| Organizers of Sharebike venture aim to provide two-wheelers for area ...
A Roanoke group is launching a bicycle-sharing program that would let people sign out two-wheelers at between five and 10 area businesses and organizations to ride wherever pleasure or work takes them. The not-for-profit venture, called Sharebike, is partly modeled on others that have moved scores of people in Europe and in U.S. cities such as Portland, Ore., and mobilized students on college and university campuses, including at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Last summer Paris, yes, the city of light, put 10,000 public-use bicycles on its streets. The goal is to provide inexpensive, environmentally friendly, calorie-burning transportation for people who don't drive, prefer not to or don't need to for where they are going. But other such enterprises have struggled with bike theft, abuse and breakage.
City's two-wheel transformation
London is likely to become one of the most cycle-friendly places in the world, with a series of two-wheeler superhighways cutting a swath through traffic and congestion. Plans for the super-cycleways will be unveiled next week as part of an initiative to stimulate a 400% increase in the number of people pedalling round the capital by 2025. At a cost of £400m, the 12 routes are intended to be the motorways of cycling and are likely to be emulated by other cities across the UK. Londoners without bikes will be able to use one of the city's free bicycles. "We want nothing short of a cycling transformation in London," said the mayor, Ken Livingstone. "We are announcing the biggest investment in cycling in London's history, which will mean that thousands more Londoners can cycle in confidence, on routes that take them quickly and safely to where they want to go." The cycle scheme is one of several environmental announcements expected in the capital over the coming weeks, including a decision on plans for a £25-a-day congestion charge on the highest-polluting vehicles and a proposal to re-fit 900 civic buildings across the capital to make them more energy-efficient.
The best books of 2007.
We can't very well expect books to change our lives, but they should certainly poke us now and then. Tom Hodgkinson's The Freedom Manifesto, a sequel to his cult classic How To Be Idle, presents its credos as a lark: Play the Ukulele! Death to the Supermarkets! Stop Moaning! Fling Open Your Doors! But the joshing tone belies a work of crafty scholarship and radical intent. Hodgkinson leafs through various malcontent movements including the Stoics, the situationists, and the back-to-the-landers to "bring three strands of thought together into a philosophy for everyday life; these are freedom, merriment, and responsibility." (Hodgkinson is an existentialist.) He finds his intellectual groove in a bohemian appreciation of the medieval, a time when workers had autonomy, beer was spiced with berries, and merchants were looked down upon as ungodly and crude.
Gadgets for cars star at convention
Other companies are displaying steering wheels with imbedded LCD displays that give navigation information while allowing the driver to keep one eye on the road and license-plate cameras that display video on the rear-view mirror. To emphasize the automobile's new role as an electronics center, General Motors Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner is scheduled to give a keynote speech today. The role traditionally is reserved for the Samsungs, Microsofts and Sonys of the world. .
Hip-Hop Rumors: Lupe In Fight With Girl? Mya Dropped? Lil Wayne Bigger ...
Anyway, because of the “dust up," I hear 102 Jamz has banned the airplay of Young Jeezy and songs that feature him. I think they can make and exception for “Corporate Thuggin," because that's my jammie jam.
Somebody else said that Jeezy said no shout outs unless you were there with him and CTE. If you weren't and you got a shout out, you were banished. I don't know about any of this so just check out the video for "Corporate Thuggin'," as Jeezy kills the track.
EARTHQUAKE RIHANNA: AN EYEWITNESS!
My boy R. Pizano was at the concert and was gracious enough to give me the run down on the concert that had Rihanna so shook.
Two funerals tell tale of the love engendered by two lives
She had a penchant for spoiling her subjects with home-baked goodies and her homespun wisdom.
Her North Carolina lilt was jaded by decades of Gloucester, living in her beloved house at the tippy-top of Beacon Street overlooking the outer harbor. Her musical connections were often embellished by her entire family of musical husband and four kids, performers all. They came as a package; with Nina, you got the whole kit and caboodle. The music dripped from their souls.
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