Spreading confusion over the internet since 1994
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I took The Streets Are Filled With Vipers on September 26, 2015 at 12:28PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on September 11, 2020 at 05:32PM
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http://flic.kr/p/HsWt1x
I took Too Many People, Too Many To Recall on May 26, 2016 at 06:47AM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on May 27, 2016 at 08:58AM
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http://flic.kr/p/ELPkVA
I took Of Speed And Skill And Schemes on April 20, 2014 at 01:10PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on March 03, 2016 at 10:54AM
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http://flic.kr/p/AQNXR9
I took Approaching on November 08, 2015 at 04:22PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on November 08, 2015 at 10:22PM
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http://flic.kr/p/Ap7Rfd
I took The Poem Remained Too Short on August 13, 2011 at 02:17PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on October 30, 2015 at 02:50AM
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http://flic.kr/p/wyBLca
I took Is This What You Wanted on July 21, 2015 at 08:49PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on July 27, 2015 at 06:08PM
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http://flic.kr/p/qpPhZG
I took While Your Train Gently Squeaks on February 19, 2015 at 05:05PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on February 25, 2015 at 02:35PM
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http://flic.kr/p/quPs46
I took Imagine My Surprise on January 02, 2015 at 12:17PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on January 12, 2015 at 04:14PM
You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine.
Big Government, saving you from an oil tanker blowing up in your neighborhood. What a travesty! Shut it down!
While the existence of this virtual pipeline is obvious to its neighbors—trains are visible from homes, the local commuter rail station, a park and a popular jogging trail—it is officially secret. Delaware Safety and Homeland Security officials contend that publicizing any information about the oil trains parked there would “reveal the State’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks,” according to a letter to The Wall Street Journal.
Finding the locations of oil-filled trains remains difficult, even in states that don’t consider the information top secret. There are no federal or state rules requiring public notice despite several fiery accidents involving oil trains, including one in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.
The desire for secrecy seems wrongheaded to some experts. “If you don’t share this information, how are people supposed to know what they are supposed to do when another Lac-Mégantic happens?” asked Denise Krepp, a consultant and former senior counsel to the congressional Homeland Security Committee.
She said more firefighting equipment and training was needed urgently. “We are not prepared,” she said.
In May, federal regulators ordered railroads to tell states about the counties traversed by trains carrying combustible crude oil from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota so local first responders could be notified.
The Journal submitted open-records requests to all 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia and received at least some information from all but 14: Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and West Virginia.
Mapping data received from the disclosing states, the Journal found a lot of other cities in the same situation as Newark. On its way to refiners on the East Coast and along the Gulf of Mexico, oil often sits in tank cars in railroad yards outside Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, Penn., and passes through Cleveland, Chicago, Albany, Seattle and a dozen other cities.
(click here to continue reading Oil Trains Hide in Plain Sight – WSJ.)
I’ve been looking for a while to take a photo of one of these oil tankers in Illinois, but haven’t found one yet. Do you have a photo?
The Bakken crude contains a lot of butane, making it volatile but useful for mixing with heavier oils or as a refined byproduct, said refinery manager José Dominguez. On a recent afternoon, the refinery was running mostly Bakken oil, along with some diluted crude from Canadian oil sands and a ship’s worth of light sweet oil from Basra, Iraq.
When Norfolk Southern began routing crude trains through Newark, it didn’t notify the local emergency officials. Last March, a year after trains started turning up, Fire Chief A.J. Schall sat down with officials from the railroad and refinery to discuss the crude shipments.
“It shows a lack of communication,” he said. By the summer, Norfolk Southern and PBF paid for Mr. Schall and another local fire chief to fly to Colorado and attend a three-day class on crude-by-rail trains.
(click here to continue reading Oil Trains Hide in Plain Sight – WSJ.)
Ok, problem solved, just fly local officials to Colorado, and give them a cannabis stipend…
Oh, and in case it isn’t clear, I’m a liberal who believes government is frequently the solution to our nation’s problems which puts me radically at odds to the flame throwers like Ted “Calgary” Cruz who want to shut the government down because they are opposed to some policy or other.
Continue reading “Oil Trains Hide in Plain Sight Waiting To Kill Us By Exploding”
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I took Things Are Going To Slide In All Directions on September 11, 2012 at 02:38PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on August 09, 2014 at 05:40PM
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http://flic.kr/p/myZJhU
I took Brooding On The Rhythmic Swing Of Your Imagination on March 29, 2014 at 06:42PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on March 30, 2014 at 02:42AM
(renderings here; scroll down: http://ift.tt/ICMv59… )
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http://flic.kr/p/iedQHi
I took Waiting For Your Next Move on November 30, 2013 at 03:26PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on December 10, 2013 at 01:54PM
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http://flic.kr/p/kQf2jj
I took Cloud Nine on March 08, 2014 at 01:47PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on March 08, 2014 at 07:52PM
While Your Traces Disappear
Cool! Another photo has made it into Flickr Explore, and with even more favorites than the last photo got. I take and process photos every day, or attempt to, and I always do the best I can to transform the images into art. But prior to these two photos making Explore, I hadn’t been selected since April 2012. I realize the Explore algorithm is mostly computerized, and that there is an element of chance in making the cut – but still. Odd. And nice.
Funny, as I only sort of randomly selected this photo of the CTA tracks near Graceland Cemetery as a means to test new perspective tools in the Lightroom 5 Beta, and then tweaked the image a bit using the Google Silver Efex Pro plugin. The subject is a bit of cliché to tell the truth – high contrast black and white image of shadow perspectives, yadda yadda. I’ve taken many similar photos that didn’t get so much appreciation from Flickreenos. Still, I am happy with how this one turned out…
Click here for an embiggened version.
Or here to purchase a print for your own wall.
It Makes Perfect Sense
Meanwhile, the US can’t even agree to construct a route connecting Florida…
China began service Wednesday morning on the world’s longest high-speed rail line, covering a distance in eight hours that is about equal to that from New York to Key West, Fla., or from London across Europe to Belgrade, Serbia.
Trains traveling 300 kilometers, or 186 miles, an hour, began regular service between Beijing and Guangzhou, the main metropolis in southeastern China. Older trains still in service on a parallel rail line take 21 hours; Amtrak trains from New York to Miami, a shorter distance, still take nearly 30 hours.
Completion of the Beijing-Guangzhou route — roughly 1,200 miles — is the latest sign that China has resumed rapid construction on one of the world’s largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects, a network of four north-south routes and four east-west routes that span the country.
Lavish spending on the project has helped jump-start the Chinese economy twice: in 2009, during the global financial crisis, and again this autumn, after a brief but sharp economic slowdown over the summer.
The hiring of as many as 100,000 workers for each line has kept a lid on unemployment as private-sector construction has slowed because of limits on real estate speculation. The national network has helped to reduce air pollution in Chinese cities and helped to curb demand for imported diesel fuel by freeing capacity on older rail lines for goods to be carried by freight trains instead of heavily polluting, costlier trucks.
(click here to continue reading China Begins Longest Bullet Train Service – NYTimes.com.)
We are foolish to ignore this sort of infrastructure project. Not only would it boost US employment, reduce pollution, but it would help the economy as a whole.