Saturday, December 01, 2007

The Storm Approaches: Open Thread

It sounds like we may actually get something out of today's storm, unlike the Thanksgiving Eve false alarm. Seems like a great to stay inside and blog, or in my case, sleep. Here are a couple of headlines from this week that caught my eye.
(EDIT: Obviously the storm is pretty much past, so I'll try and have a new post this afternoon evening Whenever)


New York firm proposes hydroelectric stations in Davenport, Muscatine -QCTimes
This one has got to be one of the strangest articles I've ever read relating to Davenport. Some random company is hoping to build a hydro plant that "would measure 245 feet long by 160 feet wide by 60 feet high" somewhere near the Lock and Dam in Davenport, but doesn't bother contacting the city? I don't know how far away from the source of water this could be built, but I don't think anything like this belongs south of River Drive. If they could build it underground, it could be turned into some kind of green energy tourism attraction under the riverfront, but that doesn't seem possible with the floods. Who knows!

Davenport-made 'Sugar' to premiere at Sundance -QCTimes
A movie that may be about a minority struggling to play minor league baseball in the evil, racist, oppressive city of Davenport? Is this even a good thing? Hopefully that's not the theme of the movie at all, but its what I'm hearing. This is Davenport, people, a city with a fairly diverse population, not some hick town where we've never seen non-whites. I wonder if this is related to the hurry to change the Swing's name.

And to finish things off, an assortment of random images. (Note: I found a fix for the images, which requires me to edit html code. Not doing that is one of the things I like about blogs vs a website)


Here we have Black Friday madness. On the left, the moon hides behind Barnes and Noble before dawn. On the right, Menard's enthusiasts park everywhere but in lanes of traffic. Good times!

Here are a couple of shots from the jail tour, which was overtaken by Holiday Balloon Parade images a couple Saturday's ago. The image on the left is the new way visits are conducted, which is through a closed circuit TV system, and the image on the right is one of the "day rooms" where most inmates will spend their days. It may look nice, but try spending a month there. Its no hotel.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Here is an article about the movies that will be at Sundance from the NY Times. Here is a quote from it:

"Class and race surface in a number of films, but seldom in a political way, festival organizers say. In “Sugar,” for example, the team behind “Half Nelson,” Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, look at the baseball scouting machine from the point of view of a Dominican baseball star recruited to play in the minor leagues."

That makes me feel slightly better, but we'll see.

Anonymous said...

Hydro dam? I don't think there is a remote chance this could be economically feasible.

From what I have read, there isn't enough elevation drop between pools to power the number and size of turbines necessary to produce enough output to provide a payback.

Whole concept sounds off-the-wall. A group fishing for federal dollars for a feasibility study?

Anonymous said...

I just made it back to my apartment from out near Devil's Glenn RD & 53rd ST...

Pretty nasty out there. Drove by a 3-car accident on 53rd, near Eastern Ave. Looked like everyone was OK, but one car had the front-end smashed in...

With my fridge good to go, there'll be no more driving around town for me today!

Anonymous said...

They may not even use Davenport's name as the city the story is supposed to take part in. They only shot it here. It's possible they may completely make something up.

QuadCityImages said...

The early news articles said they were using the Swing name, but I guess it could be "River City Swing" or something other than Swing of the Quad Cities.

Anonymous said...

There is new technology that uses 'low fall' dams to generate power. Would think that the Army Corps of Engineers are surprised that no one contacted them about a major construction project.

Anonymous said...

There's absolutely no way the City would put up this much of a shit-storm over the boat being on the Riverfront, and then allow a massive ugly hydro plant to be there. I bet that conversation doesn't even begin.