'Tricycle' can get up to 18.6 miles an hour — as you stare straight at the road

 If you’re a bicycle  enthusiast, this model ought to get your attention.

I was thinking of McKinleyville Press Publisher, Jack Durham, when I posted this. Jack rides bikes whenever he can and even has a collection of them. What do you think about this one Jack?

It's like something straight out of the mind of Tim "The Toolman" Taylor ... but German.

Dreamed up by four German design students and built like a cross between a Tron Light Cycle and our childhood tricycle, it accelerates to 18.6 miles per hour, powered by nothing but a pair of Bosch 18-volt screwdrivers. Story Here

Buy a truck, get a free Ak-47 – get cable TV and a shotgun for free!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dealer offers free AK-47 for truck buyers

I can remember the days when gas stations passed out free plates, cups, and other household items to entice customers.

Welcome to the 21st century where free weapons are handed out to get your business. It’s a damning statement about the society we live in today.

Dealer offers free AK-47 for truck buyers

SANFORD, Fla. — “A Florida car dealership trying to drum up business is offering an unusual perk for potential used-truck buyers: A free AK-47 assault rifle.

General sales manager Nick Ginetta says that since the promotion was announced on Veterans Day, business has more than doubled at Nations Trucks in Sanford.”  Story here.

Buy a cable dish, get a free gun

“A Radio Shack in Montana is offering would-be satellite television customers a bit more bang for their buck.

The Ravalli Republic reports customers who sign up for some Dish Network packages at Radio Shack in Hamilton will be rewarded with a pistol or shotgun. Those not interested in the gun offer can pick a $50 Pizza Hut gift card.” Story here

True Americana: offbeat roadside attractions wow visitors

They're weird, they're the world's largest, and they're off the next exit.

How can you pass them up? Whether oddities from a time gone by or just a way get tourist dollars for a tiny town, you'll want a snapshot with these roadside attractions.

Skip ahead to read about:

Creepy dolls in Kentucky -- Cadillac Ranch --

Hunting Bigfoot in Virginia --

The Corn Palace --  World's Largest Pistachio Nut

Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum -–The Big Blue Bug

And more here

Congress Making Themselves and Friends Richer, While Everyone Else Struggles to Make Ends Meet

It’s my honor every Sunday, to share space in the Times-Standard Opinion section with Jim Hightower.

I haven’t seen this column in the T-S, so I’d like to share it with you:

The great majority of Americans make about $30K a year. Incoming lawmakers, however? Extensive personal investments in Wall St. banks, oil giants and drug makers.

“Change is not the same thing as progress. In fact, change can be the exact opposite. It can be regressive, as we're now learning from -- where else? -- Congress.

A flock of tea party-infused Republicans has certainly changed the political dynamic there, and exultant GOP leaders are claiming that they are now the voice of "The People." But most people won't find themselves represented by this change, much less see it as progress.

That's because the newcomers in Congress, whether Republican or Democrat, tend to live high up the economic ladder, way out of touch with the people they're representing. Indeed, 40 percent of newly elected house members are millionaires, as are 60 percent of new senators.

Their wealth and financial ties might help explain the rush by the new Republican House majority to coddle these very same corporate powers. From gutting EPA's anti-pollution restrictions on Big Oil to undoing the restraints on Wall Street greed, they're pushing for a return to the same laissez-fairyland ideology of the past 20 years that got our country in massive messes.

At the same time, they're out to kill a green-jobs program, bust unions, cut Social Security, defund Head Start and generally stomp on the fingers of working families trying to hold onto the middle class rungs of the economic ladder.

The change in Congress is taking America backward, not forward, for the new majority literally is the voice of millionaires. That's not progress.

So we see corporations and billionaires wallowing in fabulous new wealth, while productive workers fall out of the middle class. And our new congress-members are just fine with that, even pushing a program of more tax breaks and subsidies for the corporate elite, while vehemently opposing efforts to create jobs and advance the middle class. Making the richest people richer is not a recovery -- it's a robbery.”

Condensed column – see Full Article Here.

- Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer

Crime gangs among first to deliver Japan earthquake aid

There’s a lot of reasons that I admire the Japanese. It’s inspirational watching the people stay orderly and not panic, despite the most devastating events that have hit their country since they were nuked in WWII.

What really blows my mind is how even the criminals in Japan pitch in and help when natural disasters happen.

“Tons of relief goods have been delivered to victims of Japan's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami from a dark corner of society: the "yakuza" organized crime networks.

Yakuza groups have been sending trucks from the Tokyo and Kobe regions to deliver food, water, blankets and toiletries to evacuation centers in northeast Japan, the area devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which have left at least 27,000 dead and missing.”

Unlike here in America, where disasters like Katrina bring out the looters, the Yakuza have standards of conduct.

“Disasters bring out another side of yakuza, who move swiftly and quietly to provide aid to those most in need. The gangs' charity is rooted in their "ninkyo" code,which values justice and duty and forbids allowing others to suffer. In times such as earthquakes, they put their money where their mouths are.”

 Full Story

Skin cancer risk is higher for rich women than for poor women, study finds

The rich really are different from the rest of us – at least when it comes to skin cancer.

That’s the conclusion of a new study from Archives of Dermatology that examined the incidence of melanoma among younger women of various income levels. Not only were melanoma rates highest among those with the highest incomes, the number of new diagnoses also grew fastest in that group too. Full Story

The U.S. is engaged in Libya because of an abusive leader who is killing his own people, what about the Ivory Coast?

“While the world has been focused on airstrikes and dramatic developments on the ground in Libya, a string of Middle East uprisings and twin natural disasters and the fear of a nuclear meltdown in Japan, another serious crisis has been quietly brewing: a potential civil war in the Ivory Coast.”  Full Story

PHOTO - Charles Ble Goude, center, Ivory Coast's Minister of Youth and leader of the "Young Patriots" speaks as commander in chief of the army Phillipe Mangou, right, looks on in front of thousands of young supporters of Ivorian strongman Laurent Gbagbo on March 21 in Abidjan

Assault on American middle class continues–this time on seniors

Another Republican governor attacking the middle class – this time seniors. Have they no shame at all?

I realize they have to answer to the tea baggers who put them there, but this is an all-out war on the middle class by special interests and corporations.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder is drawing recall threats and angry protests over his attempt to tax the pension and 401(k) incomes of millions of retirees. He also wants to eliminate a $2,300-per-person tax break for those 65 and over and reduce the credit seniors get for property tax payments.

Just another example of efforts by Republican governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker to attack the middle class and help the businesses that donated to their campaigns. And like many in that state, people are ready to rise up and demand that Michigan's governor back down.

 Story “Michigan wants to end tax break for seniors”

Dorothy Young: Last surviving Houdini stage assistant dies at 103

Dorothy Young, the last surviving stage assistant of illusionist Harry Houdini and also an accomplished dancer, died Sunday at her home in a retirement community in Tinton Falls, N.J. She was 103.

Young's death was announced by Drew University, where she was a prominent donor and patron of the arts.

Young joined Houdini's company as a teenager after attending an open casting call during a family trip to New York.

 During her year with Houdini's stage show in the mid-1920s, she played the role of "Radio Girl of 1950," (photo right) emerging from a large mock-up of a radio and performing a dance routine.

Young went on to become a professional dancer, performing in several movies. She also published a novel inspired by her career.

Story Source 

Right Photo source     Left photo source

Guest Op-Ed: the fight over collective bargaining is not just a labor dispute in a Midwestern state

By Garret Keizer

For anyone who believes that the hard-won rights of organized labor constitute an American birthright, who would as soon see the flag burned as a picket line crossed (both acts disrespectful of blood shed in our "country's cause"), the decision of the Wisconsin Legislature to end most collective bargaining rights for public employees amounts to sacrilege. In effect, Wisconsin has become a pariah state. It ought to be treated as such.

The battle in Wisconsin, symbolically and in fact, is not a fight against a political party or a governor, much less against good people who made a horrendous electoral goof. It is a fight against what increasingly has come to feel like an American death wish, a mad potlatch of relinquishing every progressive gain of the last 100 years. We talk about "making cuts" in the tone of teenagers who cut themselves. A few billionaires and their proxies yell "jump," and we call it a sacrifice whose time has come. We need to start talking ourselves in from the ledge.”

The rest of the article is here