Trapped in an Elevator, Captured on Video

With so much in the news these days about elevator problems, it reminded me of this harrowing video of a man trapped in a New York elevator for 41 hours.

The time-lapse video shows Nicholas White, who in October 1999 was a 34-year-old production manager for Business Week. He stepped out for a cigarette break and on his way back to his desk was trapped in the elevator over the weekend. His plight was chronicled in this New Yorker story about the life of elevators.

And if your claustrophobia hasn’t kicked in, check out this interactive graphic of “entrapments” in New York City elevators last year.

Have you ever been trapped in an elevator?

TO-DO TATTOO

I am definitely going to get some of these LOL
gregor

TO-DO TATTOO
the perfect solution for your shoddy short-term memory

Here’s a tongue-in-cheek tribute to anyone who’s ever
scribbled a reminder on their hand or wrist. Err, that would
be about everybody, right? Our To-Do Tattoo kit includes
12 graphic “To Do” forms that you can apply to your body
wherever it’s most convenient (or creative) and a skin-safe,
washable-ink gel pen. You’ll never again have to make
lame excuses for missing bowling night or your mom’s
birthay. Nifty peggable blistercard packaging.

Design: Andy Ward, OOF Collective

©2008 FRED

Photographer's moment of madness as he leaps across 8ft gap in the Grand Canyon

Photographer's moment of madness as he leaps across 8ft gap in the Grand Canyon

By Olinka Koster

This is the heart-stopping moment a daring photographer leapt between two rocky outcrops over the Grand Canyon - with drop of nearly a mile beneath him.

A crowd of onlookers gasped in horror as the man - who was wearing flimsy flip-flops - risked his life to capture a stunning shot of the Arizona sunset.

Deadly risk: The unidentified tourist jumps a chasm at the Grand Canyon

Minutes earlier, the unknown daredevil had been casually sunbathing on a rock column.

He had already made the leap once to get to the smaller rock - although that act of daring went unwitnessed.

Once there, he made the most of it by downing a six-pack of beer while relaxing on the outcrop for several hours.

However, as sunset approached, a crowd of tourists gathered and watched as the man took a perfect shot of the canyon.

Fearless: The photographer sets up his tripod on a perilous pinnacle of rock

To their astonishment, he then simply tucked the camera and tripod under his arm and leapt back across the 8ft gap.

He grasped hold of the opposing rock face with just one hand and momentarily lost his grip before climbing to safety.

For those who find their heart skipping a beat just looking at these photographs, it may of some comfort to know that the two rocks are actually joined together lower down.

One, two, three, jump! The man takes his life in his hands as he makes the leap

However, there is still a life-threatening drop of around 20ft on the near, 'safer' side of the rocks. On the far side, the drop is about 0.6miles.

The photos were taken by amateur Dutch photographer Hans van de Vorst, 47, who visited the spot on holiday.

When he arrived at the scene the man, dressed in jeans, t-shirt and flip-flops, was lounging on the rock column around 15ft from the edge of the canyon.

Mr van de Vorst, a marketing consultant from Veenendaal in central Holland, watched as the man set up his tripod and captured the last minutes of the sunset, before
casually finishing his beer, packing up his equipment and making the leap.

'When we arrived he was just taking in the scenery and people were discussing how he managed to get on there in the first place,' he said.

'Nobody even bothered with the sunset - everyone's eyes were on this man and how he was going to get off the rock.

'He looked really relaxed and casually stood up before jumping across the gap.
'There was complete silence as he packed his things up and then a few gasps when he jumped.

'He didn't grab the rock properly the first time and slipped back about 50cm (20 inches) before clinging onto it. Even then he didn't look fazed.'

Terrifying: Tripod under one arm, the daredevil leaper clings desperately to the far wall after making his jump

Mr van de Vorst posted the pictures on the Internet in a bid to track down the mystery man, but no-one has come forward.

The Grand Canyon - which straddles the Colorado River - is 277 miles long and ranges in width from 4 to 18 miles with a depth of more than a mile at its deepest point.

It is one of the deepest in the world and is famous for its array of bright reds and oranges, which are caused by the unusual geological formations.

The dramatic pictures were taken at The Grand Viewpoint at the Grand Canyon's South Rim.

Weezer understands how to work YouTube:

Weezer understands how to work YouTube: allude to these 24 viral videos

Weezer has been geek rock since before I was logging onto the Internet using Prodigy in fifth grade. And who among us never wondered: what's with these homies, dissing my girl? Point is: the band gets the geeks. So it's no surprise that they understand one of the easiest way to go viral on YouTube and across the Web is to make multiple references to videos gone viral before. Check out the band's latest video above, "Pork and Beans," and then below, embeds of all of the viral videos referenced.

One Man Band

Numa Numa

Dramatic Gopher

How the Dramatic Prairie Dog was Born

Afro Ninja

Diet coke and Mentos experiment

GI Joe Gay

Guiness World Record for most T-Shirts worn at one time.

Chris Crocker - LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

Star Wars Kid

Crank That Soldier Boy

Evolution of Dance

"Chocolate Rain" Original Song by Tay Zonday

K-Fed Popozao

Daft Hands - Technologic

Daft Bodies - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Shoes the Full Version

Charlie The Unicorn

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!!!

Will it Blend

Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp Utah Phillips Dead at 73

Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp Utah Phillips Dead at 73

Published on May 24, 2008

By: the family of Utah Phillips

Utah Phillips at a 2007 peace march in Grass Valley. Photo: YubaNet.com

Nevada City, California, May 24. 2008 - Utah Phillips, a seminal figure in American folk music who performed extensively and tirelessly for audiences on two continents for 38 years, died Friday of congestive heart failure in Nevada City, California a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains where he lived for the last 21 years with his wife, Joanna Robinson, a freelance editor.

Born Bruce Duncan Phillips on May 15, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio, he was the son of labor organizers. Whether through this early influence or an early life that was not always tranquil or easy, by his twenties Phillips demonstrated a lifelong concern with the living conditions of working people. He was a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World, popularly known as "the Wobblies," an organizational artifact of early twentieth-century labor struggles that has seen renewed interest and growth in membership in the last decade, not in small part due to his efforts to popularize it.

Phillips served as an Army private during the Korean War, an experience he would later refer to as the turning point of his life. Deeply affected by the devastation and human misery he had witnessed, upon his return to the United States he began drifting, riding freight trains around the country. His struggle would be familiar today, when the difficulties of returning combat veterans are more widely understood, but in the late fifties Phillips was left to work them out for himself.

Destitute and drinking, Phillips got off a freight train in Salt Lake City and wound up at the Joe Hill House, a homeless shelter operated by the anarchist Ammon Hennacy, a member of the Catholic Worker movement and associate of Dorothy Day.

Phillips credited Hennacy and other social reformers he referred to as his "elders" with having provided a philosophical framework around which he later constructed songs and stories he intended as a template his audiences could employ to understand their own political and working lives. They were often hilarious, sometimes sad, but never shallow.

"He made me understand that music must be more than cotton candy for the ears," said John McCutcheon, a nationally-known folksinger and close friend.

In the creation of his performing persona and work, Phillips drew from influences as diverse as Borscht Belt comedian Myron Cohen, folksingers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and Country stars Hank Williams and T. Texas Tyler.

Folk legend Utah Philipps sitting under the clear message:No Blood for Oil! 03/20/2003 Photo: YubaNet

A stint as an archivist for the State of Utah in the 1960s taught Phillips the discipline of historical research; beneath the simplest and most folksy of his songs was a rigorous attention to detail and a strong and carefully-crafted narrative structure. He was a voracious reader in a surprising variety of fields.

Meanwhile, Phillips was working at Hennacy's Joe Hill house. In 1968 he ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. The race was won by a Republican candidate, and Phillips was seen by some Democrats as having split the vote. He subsequently lost his job with the State of Utah, a process he described as "blacklisting."

Phillips left Utah for Saratoga Springs, New York, where he was welcomed into a lively community of folk performers centered at the Caffe Lena, operated by Lena Spencer.

"It was the coffeehouse, the place to perform. Everybody went there. She fed everybody," said John "Che" Greenwood, a fellow performer and friend.

Over the span of the nearly four decades that followed, Phillips worked in what he referred to as "the Trade," developing an audience of hundreds of thousands and performing in large and small cities throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. His performing partners included Rosalie Sorrels, Kate Wolf, John McCutcheon and Ani DiFranco.

"He was like an alchemist," said Sorrels, "He took the stories of working people and railroad bums and he built them into work that was influenced by writers like Thomas Wolfe, but then he gave it back, he put it in language so the people whom the songs and stories were about still had them, still owned them. He didn't believe in stealing culture from the people it was about."

A single from Phillips's first record, "Moose Turd Pie," a rollicking story about working on a railroad track gang, saw extensive airplay in 1973. From then on, Phillips had work on the road. His extensive writing and recording career included two albums with Ani DiFranco which earned a Grammy nomination. Phillips's songs were performed and recorded by Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Tom Waits, Joe Ely and others. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Folk Alliance in 1997.

Phillips, something of a perfectionist, claimed that he never lost his stage fright before performances. He didn't want to lose it, he said; it kept him improving.

Phillips began suffering from the effects of chronic heart disease in 2004, and as his illness kept him off the road at times, he started a nationally syndicated folk-music radio show, "Loafer's Glory," produced at KVMR-FM and started a homeless shelter in his rural home county, where down-on-their-luck men and women were sleeping under the manzanita brush at the edge of town. Hospitality House opened in 2005 and continues to house 25 to 30 guests a night. In this way, Phillips returned to the work of his mentor Hennacy in the last four years of his life.

Phillips died at home, in bed, in his sleep, next to his wife. He is survived by his son Duncan and daughter-in-law Bobette of Salt Lake City, son Brendan of Olympia, Washington; daughter Morrigan Belle of Washington, D.C.; stepson Nicholas Tomb of Monterrey, California; stepson and daughter-in-law Ian Durfee and Mary Creasey of Davis, California; brothers David Phillips of Fairfield, California, Ed Phillips of Cleveland, Ohio and Stuart Cohen of Los Angeles; sister Deborah Cohen of Lisbon, Portugal; and a grandchild, Brendan. He was preceded in death by his father Edwin Phillips and mother Kathleen, and his stepfather, Syd Cohen.

The family requests memorial donations to Hospitality House, P.O. Box 3223, Grass Valley, California 95945 (530) 271-7144 www.hospitalityhouseshelter.org

Phones shut off at police HQ; Verizon investigating

By Alesha Williams Boyd • FREEHOLD BUREAU • May 24, 2008

MANALAPAN — Verizon is investigating why phone service was shut off for several hours at the township's police department last week, according to a spokesman for the telecommunications company.

Police Chief Stuart Brown said he filed a complaint with the state Board of Public Utilities regarding the May 14-15 shutoff, which Verizon customer service representatives initially told a shift supervisor was due to nonpayment.

Brown said the last call the department received was at 10:50 p.m. on the 14th, and, after several calls to Verizon, the department's phone system was back online by about 2:15 a.m.

It was the department's main line that was disconnected; calls to 911 were not, Brown said. He said he wasn't aware that any problems resulted from the shutoff.

"Not everybody in this town calls 911 for emergencies; that number (the main line) is in their head," Brown said. "If someone called for assistance and they couldn't get through, that may be the only call they make."

"I cannot defend the billing issue; we are a municipality that pays through a voucher system like hundreds of other towns and I admit it is slow," Brown said in his complaint. "However, as a matter of common sense and decency, I find the practice of "shutting off' the phone service to a 24-hour, public law enforcement agency that is responsible for providing immediate response to public emergencies reprehensible."

"This police department was not forewarned" about the shutoff, Brown said.

He added officers only learned about the disconnection when a caller checking on the welfare of a Manalapan resident called Freehold Township police after being unable to reach Manalapan's department. An officer used the county radio system to notify Manalapan that its phone service was out, the chief said.

The township's administrative department, which Brown said handles payment of utility bills, did not return calls for comment.

Verizon investigation

Verizon spokesman Richard Young said it is unclear whether the problem was because of billing or a technical issue, and the company is looking into what happened to "make it right."

"At this point, I can't say definitively that it was a billing issue," Young said. "We need to see if there's a record of those calls, exactly what was said and why."

Young said the company has experienced occasions when municipal governments have fallen behind in payments, "but we go above and beyond in our efforts to make them whole."

"In general (shutting off service to a police department) shouldn't happen," Young said. "I can't think of an instance when we've deliberately" done that.

Brown said he hopes the BPU and Verizon's internal investigation help the company understand exactly what went wrong so it doesn't happen again.

"If it happened to us, I'm sure it could happen to someone else," he said.

BPU spokesman Doyal H. Siddell said the agency also is looking into the matter.

"Issues involving safety and security are of paramount importance to the NJBPU," Siddell said. "Board staff will be doing a thorough review of Verizon's role in the incident in question."

Transparent Frogs to Eliminate Need For Dissection

Transparent Frogs to Eliminate Need For Dissection

It would seem that Japan has decided to be a little more transparent with some of their scientific experiments.

Scientists at Hiroshima University’s Institute for Amphibian Biology in Hiroshima, western Japan, have bred transparent frogs whose organs can be seen through their skin.

The lead researcher Masayuki Sumida, says researchers produced the creature from rare mutants of the Japanese brown frog, or Rena japonica.

“You can see through the skin how organs grow, how cancer starts and develops. The researcher can observe how toxins affect bones, livers and other organs at lower costs. You can watch organs of the same frog over its entire life as you don’t have to dissect it.” — Professor Sumida

Reducing the number of dissections in schools will eliminate a lot of controversy from animal rights groups concerned with humane treatment of laboratory animals. It will also save schools money on the purchase of frogs to dissect.

The researchers also say that by fusing the genes of fluorescent proteins to the frog’s genes, they can create frogs that glow. Supposedly they would be able to see exactly when a cancer begins to develop as the frogs will actually begin to glow in the dark.

I can’t imagine any genetic engineering being on the horizon to breed transparent dogs or cats. However, I bet lots of parents wish those hamsters and gerbils that occasionally get loose would glow in the dark.

Professor Sumida may start a side line product by producing glow-in-the-dark “little pets” to pay for his research.

(link)