Building off earlier comments here, I was pleased to see more common sense from Mayor Bloomberg.
Epoch Times – Speaking Out Against Firearms on Amtrak
[The first link keeps vanishing, so here it is again: http://rbiii.wordpress.com/2007/05/15/bloomberg-poised-for-third-party-campaign/]
Yesterday, the New York Times reported:
Amtrak reached a preliminary agreement to move to an annex of Pennsylvania Station planned for the James A. Farley Post Office Building, state, federal and railroad officials announced on Sunday.
It offers this detail behind the progress: “The breakthrough was made possible by the government’s agreeing to Amtrak’s request to share revenue from retail outlets in the expanded station and to make some design changes.“ To place this into full context would require quite the essay, but please recall my first post on this topic – in August 2007 – when I noted Amtrak’s statement: “We were belatedly brought to the table in recent months.” The irony in that 2007 comment is that Amtrak had been involved in this effort for three years when I played a minute role in it in 1995, so any suggestion of Amtrak’s lack of involvement has always sounded hollow to me. It was David Gunn who torpedoed Amtrak’s role in the redevelopment, noting with some merit that Amtrak had no money to commit to such a plan. Former Amtrak President and then director of New Jersey Transit George Warrington stepped into the breach, claiming a flagship role which has become less and less appealing to NJT as they commit to the tunnel and associated station in the ARC project. (More on that here.)
Back in March, New York Magazine offered an update on the negotiations (post here) in which an unnamed source was quoted saying:
Amtrak, which would move from Penn to Moynihan, won’t commit until all three elected officials [Bloomberg, Paterson, and Corzine] are onboard. “Amtrak is the trickiest part,” one Moynihan negotiation veteran says. “If it sees even a crack of daylight between the mayor, the governors, and the Port Authority, they’ll drive an Acela right through it and kill this chance.”
Looking again at yesterday’s NYT article, with the above comment fresh in your mind, I cannot help but focus on this statement:
Senator Charles E. Schumer, who has been trying to resuscitate the project, said on Sunday that he and Gov. David A. Paterson had been negotiating with Amtrak for six months and had found the new Amtrak chief, Joseph H. Boardman, formerly the New York State transportation commissioner, “far more helpful” than his predecessor.
Looking back at the last time Schumer made waves over Farley, covered here, it seems his contention then was that Amtrak should be the source of substantial stimulus funds as part of the project. Since Gunn’s time, Amtrak’s contention has been that Amtrak would not be a part of the project. I can only assume that the quid pro quo for Amtrak to secure a share of the retail revenue in exchange for contributing stimulus funds towards the project. Curious, is it not, how easily the New York politicians found it to work with Amtrak’s new New York president to spend Federal dollars on a New York project that will not improve the speed of any of Amtrak’s trains? (Admittedly, it should increase capacity in New York, but that is not nearly as beneficial to Amtrak as it is to NJT and LIRR.) I’m sure there are many Amtrak riders far from the NEC who could have found different ways to spend that money, but no one asked them.
I know it’s been too long since I did this. I regret that. So many great shots to post, so many Fridays gone to waste. Yet life is full, and this can slide with no harm to anything, and so it has. Mea culpa.
Today we look at a Royal Air Force Panavia Tornado GR4 pitching up at high speed, reheat engaged on both of its RB199 engines. Such power! This image was captured by Flickr user F6MAN, to whom I extend my thanks.
This aircraft grew out of the same 1960’s fascination with variable-geometry wings that spawned the General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, the Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-23 Flogger, and the Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer, among others. Dassault tinkered around with swing wings on its Mirage G, G4, and G8 series of prototypes, which partially led to the Tornado. Wikipedia gives a useful timeline of the various studies that led to the Tornado – the AFVG, the MRA, the MRCA, etc. It is amazing to me to see how long it takes to move from desired capability to requirement to design to prototype to service introduction. The Tornado first flew in 1974, after almost a decade of development, and the last one rolled off of the line in 1998. It is operated by Britain, Germany, Italy, and Saudi Arabia, who together bought 992 airframes. At one point early in the effort, Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands all showed interest as well – Canada went on the operate the Boeing (McDonnell Douglas/Northrop F-18 Hornet), and the others adopted the Lockheed (General Dynamics) F-16 Fighting Falcon.
To see previous appearances of the Tornado in this series, please click here, here, or here.
If you like this, I encourage you to check out this summary of all of the aviation photography I have featured here.
Anyone who has looked at this blog for more than a moment knows I like Legos. I cannot help myself. Since my grandmother returned from Germany in the early seventies with some terrific Lego kits, I have been hooked. My kids are hooked, too, although the sets today offer different (and to my mind, diminished, satisfactions) than the sets of long ago. While they foster results that look more realistic in some ways, many of these pieces are not at all versatile in nature, and do not leave as much room for imagination as the more limited array of pieces and colors of yesteryear. I sincerely enjoy modern Lego creations, but I often feel saddened by them, too.
Finding a creation that is so unique and innovative in its use and expression via Lego brick that I forget these hesitations is rare, but I present below one that is a moment of genius.
Flickr user Legohaulic, apparently named Tyler, created this nautilus using half-spheres, an array of organic shapes, and some radar dishes. To me, it barely looks like Lego, and in some ways, that is as high a compliment as one can offer a Lego builder as can be. I think it’s wonderful.
Hat tip: The Brothers Brick
If you use Google Reader and Instapaper, then you want to make sure you pay attention to this post here. Using some of the new features introduced over at Greader this week, it permits you to add articles to your Instapaper queue straight from inside your feed reader. It’s very slick.
The only shortcomings I see at the moment are the blank 201 result page and the lack of fine tuning what URL gets sent over. I like to choose a print view before adding an item to Instapaper, but perhaps saving a few clicks may be a worthwhile tradeoff.
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