Paul Harvey says..........

[THE KOD]

smurph

sometimes I got to have a thread where I store all my interesting space junk stuff.

well its interesting to me.:SIB

what cost freedom

 

[smurphy]

I sincerely apologize, Scott from Atlanta. I was drunk.

 

[THE KOD]

smurph

I accept your apology for all the mean spirited things you have said to me over the years.

I feel better now.

Well kinda

 

[smurphy]

I accept your acceptance of the apology.

 

[THE KOD]

It was wonderful to see the two dogs when they caught sight of each other. The white dog came up to the ring straining at his leash, nearly dragging his trainer off his feet in his efforts to get at the enemy. At intervals he emitted a hoarse roar of challenge and defiance.

The brindled dog never uttered a sound. He fixed his eyes on his adversary with a look of intense hunger, of absolute yearning for combat. He never for an instant shifted his unwinking gaze. He seemed like an animal who saw the hopes of years about to be realised. With painful earnestness he watched every detail of the other dog's toilet; and while the white dog was making fierce efforts to get at him, he stood Napoleonic, grand in his courage, waiting for the fray.

All details were carefully attended to, and all rules strictly observed. People may think a dog-fight is a go-as-you-please outbreak of lawlessness, but there are rules and regulations -- simple, but effective. There were two umpires, a referee, a timekeeper, and two seconds for each dog. The stakes were said to be ten pounds a-side. After some talk, the dogs were carried to the centre of the ring by their seconds and put on the ground. Like a flash of lightning they dashed at each other, and the fight began.

Nearly everyone has seen dogs fight -- "it is their nature to", as Dr. Watts put it. But an ordinary worry between (say) a retriever and a collie, terminating as soon as one or other gets his ear bitten, gives a very faint idea of a real dog-fight. But bull-terriers are the gladiators of the canine race. Bred and trained to fight, carefully exercised and dieted for weeks beforehand, they come to the fray exulting in their strength and determined to win. Each is trained to fight for certain holds, a grip of the ear or the back of the neck being of very slight importance. The foot is a favourite hold, the throat is, of course, fashionable -- if they can get it.

The white and the brindle sparred and wrestled and gripped and threw each other, fighting grimly, and disdaining to utter a sound. Their seconds dodged round them unceasingly, giving them encouragement and advice -- "That's the style, Boxer -- fight for his foot" -- "Draw your foot back, old man," and so on. Now and again one dog got a grip of the other's foot and chewed savagely, and the spectators danced with excitement. The moment the dogs let each other go they were snatched up by their seconds and carried to their corners, and a minute's time was allowed, in which their mouths were washed out and a cloth rubbed over their bodies.

Then came the ceremony of "coming to scratch". When time was called for the second round the brindled dog was let loose in his own corner, and was required by the rules to go across the ring of his own free will and attack the other dog. If he failed to do this he would lose the fight. The white dog, meanwhile, was held in his corner waiting the attack. After the next round it was the white dog's turn to make the attack, and so on alternately. The animals need not fight a moment longer than they chose, as either dog could abandon the fight by failing to attack his enemy.

While their condition lasted they used to dash across the ring at full run; but, after a while, when the punishment got severe and their "fitness" began to fail, it became a very exciting question whether or not a dog would "come to scratch". The brindled dog's condition was not so good as the other's. He used to lie on his stomach between the rounds to rest himself, and several times it looked as if he would not cross the ring when his turn came. But as soon as time was called he would start to his feet and limp slowly across glaring steadily at his adversary; then, as he got nearer, he would quicken his pace, make a savage rush, and in a moment they would be locked in combat. So they battled on for fifty-six minutes, till the white dog (who was apparently having all the best of it), on being called to cross the ring, only went half-way across and stood there for a minute growling savagely. So he lost the fight.

No doubt it was a brutal exhibition. But it was not cruel to the animals in the same sense that pigeon-shooting or hare-hunting is cruel. The dogs are born fighters, anxious and eager to fight, desiring nothing better. Whatever limited intelligence they have is all directed to this one consuming passion. They could stop when they liked, but anyone looking on could see that they gloried in the combat. Fighting is like breath to them -- they must have it. Nature has implanted in all animals a fighting instinct for the weeding out of the physically unfit, and these dogs have an extra share of that fighting instinct.

Of course, now that militarism is going to be abolished, and the world is going to be so good and teetotal, and only fight in debating societies, these nasty savage animals will be out of date. We will not be allowed to keep anything more quarrelsome than a poodle -- and a man of the future, the New Man, whose fighting instincts have not been quite bred out of him, will, perhaps, be found at grey dawn of a Sunday morning with a crowd of other unregenerates in some backyard frantically cheering two of them to mortal combat.

 

[THE KOD]

 

[THE KOD]

...............................................

reminds me of a baseball game when there are
two outs !

 

[THE KOD]

Hey Eli, you better go next I don't think I can walk straight right now

Hey Payton, I am not wearing any underwear....

Peyton says....neither am I little brother,
neither am I

 

[THE KOD]

 

[THE KOD]

 

[THE KOD]

 

[THE KOD]

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- As cartography projects go, Christian Nold's approach to charting the peaks and valleys of urban landscapes is decidedly unconventional.

First, he outfits volunteers with global positioning system devices and the sensors used in lie detector tests. Then, he sends his subjects out to wander their neighborhoods. When they return, Nold asks them to recount what they saw and felt when the polygraph recorded a quickened heartbeat or an elevated blood pressure.

"Tried to stomp on some pigeons," one tester recalled after a stroll through the chic bohemian Mission District of San Francisco, California.

"House right here, it reminded me of flowers at a funeral," another said of what he saw a few blocks south.

"Security guard at a business giving lollipops to kids. I think I wanted one," still another volunteer observed.

Nold, a London-based artist, calls his work "emotional mapping." Having mapped settings as varied as industrial areas of Bangladesh and the red light district of Brussels, Belgium, he recently arrived in San Francisco for his first U.S. project.

He's the first to acknowledge that the intimate portraits that result from his endeavors won't help a confused tourist get from Fisherman's Wharf to Golden Gate Park.

Mapping more than streets
Instead, by taking polygraph technology out of the criminal realm, his goal is to offer a commentary on the subjective nature of reality. Maps, he notes, have always been influenced by whomever makes them, citing as an example the globes that used to show Europe as being considerably larger than Africa. (View Nold's projects )

"There are different ways of mapping the city that aren't strictly about the practicalities or financial sensibilities that we usually guide our urban planning with," said Nold, 31.

Marketers, mobile telephone companies, architects and real estate developers have expressed interest in putting Nold's handheld gizmos to commercial use, a situation the artist finds ironic. He said he gets five e-mail solicitations each day asking about the practical applications, but turns most of them down.

He's working with a government agency in London to gauge residents' perceptions of crime in public housing. The purpose of the project is to determine whether areas that get labeled as being unsafe actually have more crime or just higher population densities, he said.

One trend to emerge from the maps is how people tend to respond to social interactions much more than to buildings. In other words, encountering an accident scene or an attractive person is likely to register a response more than an architectural feature.

Nold's five-week stint in San Francisco was sponsored by Southern Exposure, a local gallery mounting an exhibit of artists whose work dealt interactively with public spaces. Executive Director Courtney Fink said Nold, one of eight artists picked from a pool of more than 300, was a natural choice.

"A lot of times, conceptual art can be very elusive. People just don't get it," Fink said. "This is very cutting edge, conceptual art, but it has a much more universal appeal to it."

Nold points out that as accessible as his work may be, people often assume the technology he employs is more sophisticated than it really is. The devices cannot, for example, detect whether someone's emotional arousal is positive or negative -- that puts the kibosh on determining whether a place makes people happy or sad.

"It seems to offer a ... lot, but what the companies want is to be able to slice people's heads open and see what's inside," he said.

Creating emotional maps also is labor intensive. Mapping one square mile around Southern Exposure will require 80 to 100 volunteers to spend at least an hour walking the area, plus more time to be debriefed on their experiences.

Eventually, Nold downloads the information into a computer and comes up with a multicolored display showing where the subjects had the most highs along with their comments. When they are finished, they resemble crude boundaries of medieval kingdoms surrounded by turrets and moats. He prints them out and makes them available on his Web site.

Nold has been making emotional maps for three years and says he has been heartened by the common threads that have linked neighborhoods in places like Siena, Italy, Munich, Germany, and San Francisco. He's found that his subjects enjoy being given a reason to roam aimlessly, tend to have elevated emotions at corners and on their way to a destination, and are endlessly curious about new stores and restaurants.

"When I go to a place, I'm always kind of a tourist," he said. "But I get a mixture of this ephemeral stuff with an amazing grass roots view you would never get unless you lived in a place for 10 years."
..........................................................

smurph could learn something from this guy.

maps are emotional :SIB

 

[THE KOD]

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Police Chief William Bratton said Sunday that up to 60 members of an elite squad that swarmed into a park and fired rubber bullets during a May Day immigration rally are no longer on the street.

Bratton said he spent the weekend viewing video of the MacArthur Park incident and he said LAPD failures were widespread with officers from the top on down culpable.

"I'm not going to defend the indefensible," Bratton told journalists during a meeting at a television studio in Hollywood.

"Things were done that shouldn't have been done."

Journalists were among those roughed up as Metropolitan Division's B Platoon moved through MacArthur and fired 148 rubber bullets to break up what had been a peaceful and lawful immigration rally.

Police said they moved in after rocks and bottles were thrown at them by 30 to 40 agitators, he said.

The Metropolitan Division is the city's premier police squad, made up of experienced officers who have extensive training in crowd control.

Bratton said up to 60 members of the Metro's B Platoon are no longer in the field. Additionally, he said, some officers will "in all likelihood" not return to the Metropolitan Division.

"Some of this will be career-impacting," Bratton said, adding that imposition of permanent discipline will await completion of the Police Department investigation.

Journalist organizations asked why officers ignored LAPD policies toward the news media worked out after reporters were assaulted during the 2000 Democratic National Convention.

A 2002 agreement called for designation of a safe spot for reporters covering news events. LAPD spokeswoman Mary Grady acknowledged reporters were not given "a designated safe spot" at MacArthur Park.

"There appears to have been here a failure to communicate," Press Photographers Association local president John McCoy said.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

not sure I understand why the police are in trouble for this.

Once rocks and bottles are thrown at them, its on.

I guess when you start pushing around reporters its differant.

 

[smurphy]

smurph could learn something from this guy.

maps are emotional :SIB

I'm glad someone in the gambling community can appreciate the depth of emo-cartography.

 

[THE KOD]

.........................................................

smurph -

this is the depth of emo-cartography
for me.

 

[smurphy]

Which one are you?

 

[THE KOD]

the one that's appreciating of course.

 

[THE KOD]

 

[THE KOD]

Congress puts curbs on open road for Mexican trucks

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to delay a Bush administration plan to allow Mexican trucks full access to U.S. highways.

The trucks would have to be declared safe first, the lawmakers said, and Mexico would have to give U.S. truckers the same access south of the border.

The House voted 411-3 to approve a three-year Department of Transportation pilot program that would restrict opening the border to 100 carriers based in Mexico. They would be allowed to use a maximum of 1,000 vehicles under the pilot program.

The Bush administration wanted to start a pilot program this year that would run for a year before fully opening the border to Mexican trucks.

The House bill, however, specifies criteria for the pilot program before it can start, including setting up an independent panel to evaluate the test program and getting certification from the inspector general that safety and inspection requirements have been met.

The Department of Transportation says it could be as late as 2008 before Congress' criteria are met, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Lawmakers said their major concern is whether Mexican trucks, often older than U.S. cargo vehicles, and Mexican drivers will be able to meet rigorous U.S. safety standards.

"We do not need 90,000-pound unguided missiles on our highways," said Rep. Robin Hayes, R-North Carolina.

American trucking companies have spent years getting their vehicles up to Transportation Department standards, lawmakers said. Letting Mexican trucks across the border without making them meet those standards is wrong, they said.

"We're going to have a major accident somewhere, and people are going to say, 'How did this happen?" said Rep. Bob Filner, D-California.

Added Rep. Candice Miller, R-Michigan: "We need to ensure that this program only takes places after the Mexican companies meet the same conditions that American companies do."

Economic arguments made too
Lawmakers also complained that allowing Mexican trucks greater access will cost American truckers their jobs.

"You can get a Mexican truck driver to work for a heck of a lot less than a Teamster in the United States, and you can get a Mexican dock worker to work for a heck of a lot less than a longshoreman in the United States, and that's what this is ultimately designed to do," said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon.

The Teamsters, the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and the Environmental Law Foundation sued in federal court in April to block the pilot program, citing safety and environmental concerns.

"We don't know how safety laws such as hours of service and drug testing would be enforced," Teamsters President Jim Hoffa said. "This vote by the House repudiates those questionable attempts to open our borders without adequate safeguards."

The Bush administration had planned to run a yearlong pilot program that would allow Mexican trucks beyond the current 20-mile limit from the border but the launch was halted after complaints from Congress.

Since 1982, trucks have had to stop within the buffer zone and transfer their loads to U.S. truckers to take them into the country. The legislation would allow Mexican drivers to take their loads from Mexico to any point within the country.

Supporters of the plan say letting more Mexican trucks on U.S. highways will save American consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. They include many in the trucking industry, the Bush administration and lawmakers who favor the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

Access to all U.S. highways was promised by 2000 under the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, as was access through Mexico for U.S. carriers. That aspect has been stalled by lawsuits and disagreements between the two countries, though Canadian and U.S. trucks travel freely across the northern border.
.........................................................


How can we be this stupid to even consider allowing this.

The fawkers will make secret compartments and
fill the tankers with illigals and let them out all over the country.

Not to mention making our roads unsafe and taking away jobs from our Truckdrivers.

Its fawking nuts in this country



:shrug:

 

[THE KOD]