Saturday, August 5, 2017

Friday, August 4, 2017

ah, fleeting summer


don’t dream it’s over


There is freedom within, there is freedom without.
Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup.


There's a battle ahead, many battles are lost.
But you'll never see the end of the road
While you're traveling with me.


Hey now, hey now
Don't dream it's over,
Hey now, hey now
When the world comes in.


They come, they come
To build a wall between us.


We know they won't win.


1986

Have an optimistic weekend!

Thursday, August 3, 2017

good career move

Eric Garner, you may recall, died in July 2014 about an hour after resisting arrest by the NYPD.
wiki

He was 43 years old, 6/3 and 350 pounds at the time of his death, with more than 30 arrests on charges including assault and grand larceny.

abcnews

At the time he was out on bail after being charged with illegally selling cigarettes, driving without a license, marijuana possession and false impersonation.


Whatever his unsavory history, he did not deserve to die.

reuters

And so the city settled with his family this month, 
for just under six million dollars.


Statistically, Garner could have lived another 31 years, implying he might have earned an average of $190,322 dollars a year for the rest of his life. 


Elvis Presley, David Bowie and Prince also 
earn a lot more after death than in life.

So at least he’s in very good company.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

because we're happy

There were over 52,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2015.


The United States lost 58,000 lives in the Vietnam War.


Over 55,000 people died in the conflict in Syria in 2015.

In the past 10 years over 560,000 people in the United States died due to drug overdoses, more than the population of Atlanta.



Fentanyl deaths reached an all-time high of 1,374 in New York City last year — a 46% increase over 2015.



Tuesday, August 1, 2017

just another day in New Jersey





leave it to the Germans


When you are #1 in cheesesteaks, 
the world might overlook your architectural achievements.


But Philadelphia’s City Hall is credited with several #1’s.




Designed to be the world’s tallest structure, it took 30 years to achieve 548 feet, from 1871-1901.

That’s 233 feet taller than the ClockTower that houses Big Ben. 

Almost 100 feet taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza, at 455 feet.

It easily bests Seattle’s Space Needle built in 1961. 
That top floor is at 518 feet.


It is still the worlds tallest masonry building.

A sentimental gentleman’s agreement among developers required that no building in Philly be taller than the statue of William Penn on the top of City Hall.


That agreement was finally discarded by a German from Nuremberg,
architect Helmut Jahn.

His One Liberty Place, soared to 945 feet in 1987.

Ripping off our 1929 Chrysler building in the process.

At least Philly is not also #1 in sausages.

Sunday, July 30, 2017

dum, dee dum dumb


If panhandling uninvited door-to-door doesn’t sound very smart to you, you’d actually be right.

Besides being disrespectful, 
Jehovah’s Witness are empirically stupid.


PEW Research took a deep dive into Jehovah’s Witness education, and the results are not pretty. 

Fewer than 12% have a college degree.


2 out of three (63%) barely finished high school.

This places them at the bottom of religious earnings,
 scraping by on an average of $24,000. 


So the next time they bother you for money, 
you can actually say “Get away from me, stupid.”

That’s not very polite, I agree. 

But you will not be technically wrong.