Timenauts, Intel Strikers, Oracle Broadcast News listeners, in Austin, Tex.:
Flux Rostrum, of Mobile Broadcast News (and a Democracy Now corresponding videographer), desperately needs to take his waste veggie oil-fueld bus off the street, in Austin, for a few weeks.
If you can donate the space for this bad boy (it is a school bus), or want more details, please email me at parallelnormal(AT)gmail(DOT)com
Thanks,
Mark
Photo: CC/Shelley
A furious Flux Rostrum is pushing his wheezing green grease bus into Austin tonight.
Emblazoned with Flux’s Mobile Broadcast News, the hobbled bus is also proving to be a cop, and bee, magnet.
I don’t know what Flux’s current mission is all about, but I do hope it gets sorted out.
For all you green greasers out there, here is an excerpt of Flux’s latest post:
As I rolled around under the bus frantically trying to put tape on wet hose with one hand (because that’s all that would fit it the space) a trucker pulls up next to me hops out and leans down to warn me of the swarm of bees he saw behind my bus… I thanked him even though those bees and the ones I was laying on were all dead from the coolant that covered my entire body as well.
I cut an extra piece of hose and tried to cover the hole and protect the hose from the sharp metal it had been rubbing against for 25,000 miles. I called in for reinforcements from my Texas comrades, ideas for where i could limp the bus to for safety.. Thank you all, just knowing someone was helping me think it through was quite comforting. Also, Much thanks to Topher who I bugged ’til the wee hours last night trying to find a solution. You Topher, are my “real” favorite veggie mechanic; the title of this post however is a reference that that other guy will only get.
Brilliant, long-form journalistic piece about a community garden and school in the Lower 9th Ward.
It takes Flux just a moment or so, to get this 16-year-old kid going about his group’s participation in the garden. It’s the best explanation I’ve heard about the kind of help people need down there.
Also: A great recipe for an organic pesticide, from one of the folks who runs the program.
Please support Flux! I dropped a tenner into his tip jar for this one.
ABC & Co. are rightly sore at the Obama administration for keeping them out of a video shoot, the results of which you can see here.From ABC’s Political Punch:Read the TV pool report: “Your Pool was not allowed to go over and shoot POTUS with the team shooting hoops. We protested loudly.”Now we know why: Obama White House officials decided to do their own media report on the visit, complete with cuts, interviews, and chyrons identifying who’s speaking.Also, just like a network, they have their own little logo!
Illustration: CC/Al Bar
A New York social worker tells a tall tale, and NPR gives him a pass. (To deny this unlikely Good Samaritan bit would be a crime, apparently.)
The story (an oldie, from last spring), about a robbery victim exchanging his coat and a hot meal for his would-be mugger’s knife, sounds preposterous enough. It might also be true. But nowhere have I seen any indication that a reporter talked to a waitress, or a third party to the story.
I’ll be heading back into the classroom in a few weeks. This is the kind of feel-good story I hope my students will learn to treat skeptically.
Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.
But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.
Sacr bleu! Fact-check gaffe at the Times. Photo: CC/ZR
The Times published a hoax email the paper thought was from the mayor of Paris:
The Times blamed the mistake on a failure to verify the authenticity of a letter that arrived by e-mail.
“In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the e-mail and did not hear back,” the paper said. “At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoe’s office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us. We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed.”
The Times said it was reviewing its procedures to avoid such an incident in the future.
I’d hate to be the person who skipped a step-or-two here.
Dharma
FLASH: Flux reports that Dharma is back on the truck, after Galveston police and residents allowed the reporter to stay in the neighborhood overnight.
Original post:
And Galveston police are making finding Dharma difficult.
Flux went to Galveston to do a hurricane damage story, and his kitty took off.
Flux is unconventional. As a journalist, the man is confrontational as hell. In other words, he still has balls, and is a great storyteller.
In this video, he takes a classic Texas insult, “You look like a coupla old hippies to me” (an attempt to discredit and emasculate Flux and an off camera friend), cold, and quiet-like.
This video will bring you far into a police-to-civilian interaction. You will cringe. (I did, at all of the crying.) Just watch as these men try to outsmart outperform each other!
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“Fuck Fox News,” DNC protesters tell a cub reporter in their midst… It’s a great bit of video from the propaganda network.
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The U.S. is closing in on $10 trillion in debt. It is painful to contemplate what being in hock like this will do to our liberties. The latest FUD flick, in the Inconvenient Truth vein, is IOUSA…
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The Age, with help from a “professional skeptic,” tries to knock-down Sasquatch, UFOs, ghosts, global warming and 9/11 conspiracies — all in one shot. (Click the image, above, to see the article and vid.)
“(The internet) has been the driving force behind a lot of social movements and conspiracy theories,” says the founder of the Skeptic Magazine.
For conspiracy and esoteric researchers, not to mention real cryptozoologists like Loren Coleman (he’s the best in the business), this can be maddening.
By linking charlatans such as Tom Biscardi to those questioning the U.S. government’s stories about 9/11 or global warming, Shermer discredits honest research.