Completely electric flying taxis called eVTOLs (for electric vertical take-off and landing) could be in use in the United States by 2026. United Airlines has already advance purchased 200 of them to air-taxi folks above LA traffic to the airport and has also investigated a significant amount of money for developing the technology that flies them.
Depending on your perspective, the air taxis look like large drones, or small helicopters. They will be piloted on rollout but pilot-free flying is under consideration for future operations. eVTOL technology is being developed by Brazilian company Eve Air Mobility.read more
Sam Soto and I loved Corey Teague’s 2018 New Year message so much we translated it to Spanish. Corey is keeping it real – and we can all benefit by following suit.
Now we have reached the part of the show where everyone begins talking about who they plan to “cut off” and how they plan to be “new” and how everything will just be different. Look out, here comes a reality check: unless you don’t wake up tomorrow, it’ll be Monday. That’s it, Monday. And then, there will be Tuesday, Wednesday, so on and so forth. Nothing out of the ordinary will happen UNLESS you do something unordinary to provoke an unordinary event to occur. Remember, NOTHING FROM NOTHING LEAVES NOTHING. You must be willing to do something in order to get something. That’s how life works. This attitude that life owes you something must die within you before you can begin mentally preparing yourself to receive something. What have you done lately for someone other than yourself? If you have to take longer than 30 seconds to answer then you’re living in a vacuum. It’s time to step out and live in 2018. If not, this new year will begin and end just like every other year.read more
Tom Lehrer performs his parody about National Brotherhood Week – that difficult week in February when Americans, “…are supposed to stop whatever we’re doing … burning, killing, whatever and love everybody else … and it’s really quite a strain.”
Some of Tom’s lyrics:
Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics and the Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Hindus hate the Moslems and everybody hates the Jews!
But During National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week, step up and shake the hand of someone you can’t stand. You can tolerate him if you try … It’s only for a week so have no fear. Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year!
Ireland has music deep in its soul. Phenomenal 10 year old Kayleigh Rogers leads her special classmates of The Killard House School in singing such a sweet, pure and strong Christmas rendition of Hallelujah that it brought me right to tears. It will do the same for you, if you’re lucky. God bless.
Kayleigh is one of 200 students aged three to 16 at Killard House School in Donaghadee, Northern Ireland … (she) often sings at the local Christmas concert at First Presbyterian Church, Newtownards, but this year she lost her voice and had to pull out of last Sunday’s service. Instead her headteacher played the video above, which had been filmed just weeks before at the school, and it left many of the congregation in tears.
The video, filmed by Billy McAuley, was uploaded to Facebook and YouTube, and reported in the local press. It has since been viewed and shared hundreds of thousands of times, and the school has taken calls from people in Australia, America and Japan who have all seen the video.
Kayleigh started at Killard House School in year four and has autism and ADHD, which results in learning delays with literacy and numeracy.
Music teacher Lloyd Scates spotted her talent early on and encouraged her to sing solos during school shows, to help develop her voice and her confidence.read more
Irvington’s video kicks off with a stunning vocal performance by Mayor Vaughn’s secretary and features crowd scenes of city employees rocking the beat and even breakdancing and performing acrobatic stunts.
In Jersey City’s video a police official orders officers to, “Get in there and dance. Have fun!” Even the K-9 unit obeys, dancing at the Hudson River’s edge with New York City for a backdrop. Scenes filmed around the city show its breadth of ethnic and arts diversity.
During the filming, residents stopped to record the scene with their phones and applaud the officers. On YouTube, 52,000 people have viewed the video, which shows officers looking for the running man. But while on assignment, they start dancing.
“This was an opportunity for the community to see a different side of police, to see that they have fun, even embarrass themselves with dancing, and really enjoying the people they work with,” said Jennifer Morrill, the (Jersey City) press secretary.read more
New Yorker cover NYC center of the universe, by Saul Steinberg
Yesterday somebody mentioned what life looks like to New Yorkers and I realized … so much time has passed since Saul Steinberg drew the famous New York cover showing what the world looks like for New Yorkers – with Jersey a slender line across the Hudson with Japan and China just blips in the far distance … that my 21 year old son may have not ever seen it. So I looked around, found the cover easily on the internet and sure enough, Ari had never seen it before. It’s a doozy, though, isn’t it?
The official name of the drawing is “View of the World from Ninth Avenue”. It was the 29 March 1976 cover of The New Yorker magazine. It is an image I often mention when trying to explain to people how myopic the view of New Yorkers actually is.
Became a beekeeper when I received 2 NUCs (5 frames) of bees at 8:20 on 22 April 2016. Got the first sting on my pinky around 8:45 – I must have been pressing on one of the little critters. By 9:15 I’d been stung 6 more times: upper arm four times plus under my shirt AND under my skirt.
Oops! forgot I shouldn’t be wearing a skirt while beekeping, but I was on my way to a Passover celebration and was dressed for the occasion. When I stopped by at home to pick something up, I heard a buzzing sound near my head and said to myself – you see, you’re so freaked out by the experience of situating your bees in the dark of night all by yourself and getting stung that now you’re imagining there are bees buzzing around your head. But then I caught a glimpse in the bathroom mirror of a bee sitting all pretty and relaxed, right on my shirt collar and the next day I found another trying valiantly to work her way out of our screened-in kitchen window. So the buzzing was bees, and not my imagination. I ended up bringing another bee with me to the seder table – found her on my hand.
Well, no lasting harm done. Bees are installed and I’m still relatively OK. These are the conclusions I can share about my first experience with beekeeping:
Bees don’t like being locked up in trunks so don’t leave them there too long. By the time I took the 2nd crew out, they were mad. Later, I found out that it’s important to orient NUCs to the same direction you’re traveling in so the frames don’t crash together when you accelerate or slow down, and I didn’t do that. Aside from being overheated, the poor guys must have gone crazy dodging death and trying to protect the queen all the time I was crashing them around while admittedly driving a little distractedly: being that I was wondering all the time if the bees in my trunk could escape into the car cabin and start flying around in there. With me.
Bees seem to like to hang out on my body. I’ve learned that some bugs do. If this bothers me I better get a suit. I’ve been thinking about that. Have decided that I’m so traumatized over being bitten that I must get a suit, and gloves. And learn to use my smoker.
It’s true that bee stings are worse to contemplate than experience. But gee, having been stung several times now in under an hour I can tell you that contemplating the next sting coming in a series is a bit disconcerting. After being stung, I did flap my hands around and do some little dances to wave the critters away from me … all the while reminding myself that this behaviour would probably be scaring those guys silly and maybe inciting them to more stings – and that I should stop being such a girl. My advise to self helped calm me down, a little bit. So much for the zen of beekeeping.
The bee under my skirt was plain old scary! Even though I knew once she had stung my belly she couldn’t do any more harm, I just didn’t want her there and crushed her dying body with my fingers through the fabric of my skirt. Poor us.
I was so glad my transport boxes had plugs I could pull out instead of the alternative – which is a little flap I would have had to play around with. Pulling the plug made it possible for me to walk quickly away after putting the box down near the hive and that’s all I wanted to do.
By a strange twist of fate, this 55 year old woman had ended up welcoming the bees and stings all by myself in the dark of night so that my two 20-something sons could arrive on time for our seder. With the wry sense of humour God likes to show me, our shipment of bees would naturally arrive on the Sabbath on the first night of Passover. Despite my unique journey, I managed to join the table not too late … about half an hour after our friends’ Hagadah reading began at 9pm.
Thanks NENJ team for getting me dispatched with my new charges as quickly as possible so I could buzz off to my adventure, and then my seder – y ou guys rock. Also thanks Rich Schluger for your tip to scrape immediately at the site of a sting to reduce venom penetration and discourage more bees from stinging there. This helped, although my 4-bite upper arm site became infected with 2 stingers I must have broken off and I ended up pretty sick for a couple of days.
Like I said, no lasting harm done but I definitely need a suit … and gloves …
Guide Dogs TV commercial from the Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation (KNGF Geleidehonden) won the Dutch 2014 Gouden Loeki award for best commercial. The work entitled “We not only help people who cannot see, but also those who have seen too much” shows the assistance a specially trained dog can offer to a military veteran coping with severe war related trauma.
Source: White House photographer @PeteSouza’s Instagram Account
White House Photographer Pete Souza takes about 250,000 (a quarter of a million) photographs of the president and White House activities every year, about 500-2000 shots a day. His year-end gallery shows 111 of the photos he took in 2015 and Politico shares 21 of them. I found Souza’s forward-thinking career approach interesting: “My Favorite picture will hopefully be the one I make later today, or tomorrow.”
An exclusive NBC News report shows Souza’s behind the scenes insights into White House life and his three most favorited Instagram Photos of 2015. Two are of President Obama with babies. Souza says, “He loves babies.”
Want to learn how Sen. Bernie Sanders became the only Independent federal Senator in the United States? Read his autobiography, which his campaign will send you in exchange for a donation of ANY size.
I had $3 to share so that’s what I sent and a few days later, there was the book sitting proudly in my mailbox. It’s a great, easy and fascinating read. I not only recommend it, I urge you to get your own copy and learn more about partisan politics, running an excellent campaign, community organizing and of course, Bernie Sanders himself – who has become the front-runner in the 2016 Democractic primary election despite being ignored by major media outlets much of the time.
Source: Facebook via Raquel Heredia Vincente and Madres Latinos de Vigo
All we who are truly blessed – with good hearing, sight and use of our limbs – can surely be inspired by this Glee video. Deaf youth and a singing club which includes a young man in a wheelchair, sign and sing John Lennon’s Imagine. Heartwarming and completely enchanting.
The best rendition I found of this awesome music video is on Facebook but the official trailer is worth seeing too:
And here are Spanish subtitles – traducción al español:
Want to learn how Sen. Bernie Sanders became the only Independent federal Senator in the United States? Read his autobiography, which his campaign 