Pictures of the Day-- Student protests in London

Not sure I quite understand this one...

Some of my best friends are poor.

I can't think of a response to this one.

For more on the protests, click here.

What I have been reading lately #39

Blood, Sweat, and Tea: Real-Life Adventures in an Inner-City Ambulance-- by Tom Reynolds

Tom Reynolds (real name-- Brian Kellett) is an emergency medical technician in London. He writes a blog about his job. Some of the posts from the blog were collected and published in this book. The book was very entertaining.

The Class-- by Francois Begaudeau

Francois Begaudeau was a teacher in Paris who wrote a novel about his experiences. The novel was then turned into a movie. I liked both the book and the movie.

What I have been reading lately #24

I have recently finished reading Robert Sullivan's excellent book, The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures at the Edge of a City.  From reading this book, I learned about the many interesting items that can be found or previously could be found in this wilderness/wasteland just a few miles west of New York City.  The list includes (in no particular order):

• many of the AM radio transmitters for New York City radio stations;
• abandoned copper mines:
• abandoned clay pits previously used for digging up clay to make bricks;
• salt hay farms;
• failed land development schemes;
• the cities of Newark and Secaucus (to name only two);
• garbage dumps (both in use and no longer in use) containing such items as rubble from the London Blitz, leachate (the liquid that trash makes after it has sat for a while), and fires (both above and underground);
• toxic waste, including, but not limited to, mercury, chromium, naphthalene, methylene chloride, toluene, and ethylbenzene;
• hunters, fishers, and swimmers;
• sports facilities for professional sports teams;
• highways and railways;
• lunatic asylums;
• organized crime murder victims (including, possibly, Jimmy Hoffa - pictured below);
• hotels;
• factories;
• pig farms;
• chemical and oil refineries;
• piles of coal;
• hills made from garbage;
• the Kearny, NJ Library, which boasts of having the world's largest collection of foriegn-language translations of Gone With The Wind;
• soccer stars, including John Harkes, Tab Ramos, and Tony Meola;
• cedar forests;
• mosquitoes;
• buried pirate treasure; and
• the ruins of the original Penn Station from New York City.

Above, the Meadowlands; below, Jimmy Hoffa.

Protests at G20 meeting in London

At the G20 meeting today in London, leaders of the world's largest market economies met to try to figure out how to save the capitalist economic system from further meltdown.  Thousands of demonstrators converged on the Bank of England (pictured above), as well as the Royal Bank of Scotland.

(Below- A protester climbs columns in an attempt to hang his banner.)

(Below- Another demonstrator near a line of police.)

Picture of the Day

"Pato won all three games"