Urban Life

Show Only ...
Maps - Photos - Videos

A Design Engineer Explains Exactly Why Your Car Is So Boring

A Design Engineer Explains Exactly Why Your Car Is So Boring

"So next time you get in your car, look around. Think about the things you do and don’t like about your car. Realize that nothing in your car exists because one engineer didn’t get enough sleep and decided to put that USB charger just out of your grasp. Designing a car is an immensely complex, exhausting process and each part has its own story. Try to understand how all those stories come together to make one coherent, attractive, quality, affordable, safe vehicle, and you’ll understand the challenge of my job."

Trump Administration Reverses Course On Energy Efficiency Standard Following AG Lawsuit

Trump Administration Reverses Course On Energy Efficiency Standard Following AG Lawsuit

I don't understand how anybody could be opposed to efficiency standards on a fans. It might require manufacturers to re-tool their plants, and lead to a slight cost increase at first -- but because ceiling fans often last decades or even longer and are small part of a home purchase -- the savings will be far greater then any marginal up cost front.

The Airport Lawyers Who Stood Up to Trump Are Under Attack

The Airport Lawyers Who Stood Up to Trump Are Under Attack

"ο»Ώ When lawyers rushed to airports this winter to protect our friends, our neighbors, and our Constitution, people cheered. The Trump administration took offense, and now those lawyers are in their cross hairs. The president is taking a sledgehammer to the pillars of our government: the FBI, the Justice Department, the federal courts. America, we are under attack."

You’re Not Wanted

Police Forces Are Sending A Message To Black Suburban Residents: You’re Not Wanted

"It was a familiar story in Troy β€” where, over the last six years, at least seven black residents have been acquitted of resisting arrest and then paid by the city over claims of police brutality β€” and evidence of a nationwide trend driven by demographic shifts shaking the country. As black and brown people leave major cities to raise families in areas that were once predominantly white, they’re encountering police departments that are slow to reflect those population shifts and all too eager to placate longtime white residents who equate change with rising crime. To those white residents, the officers serve as a final line of defense against the outsiders marching onto their land, uniformed allies paid to protect them from the dangers they feel closing in around them."

TZ Bridge deck panels to be reused

TZ Bridge deck panels to be reused

"The 61-year-old Tappan Zee Bridge, scheduled for demolition this summer, is going to live on in Orange County.

In a new twist on reuse-reduce-recycle, the county has asked the New York State Thruway Authority for 14 of the 150 prefabricated deck panels that will be salvaged from the bridge before it is dismantled.

β€œWe have one bridge – the Corwin Bridge - already in design to accept the panels,β€³ said Chris Viebrock, the county’s public works commissioner.

The bridge, which carries County Route 11 (Mount Hope Road) over the Shawangunk Kill in the Town of Mount Hope, is getting an estimated $690,000 makeover. The panels will shorten the construction timetable and shave the cost.

Viebrock, praising the Thruway for making the panels available, said he is also evaluating the feasibility of using them on three other bridges as well as two crossings on the new extension of the Heritage Trail between Goshen and Middletown."