Be still, my heart
Daryl Hall is the headliner at tonight’s July 4th concert on the Parkway. Sigh… Not one of his best performances, but even on an off night, Daryl is still good.
Archive | Life in the Big City
Poor Frank
Just because he was a bigot who allowed the cops free reign doesn’t make him a fascist, right? RIGHT?
Hot time, summer in the city
Excessive heat warning remains in effect from 1 PM Wednesday
to 6 am EDT Friday…* heat index values… 98 to 104 degrees during each afternoon
Wednesday and Thursday.
Riverside
We went down to the Delaware River waterfront after dinner last night. It was a gorgeous, cool day:
Le Bec Fin
Loved this place and I’m happy to see it restored. I especially loved the fact that you could get an early seating of their dinner for $38 instead of the regular $125 fixed price. I used to take my sales team here to reward them, back in the days when I had a company Amex. Although it was five-star French service, it never felt stuffy. I wouldn’t have gone back if it did.
In Philly, taxed extra for paying taxes
Just what a struggling major city needs — more property tax hikes for tax-paying property owners in order to make up for the huge amounts owed by deadbeat property owners, many of whom don’t even live in the city. More here.
Carcinogen
Lovely. I was driving down I-95 the other day, and there was a diesel truck spewing such dense, thick smoke from both smokestacks that it looked like fog settled across the eight-lane highway in its wake. I said to my friend, “Wouldn’t you think someone would, oh, I don’t know, enforce the law? How the hell did that truck ever pass inspection?” (He told me not to ask such silly questions.) Now it’s more important than ever to enforce the air pollution laws, in light of this news:
LONDON (AP) — Diesel fumes cause cancer, the World Health Organization’s cancer agency declared Tuesday, a ruling it said could make exhaust as important a public health threat as secondhand smoke.
The risk of getting cancer from diesel fumes is small, but since so many people breathe in the fumes in some way, the science panel said raising the status of diesel exhaust to carcinogen from “probable carcinogen” was an important shift.“It’s on the same order of magnitude as passive smoking,” said Kurt Straif, director of the IARC department that evaluates cancer risks. “This could be another big push for countries to clean up exhaust from diesel engines.”
Since so many people are exposed to exhaust, Straif said there could be many cases of lung cancer connected to the contaminant. He said the fumes affected groups including pedestrians on the street, ship passengers and crew, railroad workers, truck drivers, mechanics, miners and people operating heavy machinery.
Hah! So much for my friends who make fun of me for walking on a treadmill at the gym, instead of outside. Did you know that urban runners take in even more pollution, because they have larger lung capacity?
The new classification followed a weeklong discussion in Lyon, France, by an expert panel organized by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The panel’s decision stands as the ruling for the IARC, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization.
The last time the agency considered the status of diesel exhaust was in 1989, when it was labeled a “probable” carcinogen. Reclassifying diesel exhaust as carcinogenic puts it into the same category as other known hazards such as asbestos, alcohol and ultraviolet radiation.
The U.S. government, however, still classifies diesel exhaust as a likely carcinogen. Experts said new diesel engines spew out fewer fumes but further studies are needed to assess any potential dangers.
“We don’t have enough evidence to say these new engines are zero risk, but they are certainly lower risk than before,” said Vincent Cogliano of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He added that the agency had not received any requests to reevaluate whether diesel definitely causes cancer but said their assessments tend to be in line with those made by IARC.
Unnecessary items
I don’t know what it is about a yard sale that always cheers me up. I guess because I can take part in the Great American Shopping Pastime for peanuts! Today’s score: one of those things you use to grab things that are up high for $1, an aerobics stepper for $.50, and a nice cobalt ceramic canister for $1. Almost forgot: A gig bag chord book, the kind with pages that lay flat, for $.50. Oh, joy.
White people gone wild
And the Philadelphia newspaper didn’t even report it. I wonder why! Their comments section is full of readers who commonly refer to black people as “animals,” so this might add some balance:
CAMDEN – June 4, 2012 (WPVI) — They’re still feeling the fallout in Camden in the wake of Saturday night’s fight-filled concert event with more than 100 people injured and nearly 200 people arrested.
It started even before many of the concert goers arrived to the Susquehanna Bank Center.
Video captured two young women fighting on a NJ Transit train on the way to the WXTU Anniversary Concert.
More than 25,000 country music fans converged on at the arena in Camden. One of them, Christie Bellis, found chaos when she got there.
“There were two guys down semi-unconscious on the ground. Then I found my friends and there was a guy bleeding on a chair from his eyebrow and his jaw was cracked. I started to help treat him,” Bellis said.Witnesses say fights broke out everywhere, leaving pools of blood on the ground and on the tailgate of a pickup truck.
Emergency Medical Technicians treated 163 people for various injuries. At least a dozen were rushed to area hospitals.
“Broken bones, we had bruises, scrapes, a couple of them did have a little more severe injuries,” Dr. Rick Hong of the Cooper University Medical Center said.
Police arrested 191 people.
But, witnesses say the police didn’t do much to break up the fights.
Last year, a Camden officer was stabbed in the chest while breaking up a fight at this concert.
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