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Special Issue "Heterogeneous Catalysis"
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2013)
Special Issue Editor
Guest Editor
Dr. Eric Guibal
Ecole des Mines d'Alčs, Laboratoire Génie de l'Environnement Industriel, 6 Avenue de Clavières, F-30319 Alès, Cedex, France
E-Mail: email@example.com
Interests: treatment of wastewaters (metals, dyes); adsorption & biosorption process; liquid/liquid extraction processes; coagulation & flocculation; catalytic processes; synthesis of new materials based on biopolymers (physical and chemical modifications)
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Heterogeneous catalysis is key step in the synthesis pathway of a number of products in fields as diverse as petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals but also in environmental applications;. The specific properties brought to the reaction by the supports open the route to enhanced efficiency, selectivity in synthesis, and improved competitiveness. This special issue of molecules dedicated to Heterogeneous Catalysis calls for both fundamental and applied contributions in this field of growing academic and industrial interests. Special attention will be paid to the characterization of materials (surface properties, diffusion characteristics), the identification of mechanisms and limiting steps, and the contribution of support properties to the orientation/selectivity of catalytic reactions. A special attention will be paid to original supports (based on renewable resources).
Dr. Eric Guibal
Guest Editor
- heterogeneous catalysis
- support characterization
- surface properties
- porosity
- kinetics
- governing rate
- selectivity
- reaction pathways
- modeling
- alternative supports
Article: Photocatalytic Degradation of Mecoprop and Clopyralid in Aqueous Suspensions of Nanostructured N-doped TiO2
Molecules 2010, 15(5), 2994-3009; doi:10.3390/molecules15052994
Received: 22 January 2010; in revised form: 18 March 2010 / Accepted: 20 April 2010 / Published: 27 April 2010Show/Hide Abstract | Cited by 14 | PDF Full-text (536 KB)
Molecules 2010, 15(5), 3428-3440; doi:10.3390/molecules15053428
Received: 13 February 2010; in revised form: 15 April 2010 / Accepted: 10 May 2010 / Published: 12 May 2010Show/Hide Abstract | PDF Full-text (453 KB)
Article: Enantioselectivity Induced by Oxazaborolidine Supported on Mesoporous Silica or by Its Analog in Homogeneous Phase
Molecules 2010, 15(5), 3643-3660; doi:10.3390/molecules15053643
Received: 19 April 2010; in revised form: 6 May 2010 / Accepted: 12 May 2010 / Published: 18 May 2010Show/Hide Abstract | PDF Full-text (720 KB)
Review: Design and Use of Nanostructured Single-Site Heterogeneous Catalysts for the Selective Transformation of Fine Chemicals
Molecules 2010, 15(6), 3829-3856; doi:10.3390/molecules15063829
Received: 1 March 2010; in revised form: 10 May 2010 / Accepted: 24 May 2010 / Published: 26 May 2010Show/Hide Abstract | Cited by 18 | PDF Full-text (490 KB)
Review: Microheterogeneous Catalysis
Molecules 2010, 15(7), 4815-4874; doi:10.3390/molecules15074815
Received: 1 June 2010; in revised form: 23 June 2010 / Accepted: 5 July 2010 / Published: 9 July 2010Show/Hide Abstract | Cited by 5 | PDF Full-text (481 KB)
Review: Combining the Benefits of Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Catalysis with Tunable Solvents and Nearcritical Water
Molecules 2010, 15(11), 8400-8424; doi:10.3390/molecules15118400
Received: 11 October 2010; Accepted: 8 November 2010 / Published: 16 November 2010Show/Hide Abstract | Cited by 10 | PDF Full-text (456 KB)
Molecules 2013, 18(6), 7279-7308; doi:10.3390/molecules18067279
Received: 7 May 2013; in revised form: 3 June 2013 / Accepted: 13 June 2013 / Published: 21 June 2013Show/Hide Abstract | Cited by 5 | PDF Full-text (716 KB)
Communication: Efficient One-Pot Synthesis of 5-Chloromethylfurfural (CMF) from Carbohydrates in Mild Biphasic Systems
Molecules 2013, 18(7), 7675-7685; doi:10.3390/molecules18077675
Received: 22 May 2013; in revised form: 24 June 2013 / Accepted: 25 June 2013 / Published: 2 July 2013Show/Hide Abstract | Cited by 1 | PDF Full-text (207 KB) | Correction | Supplementary Files
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Type of Paper: Review
Title: Metal Organic Frameworks: An Exciting New Class of Components for Selective and Chiral Oxidation Catalysis: An Comprehensive Overview
Authors: Karen Leus 1,2 and Pascal Van Der Voort 1,2,*
Affiliation: 1 Organometallics and Catalysis, Center for Ordered Materials, COMOC, Belgium
2 Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry, Ghent University, UGent, Krijgslaan 281, building S3, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium
Abstract: Since the discovery of Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) in 1999, the amount of new structures has grown exponentially. A MOF typically consists of inorganic nodes that are connected by organic linkers to form a crystalline, highly porous structures. Very typical linkers are benzenedi- or tricarboxylates. Two of the most promising applications of these highly porous materials is gas storage and separation and heterogeneous catalysis. Especially in the liquid phase and mild reaction conditions, MOFs open up unprecedented opportunities to replace homogeneous catalysts by a sustainable and stable heterogeneous catalyst. The catalytic function can be introduced as (i) the active metal site; (ii) an extra functionality in the linker; (iii) an impurity or dopant and (iv) a "ship-in-a-bottle" complex as a homogeneous catalysts is no longer able to leave the cages of the porous MOF network. This way, shape selectivity and even chiral selectivity can be created. We will present an overview of the state of the art of functionalized MOFs for the case of selective liquid phase oxidations and epoxidations, focusing on improved selectivity or chirality compared to a homogeneous system.
Last update: 5 February 2013


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Forum / THE MAIN WALL / Bosch Greenstar Combi 100 / Not sufficiently heating three zones
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Bosch Greenstar Combi 100 / Not sufficiently heating three zones (21 Posts)
VTJAYBIRD October 23, 2013 @ 10:24 AM
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Bosch Greenstar Combi 100 / Not sufficiently heating three zonesHelp... I had a brand new Bosch Combi 100 installed recently and ever since then it seems that it is not properly heating my three zone home (one zone per floor). The baseboards just dont seem to get as hot as they did with our old boiler. Originally i thought it was the outdoor temperature, but last night is was approx 32F outside and the baseboards just weren't getting warm enough. After reading some of the posts here i thought it could be related to primary/secondary piping perhaps.. Any ideas? Pictures attached.
Thanks a million!
nicholas bonham-carter October 23, 2013 @ 12:04 PM
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Cold baseboardsHave you asked the installer about the cold baseboards? Is the temperature setting for radiant floor (lower temperatures), instead of baseboard (higher temperatures)?
Could the controller be locked into a setback somehow? During times of constant hot water use, the unit will not be heating.
Was a heat-loss survey done on the house to determine the boiler size? Have you compared the piping diagram in the instructions with what was installed? A quick look seems to indicate some back to front component locations.--NBC
Jamie Hall October 23, 2013 @ 2:43 PM
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And before we start chasing phantoms...a rather obvious question: is it just the baseboards which seem cold, or it is not capable of heating the house and satisfying the thermostat? If it's the latter, it's time to start looking at some of the things NBC was mentioning. If it's the former, could it be that it is simply running a cooler temperature, but longer, for more efficiency? That would be controlled by the outdoor reset curve, if it has one...Jamie
Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England.
Hoffman Equipped System (all original except boiler), Weil-McClain 580, 2.75 gph Carlin, Vapourstat 0.5 -- 6.0 ounces per square inch
RobG October 23, 2013 @ 3:44 PM
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Did it ever work correcly?It looks like the piping to the manifolds is too small. You are not piped primary / secondary. That unit has an internal pump to handle the primary side. You are pumping into your expansion tank. I would suggest that you have all of your near boiler piping re-done per the instruction manual (which is very hard to follow). Get rid of the PEX for the primary loop and use the proper size copper or black iron.
Just my opinion. As well, you have no means of controlling the temperatures for the different zones.
RobThis post was edited by an admin on October 23, 2013 3:49 PM.
VTJAYBIRD October 23, 2013 @ 6:01 PM
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Only been installed for a weekWe've had the system for about a week now. Initially i thought the lukewarm baseboards were a result of the heating curve / outside temp sensor etc. Perhaps the boiler was just so efficient that it took into account the outside temperature was around 54F and didnt have to heat the water so hot to raise the temp in that zone. Then recently we had a really cold night at 32F and the baseboards still just seemed lukewarm. Thats when i got to looking in the manuals, watched the bosch install video online (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR3uF7QHE14) and noticed the primary/secondary piping they call out using a webstone closely-spaced tee manifold. Regarding the expansion tank, are you suggesting that it may be in the incorrect location? Thanks for the help!
gennady October 23, 2013 @ 8:06 PM
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installerWhy are you acting as you want to troubleshoot your brand new installation? Where is an installer? And all this installation looks like nightmare on elm street movie.Gennady Tsakh
Absolute Mechanical Co. Inc.
VTJAYBIRD October 24, 2013 @ 8:43 AM
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concerned....because I am concerned homeowner that is trying to understand and diagnose the problem. If i go back to the installer at this point and tell them that someone on a forum said that his work looks like nightmare on elm street, i don't think that will get me very far...
nicholas bonham-carter October 24, 2013 @ 10:30 AM
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How to talk to the installerJust tell him what you told us-the system is not heating properly. Later on, you may want to show him this thread, but for the moment, just focus on the facts-you are cold! Part of the installation should be making sure the system functions as it should. Has he been paid in full yet (hopefully not).
Since you have read the manual, his replies may be interesting and inventive! Bosch has a tech support line, and they may have something to say about the reversed tank location.--NBC
VTJAYBIRD October 24, 2013 @ 10:45 AM
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tank locationThank you! The output was actually much better last night. I reviewed some of the settings in the FW200 control and it appears it was set to "radiator" instead of "baseboard" for heating. Changing it to "baseboard" seemed to make a difference, I was showing approx 170F water temp readings at the boiler after that (and the outside temp was around 40F).
They have only been paid the 50% deposit so far so i have negotiation room. When you mention the reversed tank location, what exactly do you mean? I assume that you mean the expansion tank should be on the return side of the boiler? I noticed that all the line drawings in the Bosch application manual show the expansion tank on the return side.
nicholas bonham-carter October 24, 2013 @ 10:59 AM
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Talking to the installerBefore he comes over to investigate the lack of heating, set all the controls back to where he left them.
As he is looking at it, you can ask about the tank location, pipe sizes, etc. while you have the manual in hand.
Others here may have other specific remarks about the installation--NBC
Aaron_in_Maine October 23, 2013 @ 8:16 PM
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WrongThat install is a joke. There is no primary/secondary piping. I would make him fix it.
kcopp October 23, 2013 @ 8:59 PM
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Not good....The plastic fittings are not rated for heat on the 1" pex. I have about 4 of these Greenstar boilers installed and that is not how to pipe them. I think you spent more time in the manual than the installer. Is this install in Vermont? FW Webb has plenty of training on these boilers.This post was edited by an admin on October 23, 2013 9:14 PM.
RobG October 24, 2013 @ 12:08 PM
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Re-PipeIf you still have 50% of the contract you should first speak with the original installer and give him the option of making it right. If that does not work use the money for hiring a qualified installer to do it right.
Does the PEX on any of the pipes say "for potable water only" ?
Make sure that the slab gets some sort of mixing device. If you continue to put 170deg water through it you will destroy the slab and the piping in it.
Ironman October 24, 2013 @ 4:05 PM
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PipingAs others have pointed out, you boiler is not piped pri/sec which is required for a multi zone application like yours. See page 54 of the Applications Manual for the proper piping. The way it is now places the internal pump in series with the zone pumps which is improper.
The left side hydronic connection on the boiler is the supply which means the circ's should be pumping away from the boiler. Check the directional arrow on the circ's to confirm this.
The location of the expansion tank would be acceptable if the piping were pri/sec and the zone circ's were "pumping away" from it. The manual shows it in the return of the boiler loop. It is in the U.S. drawings and has been contended by more than one knowledgeable person as not being the correct place. Leave it where it is if the circ's are indeed pumping away from it. Just get it piped pri/sec as the manual shows. There's even an enlarged detail in the manual that shows how.
The installer's workmanship looks well above average so I would conclude that he takes pride in his work and would want to correct his error. He just needs to get up to speed on his technical knowledge of that boiler. Apparently, he didn't realize it had an internal circ and the applications manual may not have come with the boiler unless Bosch has changed its practice.Bob Boan
You can choose to do what you want, but you cannot choose the consequences.
VTJAYBIRD October 24, 2013 @ 6:32 PM
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ThanksThank you very much for the comments. I appreciate your help, and everyone's help on this thread!
gennady October 24, 2013 @ 10:16 PM
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workmanshipI do not want to sound negative, but workmanship here is not acceptable in my opinion.
I do not see acid neutralizer on condensate drain line.
I do not see BFP drip line extended to no more that 6" AFF
I do not see min 18" before and after air scoop
I do not see isolation and drain valve on expansion tank
I do not see DHW mixing valve
Just to name a fewGennady Tsakh
Absolute Mechanical Co. Inc.
www.AbsoluteMechanicalCoInc.comThis post was edited by an admin on October 24, 2013 10:17 PM.
VTJAYBIRD November 1, 2013 @ 10:59 AM
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Zone heating when thermostat off?I'm thinking this new issue may be related to the lack of primary/secondary piping perhaps.
I have noticed that when our two other zones are calling for heat and circulators pumping (rightmost two circulators in diagram) that the basement zone (circulator to the far left in diagram) is heating! The basement zone thermostat is off at this time and circulator not pumping but there is definitely hot water making its way through the zone/baseboards.
RobG November 1, 2013 @ 11:27 AM
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Basement Slab HeatingThis is happening because the pump inside the boiler is pushing past the zone pump due to the pumps being piped in series. What did your installer say about re-piping the boiler correctly?
Aaron_in_Maine October 24, 2013 @ 4:49 PM
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This is rightThis is what it should look like the boiler drops straight into tees on the secondary loop.This post was edited by an admin on October 24, 2013 4:50 PM.
VTJAYBIRD October 24, 2013 @ 6:33 PM
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ThanksAlthough the picture is pretty hard to see the piping due to size, I appreciate you taking the time to send it!
BobC October 25, 2013 @ 7:20 AM
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Click on that pictureIt will expand to a large size so it will be easy to see what is going on.
BobSmith G8-3 with EZ Gas @ 84,200 BTU, Single pipe steam
Vaporstat with a 12oz cut-out and 4oz cut-in
3PSI gauge

subset: commoncrawl


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I am just wondering why we would take a QB with the 1st Overall Pick or even the 1st 2 Rounds? and here are some of the reasons i ask
1st Reason-Why Draft someone who has to come in and fight for the right to start even though Culpepper,Kitna,Stanton and Henson may not be the best QBs but they are Vets and i can not see the Coaching staff just naming some cocky kid Starter cause he is highly touted no the Vets are fighting for that right to start and they are shooting to kill
2nd Reason-The O-Line sucks so throwing a Rookie QB right in the fire right away could end his career rather quick
3rd Reason-The Coaching staff knows the O-Line sucks so they are going to draft an O-Lineman with the 20th overall Pick just so the new QB has someone to protect him so then you just wasted the first round picks on guys who are going to beef up the stronger half of the team while maybe the worst Defense in history gets nobody to help out which goes back to my first reason draft Aaron Curry there is no way this guy will lose out to guys like Dizon and Lenon and after that Alphonso Smith i think he can take the likes of Keith Smith and Travis Fisher and oh yeah you draft an OT do you really think Backus is going to give up without a fight i dont he may suck but he has experiance and knows how to handle a NFL DE now you could say the same about Curry and Smith but these guys just plain out have more talent then their compitiion
4th Reason-Does anyone honestly believe that any QB in this class has what it takes to take this team to the Playoffs? i dont because Defense wins Championships
5th Reason-If we draft a QB and he flops does this mean we need another "Face of the Franchise" in next years Draft? i hope not i mean look this is why the Lions are bad they needed to take guys who could have huge "Franchise Player" potential guys like Joey Harrington,Charles Rogers,Mike Williams you could even argue Roy Williams and Kevin Jones also Shaun Rogers,Kalimba Edwards,Shaun Cody,Boss Bailey,Teddy Lehman so on and so forth we drafted these guys hoping for a superstar instead of filling a hole
well there are 5 reasons i think QB is not a great choice
Give me some feedback here i would like to hear some arguements as to why we shoul take a QB in the 1st 2 Rounds


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Habitat is a self hosted, programmable personal-data server controlled via gherkin syntax.
So far, it stores location data reported via a proof-of-concept client:
and is programmable via a proof-of-concept browser based editor:
Background photo credit:
Johnson Cameraface
In August I'm signed up to cycle the London-Surrey 100 - a race along the olympic road race route.
It's 104 miles long and contains 800m of assent. It will probably take about 9 hours.
My training has not been going to plan (for which read none). In fact, I don't really have a proxy for what that sort of distance feels like.
This web app shows 3 things:
1) how many days there are to go to the day iteself
2) how many days I've cycled in the past week
3) how my last weeks cycling compares to the race itself.
The two boxes represent distance and assent and the bit that is filled in is how much of it I've done in the last 7 days.
The data comes from Strava and it is permanently displayed using an old iphone.
If you are also doing the 100 you can try the app out yourself.
It uses the FSA's open data API and attempts to match them to places on Foursquare, then uses the Pushover app for iphone and android to tell you the rating.
More work is needed to improve the matching of places between Foursquare and the FSA API (due to differences in names - like 'Ltd' and differences in coverage). So no guarantee you will get an alert, but it seems to work quite well.
Oyster Card backup script for ScraperWiki.com Vault -
TfL only allow access to the past eight weeks of Oyster Card travel.
It's always pained me I can't look back on the last year (or ten years) and see where I've been.
This script allows you to do a rolling backup of your travel history using a private Scraper Wiki Vault
There are plenty of games and apps that make use of location to collect, check-in to or find things in the real world. They use GPS and geoIP to work out your location.
But what if you wanted to build something on The Tube (London's underground transit system)? An app that let you collect tube stations, told you their history or even a real life version of Mornington Crescent? No GPS, no geoIP.
Since July Tube stations have started being installed with WiFi run by Virgin Media.
If there is a one-to-one mapping between tube stations and the IP address you get assigned when connected to the network then it would be possible build apps that knew your location underground.
So I've built a mobile web app to try and build a geoIP database of the underground. Bookmark it on your phone, and next time you are commuting you can help map the tube. In return for mapping a Tube station, you get a factoid about it.
The data everyone collects will be available here.
Note: this might not work, and yes, it is all a bit silly.
Edit (Dec 2012): It seems this isn't possible. The IP addresses don't seem to be fixed to stations in any reliable way.


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CATEGORIES Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Foreign Language, Independent, Fandom, Cinematical Indie, CinematicalOnce a year or so for the past several years, usually around awards season, somebody somewhere writes a story about how TV has gotten so much better than the movies. This year's article on the state of TV versus the movies is over at Newsweek, and there's a lively debate going on over at Hollywood Elsewhere on the topic, with people trumpeting their favorite TV shows (The Wire, Lost, 24, Heroes, even, god help us, American Idol) over the offerings at the multiplex.
Now, I can see the value of a well-made television program. I've been addicted to Jack Bauer and 24 since episode one of season one, and I'm not even sure how I feel about seeing 24 up on the big screen. There's something about the intimacy of curling up on the couch each week with Jack, Chloe and the gang that would be lost in translation to the silver screen. And I know lots of folks, some of them living in my very own house, who can't make it through a week without checking in with Heroes or Grey's Anatomy, but that doesn't mean that those shows are better than the films I can see at one of the arthouse cinemas in town (although I might buy the argument that they're better than what's showing down the road at the multiplex).
When I look at my own top ten films for 2006, I see films like Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth, Liittle Children and The Proposition, films which cry out for a big screen in a dark theater. Even The Lives of Others (which would have had a spot on my list if I'd seen it in time) uses the big screen to make you feel the weight of the Stasi oppression through its gloomy cinematography. TV storytelling may have gotten better over the past decade or so, with more focus on compelling stories, but I'm not sure you can even objectively compare the two media -- even the Newsweek article says, it's like "comparing apples to tubas" -- but then author Devin Gordon goes on to do just that, asserting that television is "running circles" around the movies.
So what do you think? Are your fave TV shows better than the movies Hollywood studios are churning out?
[ via Hollywood Elsewhere ]


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For banks working on their post-financial crisis image, catering to poor clients may lead to good will from regulators, the NYT reports.» Read More
The lawsuit, filed against the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, comes days after U.S. prosecutors opened criminal and civil probes into at least 15 banks and payment processors as part of a wide-ranging consumer fraud investigation.
Thomas Hoenig, vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, made the comments after Bank of America announced earlier this week that it would have to re-do its test results after discovering a calculation error that led it to overstate its capital levels by about $4 billion.
WASHINGTON, April 8- The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp voted on Tuesday to adopt tougher leverage requirements for the biggest U.S. banks. The rules set a leverage ratio of 6 percent for big banks and 5 percent for their holding companies. The new requirements would take effect in 2018, regulators said.
WASHINGTON, April 8- Financial regulators will vote shortly to finalize rules requiring the biggest U.S. banks to meet a 6 percent leverage ratio, the regulators said in documents released on Tuesday. The rules closely follow a proposal issued by the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency last year.
March 3- A federal grand jury is probing Citigroup Inc, including its Banamex USA affiliate, over compliance with the U.S. Citigroup, the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, also said Banamex USA had received a subpoena from the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, a civil agency.
March 3- A federal grand jury is probing Citigroup Inc, including its Banamex USA affiliate, over compliance with the U.S. The company also said Banamex USA had received a subpoena from the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp..
"I think we've gotten the details worked out and now it's just getting the schedule and... getting everyone lined up," Federal Deposit Insurance Corp Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig told reporters at a conference.
A provision prohibiting banks from keeping investments in CDOs backed by hybrid securities called trust preferreds ignited a controversy.
CNBC's Eamon Javers breaks down the 5 key exemptions of the Volcker Rule, including underwriting and risk mitigated hedging.
Discussing the Volcker Rule and the improvements made to make the legislation stronger, with CNBC's Rick Santelli and Sheila Bair, former chair of the FDIC.
CNBC's Eamon Javers details the five key exemptions under the Volcker Rule. Regulators from the FDIC and Federal Reserve are expected to vote to approve the legislation which would ban banks from proprietary trading.
The President is nominating top Treasury Department official Timothy Massad as head of CFTC, the agency that regulates the futures and options market.
Bank lending is on the rise. The little guy on Main Street is not feeling it, though, so many entrepreneurs are turning to alternative funding sources.
CNBC's Hampton Pearson has the latest numbers on bank earnings.
The big banks should not be allowed to dip into FDIC-insured deposits to engage in risky trading activities, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said on CNBC Friday, as she pushed for a new, modern-day bank breakup bill.
The FDIC, OCC and the Fed jointly proposed new rules on bank borrowing that could hamper lending. The new rules will make the biggest banks fund 5 percent of their assets.
Dick Bove, Rafferty Capital analyst, explains why the new banking regulation is a "turf war" between the Fed, which believes in the Basel III approach to capital, and the FDIC.
The FDIC on Tuesday will propose a leverage rule requiring big banks to have common equity equal to at least 5 percent of their assets, sources tell CNBC.
The FDIC's stricter leverage rules will be announced on Tuesday, reports CNBC's Kate Kelly. The FDIC is expected to raise the key leverage ratio for banks to 5 percent from 3 percent.
Three years after it was signed into law—and with only about 20 percent of its rules in place—critics and even supporters of Dodd-Frank say it's flawed and convoluted.


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regional news
News stories tagged with "rivers"
Noted river author, photographer featured in Clayton
Feb 05, 2009 — St. Lawrence River advocates, policy makers, and scientists will gather Saturday in Clayton for Save the River's 20th annual Winter Weekend conference. The day-long event at the Clayton Opera house will focus on the effects of climate change on the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. The event's keynote speaker Saturday night will offer a broader look at rivers across America. Tim Palmer has been writing about and photographing rivers for more than 25 years. Paddler magazine named Palmer "one of the 10 greatest river conservationists of our time". Palmer spoke with David Sommerstein. Go to full article
Paddling through pollution
Oct 27, 2008 — A group of New Yorkers is trying to convince people to get out on one of the most polluted bodies of water in the country - literally out there, in canoes. Samara Freemark reports that they hope once people see the water up close, they'll realize just how dirty it is. And maybe then they'll help clean it up. Go to full article
Book review: "Oswegatchie"
by Betsy Kepes
Jun 23, 2008 — It's summer and North Country rivers beckon. The Grasse, the St. Regis, the Racquette...the region is filled with rivers that defy map gravity and flow north. Betsy Kepes reviews an anthology about the Oswegatchie River. Go to full article
Glens Falls man begins 300-mile canoe trek
by Todd Moe
Jun 22, 2007 — A Glens Falls author and tour guide leaves tomorrow on a summer long canoe trek from Lake George to the St. Lawrence River. Roger Fulton, co-author of the Common Man book series, says his canoe trip will retrace the water routes used during the French and Indian War, including the Hudson River, Lake George, Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River. Todd Moe spoke with him about the trip, his 18th century attire and canoe. Go to full article
Ice dams flood two North Country communities
Mar 16, 2007 — Local officials watched nervously Monday across the North Country as rivers rose with early spring rain and melting snow. Ice dams were the big worry. A bottleneck of ice on the Great Chazy River forced residents to evacuate neighborhoods in Champlain. Another dam on the Ausable River triggered flooding in the town of Jay, where a state of emergency was declared. Brian Mann was in the village of Ausable Forks yesterday when crews fought to dislodge one of the massive clots of ice. He sent this report. Go to full article
Environmentalists: DEC Staff Cuts Threaten Public Safety
by Karen DeWitt
Oct 25, 2005 — A report by an environmental watchdog group finds staffing cuts at the Pataki Administration's environmental agency could have dangerous consequences. The group says dams across the state are not being properly inspected. Karen DeWitt reports. Go to full article
Supreme Court to Consider Wetlands Cases
Oct 21, 2005 — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases involving the government's authority to regulate wetlands. The cases question whether federal regulators have jurisdiction over wetlands that don't directly connect to rivers or other waterways. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium's Erin Toner reports. Go to full article
Manure Spill Contaminates Black River
Aug 12, 2005 — A massive sewage spill from a dairy farm near Lowville, on the Black River, forced Watertown to shut off its main water supply yesterday afternoon. The city is operating on reserves of stored water. State officials have increased the flow of water from the Stillwater Reservoir, hoping to flush the liquid manure out into Lake Ontario. Brian Mann has details. Go to full article
The Osgood River, One Oxbow at a Time
Aug 01, 2005 — The Osgood River flows through some of the wildest country in the northern Adirondacks. For decades, New York state has considered including it on a list of scenic and wild rivers that receive extra environmental protection. The legislature has never taken action. Brian Mann spent a day on the Osgood River this summer and has our story. Go to full article
River Otters on the Rebound
Feb 21, 2005 — There have been many wildlife success stories in the region. For instance, the numbers of white-tailed deer and Canada Geese have rebounded so strongly that many consider them pests. Now, another animal is being added to that list. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium's Bill Cohen reports on the rebound of the river otter. Go to full article
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When Barbi sent me an email
with a photo, my eyes about popped out of my head. This She-Male is gorgeous!!
Talk about a nylon and satin Queen…incredibly sexy as well.
Barbi was sweet enough to
send lots of HOT photos for her Gallery…and when you ready her autobiography,
it'll blow your mind!!
Here's Barbi Satin…
Everyone has a first memory in life. Mine was of a bedtime ritual that led me to a life of fetish and perversion. It all started innocently enough. My mother would tickle my face with satin ribbons when I was a baby. This continued until I was around four years of age. I loved the feel of the satin ribbons and I do remember that my penis would get hard when my mom would tickle me. I also had a silk comforter on my bed at the time. By the time I was five years old I had figured out that rubbing back and forth on the silk felt really good. It felt so good that I was having dry orgasms up to twenty times a day from the sensations.
I instinctively knew that my behavior was not socially acceptable. I was very careful to keep my masturbatory activities from my parents. Being a precocious little pervert I began to have fantasies about pretty females wearing satin. By the time I was eight years old I had discovered a pink satin bridesmaids dress that my mom had stored in the closet in my bedroom. I removed my new treasure from the plastic bag it was stored in and slipped it on. As soon as the soft, slippery satin touched my body I was instantly erect. It is a good thing that my mom never was a bridesmaid again because within in a year I had that dress all but worn out from all the masturbation I was indulging in while wearing it.
By the time I was twelve I had managed to accumulate quite a collection of masturbatory aids including stockings, panties and some satin from a fabric store. I also had my first wet orgasm at that age. I was in a bit of shock from it and disturbed that I had ruined my favorite piece of satin! I was curious about what I had done and tasted some of my first ejaculation.
After that first wet orgasm I became even more perverse in my masturbation and fantasy life. I soon learned that if I would wear a latex exam glove on the hand I masturbated with it would make the shiny side of the satin slip and slide on my cock. The sensation was exquisite beyond words. I also learned that if I stopped masturbating just before orgasm over and over again I could build up a gigantic load of cream. I would sometimes bring myself to the edge of cumming up to fifty times before allowing myself to cum. I would also make a game of seeing just how many times I could cum in a single day. My record as a teen was twenty five times in twelve hours.
When I was fourteen I discovered my fathers collection of Penthouse magazines. He had a huge box of them stashed away in our attic. I began to read all the Penthouse Forum letters. I read all about enemas, latex fetish, leather fetish and female domination. I was fascinated by all of it and soon began to experiment with an enema bag I found in our bathroom. I also found a pair of shiny black latex kitchen gloves and added those to my masturbatory arsenal. I also started to look at the photos in the magazines during masturbation. I was drawn to the pictorials where the models wore boots, gloves, latex and leather. Of course I also loved the photo spreads that included satin sheets and lingerie. I would have fantasies about the women in the photos masturbating me with their gloves. I would also imagine that while they were giving me pleasure they were also verbally abusing and humiliating me.
By the time I started High School I was already my full adult height of 6"6 tall. I had found an Adult Bookstore in New Haven and was soon purchasing my first fetish magazines. The clerk never asked for ID because of my height. I started a collection of magazines on cross-dressing, Fem Dom, latex and leather fetish. I also purchased a magazine called Shemale Encounters that featured Sulka and Carnal Candy. I became instantly fascinated with dominant Shemales. I began to have fantasies of being a pink satin sissy maid being forced to suck their cocks and lick their assholes. I also began to experiment with dildoes then. All my fantasies were of sensual submission to females and Shemales.
I was never the least bit attracted to males but in my sophomore year I began to experiment a little. I met an older boy who came onto me. One night Bobbie played the "you show me yours and I'll show you mine game." Within a few moments I was wearing a pair of his mothers panties and sucking his dick. While I found nothing beautiful or attractive about him physically I did love sucking his huge cock. I imagined myself as a Shemale whore on her knees sucking off a trick and really got off on it. When he shot his load I almost gagged. He must have shot a pint of cum into my mouth.
After that I would suck him off several times a week while having fantasies that I was doing it in front of a room full of cruel women. The women would call me a sissy cock sucker and whore. I broke off this relationship after a few months went by. I had a lot of guilt and confused feelings about it. I loved sucking his cock but the truth was that I just wasn't gay. I wanted to have a girlfriend. The problem was that the only girls I was attracted too then were the ones who were the most unattainable. I loved female beauty and the prettiest girls in school were all into dating cave men type jocks, not perverts!
In my senior year I met a young sophomore named Peter. Peter was only about 5"foot tall and looked very much like a pretty little girl. Peter was also very gay and a closet cross dresser. We became friends and I started hanging out at his house after school. His mom and dad both had jobs so we had several hours a day to ourselves.
We started with playing dress up games. Peter had some wigs and make up and I supplied satin lingerie, sheets and stockings. Peter took the name Missy and I found an adorable little playmate. Missy was as pretty as any real girl I had ever seen and soon I found myself in love for the first time in my life. I loved the fact that she had a beautiful, hard cock between her legs. I began to teach Missy all I knew about kinky sex. We would stroke each other off with satin gloves, play tickle games with ribbons and feathers and tie each other cocks up in ribbons. Before long we were indulging in sucking each other off and fucking each other. We even began to lick each other's assholes and piss in each other's mouths. We experimented with all the masturbation techniques I knew and even got into some light bondage and discipline. My smoking fetish also started with Missy. We both started to smoke Virginia Slims during sex play.
I never felt guilt over my sex play with Missy. She was so feminine it was like having a gorgeous girlfriend. In fact it was even better because she had the same sex drive I did. The most extreme thing we ever did was to shit on each other one day and then lick each other clean. That day still ranks as one of the top sexual experiences of my life.
At the end of my senior year her family moved out of State and I prepared for long and lonely summer before starting college. That was the worst summer of my life. I had been out all night partying and came home in the morning to find my entire kinky collection of lingerie, toys and magazines laid out on the living room floor. The ultimate nightmare for any young pervert is for your parents to discover what you are. My secret was out big time!
I just went into shock when I saw it all. The odd thing was that my parents never said a word and we played let's pretend this never happened. My relationship with my mom never really changed after that but my dad grew cold and distant. My parents were going through a divorce at the time. After my dad moved out he never spoke to me again. Missy was gone, my dad was gone and things were pretty depressing that summer. I did the only thing I could think of. I began to drink an amazing amount of beer and smoke a lot of weed.
By the end of the summer my mom moved from Connecticut to a rural area in South Central Pennsylvania. I did go to college and did fairly well for a semester but my heart wasn't in it. I felt totally directionless in life. I was a music major and I had thought that my future was going to be as a French Horn player in a symphony orchestra. I had real talent but my motivation was gone. At the end of the semester I moved to Pennsylvania and began a job search.
I found a job as a clerk at an adult bookstore and massage parlor. The job came with a small apartment in the back and soon I was living out some very kinky fantasies again. The store seemed to attract some very kinky couples that were into bisexual play. There was one couple that stopped in once a month looking for action. One night they stayed after closing time and I found myself getting a blowjob from the wife as I sucked off her husband.
I also shared some of my fantasies with a cute and kinky blonde named Bunny who worked as a hooker in the massage parlor. Bunny was everything I had ever dreamed of in a lot of ways. The only problem was that she was an insane sadist. I realized that things had gone too far one night while she tied me up. She shoved the biggest dildo in the store up my ass until I was bleeding. The more I screamed the heavier her breathing became. She was getting off in a big way on the pain I was going through. I cut things off at that point.
After the bookstore I went to work at a local newspaper. During that time I lived out my kinks by making trips to NYC to visit pro doms. I must have seen over fifty professional dominants but I only found one that was kinky enough for my tastes. She would masturbate me with satin and her kid gloves until I was so horny I would do anything for an orgasm. Anything included full toilet service and sucking the cocks of the other clients at the dungeon! Mistress told me it was ashamed that I was a male because I had the wildest imagination of anyone she had met in the scene. She told me I would make a great dominant.
At that point in my life I never even thought about becoming a Shemale. I still had some baby fat on my face and the attempts I had made at full feminization left a lot to be desired. I loved dressing in satin ball gowns and little girl dresses but I knew it was only fantasy and would never be more. I did want to be part of the scene however.
I saved all the money I could and quit my job. I started a mail order fetish business in 1995. Things didn't go so well and I soon had to consider going back to work. One day when I was bored I took out my make up and started to play around. I put on one of the latex outfits I had planned to sell and took a few photos. I took a look in the mirror and was amazed at how I looked. The baby fat on my face had melted away since my last attempt.
I did the unthinkable and submitted a few of the photos to TV/TS contact magazines and advertised myself as a professional TV dominatrix. Before long I was doing sessions and having the time of my life. I wasn't content to be a TV at that point and began to take some mild hormones. I had to be careful because the last thing I wanted was to lose my male sex drive. I began to develop small breasts within six months. I knew I would never have the breasts I wanted from hormones unless I was willing to sacrifice erections and orgasms. I never could see the point of being a TS babe only to lose all sex drive.
In 1996 I found a job at a dungeon in New Jersey. I stayed there for about a year and then went on to the big time. I heard that a new dungeon called Excalibur was looking for a TS dominatrix and I got the position. I started just before Christmas in 1997.
I was amazed at just how much the fem dom scene in NYC had changed since my days as a client. In the bad old days it was all about kink and perversion. The doms knew that it was really about SEX! By the time I arrived in the city as a pro dom it had all changed. A form of politically correct domination had taken over the houses. The rules were that you couldn't even touch a cock unless it was to administer pain. Pleasure was not a part of the equation anymore.
I played by the rules for as long as I could stand it. No one goes to see a Shemale dominatrix who won't indulge in the most perverse fantasies. Men see a Shemale dominatrix for one reason. They want to be forced to suck cock and swallow cum! I wanted my cock sucked and I wanted to shoot cum down their throats! I started to play by my rules and was soon the most popular T domina in the city. I was the cover girl for Feminine Illusion and Adam as Eve. I was even on Penthouse.com. I was also in constant conflict with management and the female dominants there. I was running ads in screw showing my cock at full erection. I was the biggest moneymaker at the dungeon but by the end of 1997 management had enough of it and we parted ways.
I found myself back in Pennsylvania wondering where to go next. I didn't want to go back to doing outcalls and endless phone sex for a living. I didn't want to go back to a dungeon either. I decided to start my own web site and produce my own very nasty fetish porn. I would have no one to answer too and could live out my perversions in front of the entire world. I had already achieved some fame from the magazines I had modeled for so going on the net seemed like the next step.
Things went very well right from the beginning. In an age of "Naked Shemales with Pretty boys porn" I was offering a throwback to the bad old days of Shemale fetish and perversion. I do most of my photo shoots with other T girls and females. Most TS these days won't even consider doing hardcore with a female.
I am not a Transsexual at all however. A Transsexual is a woman trapped in a male body. They hate their cocks and many can't even stand to have it touched. I am a Shemale now. I love my cock and kinky sex with females and other Shemales and TV's.
The only problem I had was that most of the TS on the web had much bigger breasts than I did. After years of mild hormones I was barely an A cup. In the world of Shemale porn that makes you a minor leaguer. I have never been content to be in the minor leagues. Last January I drove from Pennsylvania to San Francisco for breast implant surgery. I told the surgeon to give me big; round porno boobs and that is exactly what I got. I came home with 700cc implants at a DD cup.
really do have my dream job now. My plans for the future are to just keep
pushing the envelope to the extremes of fetish porn.
Barbi Satin


text:
It's not every day you get a free home full of furniture, a fully-stocked fridge, free insurance, electricity and maid service for a year.
It's understandable why Marine Staff Sergeant Marty Gonzalez is still reeling.
"My head is going a million miles a minute," Marty said. "Look at this house!"
HelpingaHero.org organized this and worked with Perry Homes and MISCHER Investments to make it happen. Astros legend Craig Biggio handed over the keys.
Marty was severely wounded in the Battle of Fallujah. He earned three Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars. He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, a traumatic brain injury, and is in constant pain from a broken back.
His wife said this house is not just a house for them and the three children. It's an important step in his recovery.
"It's an everyday battle but with this home, he finally has a base," Tawnee Gonzalez said. "He has a place that's his and it's not going to go anywhere. Our family is safe in it. It's a huge form of relief for him."
Tawnee said it's not going to fix everything. Marty and his family will have to fight his demons daily, perhaps forever.
Marty has found a new mission. Instead of taking lives, he's saving them. The two of them are counseling vets and their families. He wants to stem the rising tide of veteran suicides.
"Hopefully we can stop it and if we can't at least if we can save one person or two people. We want to do our part," he said.
He knows the desperation and despair. He's been there, but he also knows days like today, really great days, can be ahead.
Didn't find what you were looking for?
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Members of the committee conducting fundraising efforts for the Lafayette Huse Veterans Memorial, a project to be constructed in the county seat honoring all veterans with ties to Fayette County display an artist's rendering of the completed memorial, and a quilt recently auctioned to raise money for the construction. The quilt was handmade and donated to the committee by Tina White of Mount Hope.
The winner of the quilt was Lita Eskew of Fayetteville, at right in photo at right, who was presented her prize by Sonya Wood. The committee thus far has raised over $18,000 through various donations and fundraisers. The quilt fundraiser raised a total of $859.70. A donation of $100 will buy a name brick for your veteran. Donations are appreciated.
For more information, call 304-574-3760.


text:
Pies are 9-inch, deep-dish and serve approximately 8 people.
A hearty, classic, double-crust pie piled high with fresh apples.
A traditional American favorite prepared with choice, plump fruit and baked in a classic flaky crust.
Pumpkin Cheese Pie (subject to seasonal availability)
Old-Fashioned Pumpkin (subject to seasonal availability)
Pecan or Chocolate Pecan (subject to seasonal availability)
Choose from either a traditional pecan pie or a chocolate pecan pie made with semi-sweet chocolate and garnished with whipped cream, pecan halves and semi-sweet chocolate.
Chocolate Mousse
Sunset's own fresh chocolate mousse tops a chocolate cookie crust, finished with chocolate whipped cream.
Fresh Strawberry
A fresh berry pie in a graham cracker crust completed with strawberry glaze and garnished with whipped cream.
Key Lime
A classic sweet and tangy key-lime custard over a graham cracker crust and garnished with whipped cream and fresh lime


text:
Catalogue Number: 785-3185
Xbox 360
Released: 01/03/13
- Play as an all-new character: Gaige, the Mechromancer
- Meet Captain Scarlett and Mr. Torgue in two new add-on campaigns
- Fight against rare enemies in the Creature Slaughter Dome battle arena
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text:
The family of a 53-year-old man missing from Glen Rock since April 24 is offering a reward for information in his disappearance, according to Southern Regional Police Chief James Boddington.
Boddington said Thomas Augustyniak left his rural Glen Rock home for a walk around 6:15 a.m. on April 24. He left a note on the kitchen table that said, "Hey, I'm going for a walk" and signed it with a smiley face.
Augustyniak's family has not seen him since. They have not specified how much the reward for information is.
Boddington said Augustyniak left with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter but without his wallet or cellphone.
He said that, while adults are allowed to disappeared if they want, he is concerned because some of the circumstances seem out of the ordinary -- such as the fact that Augustyniak left his wallet.
On April 25, search teams conducted an exhaustive search around Augustyniak's home and property but didn't find him. Boddington said the area was rugged and he was afraid Augustyniak had fallen during his walk and couldn't get up or had some other type of medical emergency.
But authorities later found surveillance video showing that Augustyniak had left his property: video shows him walking down Main Street in Glen Rock.
Augustyniak doesn't have any known health or mental health problems but did recently have surgery for a hernia. Boddington said they were able to use Augustyniak's recent surgery to register him in a federal missing persons database so they will be notified if he shows up out-of-state.
Boddington said that while there is no indication of foul play, it's always something he worries about.
"You always keep it in the back of your mind but there's not tangible information that would lead us to that regard," he said.
Boddington said he delayed a planned vacation to lead the search for Augustyniak. He said officers were working double shifts and overtime to assist as well.
Blood hounds and a state police helicopter also helped search the area around Augustyniak's home.
Boddington said they ended the search and rescue on Thursday because they had exhausted the area around his house and had no further leads on where Augustyniak could have been. They also hiked several miles of the Rail Trail, which Augustyniak liked to walk, to search for him.
Police have received several tips from members of the public who believe they saw Augustyniak but none that have turned into any good leads. The department is still investigating but not engaging in an active search.
Augustyniak was last seen wearing blue jeans, a blue jacket and white leather sneakers.
Anyone who has had contact with Augustyniak since April 24, or believes they may have seen him, is asked to call the Southern Regional Police Department at 717-235-3944.
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text:
The A's declined to offer arbitration to Mecir today.
http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/oak/news/oak_news.jsp?ymd=20041207&content_id=919341 &vkey=news_oak&fext=.jsp
Yes, the Mecir era is (officially) finally over in Oakland. I feel so good today, despite the weather.
No Rhodes, no Mecir, Rincon back to being a 1 AB lefty specialist...Huston Street as a mid-season callup? '05 bullpen is looking good...hopefully.
Mecir, to his credit did put up some good mumbers in his career, but in a high pressure situation, he always seemed to be the guy giving the other team a clutch hit.
I fear Mecir no more.
I hope Mecir has a chance to enjoy his retirement, I know I will.


text:
Premiere is the most popular video editing program that works on both Windows PCs and Apple computers. Made by Adobe, it is comparable to the Final Cut Pro video editing program for the Apple platform.
Premiere is particularly popular with video journalists working in the field who want to edit their video on a laptop computer.
It's very important to do some initial settings in Premiere to make sure you're storing your video properly (this is especially true if you are sharing a computer with others who also are using Premiere for their video projects).
Filed under: Video


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SOME of Australia's best riders and their mounts will once again ply their trade in the ThinLine Dressage with Altitude International, which starts today at Orange's Bradgate Park Indoor Arena.
The three-day, European-style boutique event features international standard and national competitions including Grand Prix, Novice and Advanced.
Event director Cathie Drury-Klein said approximately 90 riders will compete, including several 2014 national squad members.
These include Rozzie Ryan (riding GV Bullwinkle), Caroline Wagner (Tango V), Brett Parbery (DP Weltmieser), Tor Van Den Burge (Lauries AS) and Olympian Heath Ryan (Regardez Moi and Utopian Cardinal).
National youth development squad member Megan Bryant will be on board Northern Xanthus III and is also expected to excel.
Drury-Klein also highlighted several other elite Grand Prix combinations to watch, particularly Robyne Smith on board Beauchamp.
Smith has been working with Beauchamp for eight years, and is coming off a "competitive performance" at the Boneo Park CDI3* in Melbourne last month, an event she wanted to pass over when asked about.
"Next question," Smith laughed.
"It was my first CDI event at Grand Prix level. I was competitive, but I'm looking to improve here."
Smith is treating the DWA as an opportunity to qualify for state and national championships later in the year.
"Every event is a chance to qualify for those two events," she said.
The DWA is one of the most important events on the dressage calendar for top riders and their horses.
It is one of just three three-star CDI events in Australia.
The DWA features an international judging panel, including Gothilff Riexinger (Germany), Isobel Wessels (Great Britain), Sue Hobson (New Zealand), and Australians Mary Seefried,, Susie Hoevenaars, Ricky MacMillan, Jane Ventura and Gisela Nilsson-Harding.
The DWA will also feature a new event, the DWA Canine Calcutta.
Dogs will be auctioned off, before racing, with 25 per cent of profits going to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
The competition at Bradgate Park starts at 8.10am today, 7.30am tomorrow, 8.30am on Saturday and 8am on Sunday.
Entry for spectators is $5.
To get to Bradgate Park, travelling south on Dairy Creek Road, turn right onto Calton Road, then left onto Malabar Road.
Bradgate Park is 200 metres down Malabar Road on the right.


text:
These are some prestigious honors I am going to grant on some of the PAX East indie games. You can't buy better publicity than this!
PAX East is back again. It's like it's an annual convention or something right? Keep this article bookmarked for all the details when it comes out!
Amazon is discounting a lot of digital download games for its End of Summer Sale. The sale runs from 8/28 to 9/1.
Though it was widely reported recently that Google would be buying Twitch for $1 billion, it is actually Amazon that is making the purchase.
The Steam summer sale has begun and will be from June 19 - June 30. Hope your wallet is ready!
Apparently it is popular to buy things nowadays… IGN is reporting that AT&T is buying DirecTV for $48.5 billion.
Though not officially confirmed by Twitch or Google/YouTube, Variety is reporting that YouTube is buying Twitch for over a billion dollars.
Why should humans have all the fun right? There's an Oculus Rift for our friends the poultry as well.
Kinect-free Xbox One will be coming out on June 9th for $399
Until May 8th, you can download Dead Space on PC for free through Origin. If you don't have it and love horror games, what are you waiting for???
To celebrate "Star Wars Day" the Durham Bulls will be sporting R2-D2 jerseys according to ESPN. These are the droids I am looking for…
A lot of people fight over who scored the highest in a game. Well, how about who got the lowest score in Super Mario Bros? Check out the video!
For a limited time, Green Man Gaming is allowing you to use a 25% discount code (YOGCST-BESTYT-EVERRR) on the purchase of most of their PC games (including The Elder Scrolls Online). Using the code, I got the ESO Imperial Edition (retail $80) for $60. Thank you to Yogcast and Green Man Gaming!
The latest Humble Bundle is out. You can get a couple Civilization games and others. I picked it up… gotta help out charity of course ;)
Nintendo just dropped a whole bunch of new information and releases. A New 3DS, Ultimate NES Remix, new bundles, and tons more! This is a must read.
The Creatures got "swatted" during a stream of Counter-Strike: GO. Swatting is when someone calls in a prank SWAT call on someone. Yes this happens.
A Pokemon fighter from Bandai Namco, the creators of Tekken, are creating a Pokemon fighting game that will be in the arcades. No Wii U version yet.
Mario Kart 8 is getting some free DLC and some other DLC that you can buy if you are so inclined. I'll personally be picking up both!
Broforce is an awesome game in its own right but why not get the spin-off game from Free Lives for absolutely free. What are you waiting for?
Ever wonder how much money it takes to make a game? Well read on and you'll find out.
Nintendo has gone crazy this month offering 8 different games for coins. Are any of them good? Let's check it out!
No physical prizes for Club Nintendo Elite prizes this year. I hope they bring them back but you have your choice of a game this year.
New fighter incoming, on July 14! And to think I thought they were done with surprises after E3…
More games for coins… some pretty good ones too!
For those looking for an old styled platformer with some awesome chiptunes, pick up Shovel Knight. Also name your price for two albums.
Another month another Club Nintendo update… here we go!
So Nintendo needs to pull out all the stops this year to get the Wii U in more households quickly. Let's what they have in store.
Nintendo needs to pull out the big guns this year to sell some Wii Us. Let's make some guesses as to what they will show off this year.
Luigi means business in Mario Kart 8. He means so much business that after taking out Waluigi, he decided to let him know who's boss.
Smash Bros. fans aren't going to be left out in the cold for Wii U. Feast your eyes on the GameCube controller adapter!
Club Nintendo rewards are back and it is time to refresh the games for coins. Check them out
So will this Nintendo Direct finally be the one that gets me to buy a Wii U? Read on to find out!


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19,000 new residents minus a plan for transportation equals a problem
EDITORIAL After a long, long hearing April 21, as the San Francisco Planning Commission prepared to vote on an ambitious development plan for Treasure Island, Commissioner Gwyneth Borden acknowledged that the plan wasn't perfect. But, she said, on balance it ought to be approved: "Twenty five percent affordable housing is better than zero percent."
That's not necessarily true.
Treasure Island is an usual piece of real estate, 403 acres of artificial land created in 1937 by dumping sand and dirt on a shallow part of the bay. It's less than two miles from downtown San Francisco — but there's no rail service, no BART station. The only way off the island is by boat — or by driving onto a Bay Bridge that's already jammed way beyond capacity every morning and afternoon.
The soil is unstable, prone to liquefying in an earthquake — and if sea levels rise as high as some predictions suggest, the whole place could be underwater in a few decades.
A strange hybrid agency called the Treasure Island Development Authority, created by former Mayor Willie Brown, cut a deal with Lennar Urban (the same outfit that has the redevelopment deal for Bayview Hunters Point) and several partners to construct a neighborhood of some 19,000 people on the island. Among the features: a 450-foot condominium tower and 6,000 units of high-end housing. The developers brag that a fleet of new ferries will offer a 13-minute ride to the city and that some streets will be designed for pedestrians and bicycles.
But the fact remains that the developers want to add 19,000 new residents — almost all of whom will work off the island somewhere — to a place that has no credible transportation system. City studies show that even with an extensive (and costly) ferry service, at least half the new residents would drive cars to work (and, presumably, to shop, and go to movies, and eat and drink), joining the mob of vehicles heading east or west on the bridge. That's almost 10,000 new cars each day trying to jam onto a roadway that can't handle the existing traffic. The backups would stretch well onto San Francisco surface streets and as far back as Berkeley.
A rail line on the Bay Bridge would solve part of the problem. So would bike lanes. Neither option is even remotely possible in the foreseeable future. Free, or heavily subsidized ferries could, indeed, be a positive alternative — but who is going to pay for that service? Nonsubsidized ferries would be far more expensive than current Muni or BART service, a particular burden on the residents of the below-market housing.) And does anybody really think there's going to be enough ferry capacity to carry 10,000 people a day to downtown SF, the East Bay, and the Peninsula?
The bottom line: this isn't a good deal for San Francisco. The affordable housing level is too low. The transportation problems are nightmarish. The last thing Treasure Island needs is a 450-foot tower.
There's no rush to approve this — and no immediate downside to waiting for a better deal. The supervisors should tell Lennar to come back with a project that has fewer residents, better transit options, and more affordable housing. Because zero is looking a lot better than what's on the table.
PS: The 4-3 Planning Commission vote demonstrated exactly why it's important to have key commission appointments split between the mayor and the Board of Supervisors. The mayoral appointees all rolled over — but at least the board-appointed members made strong points, forced real debate, and gave the supervisors plenty of ammunition to demand a better deal.
On top of all of the madnness noted above, the Mayor's office, Planning Department and developers also intend to leave rare but extremely dangerous Japan-like tsunami hazards completely out of their project design because including them would make the project too expensive.
Here is the transcript of what Dilip Trivedi (a coastal engineer with Moffat & Nichol who has been hired for the project) said in his presentation to the SF Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee on April 11, 2011; referring to rare tsunamis over 15 feet in height [my clarifying comments are in brackets]:
"We are, however, vulnerable to distant sources from Alaska and Japan...San Francisco Bay doesn't allow the propagation of a wall of water because of the restriction posed by the Golden Gate itself. And so it comes in as a very fast tide if you will. We also recognize that lower probability events [very large tsunamis from Alaska] could occur. That has been published recently in the inundation maps for San Francisco Bay. We recognize that those are for emergency scenario planning, rather than for design. They are significantly beyond the standard of practice compared to earthquakes."
In plain English, this means that such rare massive tsunamis have not been included in the Treasure Island design plan, under the excuse that they are so rare that they should be considered independent matters for City emergency response instead! This is a complete nut-ball notion that could get thousands of people killed if such a tsunami actually happens.
But it gets worse. The very next day following that Land Use hearing, a completely different contractor, also hired on the project, was presenting the Treasure Island plan to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission with mayoral staffer Michael Tymoff, and painted a completely different story about tsunami hazard. His statement was incredibly alarming because it was essentially a fairy story meant to purposely gloss over the danger. This contractor was an environmental engineer named Todd Adair with the firm BKF engineers.
Here is his deceptive exchange with Public Utilities Commissioner Art Torres, which completely contradicted Trivedi's testimony in the previous hearing the day before:
Commissioner Torres: "Is this area vulnerable to a potential tsunami?"
Todd Adair: "No. It is protected by the Golden Gate."
The trick Adair is pulling is that he is vaguely indicating that there will not be a wall of water hitting the island, while very conveniently completely failing to mention the very rapid, massive and hazardous tide rise that Trivedi made clear the day before in Land Use. Even more outrageous however is the fact that Michael Tymoff of the Mayor's office, just stood there watching Adair spout this dangerous half-truth and then didn't not say one word to the commissioners to correct the blatant misconception that Adair had just created.
With such macabre and dangerous semantic and silence games being played like Russian Roulette with other people's lives by these private developers and city staffers in public testimony, this project is now screaming be canceled outright; in order to protect the people of San Francisco from a major disaster that could kill thousands, and possibly bankrupt the City.
This is the beginning of what follows the Manhattanization of SF ... the Hong Kongification of the Bay. Ya Basta! Enough! Vote Karthik Rajan for Mayor and put an end to the Twittter Giveaways and the Treasure Island Boondoggles.
While your editorial made an excellent point about the instability of TI, your statements about transit are undermined by your failure to acknowledge a major part of the transportation system; Muni.
There are already people who live on the island, and most of those who lack cars use muni. The bus runs all night, from Transbay to TI and back. Honestly, it's faster from the island to downtown than it is from the Richmond or Sunset.
I know it's hip to hate on Muni, but please don't forget that it does some things right.
While your editorial made an excellent point about the instability of TI, your statements about transit are undermined by your failure to acknowledge a major part of the transportation system; Muni.
There are already people who live on the island, and most of those who lack cars use muni. The bus runs all night, from Transbay to TI and back. Honestly, it's faster from the island to downtown than it is from the Richmond or Sunset.
I know it's hip to hate on Muni, but please don't forget that it does some things right.
Your comment that Muni can somehow solve the Treasure Island project's transportation problems is absurd, and shows a lack of actually reading what people have written about these deep transportation flaws.
Currently only 2,800 people live on Treasure Island and since many of them are there for the currently -very- low housing prices, a -lot- of them don't have cars.
The proposed massive development project will house 20,000 people (at least 75% of them at high market rate condo and rent prices) and will be built with one-parking-place-per-unit parking in order to attract wealthy residents who want to own cars.
That idea that Muni and ferries can serve the need of such a project, especially in the middle of a major disaster, is absolutely ridiculous.
I have lived on T.I. since 1999. I live on the east side of the Villages. About a third of the units on my block are empty-- many for years. There are now less than 2,000 folks in the Villages-- probably around 1,500-- because TIDA has told the Villages property manager (John Stewart Co.) to leave the units empty when tenants move out, ostensibly in order to provide units to relocate Yerba Buena residents displaced by redevelopment (Y.B.I. is first in line for the bulldozers)-- but I think TIDA does not want to deal with tenants who have rights to relocation assistance (incl.$$) and dibs on new and affordable housing (if it ever gets built).
At the public information meeting at the Port Authority (in Feb.2011) I raised the issue of the increased frequency of the "100 year storm" due to climate change and rising sea levels. Recent scientific research suggests that as sea levels continue to rise, the "100 year storm" may have a probability of increased frequency to as little as ten years. Btw, this conclusion has been accepted by the SF Bay Commission, who have included it in public service announcements now airing on PBS-- but they "signed off" on the redevelopment plan nontheless.
I suggested to folks from the Mayor's Office on Economic Development conducting the meeting that it would be prudent to adopt a higher standard of risk on which to base sea level rise mitigation measures-- for instance to plan for the "500 year storm". I was dismissed out of hand with the facile response that FEMA used the "100 year storm" standard, and that FEMA had not [yet] listed Treasure Island as being in a flood hazard zone, and that the measures to deal with the risk of SLR contained in the Draft EIR were sufficient. Btw, FEMA has not yet published a flood hazard map for T.I. Oh yeah, FEMA is the only source of flood insurance for the future homeowners here.
I have written to the Mayor and TIDA with my concerns regarding the risks of natural disasters:
"This man-made island is less than ten feet above sea level, and is vulnerable to big storms, earthquakes, and tsunami. It is a problematic and expensive site to develop and will be more expensive than mainland sites to protect against sea level rise and other hazards.
I just learned about the ARkStorm scenario identified by the USGS as a $700B+ risk to the entire state, and the related Golden Guardian statewide drill planned for June. I have also heard reports that the tsunami in Japan over-topped at least one of the major seawalls there, causing massive loss of life and enormous property damage.
I feel the EIR and Development Plan does not adequately address these risks, and I strongly urge that the EIR approval should be delayed until scientists and responsible parties and agencies can fully evaluate what happened in Japan, and also the implications and results of the ArkStorm Scenario drill."
No response. Regarding traffic and pollution from redevelopment, the CEQA findings are quite damning. Like the editorial says, backups to most on ramps on to the bridge, morning and afternoon, and Saturdays! They think they can impose congestion pricing to mitigate-- charge working folks five bucks to get on the Bay Bridge 6-8 hours of the day. Oh yeah, they plan to not provide enough parking, which will punish the working poor while the rich can just pay for private parking spaces. What an elitist joke!
If you're so unhappy in your government-subsidized housing you can always consider other options.
Lucretia: I live in market rate housing-- my rent is not subsidized (although the housing is dilapidated). Where do you live Ms. Snapples? Do you have to commute across the Bay Bridge? As for "other options": have you looked for market rate housing in SF lately? Anyway, I have no plans to "cut and run".
To return to topic: my post was about some of the environmental risks involved, the fact that T.I. is a very problematic site to strand $4B+ worth of real estate and $1.5B of publicly funded infrastructure, and also about the impact that the redevelopment plan to build 8K units of housing for 20K residents will have on Bay Bridge traffic.
Btw, there are probably less than 2,000 residents here now because the landlord has left many units empty (some for years) to make room to relocate people from Y.B.I. as that housing will be demolished first. So the MUNI buses and Bay Bridge will have to handle 10X more traffic from TI/YBI. In any case, this is probably not a great place to strand 5,00 low income residents-- and, finally, why should the city subsidize 6k units of luxury housing?
in central San Francisco in a home we purchased in the first part of the last decade.
I agree the traffic issue is one which screams out for better mitigation. There are a lot of creative solutions - more ferries (which should be subsidized for Treasure Island residents), a gondola lift connecting the island to the pier in SF is another creative idea which could work. Personally I've suggested banning cars on the island except for deliveries and emergency vehicles - it works on islands in both Greece and Turkey with FAR more residents on them than live in Treasure Island.
So you own a home in SF and presumably don't commute on the Bay Bridge, and you post your comments under a pseudonym.
You got yours and the hell with us working class folks? a gondola? banning cars? ru serious? "it works" for Greeks and Turks, so I guess I should ride an ass to my catering jobs in the East Bay? oh damn, they only let two-legged asses on the Bay Bridge! with all these great ideas maybe you should-- or do-- work for TICD and Lennar?
Hilarious. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.
Here's an idea. When redevelopment happens you can BUY a place on Treasure Island. Wait - "I can't afford it." Then move - move closer to your job in the East Bay. You don't have a "right" to live someplace you can't afford and you certainly don't have a right to have a car in a community that wants to figure out alternative modes of transportation.
No, you won't ride an ass to your job in the East Bay. But you can take a ferry to your job in the East Bay, or ride a gondola to the BART stop. Be creative. Stop whining and figure out a solution. But if you can't afford to buy a place on Treasure Island then you should start figuring out one that doesn't involve living there.
Dear Lucretia: So much wrong in just a headline and mere two paragraphs-- kudos! Ayn Rand would be proud.
First, since you seem to believe in an America where only the wealthy should be accorded full (human) rights, perhaps you can point out the 'income test' in the Bill of Rights of our Constitution? As a legal resident, I have the right to live in the USA-- though I can less afford to do so as the cost of living has risen--especially the cost of housing and health care at double the rate of inflation-- while wages have remained flat for more than a decade.
I assume that you would gladly follow your own facile advice to "move" if you-- god forbid-- were to go bankrupt, say due to a financial misfortune such as catastrophic illness--like hundreds of thousand of Americans do each year (despite most of them having health insurance). In that sad case, perhaps you should move to a third world country where you could, hopefully, afford to live. I hear Mexico is cheap, ten pesos to the dollar-- thanks to NAFTA!
As for my wanting to continue to "live on T.I. AND own a car": you're quite right: only the new wealthy residents of the 6,000 units of luxury (taxpayer subsidzed) housing will probably be able to afford to keep a car on T.I. after redevelopment. Impoverished twelve-year residents like me should just be thankful if they let me stay in their privileged community.
But seriously, why on earth would a rational person "BUY a place on Treasure Island", and put their hard-earned money into an overpriced apartment (the developers and the OED wonks admit that units on T.I. will cost more than comparable housing on 'mainland' SF), built on toxic landfill (not just the Navy's toxic leftovers, but also with dredged-up mercury from hydraulic gold mining--nothing about that risk in the EIR!), on an artificial island that is prone to severe shaking, whose subsiding (like the entire island) seawall cracked in the '89 Loma Prieta Quake (read the Navy's report), which not only sits astride multiple earthquake faults, but is also at risk for flooding from climate-change induced Sea Level Rise, as well as tsunamis, storm-driven high tides, and ARkStorm events? Btw, even if you could get government financed flood insurance (that's the only kind there is in the US- look it up!) that will only cover the first $250K of losses (of your $1M home)!
Incidentally, did you know T.I. currently requires several massive electric pumps to prevent it from filling up with water like a bathtub in a heavy rain? And did you know TI/YBI and the Villages residents have suffered through numerous utility interruptions of the electric power (and of gas, and of water), roughly ten times a year for the past decade?
Has it occurred to you that home ownership may be over-rated? Or that buying more home than you can afford (S.O.P. in SF, much of California and across the US) was encouraged and enabled by a bunch of scamming banksters and complicit pols, and led to a bubble that is still deflating (five years and counting), leading to millions of foreclosures and bankruptcies, disappearing many trillions of your fellow citizens' wealth in the process?
I don't accept your elitist premise "(y)ou don't have a "right" to live someplace you can't afford". The fact is that I can afford to live on T.I. right now, and I have paid market rents here for a dozen years. In fact, I have paid rents of nearly $300K in total-- roughly half of which has gone to fund TIDA, a government organization which, among other things, has worked for many years to plan for and prepare to supervise my eventual removal-- ironic, huh? However, if this project ever gets built (I still have my doubts) it will become significantly more expensive and inconvenient for me to live here.
As for your snooty comment "you certainly don't have a right to have a car in a community that wants to figure out alternative modes of transportation": I dare you to say that to the well-heeled prospective 'suckers' willing to throw down for a million dollar apartment with bay views in the planned 40-story luxury towers-- get serious! Your lofty but badly confused sentiments will certainly NOT be included in the developers' prospectus, or in the brokers' sale pitches.
But exactly what "community" are you talking about, and who do you think you are talking too, anyway? I was one of the earliest tenants to move to T.I. when market-rate housing was first made available here, and I am one of the very few 'pioneers' to maintain my tenacy to this day-- Treasure Island is my community!
For your information, it was a cabal of greedy outside developers, and their 'tools' in the Mayor's Office of Economic Development, who came up with the brilliant idea of forcing (poor) people to do without cars and ride the bus (while still allowing wealthy residents to have THEIR cars), simply in order to make this over-sized project 'work'-- that is, to 'sell it' to the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. NONE of the people in the TICD or OED, or on the SFPC or BOS, have EVER lived in this community. Only one Villages resident has even briefly served on the Treasure Island Development Authority board, and he was forced out in short order (I wonder why?). So what "community" ARE you referring to?
Since you are obviously ignorant of the facts and history of T.I., here is some background. Just so you know: the affordable housing component is the public benefit required by the Federal DCBRA (law) that allowed the Navy/DoD to sell N.S.T.I. to the city of SF for well below market value ($105M vs. $1B?). Btw, some of those units will be affordable to city employees, like our police and fire personnel, and teachers-- but I guess you think they should have to move to the East Bay too, or maybe Stockton?
The Navy Draft EIS from 2002, required by NEPA and CEQA, looked at three reuse alternatives: Alternative 1, the most intense development scenario--the one preferred by the LRA (TIDA)-- included 2,850 dwelling units, included ferry terminals, and projected approximately 18,100 average daily vehicle trips. The project was later "scaled up", to roughly 6,000, and then 8,000 dwelling units-- (ostensibly) to create economies of scale for the ferries and other aspects of the project-- and incidentally creating a guaranteed $1B profit for the developer, Treasure Island Community Development (TICD = Lennar, et.al.). Btw, Lennar ran into some 'snags' due to the housing downturn and troubled projects on other former military bases, such as Mare Island (leading to the Vallejo City bankruptcy) and Hunters Point (toxics violations). They need a big 'winner' to please Wall Street and boost sagging share values.
Facing continued criticism, especially in regards to traffic impacts of a project that had more than doubled in size, TICD 'retooled' the T.I./Y.B.I. plan into a 'green' project, adding 'social engineering' fixes to mitigate some of the traffic issues: brilliant ideas such as not providing enough parking for the residents (10.5K for 8K units vs. SF avg. of 1.5/per unit = 12K), forcing all market rate households to buy MUNI passes, making the westerly on-ramp for MUNI only, and finally, congestion pricing: charging non-MUNI vehicles $5 to get on Bay Bridge during 6-8 hours of each day. This bevy of punitive measures probably won't prevent hour-long backups during commute hours, or on Saturdays-- but the lucky few who just need to get to their jobs in the F.D. can pay $5 (or more) to ride the yet-to-be-funded ferries.
As for your suggestion that I "can take a ferry to the your job in the East Bay": there is no such ferry planned to link T.I. with the East Bay. There are plans for AC Transit to run buses from T.I.-- and this will result in yet more traffic on the Bay Bridge. Btw, I wrote that I do catering work-- not that I had a "job in the East Bay". T.I.'s central location is one reason I live here. Work necessitates that I drive to many locations throughout the SF Bay area, often very early (5am) or very late (returning after midnight), making mass transit-- if it even exists and runs to these locations at such times (which it does not) totally unworkable.
Speaking of ferries: I do appreciate that you said the ferry service should be subsidized, but where do you get off telling me to: "Be creative. Stop whining and figure out a solution." ? I don't need a damn solution: the proposed project is the problem that needs a solution. Btw, I have been going to meetings for years, and have supported efforts to convince the pols and developers to scale back or relocate this project to a more suitable site. At a recent CAB meeting, I offered a constructive and novel idea to make this unstoppable juggernaut of a project more 'carbon neutral'. Nevertheless, if you believe that building multiple concrete and steel 40-story apartment towers (with massive foundations) can be truly 'green' or 'carbon neutral', I have some bogus EU carbon credits to sell you for cheap!
But what are you 'smoking' in your pipe to suggest that I "ride a gondola to the BART stop"? Treasure Island and the two miles of open SF Bay water to the Ferry Building ain't Roosevelt Island and a couple hundred yards of the East River in NYC! If you do like real (not imagined) gondolas so much, why don't you move to Switzerland? I hear they have plenty: very scenic, too, and few poor folks to spoil the view, or lower property values!
Returning to the subject of potentially catastrophic risks (both environmental and financial) involved in the proposed project on TI/YBI, I'd first like to make one important note about the probability of a catastrophe. Remember the Challenger space shuttle disaster? The late physicist Richard Feynman was brought in to head an investigation. He discovered that the experts at NASA had forgotten a basic principle of statistics, that multiple risk probabilities are additive.
For example, if there is a 1 in 100 chance of one part in a system failing, and a 1 in 100 chance of a second part failing, the resultant risk of failure is 2 in 100-- simple, huh? Inexplicably, the engineers at NASA had multiplied instead of adding-- with a resultant risk of 1 in 10,000 for my very simple example-- and consequently, had grossly underestimated the true risk of a catastrophic failure by many orders of magnitude (!).
Btw, there is a hard and fast 'old school' rule that should always be followed in disaster planning. It would have prevented the meltdown at Fukushima, where they couldn't imagine that the diesel generators would fail at the same time the grid went down, and hence had no plan for that contingency. It is Murphy's Law that states if something can go wrong, then it will go wrong; its Corollary is that if something does go wrong, it will go wrong at the worst possible time. Nuke engineers at Tepco ignore Murphy's Law, and voila: multiple meltdowns!
Allow me to give a more recent, but less well known example of 'bad math' or subscribing to a faulty paradigm: one from the financial meltdown of 2008. The brilliant mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot-- discoverer of fractal geometry-- early in his career studied more than two centuries of Egyptian cotton prices (btw, a far longer record of price movements than that available for stock prices). To his surprise, he found that the distribution of price fluctuations did not follow a normal (bell curve) distribution.
His paper on this subject was published in the early 1960's, and was known to smart folks on Wall Street-- and amonst oil drillers like Schlumberger, who used Monte Carlo simulations to minimize the expensive risk of drilling "dry" wells. Mandelbrot's paper factually and definitively disproved the long accepted view-- based merely on a popular and convenient theory-- that stock price fluctuations always follow a normal distribution (see: Taleb's 'Black Swan' and 'fat tails').
That conventional (false) assumption and reliance on standard deviations was (is) the basis for all (most) portfolio planning, and for risk analysis in investing, including the Black-Scholes option pricing formula. Even though they should have known better (and often did)-- it was, after all, their fiduciary duty to give sound and prudent advice-- stock brokers, portfolio planners, and investment advisers all failed to enlighten their clients and the general public, probably because it have revealed that the investments they were selling were much more risky than they were claiming to their clients.
Clinging to a false paradigm was more convenient-- and financially rewarding-- in the short term. Subscribing to this obsolete and faulty paradigm led to the LTCM crisis in 1998, and to the even bigger collapse of the CDS market (with a $62 Trillion notional value at the time-- greater than the GDP of the entire world-- yet merely a tenth of the entire derivative market). This led to the bankruptcy of Lehman Bros., the $185B bailout of AIG, and the rest of the mess in 2008 (see also: 'Crash of 1987').
Unfortunately for future occupants, if a city of 20,000 is built on TI/YBI, more than just loads of private and public money-- $5.6B at last count-- will be at stake. While the planners for this project have obviously not taken the lessons of NASA's tragic and fatal mistakes to heart, neither have they learned the more esoteric lessons of the financial meltdowns of the past decade and a half. Just like the bailed-out banksters on Wall Street-- and apparently motivated by a similar sort of short-term self-interest (a.k.a. greed)-- they choose optimism over prudence, but in this case it is doubtful if the government (with taxpayers' money) would, could, or should, similarly 'bail-out' Treasure Island if this project goes catastrophically 'under water'.
When you have to wait up a good chunk of an hour for an all night bus from the TBT to TI, then it is not necessarily any faster to get from TI to Civic Center than it is from the outer on-peninsula boroughs.
Add in 6 times more residents and their cars with no identified funding for additional Muni operating obligations to serve those residents and you're adding another straw onto the camel's back towards Muni meltdown.
Maybe they're just hoping that somebody will have invented the hover car by the time that the development is finished?
20,000 is why too much,, lets say anywhere between 5,000 to 10,000 just be fine
I too live on the island and I have read the plan and talked to the developers and I am strongly in favor of the plan. It is good for us that live on the island and it is good for the city. It means JOBS and AFFORABLE HOUSING!!!
So all of these people that are suddenly jumping on the anti development band wagon, need to 1) Read the plan 20 talk to the developers and 30 most importantly talk to people that live on the island we WANT the Plan!!!
I want jobs and affordable housing, too! I too live on T.I. and support sensible development-- as "green" and sustainable as possible-- but T.I. is the wrong place for a city of 20,000. However, I disagree that this development will be good for all existing tenants-- or even good for the city-- and there are a few other 'Villagers' who also have grave doubts about the project as it stands.
Btw, I have been reading redevelopment docs, attending meetings, and listening to developers presentations for many years, and arguing all along with TIDA (the true landlord), and their agent, the John Stewart Company (dba the Villages), for OUR tenant rights!
While it seemed to me that many of those arguments fell on deaf ears, in the past few years there have been some encouraging concessions. For example, the lease we have all signed says we give up our rights to relocation assistance under federal and state Uniform Relocation Act laws.
I argued it was improper to force tenants in such a tight housing market as SF to sign away their rights in order to get scarce and relatively affordable housing, and that it was contrary to public policy. I took this issue up with JSCo, TIDA, and an administrative law judge in city government. Perhaps there was no direct connection, but tenants of the Villages now have full entitlement to relocation assistance (as per the URA laws).
You say the project is good for the city, but I am not so sure. Now that the state is about to abolish Redevelopment Agencies, I have new concerns about the tax-increment financing of $1.5B of infrastructure using Infrastructure Financing District bonds. Interest payments to the folks who buy those bonds come from property taxes. What if property values go down drastically due to a natural or financial disaster, and the reduction in property tax revenue leads to default of those bonds?
Will such a default adversely affect the city's credit rating? That would cost the city much more in interest payments on its debt, and wipe out any net revenue anticipated from this project.
Why are you so uncivil, why must you bicker?
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