Though this thing is a definite beauty, I’m not sure if I would ever be able to get it to fit in some of my favorite camping spots here in Montana — I may wish to bring a chainsaw along for just in case that one big tree is in the way … just kidding.
The most striking feature of the Romotow T8 is its rotating cabin, which can swivel 90 degrees from its shell when parked. Inside the rounded front nose are removable canvas/mesh sidewalls to keep the bugs out.
The rotation is controlled by an automated hydraulic system that makes the process smooth and easy. You don’t need any special skills or tools to operate it, just a hitch to tow it and a button to transform it.
It costs about $260K, which is more than some houses. But according to Romotow’s co-founder Matt Wilkie, the Romotow T8 is well worth the investment.
“First, the tracks are close to the intersection of Montana Avenue, Lyndale Avenue, and Helena Avenue – often referred to as “malfunction junction.”
Knoepke said an overpass or underpass could interfere with that already challenging intersection.
Second, an overpass or underpass could cutoff access to the many businesses near the tracks.
Third, Knoepke said the railroad needs to keep running through construction.” – KRTV
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I’ve been through that intersection many many times as I’m pretty sure that most of you have too.
Based on how that intersection looks I’d have to say that the better money would be on the railroad actually building a viaduct over the top of everything.
This way, none of the businesses would be affected and no one would ever have to stop for the train as it passed over.
I haven’t watched commercial television since 2009 (cable television since 2013). I won’t pay money to watch commercials.
What I like the most about Indie films is that the writers and directors all seem to still have some semblance of talent. They seem to hold themselves to a higher standard and present a closer to real life experience in their work.
Here are two Indie films that I’ve seen recently that I thought to share. I looked at some of the other reviews online and I’m afraid to say that NPR especially, got it wrong in it’s interpretation of these films — neither of these films pushed any sort of narrative or ideology in any way.
Both of these Indie films are presented in the setting of a big city, and they both touched base on the realities of life. You can’t put a label on the human condition and both of these films did an excellent job of helping us to understand that.
Detachment
Director Tony Kaye’s (AMERICAN HISTORY X) long-awaited film DETACHMENT stars Academy Award(R) winner Adrien Brody as Henry Barthes, a substitute teacher who conveniently avoids any emotional connections by never staying anywhere long enough to form a bond with either his students or colleagues. A lost soul grappling with a troubled past, Henry finds himself at a public school where an apathetic student body has created a frustrated, burned-out administration. In finding an emotional connection to the students but also to fellow teachers and a runaway teen, he finds that he’s not alone in a life and death struggle to find beauty in a seemingly vicious and loveless world. Kaye has molded a contemporary vision of people who become increasingly distant from others while still feeling the need to connect. DETACHMENT features a stellar ensemble cast, including Academy Award(R) winner Marcia Gay Harden, Christina Hendricks, William Petersen, Bryan Cranston, Tim Blake Nelson, Lucy Liu, Blythe Danner, Academy Award(R) nominees James Caan, and newcomers Sami Gayle and Betty Kaye.
Walter Vale is a widowed Connecticut College economics professor who lives a fairly solitary existence. He fills his days by sometimes taking piano lessons in an effort to emulate his late wife, a classical concert pianist, and infrequently works on a new book. When he is asked to present a paper at an academic conference at New York University, he is not enthusiastic to make the trip, given he is only the nominal co-author and has never even read the complete work. Charles, his department head, insists and Walter is forced to attend.
When he arrives in his old apartment in Manhattan, Walter is startled to find a young unmarried couple living there, having rented it from a swindler who claimed it was his. Tarek is an immigrant from Syria, a Palestinian-Syrian djembe player, and Zainab is a Senegalese designer of ethnic jewelry. He later discovers both are illegal immigrants. Although they have no place to go, they hastily pack and leave, but Walter decides to let them stay.
Cast: Dania Gurira, Haaz Slieman, Richard Jenkins, Hiam Abbass, and Marian Seldes
‘Ancient Lights’ is an English property law giving house owners the right to receive natural light through a window – if that particular window has been receiving light uninterrupted for 20 years.
Once a window wins the right to ancient lights, adjoining land owners cannot obscure them by erecting a building, raising a wall, planting trees, etc.
In England, the rights to ancient lights are most usually acquired under the Prescription Act 1832.
In American common law the doctrine died out during the 19th century, and is generally no longer recognized in the United States.
Japanese law provides for a comparable concept known as nisshōken (literally “right to sunshine”).
In our modern times we can still find what one might consider a hybrid concept of the Ancient Lights rule.
For instance:
In 1984, voters in San Francisco passed Proposition K, which prevents construction of any building over 40 feet that casts a shadow on a public park, unless the Planning Commission decides the shadow is insignificant.
Massachusetts has similar laws against the casting of shadows on Boston Common, the Public Garden, and other important public open spaces.
Also:
In 2016, the Eneref Institute launched the Right To Daylight campaign to promote the idea that daylight is a natural right.
“So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense.
Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer.
Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over — a weary, battered old brontosaurus — and became extinct.”
– Malcolm Muggeridge (1903 – 1990)
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Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist and satirist. His father, H. T. Muggeridge, was a socialist politician and one of the early Labour Party Members of Parliament. Muggeridge was attracted to communism and went to live in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and the experience turned him into an anti-communist.
