Jan 252017
 

Weather has been rather aggressively wintery of late. For example, I am getting a serious uncomfortableness about the amount of snow and ice built up on my roof. Conditions on the roads have been similarly dodgy from time to time. So it wasn’t entirely shocking to hear on the news this last weekend that a Fed Ex truck got smacked by a commuter train in Salt Lake City.

But today the police released some dash cam footage that put a bit of a different spin on things. There was a police car *right* *there* when the incident occurred and good footage was obtained. You might think the truck driver is an idiot for pulling out in front of the train. But pay attention to the train crossing signals and barriers. More importantly, pay attention to the *timing.*

Ruh-Roh…

Note that there’s no audio. I *really* want to hear the audio. I bet it’s entertainingly expletiv-riffic.

 Posted by at 2:40 am
Dec 272016
 

Long ago, what is now the Great Salt Lake in Utah was much, much greater, stretching north of the Idaho border. But about 14,500 years ago, a natural dam broke loose at the north end and the lake spilled out, and through drainage and drought over 500 years it receded to more or less what we see today.

The former extent of Lake Bonneville can still be easily seen around here in the form of the level “benches” several hundred feet up on the sides of hills and mountains. The uppermost bench is about a thousand feet high.

Yesterday morning weather conditions were such that from certain vantage points the lake almost seemed to return. The temperature was around 15 degrees, and a vast fog formed in the region; down in the valley it was just an obscuring mist, but if you went up a few hundred feet on the local hills you could see the fog from above. Not a perfect match for what the lake must have looked like, of course, but still, quite a thing to see.

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This is looking east towards Tremonton, Brigham City and the Wasatch Mountains from just west of Thatcher.

 Posted by at 11:36 pm
Nov 192016
 

Here’s something I don’t see every day: an RV with a painting of the M-21/D-21 combo on the back:

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As the speed limit was 80 MPH, there wasn’t a whole lot of hanging aroung to try to get details, so what you see here is what I got. Perhaps the RV owner worked on the project; perhaps he/she just liked it.

Nostalgia moment: So, who else here is old and creaky enough to remember that vans are supposed to have airbrushed on their sides wizards, barbarians, warrior women in dubious armor and dragons?

 Posted by at 11:46 am
Sep 202016
 

After a couple days of wacky jihadists making news outside of Utah, someone decided that Utah needed to get in on that action. However, this here is what I think is a “fake Muslim,” an outright whackjob.

Empty bomb threat detailed in letter to media leads to school’s lockdown, former Utah State Eastern coach’s arrest

Meanwhile, Craig remained in front of the school. He told emergency dispatchers that he had placed explosives in the car near the school, so police did not approach him directly. Instead, they spoke on the phone and sent a robot with a microphone near the spot where Craig was lying on the ground, behind his car, Cannon said. Craig moved closer to the microphone, got out a book and read aloud a speech about perceived “social injustices” similar to those he described in the email he sent to The Salt Lake Tribune and other media. In that message, he identifies himself as Christopher Craig and as “the radical Islamic jihadist Muhammad Allah Al-Khidr,” saying he would “call 911 with a threat of an explosive” at the school. The email describes a promised bomb threat and a hunger strike he plans to conduct in jail.

“Racism is the reason for my hunger strike,” the email reads, “to take this conversation deeper, to the truth, core and roots.” He describes black men as “the most racist, bigoted group of homo sapien primates” and titles the message “In honor of Skylar Dore” — an allusion to a white Louisiana police chief who was fired after a profanity-laced Facebook post about the death of white police officers in Baton Rouge.

Feller seems to be schizo. It’s claimed that he was wearing Arabic-style clothing, but if you watch the video it sure looks like it was a cheap parody of Arabic clothing, like a bad Halloween costume.

 Posted by at 1:26 am
Sep 182016
 

Some photos and panoramas I’ve recently taken. With the arrival of actual weather (something beyond “hot and sunny”), summer has finally started to give way to fall.

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More after the break.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 1:21 am