State park officials were concerned about safety at Burlingame State Campground in Charlestown so they strongly recommended that campers leave.

But a staffer also put up posters in the restrooms that used the word "evacuation."

The result was the 755-site campground place was empty by late morning, according to Larry Mouradjian, associate director at the state Department of Environmental Management. One camper complained loudly and on the radio.

Mouradjian relented and let the complaining camper in, as well as anyone else who wants to sleep in the rain tonight. DEM's other campground had lots of campers who didn't leave he said.

Everything should be back to normal on Saturday, Mouradjian said."We don't want to get people hurt. But we're not going to harrass them either," he said.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The American Red Cross Rhode Island Chapter reports it has opened four shelters in the southern part of the state.

"With Earl down-graded to a Category 1 storm, we won't be hit as hard as we expected," said Nick Logothets, Emergency Service Director at the Chapter. "But four towns have asked us to open shelters in case residents need to leave their homes."

The four opened Red Cross shelters are:
-The Gaudet Middle School in Middletown
- Narragansett High School
- South Kingstown High School)
- Tiverton Middle School

The Red Cross reports that if no residents arrive at the shelters by early evening, that the shelters may be closed by the towns.

"We don't know what kind of turn-out we'll get," said Bruce Rutter, CEO of the local Red Cross, "but regardless of how few or how many clients are sheltered, we were there to serve the people of Rhode Island when needed." Rutter and Logothets reported that they had an excellent response from their volunteer network -- more that 33 percent (367) reported ready to serve when called yesterday.

Over the past two days, Red Cross volunteers from around the northeast have converged on Rhode Island and Massachusetts to help back-up the local chapters. With Earl tracking to the east, dangerous conditions are still predicted for Nantucket, Martha's vineyard and the Cape. Volunteers are standing by to move to those areas if needed.

Preparation for Hurricane Earl will cost the Chapter tens of thousands of dollars in staff time, volunteer training, food, supplies and gasoline for vehicles. And Earl is just one of hundreds of large disasters the American Red Cross will prepare for and respond to this year. To make a donation to help the Red Cross prepare for and respond to disasters--here in Rhode Island and across the country--call 1-800-Red Cross or visit www.redcross.org.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Because of the approach of Hurricane Earl, Peter Pan Bus Lines has canceled two bus trips between Providence and Cape Cod on Friday night.

The trips are:

•7:45 PM Providence-Hyannis (including Fall River, New Bedford, Bourne and Barnstable)
•5:15 PM Hyannis-Providence (including Bourne, New Bedford and Fall River)

The company cautioned that other changes or delays may occur because of the weather.

By RICK MASSIMO
Journal pop music writer

Some activities around Rhode Island may have been rescheduled Friday as a result of the approach of Hurricane Earl, but the Rhythm and Roots Festival, at Ninigret Park in Charlestown, is rolling on with only minor modifications.

Festival co-organizer Chuck Wentworth says that tonight's bill will see the main stage acts, headlined by Johnny Nicholas and The Texas All-Stars, as well as The Red Stick Ramblers, move into the dance tent, with a rejiggered schedule that will allow the main-stage and dance-tent bands all to play before the night is through.

"We moved everything into the dance tent for tonight, just to keep the audience out of the rain," Wentworth said.

Wentworth said that the influx of campers at Ninigret was heavier in the morning than usual, as festival-goers hustled to beat the rainfall. Other than that, all is normal at Rhythm and Roots, he said.

"We've been around the block," said Wentworth, noting that he and his partner have more than 50 years of festival-production experience between them. And in a dig at the Boston Pops concert that was postponed earlier this week, he added, "We're not McCoy Stadium."

Wow, one little lie about being an undercover cop who got too close to official corruption and you're booted, even from the Tea Party. Apparently making up stories about your personal history is worse than believing in the grand UN bicycle conspiracy. At any rate, Colorado gubenatorial candidate Dan Maes is nobody's darling anymore.

Despite mounting pressure from the GOP establishment and Tea Party groups to get out of the governor's race, Republican Dan Maes continued to dig in his heels Thursday, saying he wasn't going anywhere.

"This is a culture war, a culture war between the people and the machine, and we're going to find out who controls things," Maes said. "I am not getting out of the race."
....

[A] Denver Post story this week reporting that Maes embellished details about his law enforcement background combined with today's deadline for certification of the general election ballot prompted a string of defections. Soon after the story was published, Hank Brown, a former U.S. senator and former University of Colorado president, withdrew his endorsement, setting off a domino effect not only among prominent Republicans, but Maes' core, grassroots base.

Tea Party leaders across the state Thursday said in often harsh terms that they wanted Maes to drop out. Lesley Hollywood, director of the Northern Colorado Tea Party, posted on Facebook: "Alright Dan Maes — it's time for you to go. Get out now, while the gettin' is still good."

Mesa County commissioner and Tea Party organizer Janet Rowland called Maes a "fraud" in an e-mail sent to thousands of grassroots supporters and asked them not to support his candidacy. Hear Us Now!, which bills itself as the original tax-day Tea Party group, rescinded its endorsement.

What's a beleaguered Tea Party candidate to do? Why, just what Sarah Palin would! Take to Facebook, where Maes defiantly claims: "We are in the 4th quarter of the game and we must dig deeper than ever into our souls to find the strength to fight to . . . the end. Do not waiver. Do not quit. This is all part of the journey."

But state Republicans met with him today to try to force him out, and he lost the support of Senate candidate Ken Buck. If he leaves the race today, there's time to get the secretary of state to halt printing ballots while the party decides on his replacement. After today, it'll apparently be to late to stop the printing.

Hang in there Maes! Don't let Tancredo monopolize all the crazy fun.

LITTLEFLY (Thanks, Irene Delse via Submitterator!) Apartment made out of books Font made of stacked books Furniture made out of used books A House of Books Xmas tree made from books Chair made from discarded paperbacks Furniture made from books Blank books made from discarded vintage hardcovers

WTF Stamp (Thanks, Alice!) WTF?!, a Flash-based World of Warcraft parody Raygun: WTF 2000 WTF: "Kids' lingerie" photos featuring Miley Cyrus' 9-year-old ... Web Zen: WTF? zen Wisconsin Tourism Federation loses to WTF, changes name WTF is "Dairy Drink?" Cellphones and Cancer: OMG + FUD + WTF WtF Magazine (Welcome to Finland)

Even as the IEEE P1901 working group was set to meet this week to recommend its draft standard for broadband over powerline networks for official status, Netgear announced its line of Powerline AV 500 adapters that incorporate the HomePlug-compatible flavor of the standard. The new devices theoretically promise up to gigabit Ethernet speeds over home electrical wiring, and are the first to incorporate the newest standard.

The Powerline AV 500 comes in either standard or power pass-through versions, and are available in two-adapter "kits" to set up a source and destination point for your network. While hardcore geeks won't settle for anything less than running Cat 6 cable all throughout the house, powerline adapters have the benefit of being able to utilize existing electrical wiring to move data from point to point, and could be convenient for homes or apartments where running new cable would be impractical, prohibitively expensive, or just not allowed by your landlord.

While the IEEE P1901 standard promises speeds up to 1Gbps, no powerline adapters come close to the top theoretical speeds (and to be fair, neither does most wireless networking hardware). Still, it can provide greater and more consistent bandwidth for applications like networked AV equipment or gaming consoles compared to increasingly crowded home WiFi networks.

"Almost every new home entertainment device today can be connected to the Internet. This puts tremendous demand on the home network," Netgear product manager Chris Geisersaid in a statement. The new Powerline adapters are up to 2.5 times faster than competing products and provide a useful supplement to WiFi networks, he said.

The Powerline AV 500 line starts at $159 for a kit, and will begin shipping this fall according to Netgear. The P1901 WG expects its standard to be submitted the IEEE for adoption as an official standard at the end of this month.

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Review Ubuntu fans, fire up your virtual machines. The beta release of Ubuntu 10.10 is here. Maverick Meerkat, as this release is known, is actually several weeks ahead of the original schedule, and that means Ubuntu 10.10 is on track for its final release October 10.…

Here's mine: My older brother and I had adjacent rooms with a bathroom across the hallway. I heard him go into the bathroom, and on a complete whim, I jumped up, left my room, quietly shut my door, went into his room, and got under his bed. He finished a few seconds later, flushed, came back into his room, and shut the door.

He got onto his bed and watched some TV show. I was under his bed for half an hour. Afterward, he shut off the TV and hopped off the bed. As soon as his foot hit the floor, I reached out and grabbed his ankle as tightly as I could. He just started screaming. I thought that shit was a fucking riot.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- US Airways has canceled a flight from Philadelphia into T.F. Green Airport because of Hurricane Earl.

The flight was set to arrive at 11:50 p.m.

Earlier Friday, Southwest Airlines canceled 19 evening flights through Green because of the weather.

That announcement followed news that Cape Air had canceled all flights after 10:45 a.m.

Rebecca Pazienza, community affairs manager for Green airport, recommended travelers check with their airlines for the status of other flights.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- A boil water advisory has been issued for Prudence Island, off the coast of Rhode Island.

State health officials say the precaution is necessary because E. coli has been detected in the public water supply.

Customers of the Prudence Island Water District are urged to boil water for one minute and then let cool before using it for cooking, brushing teeth, bathing infants or making ice.

Customers can also use bottled water.

The boil water advisory is in effect until further notice.

Let's go back to the 1950s, says Ken Buck, GOP candidate for Senator in Colorado.

Buck: He still has his recorder on right there... [points, laughter]

Question: [brief lead-in] What plans do you have to make public education better in America?

Buck: "Let's talk about that [education] folks. In the 1950s, we had the best schools in the world. And the United States government decided to get more involved in federal education. [Pols emphasis] Where are we now, after all those years of federal involvement, are we better or are we worse? So what's the federal government's answer? Well since we've made education worse, we're gonna even get more involved. And what's gonna be the result?  It's kinda like health care. We've screwed up health care--Medicare--we've screwed up all kinds of other things, so what are we gonna do? We're gonna get even more involved in health care.  What are we going to do? We're gonna get more involved in education.

As Colorado Pols points out in this piece, most of the real federal investment in education came a lot later, in the 60s and 70s. What was the primary feature of education in the 50s (other than Bert the turtle films?).

Is this the "Rand Paul moment" for Ken Buck, folks? Most of the increases in federal funding for education, the federally-guaranteed student loans that Buck so famously wants to do away with, and other federal "involvement," happened in the 1960s, not the 1950s: the federal Department of Education didn't itself exist until 1980. In addition, before the 1965 federal student loan program we know today, which uses private lenders and federal loan guarantees, student loans were made directly by the U.S. Treasury. Is that his conservative vision?

....

Of course, there was that little matter of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954, later enforced by federal troops on a rather unwilling local government in Little Rock. Which would very certainly come under the heading of "federal involvement" in education, wouldn't it? As a matter of fact, wasn't that a big argument about "local control," if you set aside the messy racist stuff?

Yeah, that whole pesky Civil Rights era progress again. Wasn't life a lot better for the Ken Bucks and Rand Pauls of the world before brown people could start associating with them? Oh, and before Medicare "screwed up health care," too. You really need no more proof that women, minorities, and seniors don't really have a part in Ken Buck's world.

Canonical has announced the availability of the Ubuntu 10.10 beta release. The new version of the popular Linux distribution, codenamed Maverick Meerkat, is scheduled for final release in October. It brings some noteworthy user interface improvements and updated software.

The beta ships with GNOME 2.31, which introduces support for the new dconf configuration storage system. Ubuntu's standard F-Spot photo tool has been replaced by Shotwell, a relatively new application that is developed by nonprofit software group Yorba. Although it's not as feature-complete as F-Spot, it's progressing quickly and has a lot to offer.

Canonical has continued its work on panel indicators, especially the audio indicator which now has playback controls in addition to a volume management slider. This will eliminate the need for individual audio applications to have their own notification area icons.

Work has also continued on the Ubuntu Software Center, which now promotes "Featured" applications and has a section for purchasing commercial third-party applications. The look and feel of the Software Center is more refined and aesthetically sophisticated.

The Ubuntu Netbook Edition has seen particularly dramatic improvements during this development cycle due to Canonical's work on the new Unity user interface. Unity, which was initially introduced in May, has matured very rapidly. It has a global menubar that works surprisingly well.

Users who want to get an early look at the new version can download the beta release from the Ubuntu website. For additional information, you can refer to the release notes.

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NEWPORT, R.I. -- In anticipation of heavy rain from Hurricane Earl, both ends of Hazard Road in Newport will closed to traffic from 4 p.m. Friday until 8 a.m. Saturday, in anticipation of flooding across the road, city officials just announced.

Journal photo / Frieda Squires
Jan Carlson of Attleboro, left, and her sister-in-law, Marge Carlson, of Norton, Mass., must leave Second Beach Campground in Middletown by 5 p.m. They'll head home, they said. Everyone must leave, but they can leave their vehicles and return after the storm passes. There are 46 camping sites at the campground.

A strong earthquake hit near New Zealand’s second-largest city, Christchurch, early Saturday. Authorities reported extensive damage across the city but said so far only minor injuries were being reported.

Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of Daniel Millis, convicted of littering because he left sealed bottles of drinking water in a desert wildlife refuge. He explained that he left them "along frequently traveled routes for unlawful entrants to the United States." He belongs to a group called "No More Deaths," and the opinion quotes his testimony: "humanitarian aide [sic] is never a crime."

The majority overturned his conviction because a reasonable person might not understand that leaving drinking water for people dying of thirst is littering. The United States countered that the water bottles constitute "garbage" in the sense of the statute. After foraging through some dictionary definitions of "garbage" and "discarded," the majority concludes that the regulation is too ambiguous to enforce in this case.

Guess who dissented? Judge Jay Bybee -- the author of the torture memo:

Littering is littering, and Bybee finds that the regulation is as clear as a sunny day in the desert. This is the same Jay Bybee who thinks that terms like "torture" and "severe suffering" are so vague that it would be unfair to apply statutes prohibiting them to interrogators who waterboard people and keep them awake for a week at a time, naked and hanging in chains.

Newt now believes Congress can designate Ground Zero as "a national battlefield memorial because I think we should think of the World Trade Center as a battlefield site." Putting aside whether this is a good idea or not, even if Congress did as Gingrich suggests, it wouldn't make any difference -- because no one is talking about building the community center at Ground Zero.

Maybe Newt means to designate all of Manhattan as a "battlefield site"? That way, his dream of big federal government oversight of local zoning laws would be fulfilled.

Atrios:

It's incredible to me that genius political strategists think that what voters really want are tepid and timid half measures.

Dems are paralyzed with fear. Have been, in fact, for much of the last year and a half.

They were so worried about what ads Republicans would run against them, and in bipartisanship for the sake of bipartisanship, that now, their worst fears will be realized.

But really, being even more timid ain't gonna cut it.

Those who are paying close attention realize that [Republicans] either care more about destroying the socialist/Muslim menace or they care more about taking back the power they so recently lost. But either way, they do appear to give a damn. The Democrats, on the other hand, rather than coming out with their guns blazing at those who have made it impossible for them to fix these problems seem content with trying to convince people that it isn't as bad as they think it is.

You know --- like when your friend tries to convince you that you shouldn't be upset about something you are upset about. It's annoying. And you realize very quickly that they just don't want to hear about it anymore. That's how the Democrats seem right now --- that they are sick of hearing about it.

Ha ha!

Information designer Jess Bachman has a new piece out which isn't so much an info-graphic as a graphic article. Jess explains: It deals with the nightmare that has become student loans. Default rates on student loans are worse than sub-prime mortgages, and the total debt is bigger than all our credit card debts combined. It's a huge issue than many people are keeping quiet about. College students are a hugely under-represented and unadvocated group in Washington, and what we and the government are doing to them is just wrong. Link to the full-sized graphic on CollegeScholarships.org.

Poster: 389 Years Ago (updated). Infographic: The History of Search Glenn Beck's gold-investment scam/scheme: an explanatory ... One terabuck, visualized Death and Taxes, the 2010 edition Infographic: The history of Google's acquisitions

Here's a timeline:

On August 10 this year I received an e-mail from an employee of People Magazine requesting permission to use my cake resignation photo in an article. This is shortly after the Jet Blue Steward event, prompting many 'Weird ways people have quit their jobs' news stories.

I replied to People and said they needed a license to use my photo - meaning they have to pay me to use it. I did not receive a reply.

On August 11 my image was used without authorization and without payment on People.com, in an article titled "Take This Job and Shove It! 8 Memorable Quitters".

I sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding my image be removed from their website. Six days later I receive an e-mail stating my image had been removed from their website. I received an offer at that time of $75 for the use of my image. That may have been reasonable if my photo's copyright had not been willfully infringed and used for six days.

So, today I sent the photo director an invoice for a usage license of my cake resignation photo. This cake was delivered today, September 3rd.
Invoice Cake to People.com (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

Repurposed Antique Tabriz Wool Rug (via Make) Monster skin rug Relief map rug World's biggest handmade rug

East meets west (via Craft) Sofa turns into a punching bag Sofa/bookcase Coffin sofa Sofa modelled on brainwaves Accordioning sofa - mindblowing video Sofa that lets you float in the clouds Doc sofa bed converts into a bunk bed within seconds ...

The extraction of heavy crude oil from oil sands in Canada is releasing as many as 13 kinds of pollutants into the surrounding air and water, according to a study published in PNAS this week. The independent report directly contradicts the results of the government-administered Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program (RAMP) that claimed neither humans nor the environment were at risk from the oil extraction.

Oil sands are swaths of ground that are laced with heavy crude oil that can be extracted and refined into fuel. Development of oil sands in Canada has been taking place since 1967, but scientists have long been uncertain of the production's impact on the environment.

The RAMP study conducted by the government showed no significant ill effects, but another group of scientists decided to double-check their work. They took samples around an oil sands development facility in Alberta near the Athabasca River from the air and surrounding watersheds, and found some highly contradictory evidence.

Summertime water samples downstream from the development area had concentrations of elements like mercury, arsenic, chromium, and beryllium eight times as high as the background levels. Air samples showed concentrations twice that of the late 1970s, and during the winter, the water concentrations were also twice as high as normal.

The authors speculate that the concentration difference results from the snow capturing many airborne particulates and holding them until summer, when it all melts into the ground and water. The researchers also suspect that many of the airborne contaminants are scattered, lowering their local concentrations but spreading their effects over a wide area.

While this single study doesn't automatically invalidate the RAMP study, this data seriously undermine the government's results and methods, and suggests that the long-term effects of oil sands development bear further scrutiny.

PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1008754107  (About DOIs).

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