Welcome to the tenth episode! Today I'll be discussing bridges, tornadoes, and Amazon, not necessarily in that order. I hope you enjoy the show!
AMAZON DID WHAT??: In case you haven't heard, there's this little company called Amazon, founded out of a garage by a fellow named Jeff Bezos, and if he has his way, he and his empire will rule the world.
Jeff and his little company have already taken huge steps towards global domination, building fulfillment centers in every corner of the world--my girlfriend lives in the shadow of one--and coming up with things such as the Kindle, which has helped render the book nearly obsolete, and Amazon Prime, where for about $100 a year, you can get access to a whole bunch of bells and whistles. Heck, they're even looking to utilize drones as delivery vehicles! So nobody should or would be too surprised that they've come up with another crazy idea, right?
It depends. Do you like your cable provider? (I don't like mine)
Yesterday, on a Manhattan stage set to look like a living room, Jeff Bezos' evil empire unveiled their newest gadget--Amazon Fire TV. What this contraption does, essentially, is it hooks into your TV and Internet, and you can stream video onto your TV. You can watch programming provided under license, or one of the Amazon-produced TV shows. Yep, you heard right; Amazon's gotten into the TV show business.
But wait! There's more! You can also play video games! A separate controller will make this possible. Minecraft fans, that includes you. The company will also provide content from Netflix and Hulu, and will even let you watch or edit videos and upload them. At $99, the device is fairly cheap, but it requires one of those $100 per year Amazon Prime memberships--there's always a catch.
So what made this all possible? How is it that Amazon is unleashing their dastardly plan to rule the world? Well, quite simply, we exist. Amazon doesn't see us as people, they see us as consumers. Jeff Bezos looks at a person on the street and doesn't see a guy in a suit and tie, or a woman in skinny jeans and a t-shirt; no, he sees dollar signs. Any-and-everything anyone can come up with to have some sort of connection with our lives, Amazon has either come up with it first, or came up with it last but got it designed, tested, refined, and put on sale first. To this end, Fire TV will have the ability to figure out what you're watching, and mold their advertising around it, thereby ensuring that at some point, you will be at least tempted to click on that advertisement for hair gel that pops up after the umpteenth Dapper Dan reference in O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
Should we be afraid? Probably not. Although they will be a Fire TV content provider, Netflix already provides considerable competition. And the cable companies are liable to start firing figurative and literal shots across the bow--according to the New York Times article on this, Comcast already has trained their sights on Fire TV. Other, more well established forms of online content providers will get a jump start on showcasing how their product is better, while the cable providers will probably engage in a two-front offensive, trying to charm existing customers while calling in favors on Capitol Hill to make Amazon's plan a little harder to implement.
But they're not going to be able to stop Jeff Bezos and that little company of his. Amazon's still working on grocery delivery, and has plans in the works to establish in-house logistics services, where they will handle cradle-to-grave shipping, warehousing, and delivery services, essentially cutting themselves off from the outside world, logistically speaking. I wouldn't be surprised if they were looking into getting into the business of manufacturing their own products (don't get any bright ideas, Bezos). I'm sure there are many bright ideas running around their collective heads.Just give them some time, and they'll come up with another insane--and insanely brilliant, in a Dr. Frankenstein-ish sort of way--idea that will put them one step closer to owning, or at the very least heavily influencing, your daily lives.
You've been warned. Keep calm and carry on.
SO LET'S TALK TECH SOME MORE: Google's got Glass, and a TV. Amazon's come up with this Fire TV doo-hickey. Apple came up with the iPhone. There are apps for just about anything--I can work on this show from my Android while listening to the smooth sounds of I Heart Radio or the comings and goings of the Toronto Police. My, how far we've come.
I'm a "millennial" (31 soon). When I was little, the Steves (Jobs and Wozniak) had just come out with the Macintosh. Atari was still in vogue, and some folks in Japan were watching the Nintendo take hold; in 1983, Sega was still a year or two away. Cable was limited to a handful of channels, the best music (at least in the Louisville area) was still on the AM band, and the Internet was still a military toy. Those wealthy enough to afford a cell phone had to lug a bag around--or get a personal assistant to do it for them. Flip phones and tablet computers (called PADDs, for Personal Access Display Device) were those things Kirk and Co. used in the Star Trek movies, and text messaging required pen, paper, envelope, and a stamp.
So from 1983--the year of my birth--to now, we've now got zillions upon zillions of technological gadgets. People my age fly planes from computer consoles on an Air Force Base somewhere. The Postal Service is no longer a middle man to instant text communication. Cell phones are basically small computers, and there's those pesky iPads. Where movies were once made with massive budgets, bulky cameras, and six months of editing two months worth of film, anyone with an inexpensive camera and the right software can shoot, edit, and release a movie. This show wouldn't be possible without the widespread rise of the Internet.
What's my point? Well, I don't know, really. The thing is, technology has exploded around us. It has become an integral part of our daily lives. Maybe too integral. . .we've become so reliant on technology that,
FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY: This is the fortieth anniversary of the Super Outbreak of 1974. Locally, tornadoes struck in several places.
31 people were killed in an F5 tornado that made its way through Breckinridge and Meade Counties in Kentucky; 28 of those killed were in the city of Brandenburg, along the Ohio River in Meade County. That tornado crossed the river and lifted in southern Harrison County, IN, not far from Mauckport and Laconia.
An F4 tornado touched down just north of Louisville International Airport and weaved its way through the old city, St. Matthews, Rolling Fields, and Barbourmeade--among others--before crossing into Oldham County and lifting; the numbers vary, but between 2 and 6 people died, and 225 to 243 injured.
A pair of F4 tornadoes struck Jefferson County, Indiana that day, killing 11 and injuring 294. The first tornado touched down near Henryville, in Clark County, and marched into Jefferson County, where Hanover and Madison took direct hits; seven of the 11 fatalities from this twister were in Hanover. This tornado continued into Ripley County, IN before lifting. The second tornado touched down east of Madison as the first one was still running through the city, and continued on into Switzerland, Ohio, and Dearborn Counties prior to lifting. The storm that produced the Madison-area tornadoes later produced an F5 in Cincinnati.
In all, over 300 people died in 148 confirmed tornadoes across 13 states and one Canadian province. The worst of the tornadoes was an F5 that struck Xenia, Ohio, killing 32 people and inflicting over $100 million in damage. The town of Tanner, Alabama was struck by two F5 tornadoes within a half hour of each other; a total of 50 people perished between these two storms, whose paths were less than a mile apart, and largely parallel to each other. This town would later be struck by another F5 tornado, in 2011.
Nine people died in Windsor, Ontario, Canada when a F3 tornado crossed the Windsor River out of Michigan and struck a curling hall.
At one point, sixteen tornadoes were on the ground simultaneously, and National Weather Service forecasters trying to keep up with the tornadoes in Indiana placed the Hoosier State under a blanket tornado warning, the only time in history an entire state has been under one.
Remember my previous blurb about technological advances? Well, many advances have been made when it comes to weather forecasting and tornado warnings. A 2012 tornado struck Henryville, Indiana, not far from me, but thanks to weather radios and increased lead times due to advances in weather radar technology, among others, nobody in Henryville lost their lives. (There was one person who died, in Borden, not far from Henryville) A number of students were trapped inside Henryville High School, having been taken back there by their bus driver as the tornado approached; all came out okay, save for minor injuries. Research projects like the 1990's-era Project Vortex, undertaken by Oklahoma University and the National Severe Storms Laboratory (now a part of the Storm Prediction Center, born in part from Project Vortex research), have given meteorologists new insight into tornado development.
The lessons learned in 1974 have made it easier for those in the weather-guessing business to tell us where that tornado is, and although sometimes it can go a little too far--see also the TOR:CON, or Tornado Condition, index, the brainchild of The Weather Channel--by and large, we are safer and better prepared, as evidenced in Henryville. Destructive, killer tornadoes still happen, and there's nothing no mortal being can do about that, but at the very least, we're in a position where we can protect ourselves better.
BRIDGE TO SOMEWHERE, SOON: Mark your calendars once again! April 30 is now the target opening date for Jeffersonville's end of the Bridge Four Bridge.
Now, you're probably thinking the same thing I am--"Yep, we've heard this before"--but apparently, this time it's for real. The city has approved funding to install temporary lighting that will allow the city to open up while the permanent lights are being installed. The city will hold a ceremonial ribbon cutting ceremony that day; the park at the foot of the Jeffersonville side will be finished in September*.
(*Subject to change)
Now, there's no one person or group that can take the blame for the multiple "We're gonna open this day, no, now it's this day, never mind, it's this day" routine. I recently hit on some of the people who live near the Big Four landing, who decided fighting the city over the original lights--which would have looked like Louisville's--was preferable to buying curtains, so they can thank themselves for this. So can the city. And INDOT, the state Department of Transportation. Jeffersonville stands to reap more of a financial windfall from this project than Louisville does, because the Jeff side empties a block from the Spring Street commercial district, but it's coming at a fairly big expense, and not just monetarily, because homes had to be bought, and many of them moved, and people had to move out of them and find a new place to live--my girlfriend among them--and the temporary lighting has to be installed, and that defective beam on the ramp had to be replaced. . .Add to that security requirements that were painfully brought to the fore courtesy of a mob attack in downtown Louisville recently, which will probably require more police and lots of cameras. This thing's turned out to be fairly expensive.
it's nice that there's finally a concrete opening day, and it's nice that the city's going to make a few bucks off of it in the end. But before anything else is done--like, say, the proposed western walking bridge, which would use an existing, active train bridge that once carried cars and which both Louisville and Indiana officials have said they're willing to seize through eminent domain to use--everyone needs to sit back, take a long, hard look at what happened here, put together some serious lessons learned, and ask themselves, is it going to be worth the trouble? Norfolk Southern's promising the mother of all battles if eminent domain is used, and they'll probably win because, after all, they DO still use the 14th Street Bridge for train traffic, and because there ARE major safety concerns that would need to be addressed. I'll talk more about that tomorrow.
Well folks, that about does it for today's episode. Tomorrow I'll touch on the 14th Street Bridge some more, and throw in whatever other random thoughts I have. Until then, enjoy your day!
AMAZON DID WHAT??: In case you haven't heard, there's this little company called Amazon, founded out of a garage by a fellow named Jeff Bezos, and if he has his way, he and his empire will rule the world.
Jeff and his little company have already taken huge steps towards global domination, building fulfillment centers in every corner of the world--my girlfriend lives in the shadow of one--and coming up with things such as the Kindle, which has helped render the book nearly obsolete, and Amazon Prime, where for about $100 a year, you can get access to a whole bunch of bells and whistles. Heck, they're even looking to utilize drones as delivery vehicles! So nobody should or would be too surprised that they've come up with another crazy idea, right?
It depends. Do you like your cable provider? (I don't like mine)
Yesterday, on a Manhattan stage set to look like a living room, Jeff Bezos' evil empire unveiled their newest gadget--Amazon Fire TV. What this contraption does, essentially, is it hooks into your TV and Internet, and you can stream video onto your TV. You can watch programming provided under license, or one of the Amazon-produced TV shows. Yep, you heard right; Amazon's gotten into the TV show business.
But wait! There's more! You can also play video games! A separate controller will make this possible. Minecraft fans, that includes you. The company will also provide content from Netflix and Hulu, and will even let you watch or edit videos and upload them. At $99, the device is fairly cheap, but it requires one of those $100 per year Amazon Prime memberships--there's always a catch.
So what made this all possible? How is it that Amazon is unleashing their dastardly plan to rule the world? Well, quite simply, we exist. Amazon doesn't see us as people, they see us as consumers. Jeff Bezos looks at a person on the street and doesn't see a guy in a suit and tie, or a woman in skinny jeans and a t-shirt; no, he sees dollar signs. Any-and-everything anyone can come up with to have some sort of connection with our lives, Amazon has either come up with it first, or came up with it last but got it designed, tested, refined, and put on sale first. To this end, Fire TV will have the ability to figure out what you're watching, and mold their advertising around it, thereby ensuring that at some point, you will be at least tempted to click on that advertisement for hair gel that pops up after the umpteenth Dapper Dan reference in O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
Should we be afraid? Probably not. Although they will be a Fire TV content provider, Netflix already provides considerable competition. And the cable companies are liable to start firing figurative and literal shots across the bow--according to the New York Times article on this, Comcast already has trained their sights on Fire TV. Other, more well established forms of online content providers will get a jump start on showcasing how their product is better, while the cable providers will probably engage in a two-front offensive, trying to charm existing customers while calling in favors on Capitol Hill to make Amazon's plan a little harder to implement.
But they're not going to be able to stop Jeff Bezos and that little company of his. Amazon's still working on grocery delivery, and has plans in the works to establish in-house logistics services, where they will handle cradle-to-grave shipping, warehousing, and delivery services, essentially cutting themselves off from the outside world, logistically speaking. I wouldn't be surprised if they were looking into getting into the business of manufacturing their own products (don't get any bright ideas, Bezos). I'm sure there are many bright ideas running around their collective heads.Just give them some time, and they'll come up with another insane--and insanely brilliant, in a Dr. Frankenstein-ish sort of way--idea that will put them one step closer to owning, or at the very least heavily influencing, your daily lives.
You've been warned. Keep calm and carry on.
SO LET'S TALK TECH SOME MORE: Google's got Glass, and a TV. Amazon's come up with this Fire TV doo-hickey. Apple came up with the iPhone. There are apps for just about anything--I can work on this show from my Android while listening to the smooth sounds of I Heart Radio or the comings and goings of the Toronto Police. My, how far we've come.
I'm a "millennial" (31 soon). When I was little, the Steves (Jobs and Wozniak) had just come out with the Macintosh. Atari was still in vogue, and some folks in Japan were watching the Nintendo take hold; in 1983, Sega was still a year or two away. Cable was limited to a handful of channels, the best music (at least in the Louisville area) was still on the AM band, and the Internet was still a military toy. Those wealthy enough to afford a cell phone had to lug a bag around--or get a personal assistant to do it for them. Flip phones and tablet computers (called PADDs, for Personal Access Display Device) were those things Kirk and Co. used in the Star Trek movies, and text messaging required pen, paper, envelope, and a stamp.
So from 1983--the year of my birth--to now, we've now got zillions upon zillions of technological gadgets. People my age fly planes from computer consoles on an Air Force Base somewhere. The Postal Service is no longer a middle man to instant text communication. Cell phones are basically small computers, and there's those pesky iPads. Where movies were once made with massive budgets, bulky cameras, and six months of editing two months worth of film, anyone with an inexpensive camera and the right software can shoot, edit, and release a movie. This show wouldn't be possible without the widespread rise of the Internet.
What's my point? Well, I don't know, really. The thing is, technology has exploded around us. It has become an integral part of our daily lives. Maybe too integral. . .we've become so reliant on technology that,
FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY: This is the fortieth anniversary of the Super Outbreak of 1974. Locally, tornadoes struck in several places.
31 people were killed in an F5 tornado that made its way through Breckinridge and Meade Counties in Kentucky; 28 of those killed were in the city of Brandenburg, along the Ohio River in Meade County. That tornado crossed the river and lifted in southern Harrison County, IN, not far from Mauckport and Laconia.
An F4 tornado touched down just north of Louisville International Airport and weaved its way through the old city, St. Matthews, Rolling Fields, and Barbourmeade--among others--before crossing into Oldham County and lifting; the numbers vary, but between 2 and 6 people died, and 225 to 243 injured.
A pair of F4 tornadoes struck Jefferson County, Indiana that day, killing 11 and injuring 294. The first tornado touched down near Henryville, in Clark County, and marched into Jefferson County, where Hanover and Madison took direct hits; seven of the 11 fatalities from this twister were in Hanover. This tornado continued into Ripley County, IN before lifting. The second tornado touched down east of Madison as the first one was still running through the city, and continued on into Switzerland, Ohio, and Dearborn Counties prior to lifting. The storm that produced the Madison-area tornadoes later produced an F5 in Cincinnati.
In all, over 300 people died in 148 confirmed tornadoes across 13 states and one Canadian province. The worst of the tornadoes was an F5 that struck Xenia, Ohio, killing 32 people and inflicting over $100 million in damage. The town of Tanner, Alabama was struck by two F5 tornadoes within a half hour of each other; a total of 50 people perished between these two storms, whose paths were less than a mile apart, and largely parallel to each other. This town would later be struck by another F5 tornado, in 2011.
Nine people died in Windsor, Ontario, Canada when a F3 tornado crossed the Windsor River out of Michigan and struck a curling hall.
At one point, sixteen tornadoes were on the ground simultaneously, and National Weather Service forecasters trying to keep up with the tornadoes in Indiana placed the Hoosier State under a blanket tornado warning, the only time in history an entire state has been under one.
Remember my previous blurb about technological advances? Well, many advances have been made when it comes to weather forecasting and tornado warnings. A 2012 tornado struck Henryville, Indiana, not far from me, but thanks to weather radios and increased lead times due to advances in weather radar technology, among others, nobody in Henryville lost their lives. (There was one person who died, in Borden, not far from Henryville) A number of students were trapped inside Henryville High School, having been taken back there by their bus driver as the tornado approached; all came out okay, save for minor injuries. Research projects like the 1990's-era Project Vortex, undertaken by Oklahoma University and the National Severe Storms Laboratory (now a part of the Storm Prediction Center, born in part from Project Vortex research), have given meteorologists new insight into tornado development.
The lessons learned in 1974 have made it easier for those in the weather-guessing business to tell us where that tornado is, and although sometimes it can go a little too far--see also the TOR:CON, or Tornado Condition, index, the brainchild of The Weather Channel--by and large, we are safer and better prepared, as evidenced in Henryville. Destructive, killer tornadoes still happen, and there's nothing no mortal being can do about that, but at the very least, we're in a position where we can protect ourselves better.
BRIDGE TO SOMEWHERE, SOON: Mark your calendars once again! April 30 is now the target opening date for Jeffersonville's end of the Bridge Four Bridge.
Now, you're probably thinking the same thing I am--"Yep, we've heard this before"--but apparently, this time it's for real. The city has approved funding to install temporary lighting that will allow the city to open up while the permanent lights are being installed. The city will hold a ceremonial ribbon cutting ceremony that day; the park at the foot of the Jeffersonville side will be finished in September*.
(*Subject to change)
Now, there's no one person or group that can take the blame for the multiple "We're gonna open this day, no, now it's this day, never mind, it's this day" routine. I recently hit on some of the people who live near the Big Four landing, who decided fighting the city over the original lights--which would have looked like Louisville's--was preferable to buying curtains, so they can thank themselves for this. So can the city. And INDOT, the state Department of Transportation. Jeffersonville stands to reap more of a financial windfall from this project than Louisville does, because the Jeff side empties a block from the Spring Street commercial district, but it's coming at a fairly big expense, and not just monetarily, because homes had to be bought, and many of them moved, and people had to move out of them and find a new place to live--my girlfriend among them--and the temporary lighting has to be installed, and that defective beam on the ramp had to be replaced. . .Add to that security requirements that were painfully brought to the fore courtesy of a mob attack in downtown Louisville recently, which will probably require more police and lots of cameras. This thing's turned out to be fairly expensive.
it's nice that there's finally a concrete opening day, and it's nice that the city's going to make a few bucks off of it in the end. But before anything else is done--like, say, the proposed western walking bridge, which would use an existing, active train bridge that once carried cars and which both Louisville and Indiana officials have said they're willing to seize through eminent domain to use--everyone needs to sit back, take a long, hard look at what happened here, put together some serious lessons learned, and ask themselves, is it going to be worth the trouble? Norfolk Southern's promising the mother of all battles if eminent domain is used, and they'll probably win because, after all, they DO still use the 14th Street Bridge for train traffic, and because there ARE major safety concerns that would need to be addressed. I'll talk more about that tomorrow.
Well folks, that about does it for today's episode. Tomorrow I'll touch on the 14th Street Bridge some more, and throw in whatever other random thoughts I have. Until then, enjoy your day!