Day: December 21, 2017💾

📽️ Videos

Phil Ochs – Another Age

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"Soldiers have their sorrow
The wretched have their rage
Pray for the aged
It's the dawn of another age
Of another age
Of another age"

"Thomas Paine and Jesse James are old friends
And Robin Hood is riding on the road again
We were born in a revolution and we died in a wasted war
It's gone that way before"

"The dogs are chasing chicken bones across the lawn
If that was an election, I'm a Viet Cong
So I pledge allegiance against the flag
And the flaw for which it stands
I'll raise it if I can"

Map: Debar Pond

I Tried to Make My Home Energy Efficient and It’s Ruining My Life

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I Tried to Make My Home Energy Efficient and It’s Ruining My Life

"Leonard McBean had been told for months that his south Los Angeles home was a firetrap. Decades-old wiring had never been replaced, a common situation in his low-income neighborhood. One Tuesday morning, McBean asked a friend about the electrical contractor working on their house. By Wednesday night, the same contractor—a man who gave his name as Yogi—had approved the Jamaican immigrant for $18,000 in energy-efficient improvements."

“I said, ‘I don’t have that money,” McBean, a 67-year-old retired medical shuttle driver, told me. “He said, ‘Mr. McBean, don’t worry, you’re not going to pay a lot, just $100 a month.’ He said it was an Obama program.”

"When McBean electronically signed the contract two years ago, he didn’t realize he was consenting to have a lien placed on his house, meaning the county could take the home away for lack of payment. "He didn’t know the escrow payment attached to his mortgage would jump $400 a month. He didn’t know the lien would make the home difficult to sell."

Articulated Bus in Seattle slides on snow

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Tomorrow, CDTA gets to see how their 10 or so new articulated pusher buses will preform in the snow and ice.

Pusher buses are notoriously bad in the snow, they use the TRAILER rather then the TRACTOR to "push" them along the road. It's the opposite of semi-trucks that use the tractor to pull the trailer. Air pistons keep them from jackknifing when the steering wheel is going straight in normal weather, but they don't do very good in snow and ice.

Of course, they could just leave the articulated buses parked and just use the normal buses. But what fun would that be?

Map: Hawkins Pond State Forest And County Park