Click here to see a list of scary bridges near you

Despite billions of dollars in federal, state and local funds directed toward the maintenance of existing bridges, 69,223 bridges — 11.5 percent of total highway bridges in the U.S. — are classified as “structurally deficient,” requiring significant maintenance, rehabilitation or replacement.

Two key problems persist: while Congress has repeatedly declared bridge safety a national priority, existing federal programs don’t ensure that aging bridges actually get fixed; and the current level of investment is nowhere near what is needed to keep up with our rapidly growing backlog of aging bridges.


Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

A year after his resignation plunged Belgium’s Roman Catholic Church into a crisis, the former bishop of Bruges provoked almost universal condemnation on Friday, this time by admitting that he had abused a second nephew – and insisting that he was not a pedophile.

In a television interview late Thursday that reopened deep wounds, the bishop, Roger Vangheluwe, 74, recounted with apparent lack of contrition events leading up to his resignation as bishop of Bruges last year, when it emerged that nearly 25 years ago he had abused a boy who was later revealed to be one of his nephews.

Those revelations prompted hundreds of people to come forward, claiming that they, too, had been victims of priests, and forced Belgium’s Roman Catholic Church into its deepest crisis of recent times.

In a broadcast from a location in France, Bishop Vangheluwe, dressed in an open-neck shirt, suggested that the 13-year relationship revealed last year had not been opposed by his nephew, and, in an unexpected new twist, he admitted having abused a second nephew for a much shorter period…

Bishop Vangheluwe is not facing criminal charges because of Belgium’s 10-year statute of limitations, and the Vatican says he is receiving “spiritual and psychological treatment” outside Belgium…

During the interview, to which Bishop Vangheluwe had agreed only on the condition that it would be broadcast live, he denied that he had been driven by sexual motives…the abuse had been restricted to the touching of genitals…

Um, the Pope said – well, the Pope said nothing. When the abuse became public he condemned the police for searching church property and took the Bishop’s fate into his own hands. Since then – the Pope said nothing.


And as the Republican’s (especially here in NV) work hard to cut funding for education, this will all only get worse.

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.
[…]
“Imagine,” said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don’t continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job. Up until very recently, the principal of a school was something like the conductor of an orchestra: a person who had deep experience and knowledge of the part and place of every member and every instrument. In the past 10 years we’ve had the emergence of both [Mayor] Mike Bloomberg’s Leadership Academy and Eli Broad’s Superintendents Academy, both created exclusively to produce instant principals and superintendents who model themselves after CEOs. How is this kind of thing even legal? How are such ‘academies’ accredited? What quality of leader needs a ‘leadership academy’? What kind of society would allow such people to run their children’s schools? The high-stakes tests may be worthless as pedagogy but they are a brilliant mechanism for undermining the school systems, instilling fear and creating a rationale for corporate takeover. There is something grotesque about the fact the education reform is being led not by educators but by financers and speculators and billionaires.”


Earlier this month, Gary and Heather Clark were notified by officials at Tallwood Elementary School in Virginia Beach that their son Bronson had been suspended from school for allegedly crying in class and disrupting the educational process, according to the Rutherford Institute, a Virginia-based civil liberties organization.
[…]
“While crying in class may indeed be inconvenient for the teacher, surely there are other, less draconian means of addressing this type of disruption than an out-of-school suspension.”

The zero-tolerance policies adopted by many schools have seen kids “tossed out for the craziest things,” Mr. Whitehead said in a telephone interview. He cited a greatest hits of seemingly head-scratching insanity: A case where a Grade 4 student who gargled Scope mouthwash after lunch was suspended because it violated the school’s drugs and alcohol policy; a high-school student suspended because the nail clippers he had at school were considered a weapon; even one instance of a youngster bringing a drawing of an uncle, who was then serving in Iraq, carrying his gun, which the school said violated its weapons policy.

As for the boy suspended for crying, Mr. Whitehead points out that crying is something six-year-olds just happen to do sometimes. Dealing with the problem like this should start with consulting mom and dad instead of going straight to a suspension.




I wonder if someone could find Bin Laden with these…

Brazilian police will use futuristic ‘Robocop-style’ glasses fitted with facial recognition equipment to identify and root out troublemakers at the 2014 World Cup. A small camera fitted to the glasses can capture 400 facial images per second and send them to a central computer database storing up to 13 million faces.

The system can compare biometric data at 46,000 points on a face and will immediately signal any matches to known criminals or people wanted by police. If there is a match a red signal will appear on a small screen connected to the glasses, alerting the police officer of the need to take further action or make an arrest.
[…]
The camera will generally be used to scan faces in crowds up to 50 metres (164ft) away but can be adjusted, if searching for a specific target, to recognise faces as far as 12 miles away.


Executive Producer: Sir Mark True
Executive Producers and 300 Club members: Cloudsigma AG, Josiah Thomas, Hans-Jorg Schultz, Anonymous, Simon Elisha
Associate Executive Producers: Robert Hulsy, Kevin McNulty
Art By: Jesse Anderson

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Trump and Palin in ’12. That’s the ticket!

Property magnate and reality TV star Donald Trump on Thursday strung out a media tease over whether he will run for U.S. president by setting a — tentative — date for announcing a date for announcing his decision.

Trump said in a statement he may declare when he will declare whether he will seek the Republican candidacy on network television during the May 22 season finale for his reality TV show “The Celebrity Apprentice,” which airs on NBC.

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Found by Gary the Dangerous Infidel



I bet he charged them for framed copies of this photo

A Chinese man was arrested for creating a fake U.S. Army unit and convincing immigrants that joining the squad was a path to citizenship…

Yupeng Deng, 51, allegedly gave his recruits military uniforms, had them parade in a Los Angeles suburb and took them to the decommissioned USS Midway aircraft carrier, which is a museum in San Diego.

Deng charged more than 100 fellow Chinese nationals a fee of between $300 and $450 to join the fake Army unit, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.

He called his bogus squad the U.S. Army/Military Special Forces Reserve unit, or MSFR for short, and he gave himself the lofty title of supreme commander, prosecutors said.

Aside from telling recruits that belonging to the unit was a path to U.S. citizenship, Deng also urged them to pay him cash for higher military rank, according to prosecutors. He also allegedly provided them with fake documents and phony military identification cards…

He was charged with theft by false pretenses, manufacturing deceptive government documents and counterfeit of an official government seal.

Har! PT Barnum got it right. There’s a sucker born every minute.


Here is the latest conversation I had with money manager Andrew Horowitz…. new insights for anyone who invests in anything. This week we look closely at upcoming reports and the sketchy S&P.

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Courtesy Houston Chronical

Enough $100 bills to fill 22 Astrodomes

News accounts on the latest federal budget deal gave the numbers in a vacuum, e.g., “The deal cuts $38 billion from last year’s budget. It’s being called the largest domestic spending cut in U.S. history” (source). How can an individual voter make sense of quantities that are ordinarily written in scientific notation? I think the easiest way is to divide everything by 100,000,000 (10^8).

Let’s start with federal spending. The FY 2011 federal budget is approximately $3.82 trillion (3.82×10^12). Of that, approximately $2.17 trillion will be paid for by taxes collected and the remaining $1.65 trillion will be borrowed from our grandchildren. If we divide everything by 100 million, the numbers begin to make more sense.

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.


We’re looking for houses to paint. In fact, paint is an understatement. We’re looking for homes to turn into billboards. In exchange, we’ll pay your mortgage every month for as long as your house remains painted

Here are a few things we’re looking for. You must own your home. It cannot be rented or leased. We’ll paint the entire outside of the house, minus the roof, the windows and any awnings. Painting will take approximately 3 – 5 days. Your house must remain painted for at least three months and may be extended up to a year. If, for any reason, you decide to cancel after three months or if we cancel the agreement with you, we’ll repaint your house back to the original colors.

If you’re prepared for the bright colors and stares from neighbors just complete the submission form below. We review every submission. If your home meets our criteria, an Adzookie team member will contact you.
If you’re a website owner we can also help your business. Click here to register and every month we’ll give you $1000 in credit so you can spend it advertising your business on smartphones. We’ll also find advertisers that want to place mobile ads on your website. These ads will only appear when your website is viewed on a smartphone. Of course, every time an advertiser pays to place ads on your site, we pay you.

I’m sure your neighbors and your HOA will approve, or they might just turn your house into cinders. Either way, problem solved!


As President Obama weighed in on one of the most important issues of the day, outlining his plan to deal with deficit reduction and attack the national debt, at least one audience member did not appear to be fully engaged. Biden, at one point, could be seen apparently nodding off — or at least deep in thought. The bug was catching, too. The woman in glasses directly behind Biden appears to close her eyes too.

If you watch closely, you’ll see a little drool on the corner of his mouth.


“Heh-heh”

LONDON – In life, Pall Arason sought attention. In death, he is getting it: The 95-year-old Icelander’s pickled penis will be the main attraction in one of his country’s most bizarre museums. Sigurdur Hjartarson, who runs the Phallological Museum in the tiny Icelandic fishing town of Husavik, said Arason’s organ will help round out the unusual institution’s extensive collection of phalluses from whales, seals, bears and other mammals.

Several people had pledged their penises over the years — including an American, a Briton, and a German — but Arason’s was the first to be successfully donated, Hjartarson said. “I have just been waiting for this guy for 15 years,” he told The Associated Press in a brief telephone interview.

Ahem….

Highlights of the museum’s collection include a 170-centimeter (67-inch) sperm whale penis preserved in formaldehyde, lampshades made from bull testicles and what the museum described as an “unusually big” penis bone from a Canadian walrus.

Hjartarson, 69, said his interest in what he calls “phallology” began when, as a youngster in rural Iceland, he was given a whip made from a bull’s penis to help him herd cattle. Later, when he worked at a school near a whaling station, colleagues brought him whale penises as gifts. Photos posted to the museum’s website show small army of ghostly, whitish penises stuffed into jars, tall glass cylinders and large aquariums. There are sculptures, molds and other penis-related craft items. Outside, the museum has a large tree trunk carved into the shape of an erect phallus.

Most items are donations from friends and well-wishers, people listed on the museum’s website as honorary members.”

In other news, it appears that Iceland has a penis museum.


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