Beam Reach

For those that haven’t seen it yet…

They came. They saw. They conquered. Seven boys signed up for something called Movember, and thirty days later emerged as men.

Who’s in for Movember 2008?

With the sun setting on 2007, I continue the tradition of listing films I have enjoyed over the past year.

Happy New Year!

Movies I watched on The Big Screen and enjoyed

Spiderman 3
28 Weeks Later
Breach
Garbage Warrior @ Silverdocs
Knocked Up
The Bourne Ultimatum
Once
Into The Wild
No Country For Old Men
The Darjeeling Limited
Hotel Chevalier
It’s a Wonderful Life
A Muppet Christmas Carol

Movies I saw on DVD and enjoyed
State and Main
An Officer and a Gentleman
Inner Space
Howard Zinn: Hard to be neutral on a moving train
Thank You For Smoking
The Boys of Baraka
The Bourne Supremacy
Protocols of Zion
Husbands and Wives
Hard Candy
The Simpsons Movie
Leonard Cohen, I’m Your Man
Inside Deep Throat
The Devil and Daniel Johnston
Wordplay
This Film is Not Yet Rated
Stolen
Sir! No Sir!
Secretary
Amores Perros
Transformers
No Direction Home
Little Children
The U.S. vs John Lennon
No End In Sight
Hannibal Rising
Fracture
Shooter
The Prestige
Wet Hot American Summer
Capote

I have a Google Alert set up for the word ‘potbelly’. I did this not because I am a potbelly enthusiast, but because I am simply a guy who likes Potbelly’s. As in Potbelly’s sandwiches. Some time ago, I thought it would be prudent to set up such a Google Alert. Perhaps such could alert me to an initial offering of stock for me to get my greedy little hands on. Little did I know that a sandwich shop alert could result in such thought-provoking results. For example:

Pig Sitter Accused Of Porking Up Pet Potbelly
Today’s THV - Little Rock,AR,USA
A Minnesota woman is asking that abuse charges be filed against an acquaintance who was pet-sitting for her potbellied pig and allowed the animal to get fat …

It’s raining cats and dogs at California hotels
USA Today - USA
“Today, we have a chinchilla, a goat — a very cute little goat — we have a couple of potbelly pigs and quite a few bunnies,” Cochran says. …

Mesa woman escapes attempted sex assault
East Valley Tribune - Mesa,AZ,USA
He was also said to have had a medium build and a potbelly. He also smelled of gasoline or grease and had dirty fingernails. Police released a composite …

Around Murakami’s Superflat world
Los Angeles Times - CA,USA
He has a potbelly. His spine sags. He is asleep. “It says I’m getting old and fat and have a big head,” he says, a laugh seeming to explode from his belly. …

Carbon pig owners plead guilty
Allentown Morning Call - Allentown,PA,USA
The owners of two potbelly pigs who have moved from home to home after running afoul of zoning ordinances pleaded guilty today to violating Nesquehoning’s …

What’s an Herbfarm without thyme and swine?
Seattle Times - United States
Carrie Van Dyck signals to one of her Vietnamese potbelly pigs, Borage, to sit in the Herbfarm’s herb garden. Borage and Basil, who know quite a few piggy …

Every third Saturday in October several hundred crazies descend on Fayetteville, West Virginia to throw themselves off of a bridge. The bridge is the 867 ft. low New River Gorge Bridge. A cell phone dropped from the bridge will fall for 8.5 seconds before hitting the New River directly below.

The jumpers at Bridge Day are experienced skydivers who are skilled in all things falling. Some choose to throw their pilot chute immediately after jumping from the platform, while some wait as long as four or five seconds before deploying the air-catching piece of fabric that will jerk them to a slower,but life-preserving rate of descent.

The West Virginia fall foliage passing in his peripheral vision at an accelerating rate, he doesn’t remember where he wants to land, nor why. He only knows why he jumped.

Flickr

Today is the first ever DC Car Free Day. According to the official website,

This is an opportunity to reconnect with the city, exploring new neighborhoods, and take advantage of transportation choices. Going carfree on September 18th will give you the opportunity to join your neighbors from all over the city as well as the metropolitan area who are signing up to leave their cars at home and travel to work by train, bus, bicycle, walking, roller-blading, etc.

Bike the Sites is offering free or discounted bike rentals as well. Considering this is the first ever DC Car Free Day, I suppose this is a step in the right direction. But next year let’s aim for actually barring auto traffic on Car Free Day. I think today “Car Free Day” will be a bit of a misnomer. We could at the very least bar private cars within the Central Business District or ‘Golden Triangle’ for one day.

http://www.carfreedc.info/

Cartoon by Andy Singer

Andy Singer is a cartoonist. Andy singer hates cars. He really hates them. He has published a book of his anti-car cartoons aptly titled CARtoons. The book costs $10 and you can order it here. The book is published by Carbusters Press which is a project of the World Carfree Network. His stuff is really great and he makes a very compelling argument against the steel and plastic boxes so many Americans live by.

If someone had to have a car., a smart fortwo from smart USA would be a clever choice. Having been available in Europe for nearly a decade, the smart is finally coming to the USA. The smart fortwo will be available Q1 2008 but reservations can be made right now at smartusa.com for a refundable $99 deposit. For the US market, the smart fortwo will come in three flavors, all powered by a 71 hp 1.0 liter three-cylinder gasoline engine. The base model ‘Pure’ starts under $12,000 while the ‘well-equipped’ Passion starts just under $14,000 and there will even be a convertible model sold for $17,000.

Six Reasons why I think the smart fortwo is really great:

1. This thing is tiny. Just to give you an idea of how hilariously small this car is, take note: two of these suckers can be parked end-to-end in a normal parking space. Three can be parked in a normal space if parked sideways, side by side! (Yes, they are that short. 8.8 feet short.)
2. These things come standard with an electro-hydraulic clutch. This means the internal machinery is akin to a manual transmission, however to the driver the car behaves like an automatic transmission vehicle. This allows the fortwo to have the efficiency of a manual with the convenience and ease-of-use of an automatic. A few years ago, these transmissions were only available on Ferraris, BMWs, and Porches. There is no clutch pedal, as a computer automatically actuates the clutch hydraulically and shifts when appropriate. A manual mode is user-selectable and the Passion and Passion Cabrio models come with paddle shifters behind the steering wheel for use when in manual mode.
3. Four airbags, ABS, and Stability Control are all standard.
4. Power steering is a $450 option. (save $450 and build upper body strength)
5. Manufactured by Mercedes, so quality of build and materials should be superb.
6. An all-electric fortwo EV is being tested in the UK right now and may eventually be sold in the US.

As my parting gift to you, I leave you with some of my favorite photos of the fortwo.

photo: Godofgta42

If it’s good enough for Snoop, it’s good enough for me.

My link blog is updated daily, even if Beam Reach isn’t.  Check it out. It also has a feed.

I attended the SILVERDOCS Documentary Film Festival earlier this summer and caught the U.S. premiere of a film called Garbage Warrior. After the movie, filmmaker Oliver Hodge as well as the subject of the documentary, Michael Reynolds, were on hand for a Q&A session.

It was a perfect example of a great documentary film recording an infinitely interesting subculture. In this case, the subculture filmed is in the New Mexico desert building houses out of tires and bottles and loving every second of it. These guys are living lives that are sustainable and independent and they know the architectural and otherwise technical points of environmentally-friendly living.

My blog might not be updated regularly, but my link blog is a-whole-nother story, if you want to keep a grasp on what’s goin’ on, you’ll check it out. Subscribe to with Google Reader!

Pay-by-touch @ Whole Foods in Silver Spring. You can now pay for your groceries with your fingerprint. Welcome to the future.

Vermont secedes from the empire: U.S. out of Vermont. Maybe Ben & Jerry were on to something.

 Photo Credit: The recline button on a Virgin America flight taken by Johnny Vulkan

Beam Reach is back! After such a long break, there’s lots to talk about and link to, so let’s get busy like Sean Paul.

The famed journalist Bill Moyers had NYU Professor of History Marilyn B. Young on his program to discuss recent comments made by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. In the interview, Young provides a welcome voice of reason while drawing chilling parallels between the the behavior and language of our current administration and that of the Johnson and Nixon administrations during the Vietnam War. Young is the co-editor of a new collection of essays titled, Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam (or How Not to Learn From the Past). There is a video clip of the interview (16:23) as well as a transcript available here.

I apologize for the long hiatus this blog experienced, I think I may have been spending too much time hanging out in Room 641A. If you like that, check out this fantastic PBS Frontline special on the NSA warrentless domestic spying program: Spying on the Homefront (full program watchable online).

Calling all global warming deniers: What say you about this study? Southern Ocean saturated with CO2 (CNN)

Sell your car: liberate yourself from car payments, insurance premiums, gas prices, and maintenance costs. Use public transit. Ride a bike. Walk. Segway. Stop contributing to global warming, the coffers of Saudi princes, and smog-induced diseases. If you don’t live in a place where this is realistic, move. Read this book.

You’ve been waiting for this haven’t you?

“Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There’s something wrong with a society that drives a car to work out in a gym.” - Bill Nye