Gusterfell

http://www.newport-now.com/2009/09/16/wind...ver-middletown/ Aquidneck Island is in the process of receiving its third wind turbine, this one at the Aquidneck Corporate Park, between Valley Rd. and Aquidneck Ave. in Middletown. It's not quite as large as the two in Portsmouth, but it is one more step toward making Newport County a leader in wind energy.

The crane between near the Superman Building would be for Waterplace, right? I think the two towers are sort of blending into Superman and the State House from this angle.

http://www.projo.com/ri/newport/content/EB...v5.411ad1f.html An article from the East Bay section of the Projo about the makeover of Long Wharf Mall...excuse me, the Shops at Long Wharf... that I mentioned a while back in the House of Scrimshaw thread. The new look is quite nice. I'll have to take some pictures now that work is wrapping up.

^After the last eight years, I wouldn't put anything past the criminals running the executive branch. They've already committed far more far-fetched crimes than opening their biggest threat in years to possible elimination.

Yes, that is the official explanation. To accept it at face value, one must completely disregard the fact that the Secret Service's purpose is to ensure officials' safety, not to provide crowds for photo ops. Bag checks and metal detectors have been standard practice at concerts and sporting events for years now, and it would be highly unlikely for officials at such events to disregard security for the sake of getting the crowd in a little faster.

Here's a conspiracy theory for you. Why did the Secret Service order Dallas police to stop screening people for weapons as they entered a Barack Obama rally on Wednesday, despite the fact that the local officers were uncomfortable with the security risk? Other reports have said that this has happened at previous Obama rallies as well. I can't imagine similar risks being taken at events involving Bush, or any other such high profile figures for that matter. One has to wonder if the powers that be want Obama out of the picture. Or perhaps the present administration (of which the Secret Service is a part) wants to use the turmoil following an attack on Obama as an excuse to declare martial law and remain in power beyond next January.

Two pics from the past week. NYC: Providence:

That depends on just how much more advanced the alien technology is compared to ours. Show a computer to people from the middle ages and they'd never figure it out. On the other hand, show it to engineers from the 1930s and give them some time, and they'd probably be able to decipher much of the technology behind it. As someone pointed out, modern physicists already have a theoretical understanding of how interstellar travel could be possible, even without the technological knowledge necessary to build an interstellar craft. If a hypothectical alien craft is based on principles not completely unknown to our scientists, they could probably reverse engineer a good bit of it... ...On the other hand, if the alien technology is indeed advanced far beyond human knowledge, or based on principles we aren't even close to discovering, anything could be possible. There was a time when the speed of sound was thought to be a limit as unbreakable as the speed of light, hence the term "sound barrier." There is a lot we still don't know about physics.

Salve Regina University a couple nights ago. Ochre Court: Wakehurst:

^Ages ago I saw pics of that view on some architecture forum or other. It is indeed incredible to see the massive skyline rising out of the featureless lake. I've seen an aerial photo of the Bryant University campus in which the Boston skyline was clearly visible in the far distance. However, it looked like it was taken from closer to 1000 feet, and the hilly terrain looked like it would obscure the skyline from much lower than that. You might be able to just see a couple of the tallest Boston buildings from the Hospital Trust, but probably not more than that. Since I'm posting in the photos thread anyway, here are a couple of older pics that I've recently played around with in GIMP, using more or less the same effects as the one I posted earlier on this page.

Not to debunk the entire "UFOs on the moon" conspiracy (which I believe to be possible), but both of these anomalies are easily explainable through the limitations of photography. Cameras can't discern extremes of light and dark anywhere near as well as the human eye. What this means is that if the camera is set to properly expose the brightly lit foreground objects, the relatively faint pinpoints of stars will be underexposed to the point they aren't visible. Go outside on a clear, starry night and take a picture of something brightly-lit. You won't see any stars in the photo. The anomaly with the crosshairs could easily be caused by a similar circumstance. Notice that in all cases the object the crosshair is "behind" is much brighter than the background. The camera was set to properly expose the background, which is why it appears in detail. These brighter objects are severely overexposed, causing their surface detail to be blown out. Likewise the white glare from the overexposure will blow out the fine line of the crosshair if the camera isn't powerful enough to resolve it. Both these issues would be magnified if (as is extremely likely online) the photos we are looking at are at a lower resolution that the originals. Since this is sort of anti-conspiracy, for balance I want to offer a pro-conspiracy responce to Charlotteman's earlier post: Not necessarily. Our own space program would seem like fantastically advanced technology to an ordinary person of just 100 years ago. As we all know the technology isn't perfect, and occasionally results in terrible failures. UFOs apparently involve extremely advanced technology, but that doesn't necessarily mean that whoever possesses that technology (whether human or alien) have perfected it to the point that accidents never occur. If the government were in possession of crashproof technology, wouldn't it make sense to install it on military and government aircraft and spacecraft, if not on commercial aircraft?

Perhaps inspired by the success of the turbine at Portsmouth Abbey, Portsmouth voters this week overwhelmingly approved a $3M bond to build a wind turbine at Portsmouth Middle School. The arrangement would be similar to that at the Abbey, with the turbine powering the school and excess power being sold to benefit the town.

That does sound odd. Maybe the overturned truck was carrying weapons, chemicals, nuclear material, or something like that. I can see the military wanting to keep the public far away from the scene of such an accident, both for public safety and for security. Strange that it wouldn't be mentioned on the local news, though.

Did I post anything that isn't a verifiable fact? If you look at the facts of what have happened in the years since the 2000 election, along with the long-term strategies being produced by right-wing think tanks in prior years, there really aren't many unanswered questions or topics for speculation. What is happening is what they wanted to happen. If the "official" story is to be believed, then we've got a bunch of incompetants running the country, bungling everything they attempt yet somehow managing to personally profit immensely from their gaffes. Frankly, I find this idea far more unbelievable than the one I posted above.

Project for a New American Century (Neoconservative think tank) laid out plans for invasions of both Iraq and Iran, as well as increasing control over the American people, way back in the mid 90s. Step one was to get a Republican president in office. Step two was to await (cause?) what they referred to as "another Pearl Harbor" to scare the public into supporting the invasions and giving up their constitutional rights. All of this has come to pass in the last several years. Do a web search for PNAC and you'll see that the neocons didn't even keep this agenda secret. They felt free to publish it all publicly, knowing that the apathy of the American public would keep too many people from looking closely enough to realise just what was going on. The idea that wars with Iraq and Iran, and even 9/11, were central to the neocon agenda well before Bush took office isn't a conspiracy theory. It is a conspiracy, out there for anyone to see, if they care to look. Osama bin Laden was trained and supplied by the Reagan administration. He was on the CIA payroll for many years until, according to the official story, he somehow decided that his American allies were insulting his people by maintaining a presence in his homeland, so he declared war. Honestly, it makes more sense to think that he is still working with the American neocons, who have gained immense wealth and power as a direct result of bin Laden's actions. It would explain why, in the late 90s, the Republicans attacked Clinton for attempting to eliminate bin Laden ("Wag the Dog," anyone?). It would explain why six years after 9/11 bin Laden is still at large, the CIA office charged with finding him is closed, and why our president says he "doesn't spend much time thinking about" the hunt for bin Laden. It would also explain why we haven't been attacked at home, why there hasn't even been a serious attempt by al Qaida to attack us at home, in over six years. An attack in the US during that time would have destroyed the Bush administration's credibility on homeland defense and, unlike 9/11, would have no tangible benefit for the neocons. I think the likelihood of an al-Qaida-linked attack in the US will increase as we approach next year's elections, especially if it seems likely that the Republicans will lose the White House in the election.

Has anyone else noticed the new color scheme on the Brick Market Place buildings? They've broken up the facade into sections, each painted in a different, colonial-Newport inspired color. No one will ever mistake this for a historic building, but at least now it seems to be made up of individual, smaller-scale buildings, rather than the block-length monolith it was before. The new look is a much better fit to the buildings' surroundings: In this pic, the old natural wood/orange color scheme can be seen at far right, while the sections stretching down the street have been repainted:

^Great pics, all! A couple of Providence: Capital Center district: Financial District:

^I'm going to have to check that out. I use GIMP to edit my photos, but there is a lot I don't know about the program. As that review alludes to, there's a bit of a learning curve to it. Anyway, here's a pic I took a couple weeks ago: I took this one last winter and gave it some artsy edits in GIMP, but I never posted it:

Hollow-earth theories are interesting in a "what if" sort of way, if nothing else. To me, though, this type of gravitational arrangement deoesn't seem like it would work. If the center of gravity were in the crust, wouldn't objects in the interior be more or less weightless, as they are surrounded by the crust?

A couple I took from the RIPTA ferry the other day:

I didn't see that. I clearly saw the passenger's head move back slightly as the shot hit Kennedy, then move forward again. This creates the effect of the silver "object" seeming to extend beyoned the head, but if you keep your eye on the passenger's head throughout the video, it is obvious that what you are seeing is just reflected light. Further, a bullet entrance wound would not cause a spray of blood in front of Kennedy's face, as is clearly visible in this video, but an exit wound would. If anything, this video looks far more like a shot from behind than the more famous clip does, as Kennedy's head doesn't seem to recoil back in this one like it does in the other. Mrs. Kennedy isn't trying to get out of the car. She seems to be reaching for the secret service man at the car's rear bumper. You can see in the final frames of this video that he motions for her to take cover in the car, and she does just that.

^Well, I'll see what I can do. I'm actually miffed at myself for how little photography I've done this summer. I took some pics of the tall ships, and the Fourth of July fireworks, and that's about it. Which service are you going into, BTW? Garris, do you happen to know what sort of post-processing Mike Savad has done to those pictures? I like the effect. To break my dry spell, here are some shots I took on my way to Waterfire this past Saturday:

^I'm pretty sure Baltimore/Washington Int'l is on the Amtrak line, but no others come to mind. Is Reagan National connected to the metro system, as close to the city center as it is?

BT-"The Anhtkythera Mechanism"