Nice Truck.
What can I say? I just sometimes enjoy looking at videos of sweet lifted trucks.
Efficiency and Clean Air Cars Standards Didn’t Make Cars Boring
Sometimes it is claimed that fuel efficiency standards and clean air regulations will lead to cars being small, boring, and unsafe. But that’s contrary to what history says.
Cars got smaller in the 1970s and early 1980s, but over time grew bigger and more powerful than ever before, all while using less gas than their predecessors.
Just a reminder of the fact that fuel economy standards don't force people to buy expensive, little cars, that are unpowered. Cars are as powerful and as roomy if not more roomy then the beasts of the early 1970s.
Finally Succumbed to the Cold Going Around the Office
The past few weeks there has been a bad cold going around through the office. I responded by drinking lots of orange juice, washing my hands thoroughly, using lots of hand sanitizer, and trying to avoid chewing on pens and putting things in my mouth that shouldn’t be there.
It worked for a while. But this weekend, I’ve finally gotten the cold. It’s not awful, but I also don’t feel wonderful either. I might go out hiking at Five Rivers this evening, but right now, it’s pretty cold out and I don’t feel great. Sucks though, that I had to get sick on the weekend.
I tried my hardest not to get the cold going around the office, but I seemed to have finally got it for the long weekend.
They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot
A few months ago I stumbled across this photo on the AlbanyGroup on Flickr. It is of the Northway Exit 1, shortly after it was constructed in the mid-1960s, prior to construction of Crossgates Mall.
The the Pine Bush at that time seems largely wild, although there are some newer housing subdivisions in the distance. The Northway and Thruway Interchange seem somewhat out of place, and once can only imagine what these wild lands must have looked like before these superhighways were overlaid over this area that once was mostly dirt roads, the wilds at the outskirts of the city.
Within a decade, much of this land would be filled in with Washington Avenue Extension’s many strip malls and Crossgates Mall. These wild lands would be lost, at least temporarily to parking lots, suburban office buildings, and shopping centers.
Similar scenes can be seen across more rural portions of New York. What happened in the Albany Pine Bush can happen anywhere.
Look now and speak up before it’s gone.
An old-1960s photo of the Northway and Rensselaer Lake reminds us what the Pine Bush looked like before it's heavy development, and is a warning for future generations.