Gary SouthShore RailCats | 2002 | Gary, Indiana | U.S. Steel Yard | 6,139 | |
| Kansas City T-Bones | 2003 | Kansas City, Kansas | CommunityAmerica Ballpark | 6,537 | |
| Lincoln Saltdogs | 2001 | Lincoln, Nebraska | Haymarket Park | 8,000 | |
| Sioux City Explorers | 1993 | Sioux City, Iowa | Lewis and Clark Park | 3,631 | |
| South | |||||
| Cleburne Railroaders | 2017 | Cleburne, Texas | The Depot at Cleburne Station | 1,750 | |
| Salina Stockade | 2016 | Salina, Kansas | Dean Evans Stadium | ||
| Wichita Wingnuts | 2008 | Wichita, Kansas | Lawrence-Dumont Stadium | 6,400 | |
| Texas AirHogs | 2007 | Grand Prairie, Texas | AirHogs Stadium | 5,445 | |
Winnipeg Goldeyes mascot Goldie.
The Idiocy, Fabrications and Lies of Ancient Aliens
The History Channel presents self-appointed challengers of science who take on the idea that aliens caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs
By Brian Switek
smithsonian.com
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Until now, I have assiduously avoided Ancient Aliens. I had a feeling that if I watched the show—which popularizes far-fetched, evidence-free idiocy about how human history has been molded by extra-terrestrial visitors—my brain would jostle its way out of my skull and stalk the earth in search of a kinder host. Or, at the very least, watching the show would kill about as many brain cells as a weekend bender in Las Vegas. But then I heard the History Channel’s slurry of pseudoscience had taken on dinosaurs. I steeled myself for the pain and watched the mind-melting madness unfold.
I’m actually glad that my editors don’t allow me to cuss a blue streak on this blog. If they did, my entire review would be little more than a string of expletives. Given my restrictions, I have little choice but to try to encapsulate the shiny, documentary-format rubbish in a more coherent and reader-sensitive way.
The episode is what you would get if you dropped some creationist propaganda, Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods and stock footage from Jurassic Fight Club into a blender. What results is a slimy and incomprehensible mixture of idle speculation and outright fabrications which pit the enthusiastic “ancient alien theorists,” as the narrator generously calls them, against “mainstream science.” I would say “You can’t make this stuff up,” but I have a feeling that that is exactly what most of the show’s personalities were doing.
There was so much wrong with the Ancient Aliens episode that I could spend all week trying to counteract every incorrect assertion. This is a common technique among cranks and self-appointed challengers of science; it is called Gish Gallop after young earth creationist Duane Gish. When giving public presentations about evolution and creationism, Gish rapidly spouted off a series of misinterpretations and falsehoods to bury his opponent under an avalanche of fictions and distortions. If Gish’s opponent tried to dig themselves out, they would never be able to make enough progress to free themselves to take on Gish directly. Ancient Aliens uses the same tactic—the fictions come fast and furious.
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While the main point of the episode is that aliens exterminated dinosaurs to make way for our species—a sci-fi scenario accompanied by some hilarious, mashed-together footage of dinosaurs fleeing from strafing alien craft, perhaps a preview of Dinosaurs vs. Aliens the movie—the various ancient alien experts do little more than assert that such an event must have happened. Surprise, surprise, they provide no actual evidence for their claims. Instead, they borrow evidence for fundamentalist Christians, who are never actually identified as such. Creationist Michael Cremo is identified only as the author of Forbidden Archeology, and Willie E. Dye is credited as a biblical archaeologist without any mention of his young earth creationist views. Ancient Aliensproducers clearly did not care about the credentials or expertise of the talking heads they employed—just so long as someone said the right things in front of the camera.
And the creationists didn’t disappoint. About halfway through the program, Cremo says, “Some researchers found human footprints alongside the footprints of dinosaurs.” The quote is a line out of context from Cremo’s interview, but is played in a section claiming that American Museum of Natural History paleontologist Roland T. Bird found human footprints associated with dinosaur trackways in the vicinity of Glen Rose, Texas.
Bird didn’t find any such thing. He found many dinosaur footprints and trackways—one of which he and his crew partially excavated and anachronistically placed behind the AMNH’s “Brontosaurus“—but no human tracks. Strangely, though, hoaxed human tracks did have a role to play in Bird’s decision to initially visit the tracksites.
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Erich Von Daniken is one of the noisiest blow-hards propagating the myths and archeological lies of the Ancient Aliens family. He is a big proponent of the theory that the Nazca Lines in Peru were space alien landing strips. The aliens travel billions and billions of miles through outer space to get to earth and they need landing strips?!!
The show can’t seem to decide whether aliens exterminated dinosaurs 66 million years ago or whether dinosaurs somehow survived to the modern era. Which is it? Did aliens clear away dinosaurs so that we might live? Or did some dinosaurs escape extinction somehow? Competing ideas bounce around like ping-pong balls during the whole episode. Grandpa Simpson tells more coherent stories.
Ancient Aliens is some of the most noxious sludge in television’s bottomless chum bucket. Actual experts are brought in to deliver sound bites that are twisted and taken out of context while fanatics are given free reign. Fiction is presented as fact, and real scientific research is so grossly misrepresented that I can only conclude that the program is actively lying to viewers. To present the show as a documentary, on a non-fiction network, is a loathsome move by the History Channel spinoff. (Technically, Ancient Aliens airs on an offshoot of the History Channel called H2.) If the network and the show’s creators want to present Ancient Aliens as a light survey of fringe ideas and make it clear that the ideas aren’t meant to be taken seriously, I can’t quarrel with that. But Ancient Aliens and shows like it winnow away at actual scientific understanding by promoting absolute dreck. Ancient Aliens is worse than bad television. The program shows a sheer contempt for science and what we really know about nature.
The narrator on the show does nothing but postulate conjecture. Question after question: Is it possible…, could it be…, is there a chance…, what if…,? The questions go on and on. And the ancient alien theorists assume that their speculation has to be true!
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This clown has gotten dirty rich off this TV show. He is laughing all the way to the bank.
Hidden Pools
This is cool. Save space with these innovative ideas.
The MarkoZen Blog 