http://bst.gc.ca/en/reports/marine/2001/m01c0054/m01c0054.asp

On 08 August 2001, the Windoc departed Thunder Bay with a cargo of wheat for Montréal, Quebec. At 1748 eastern daylight time (EDT) on 11 August 2001, the vessel arrived at the southern entrance to the canal. It then proceeded under vertical-lift Bridge 21 and bascule Bridge 19A and entered Lock 8. At 1923, it departed the lock, passed under bascule Bridge 19, and proceeded downbound in the canal. Eight of the 22 crew members on board were permitted to disembark from the vessel before it proceeded downbound.

At 2028, the master of the vessel informed the TCC controller on VHF radiotelephone channel 14 that the vessel was off Port Robinson. Accompanying the master in the wheelhouse were the third officer and a wheelsman. The vessel's speed over the ground averaged approximately six knots from Port Robinson to Bridge 11.

The vessel proceeded downbound, and the wheelhouse team observed the flashing amber approach light, located 925 m from the bridge on the west side of the canal, which indicated that the bridge operator was aware of the approaching vessel. The speed of the vessel was reported to be approximately five knots. As the vessel neared the bridge, the signal lights on the bridge were flashing red and the lift span was being raised. When the vessel was approximately 0.75 to 0.5 nm from the bridge, the signal lights changed to solid green and the lift span was in the fully-raised position. With the centre line of the vessel lined up with the bridge signal lights, the vessel proceeded under the bridge.

When the vessel was approximately halfway under the bridge, the third officer observed that the bridge signal lights were solid red and the lift span was descending. At 2053, the master sounded a few blasts on the ship's whistle. The master, without identifying himself or the bridge in question, called the TCC on VHF channel 14 about the lowering of the bridge. The master quickly stopped the engines and ordered an evacuation of the wheelhouse.

The master and third officer left the wheelhouse by the starboard navigation bridge wing. As they proceeded down the external bridge access ladder, the span of the bridge struck the vessel in way of the wheelhouse front windows, subsequently destroying the vessel's wheelhouse and funnel.

The wheelsman remained at his station in the wheelhouse and lay down on the deck as the bridge span passed overhead. He freed himself from the debris and descended by the deckhouse stairwell before the third officer returned to the wheelhouse to look for him. When the TCC controller heard a call on VHF channel 14 about a bridge being lowered, he recognized the voice and used a camera, located at Seaway mile 14.6, west of Port Robinson, to look at Bridge 11. The controller saw that the stern of the vessel had not yet cleared the bridge, and the fixed camera mounted on the east tower of Bridge 11 showed that the picture on the monitor was shaking. Thus, the controller concluded that the bridge had been lowered onto the vessel.

The operator took two Darvon-N tablets at approximately 0800 that morning to relieve back pain and had consumed between two and four glasses of wine around lunch time. Between 1300 and 1400, he received a telephone call from an SLSMC team leader, who asked if the operator would agree to work an overtime shift that evening on Bridge 11. The bridge operator agreed. No information concerning his fitness for work was exchanged at the time of the request, nor was it common practice to do so. SLSMC's policy is that no employee shall report to duty with their ability impaired. After the telephone call, the operator relaxed, ate, and tried to get some sleep but did not sleep. Reportedly, he did not consume any additional alcohol or take any medication after accepting to work the overtime shift.

outstanding sir.

for anyone with an interest in Mars and science fiction, the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is a must-read. his personal, on-the-ground style accounts of life on the surface in the series, which is near-future history, are some of the best i've read in any genre

found in http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=50986--

This is what Elvis had to say about the song:

"Every Day I Write The Book" is kind of a hack pop song. It doesn't have any feeling behind it. It's just an exercise in writing that sort of bad Smokey Robinson song with all the tricks of the trade...To balance [the album], we had a thing like "Everyday I Write The Book," that anybody could whistle, and that was written in 10 minutes, as a spoof. Originally I tried to do it as a lovers' rock song, and then we grafted on this kind of modern rhythmic treatment. It always begged to be done in some kind of pop style."

>> ^waxxx:
Inflation in Germany was one of the prime factors of the fall of the national socialism party. Hitler had many pipe dreams, spoke a lot empty phrases and often held gatherings that were tailored to be energized by packing small venues. I often wonder why he didn't attack other English countries such as Britain?


Um, dude, you wanna, I dunno, study history a bit?

If not for British kickass fighting in the air, a full sea/land invasion would've occured.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain
"Had it been successful, the planned amphibious and airborne landings in Britain of Operation Sealion would have followed. The Battle of Britain was the first major campaign to be fought entirely by air forces. It was the largest and most sustained bombing campaign attempted up until that date. The failure of Nazi Germany to destroy Britain's air defence or to break British morale is considered its first major defeat.[7]

Neither Hitler nor the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) believed it possible to carry out a successful amphibious assault on the British Isles until the RAF had been neutralised. Secondary objectives were to destroy aircraft production and ground infrastructure, to attack areas of political significance, and to terrorise the British people into seeking an armistice or surrender. Some historians, such as Derek Robinson, have argued an invasion could not have succeeded; the massive superiority of the Royal Navy over the Kriegsmarine would have made Sealion a disaster and the Luftwaffe would have been unable to prevent decisive intervention by British cruisers and destroyers, even with air superiority"

From YouTube description:

Notes: Recently I performed a revised rendition of this piece in Hollywood, obviously with the main point preserved, for "Motion Theory," a Production company in Venice, CA. The scene was shot on New York Street, Paramount studios, Hollywood. At this point, the film may take up to 6 months to produce (scoring, animating, etc). I'm pretty pumped to see the finished result... I have a feeling it will be more powerful than this fuzzy, in-class video, though I hope you still found this original version moving. See pics & read a little about the filming at Paramount here: http://www.b.eaudacio.us/Blog.html

Description of this video:
A businessman on the second tower of the World Trade Centers experiences the United States worst terrorist attack.

*Note! This is VERY unlike typical Mime sketches. It is NOT meant to be funny in any way!

Pretty heavy duty in tone, this piece I performed to fulfill the "Serious Sketch" assignment for TA 277 [Mime] at Whitworth College/University (Comparably my miming abilities have improved dramatically, though I still have a lot to learn!). I approached this piece with traditional pantomime essentials, such as music, costume, etc. Filmed by Thomas Robinson from Cannon Beach OR, an Art major at Whitworth University. I ought to mention that Robinson is not necessarily 'used' to film (hence the digital camera that was used); his cup of tea is primarily still photography--the pictures of which would make your jaw drop. Here's a sample gallery of his work: http://gallery.ecola.us/ )

>> ^Farhad2000:
Am actually interested how in long term missions the astronauts are meant to keep themselves sane...

Kim Stanley Robinson, in the mars trilogy argues that anybody who wants to go to mars it already crazy, and I think he has a point.

In realated news, whenever I see a NASA news releases like this, all I can think of is diaper drive.

i do not totally agree with many of his ideas on the iraq war, but i will say that he is one of the only public proponents of the war who sounds intelligent while showing said support. also i think he may be the only one who knows who the kurds are.

also, i actually had to go back and listen again to make sure i heard him right when he complimented hillary clinton. that has got to be a first, considering the volume of bile he usually reserves for she and her husband.

oh, and i'm not familiar with him, but Peter Robinson is quite the interviewer.

I wanna see this promoted

Smibbo, I wouldn't say there's much difference between agribusiness and pharmacorp. And it's just not true that the GMO's have been well tested before release -- I forget which documentary it was that I watched a while back, but it showed how every director of the FDA is a former board member of Monsanto. Pretty convenient, huh? They just wave these things through.

Dag: I totally agree with you, except where you say that organic food production has a lower yield than conventional agriculture. I have personally seen organic crops significantly outperform conventional ones -- organic growing techniques have advanced a lot too! And most conventional soils are now degraded to the point that they are essentially just an inert medium for soil-based hydroponics.

There are some free ebooks by Dr. Raoul Robinson that talk about breeding for pest & disease resistance -- I recommend Return to Resistance as a good starting point. Dr. Raoul is my uncle; we are currently building an open-source breeding foundation that will share seeds and encourage effective low-tech breeding methods.

CaptWillard, I don't think population would be a problem. In the developed world we live a lot longer but have less children. While in the developing world they have more children because the child mortality rate is higher (and lack of access to birth control) among other things. So if we started living for hundreds of years we'd still only likely have children for the first few decades, and we may even have colonies on other planets to have people on. Who knows?
Which leads to another problem I have with this technology. That is the future being such an unknown variable (but I'm guessing for some that's part of the attraction).

I suggest SciFi fans read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. It delves into a lot of these issues, and its a superb read to boot .

Remembering Chile's 9/11
by Paul Street

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=4162

September 10, 2003

"Close to Perfect:" A Different, Bloodier Nine-Eleven

The events of September 11th were horrific, tragic, and criminal on a monumental scale. Planes flew low over an American nation's leading city. Buildings erupted in flames. There was an official death toll of more than 3,000. Thousands of innocent people were ruthlessly slaughtered. Their loved ones were placed in horrible suspense, waiting to learn the fate of missing husbands, wives, sisters, cousins, and children. An American country was left in shock, with an uncertain future, as the perpetrators evaded capture and punishment. September 11th was a dark, bloody day of historic proportions. It was a prelude to regression, repression and heightened bloodshed.

Yes, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile's president Salvadore Allende on September 11th, 1973 was a terrible watershed. The low-flying planes belonged to the Chilean Air Force. They came on the orders of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet to bomb La Moneda Presidential Palace, where Allende, a self-declared Marxist, killed himself before he could be assassinated. Hundreds of real and suspected Allende supporters were gunned down in Santiago's soccer stadium, fashioned into a torture center and concentration camp. Across the nation, in the streets and military detention centers, Pinochet's forces murdered 20,000 and tortured 60,000 in the first few months after 9/11/1973. One million Chileans were forced into exile. According to leading international relations analyst William I. Robinson, it was "the bloodiest coup in Latin-American history" (Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony [Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996], p. 46).

According to a report from Patrick Ryan, the US Naval Attaché stationed with the United States Military Group in Chile that black September, the coup was "close to perfect." It was, Ryan told his superiors, a great victory for "free men aspiring to goals which are to the benefit of Chile and not self-serving world Marxism." (Situation Report, Navy Section, United States Military Group, Valparaiso, Chile, October 1, 1973, available online at http://www.gwu. edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch21-01.htm)

This state-terrorist rampage targeted the left and the mass popular social movements ("Marxist" and otherwise) that brought Allende to power in September 1970. Chilean trade unions and other popular organizations were dismantled. Clinics serving the poor were closed down. Twenty-six newspapers and magazines were shuttered. Chilean state and society, exceptional among Latin American states in the degree or its respect for civic freedoms and bourgeois-democratic political institutions, was militarized at every level.

Next came the restructuring of Chile's political economy along "free market" lines, meaning state protection for the wealthy and savage market discipline for the poor. Land, factories, mines, and mills that had been put under public direction for public service were returned to their "rightful" owners, "rescued" for the noble pursuit of egoistic, capitalist profit. This was consistent with the counsel of University of Chicago economic "experts," who arrived to spread Milton Friedman's delusional notion that capitalism and democracy are identical phenomena.

The socioeconomic consequences of the new "freedom" and "democracy" were striking. As the Chilean rich got richer during the first ten years of Pinochet's rule, the number of Chileans living below the official poverty line rose from 17 to 40 percent. The related slashing of health expenditures and programs led to an explosion of poverty-related diseases at the bottom of Chile's increasingly steep pyramid. Those who questioned the policies leading to these aristocratic outcomes did so at the risk of torture and murder by the fascist "free market" state.

"In Our Own Best Interests": Saving Chile from the "Irresponsibility" of Its Own People

It was all carried out to the applause and with the assistance and political cover of the US power elite. When the American ambassador to Chile expressed misgivings about Pinochet's use of torture, he received a sharp rebuke from US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who oversaw US covert actions and made sure that the ambassador was kept out of the "black-ops" loop during the early 1970s. For Kissinger and President Richard Nixon, humanitarian concerns were irrelevant. The higher Cold War goal was to protect global capitalism and American multinational corporate interests from the virus of "Marxism." Stated more accurately, the purpose was to crush the contagious notion that national social and economic policy should and could be conducted with collective and egalitarian purposes and national self-determination in mind. Kissinger seems to have been most concerned with the demonstration effect successful Chilean left-democratic governance might have on Italy, where left parties were in a position to make gains within the existing parliamentary political system.

Upon learning of Allende's election in 1970, Nixon informed Kissinger and CIA Director Richard Helms that the newly elected government of Chile was "unacceptable." He instructed his dark foreign policy stars to devise a scheme for keeping Allende out of office. "Not concerned risks involved," read Helms' notes on Nixon's instruction. "No involvement of the embassy. $10,000,000 available, more if necessary. Full-time job - best men we have...Make the economy scream. 48 hours for plan of action."

Kissinger saw "no reason," he once remarked, that the US should stand by and let a nation "go Marxist" because "its people are irresponsible." Consistent with that judgment, Kissinger and the CIA were centrally involved in efforts to de-stabilize and overthrow the Allende regime through various means, including military force. This pivotal, illegal US intervention in Chile's internal affairs is now a matter of voluminous documentary and scholarly record, much of which can be perused in a number of sources listed in an Appendix at the end of this article.

(to be continued)

oh and GMA's Diane Sawyer??? This bitch needs her ass slapped, trying to make Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
into a kind-old uncle.....bitch, please, join one of his harems, and get yer ass of the TV-yer a media slut.

Hey robin32....thanks for inspiring a tirade, I love to remind all the folks regularly, who and what they allow to breathe the common air.

If humans had a clue, they would collectively call for these people's immediate assassinations. That's one thing me and Pat Robinson can agree upon.

Just deaded the Paul Robinson video. Here's a replacement for you;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVSiysmz08o

Andy Robinson is shooting from the roof of Bank of America,
555 California Avenue at Montgomery Street.

The shooting victim was in the pool on top of the Holiday Inn,
750 Kearny Street, two blocks away.

BOA and Holiday Inn, are two places you never wanna go....

In addition to his work with Tim Burton, Elfman has written scores for dozens of other films including:

* Forbidden Zone (Richard Elfman, 1980)
* Back to School, (Alan Metter, 1986)
* Wisdom (Emilio Estevez, Robert Wise, 1986)
* Big Top Pee-wee (Randal Kleiser, 1988)
* Midnight Run (Martin Brest, 1988)
* Scrooged (Richard Donner, 1988)
* Darkman (Sam Raimi, 1990)
* Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty, 1990)
* Nightbreed (Clive Barker, 1990)
* Army of Darkness (Sam Raimi, 1993) (theme)
* Sommersby (Jon Amiel, 1993)
* Black Beauty (Caroline Thompson, 1994)
* Dolores Claiborne (Taylor Hackford, 1995)
* Dead Presidents (Hughes Brothers, 1995)
* To Die For (Gus Van Sant, 1995)
* The Frighteners (Peter Jackson, 1996)
* Freeway (Matthew Bright, 1996)
* Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996)
* Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant, 1997)
* Men in Black (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1997)
* A Simple Plan (Sam Raimi, 1998)
* Proof of Life (Taylor Hackford, 1999)
* Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002) (The instrumental pieces "After Midnight" and "Roxie's Suite")
* Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002)
* Red Dragon (Brett Ratner, 2002)
* Hulk (Ang Lee, 2003)
* Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, 2004)
* Deep Sea 3D (Howard Hall, 2006)
* Nacho Libre (Jared Hess, 2006) (Ramses Suite)
* Charlotte's Web (Gary Winick, 2006)
* Meet the Robinsons (Steve Anderson, 2007)
* Spider-Man 3 (Sam Raimi, 2007)

He has also written the theme music for several television series, including:

* Pee-wee's Playhouse (some episodes) (1986)
* Sledge Hammer! (1986)
* The Simpsons (1989)
* Beetlejuice (1989)
* Tales from the Crypt (1989)
* The Flash (1990)
* Batman: The Animated Series (1992)
* Dilbert (1999)
* Desperate Housewives (2004)
* Point Pleasant (2005)