Ohio Follows Arizona

Ohio Christian Alliance reports that, after nutjob Jan Brewer shot down Arizona's Religious Freedom act (lampooned here by Jon Stewart), the Ohio general Assembly shelved, indefinitely, it's (mysteriously) similar legislation, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, H.B. 376. The reason being, 'while the legislation stemmed from a well-meaning place, they don't want to allow for confusion around the issue.'
Apparently, the OCA & the CCV are very disappointed in their loss of freedom to discriminate and ram their extremist agenda down Ohioan's throats. How confusing is that?

An AI Seance

OK, when the going gets weird, the weird get going. So, after you kick the bucket, these guys have come up with a scheme that marries the dumbass shit you tweet & blather about in other online venues with an artificial intelligence engine, globs it onto an avatar and lets your loved ones semi sorta kinda speak with your dead ass via Skype.
First thing to pop into my noggin was the scene in Dark Star where the crew has to resurrect the dead captain.
I don't get it. It might fly with casual friends, but for close friends & relatives, forget it. Or maybe that's how people relate to each other now.
Still, I bet Harry Houdini would have kicked the developers asses.

More here

WCPO Jumps the Shark

Carol Williams endless warnings of, "it's not as safe as you think" have now gone into the realm of passenger rail. Apparently streetcars kill. But not in the hundred mile an hour screeching metal on metal way that would be cool - more like the the way fences lure motorists to their demise way. After dire warnings, the article does state that all the accidents they cite have been due to motorist error but Chairman Brinkman almost tearfully assures us that because of the streetcar, people will die. Never mind that without street rail, about a thousand people a year die in traffic accidents every year in Ohio.
I used to like charnel 9 but they have taken a jag that seems to have led them into the twilight zone. Well, what the hell. Horror sells.

More Cello Madness

Putin will teach you to love the Motherland

Putin will teach you to love the MotherlandIt appears Pussy Riot is at it again. God I love the vocals - Russian just nails it for angry punk music.
Whatever, they've got their work cut out for 'em. Between some stuff Eric Voegelinwrote & stuff like this article, What Makes The Russians Tick? by Richard Longworth, I don't thin change - real change - is coming to Russia anytime soon.

Hey Hollywood !

Everybody knows it. Everybody is thinking it. But nobody will say it.
OK, I will. Hollywood should put Aztec Ace on the big screen. A guy from the 23rd century with a penchant for jazz & Coca Cola, who lives in an ancient Aztec pyramid who goes globe trotting & time traveling with his girlfriend Bridget & the floating, disembodied head of Sigmund Freud in an effort to save the space time continuum couldn't not be a success.
But, Quimbob, doesn't Hollywood fuck up everything it touches?
Well, yeah….
oh well...

More on Ace

KAHN !

Horror Sells

Time, money, safety? Gridlock? Check out the ominous music.
And, as you know, being stuck in traffic makes you an easy target for the imminent zombie horde.

Rivers, Wolves, Beavers & Stuff

This video tlks about how the reintroduction of wolves changed the habitat & even the rivers in Yellowstone. The Book, The Mill Creek, An unnatural History of an Urban Stream discusses a lot of the same thing except in an urban environment. As anybody in Cincinnati can attest, there's not much in the way of beavers & wolves but loads of deer that the cops kill from time to time. Should Cincinnati reintroduce wolves? Might be kinda cool. It would make waiting at a bus stop more interesting. Late nights, sprinting across parking lots could get really entertaining.

Remembering Dresden 1945

February 13-15 1945, Dresden was firebombed & strafed mercilessly in an effort to finish the war in Europe. Here is a recollection by a survivor

Then the bombing began again. This time there was no pause between detonations and the rocking was so severe, we lost our balance, and were tossed around in the basement like a bunch of ragdolls. At times the basement walls were separated and lifted up. We could see the flashes of the fiery explosions outside. There were a lot of fire bombs and canisters of phosphorous being dumped everywhere. The phosphorus was a thick liquid that burned upon exposure to air and as it penetrated cracks in buildings, it burned wherever it leaked through. The fumes from it were poisonous. When it came leaking down the basement steps somebody yelled to grab a beer (there was some stored where we were), soak a cloth, a piece of your clothing, and press it over your mouth and nose. The panic was horrible. Everybody pushed, shoved and clawed to get a bottle.

Meanwhile…

While it's only taken 50 years, Sports Illustrated has finally decided to use the ultimate swimsuit model in their rag.
whatever...

More from La Timez here

MORE

While John Cranley wants to hire more police and add to a budget that's already in the red, do we really need more police? A post from the Cincinnati Libertarian from '05 indicates, not necessarily.

Are more police officers always the answer? Lt Rahtz sites an experiment in Kansas City where the police department there took all of their patrols out of one beat, and sent them to a beat with a similar crime rate (the only time a police officer would enter that beat was when dispatched). So for a time, one beat had twice as much police presence as before, and the other one had virtually none.
So, what was the end result? Crime stayed the same in both beats. Police presence had no effect on crime!

While having more police to respond & investigate might be on the table, mere presence doesn't seem to be any deterrent.
Add to that, that The Queen City is near the top 10 of officers per capita in the nation and that we had only about 300 police around 1890 when the city population & footprint were about the same…
Maybe holograms are the answer.

.

Sylvia Plath, 11/27/32 - 2/11/63
Peter Laughner, 8/22/52 - 6/22/77

Who Needs a Bridge ?

Do you commute over the Ohio River on a regular basis? Are you "blocked by the bridge"? Don't want to pay tolls on a new bridge?
This amphibious car can do 80mph on land & 44mph on the water. For a cool $135,000 you can avoid all that nonsense and just drive across the river whenever you please. No need to confiscate $3 BILLION dollars from the taxpayers to cover your dumb decision to live 100 miles from your job with a major natural obstacle along the route…

Find out more here

Slummin' in the Sketchbook

CFD goes Vimeo

Fireline from CitiCable on Vimeo.

the sound effects crack me up, but it's cool that the Cincinnati Fire Department is communicating. The Fire Dept & other city services are reaching out to citizenry thru Nextdoor.

So How's That New Government Working For ya ?

Our new, level headed, fiscally conservative City council & mayor are off to an incredible start. While their first month was exciting, there was a bit of a lull in January, but February is making up for lost time.
Back in December the mayor expressed his commitment to core services. CO   's Amy Murray took over the transportation committee & that fiscal watchdog, the Windbag uncovered a horrific scandal as the city had bought road salt without running out of their current supply - never mind that salt doesn't go bad….
Now the city is running out of salt, the streets are snarled & unpassable. Transportation, core services, Saltgate - everything has come to a grinding halt under those folks who were going to 'clean up the mess'. Charlie Winburn should apologize to the salt buyers right now.
Cranley has also announced he will reveal his parking semi-modernization plan that will raise rates, incur more debt, apparently, skip smartphone compatibility & maintain the same lax maintenance & enforcement.
Leadership in action, boy howdy.

Bike Sharing = Insanity

The yahoos over at Urban Cincy go off on Bike Sharing like they just found Bettie Page. They seem to go for any weird bicycle jimcrackery. At some point it comes down to pedaling from point A to point B, tho.
The proposed Cincinnati bike share program is expected to cost $1.2M to get going & $400,000/year to run. It uses a system of stations with bikes nobody wants to ride locked in high tech bike racks and card readers to determine if you are a subscriber or just snaging a bike for half an hour. It appears to service people who, out of the blue, decide they need to ride from one station to the next. So, what if I neither live near a station nor want to go anywhere near a station? The rationale is that

usage of shared bikes is intended for one-way rentals

Seriously? You're never going home? 99% of all trips are round trips.
So, this scheme relies on paying people to constantly redistribute the bikes.
You may or may not be able to get a bike, so, do you leave for your destination an hour before you need to be there or twenty minutes? You won't know til you walk over to the station to see what's available.
A one year membership/subscription to ride a crappy bike that may or may not be available & may or may not get you where you want to go & may or may not be available to get you home again will be around $80. If this is as serious you are about riding - BUY A CHEAP BIKE!!! It's gonna be about the same price.
Bike rental services can rent by the hour or week or anywhere in between. They can offer crappy bikes or nicer bikes & fit you. They can work with hotels & deliver & pick up the bikes and you can just have the hotel valet store your bike. They could probably work something out with the train depot.
Investing almost $2M to service people who randomly spaz out & need a bike to go from one bike rack to another is just crazy.

Fishwarp regurgitates UrbanCincy story here

A New Home for the Police Museum

Lost in the shuffle, as the Hamilton County GOP seeks to game the local elections & politicize the county law enforcement agencies, one of the entities moving the Mercy Hospital in Mt Airy is the Greater Cincinnati Police Museum.
These guys had lost their old location and with a budget of about $0, they had no place to go. With the donation of the facility to the county, the museum has been invited to set up shop with a larger facility with more parking.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

What's a cemetery without a cool wrought iron fence around it - you know, with spikes ^ stuff up top? Unfortunately, when you have cars, you can't have nice stuff.
Ferncliff Cemetery, in Springfield, OH, has a problem with motorists losing control on a Bend in the road and careening into the cemetery destroying the expensive iron fence panels. They cost about $1,240 apiece and a car can take out 4 pretty easy. Apparently they stop the cars, tho…
FWIW, I never had any problem navigating that turn.
The latest chunk to get creamed wasn't on the bend, however, it was on a straight stretch of road.
I have seen this at Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery, too. One of the few straight, flat stretches of Roadway in the city and people manage to veer off the road & destroy iron fences pretty regularly.
The corner of Spring Grove and Crawford, at the SW corner of the cemetery is so impossible to navigate the cemetery has moved their fence back incrementally over the years to accommodate the shitty drivers.
The aforelinked Frogtown Noose Son article has the headline:

Springfield cemetery fence a magnet for car crashes

So, I guess the villain, a temptress, I guess, is the fence luring innocent motorists to their demise with their siren call, "come to me, come to me, crash, crash…".
I'm gonna go out on a limb here & say we need to quit handing out drivers licenses like candy at a parade & stop assuming peoples' driving skills never diminish. A reduced speed limit, Cemetery Zone, like a school zone might help but on streets like Winton Road, on the east side of Spring Grove Cemetery is a daredevil race track and any speed limit signs are pointless.

.

Kind of an odd song for a singalong but what the hell, happy Birthday to Dave Davies.

Happy Imbolc Everybody !!