A 6.2 earthquake hit central Italy last night.
Not sure if you're depressed? Check your Instagram.
Business owners have already started to take proactive action against the negative affects of ART.
A spontaneous block party was filmed for a music video for the musician Jandro on Sunday.
#LetEmployeesVent or #NoRespect
France exploited three women who just wanted to enjoy the beach for an afternoon.
A project called Holobiont Urbanism is tracking microbes with bees and mapping the results.
It’s that time of year again: Traffic! Heat! Obligatory family time! Oh, and the cost! You know what I’m talking about, the New Mexico State Fair.
The idea is great; a day with the family celebrating New Mexican culture. Once you act on it, though, you realize the grievous error you’ve inflicted on yourself and those you choose to go with.
The traffic that surrounds the area for blocks creates a vehicular circle of hell. You could use ABQ Ride, but this is Albuquerque! We drive everywhere, under all conditions. Unless you pay for parking (to add to the increasing debt you’ll owe to a fast cash loan service to afford this trip) you have to fight for a too-small parking spot that takes nearly 20 minutes to find after a 30 minute wait in traffic. I can’t imagine how the folks who live in the surrounding area deal with the animosity of these drivers.
After an hour or so once you’re on the Fair Grounds, you get a New Mexican sweat; the sweat that pours from every crevice on your body. Theoretically this cools the body, but personally, it just makes me damp and irritated. Add this to forced family time and you’ll see the result: red-faced parents, screaming kids, uninterested teens and the slowing elderly.
The Fair is also incredibly expensive for most families. The parking is $10 (and $20? Can you be more specific, New Mexico State Fair Facebook page?), entry is another $10 if you’re 12-64, $7 if you’re 6-11 or 65 and older, and free for kiddos 5 and under.
So already, for an average family of four, this is around $40 without preferred parking. Plus paying for food and tickets for rides, you're looking at at least just under $100 and that’s not even counting the total cost of gas, either.
In addition to all of this I hate long lines, line-cutters, the idea of the baby animals being required to sit in the same spot all day so screaming families can view them for two minutes (once I did see some llamas chasing a baby giraffe, or was that a dream?), the creepy carnies, creepy dudes in general, running into people I haven’t seen since high school, and the amount of smoke from the meat food places.
But I’m pretty excited for Balloon Fiesta.
A man pointed his finger at Santa Fe private school students and said “pew pew.” This didn’t go over well.
Albuquerque, as a whole, has been revealed to be a terrible driver. And Albuquerque, as a whole, gives a knowing laugh.
A Washington D.C. based consultant has some interesting ideas for making our Downtown more walkable.
A UNM professor is looking into why APD’s lapel cameras are always switching off at key moments, which is really weird, and must be because of, I dunno, a chip or something? Or a wire? Yeah, that's it. Probably a wire.
Air France has suspended flights because of… bum bum bum… EBOLA. Let's all freak out.
And a 9-year-old girl fatally shot her instructor with an automatic Uzi during a practice session gone wrong.
Soccer fever may lead to other illnesses.
A German vagina sculpture trapped an ugly American.
The new X-ray gun can see what you’re hiding.
Introducing the $250 hangover cure.
Vodka erases bad smells as well as bad memories.
Stress causes heart attacks by over-producing white blood cells.
Times Square weirdos face a costume crackdown.
Are the French rude? Mais non!
There was a fatal hit-and-run at Carlisle and Indian School.
There was a fatal crash on 2nd Street.
What’s happening in Albuquerque today?
Mushy sparks flew when I saw you.
Happy birthday, Bryan Brown.
Who would have thought the cotton-ball diet is dangerous? Who would have thought of a cotton-ball diet?
What about the Flamin Hot Cheetos diet?
What about the rat cheese diet?
What about the turkey egg diet?
Liquidmetal is made from people.
Is it cool to wear clothes with logos on them? Undoubtedly.
I challenge you to chessboxing.
I challenge you to a twerk-off.
Sarah Silverman talks about jokes.
Blue Velvet’s 22 deleted scenes clock in at about 52 minutes.
When Albuquerque has weather, the weather is the news.
When weather is the news, traffic is the news.
When traffic is the news, power outages are the news.
Happy birthday Rodney Dangerfield. I respect you, sir.
Mitt Romney won Florida's Republican primary last night. Newt Gingrich isn't giving up (yet).
Chicago's draconian eavesdropping law poses problems for protestors and journalists at the upcoming G-8 summit.
Traffic crackdown in Rio Rancho.
New Mexico has a new prison gang with a lame name.
In response to an invasive abortion law, a Virginia state senator proposed an amendment requiring men seeking erectile dysfunction drugs to receive a rectal exam and stress tests.
Meet the monkey refugees of Louisiana.
Louis CK sold a sitcom to CBS.
Netflix won't be renting games after all.
DC Comics unveils its long-rumored line of Watchmen prequel comics. I wonder what Watchman co-creator Alan Moore thinks about it? "As far as I know … there weren't that many prequels or sequels to Moby Dick."
What does an artist with Alzheimer's paint?
Stephen Colbert's fake Super PAC raised more money than Sarah Palin's Super PAC.
Everything is cool guys, that red river in Texas was just polluted with pig blood.
Where did the Frito pie really come from?
Every overhead hand shot from Wes Anderson films.
Check out this recently discovered test footage from a proposed 1936 John Carter of Mars animated movie.
When I'm President this fake Breaking Bad RPG will be real.
Of these three trailers for returning HBO shows, I am excited about them in this order: Game of Thrones, Eastbound And Down and True Blood.
Completely mesmerized by this video.
The Mayor’s Office released yesterday afternoon a list of legislative priorities for 2012. Albuquerque’s asking for:
• A law that would allow cities and counties to ban fireworks sales
• A law that criminalizes organized retail theft where stolen merchandise is resold on the black market
• $50 million for the I-25/Paseo interchange
• $500,000 to clean up trash along I-40 and I-25
• Adding a Silver Alert for Albuquerque to the state’s Amber Alert system. This could help the families of seniors who struggle with dementia or Alzheimer’s find their loved ones if they go missing.
We can't always blame it on the booze. Sometimes bad drivers are just bad drivers, particularly on Paseo del Norte. A report by UNM’s Division of Government Research breaks down the 50 worst intersections in the state based on data from 2007 through 2009. Paseo del Norte at Coors as well as at Jefferson tie for the No. 1 spots with 391 crashes apiece. Coors and Paseo is slightly more dangerous, as 118 of those crashes (or 30 percent) were fatal. (Paseo and Jefferson comes in at 110 fatalities, or 28 percent.) More intersections to steer clear of: bit.ly/abqcarcrashes. (EK)
A contract with Arizona-based Redflex expired in Oct. 2010, and we thought they were gone. No such luck. A month later Mayor Richard Berry reinstated red-light cameras at 14 intersections throughout the city. Not only do the cameras catch you red-handed, estimates say that an additional $370,000 was needed in tax money to keep the program in place. On average, 73 citations are issued per month and make up one-third of the city’s moving violation tickets. Data from 2010 put the intersection at Central and Coors as the clear frontrunner, with 3,036 citations issued between January and August. Add that to 4,385 citations at the same intersection in 2009. Fines are $75 and can be paid by mail or online. The question of whether to keep the system in place goes to Albuquerque voters on Oct. 4. For more on these robocop cameras: 1.usa.gov/abqredlightcameras. (EK)
Yesterday's tornado in Albuquerque was actually a landspout.
Virginia Tech says there's a gunman on campus. In 2007, a shooter killed 33 people at the school.
The mayor of Sunland Park near Las Cruces says he was drunk when he signed those nine contracts.
Construction near University and Coal is going to get worse.
The ACLU wants to make sure we're not being tracked by the police through our cell phones.
NRA files lawsuit to stop a rule that requires gun shops to report the purchase of more than one semi-automatic. The rule would be lifted in border states, such as New Mexico.
First chile harvest is in from Hatch.
The world's first text messages from 1890.
Fox News hosts don't criticize Sarah Palin because she's their coworker.
Adult men who like My Little Pony are called bronies.
The golden oldies of a gen-Xer.
Maybe our universe is in a bubble of space and time, and other universes are, too.
Writer finds out how easy it is to buy a gun from a stranger in Portland.
The ultimate food taboo.
Charlene Baldwin says the speed humps in her neighborhood could have caused her a major medical problem in the fall.
Things just went from bad to worse for small business owners in the area of the city's $26.5 million Lead and Coal renovation. On Monday, Feb. 21, the city blocked off Yale between Lead and Avenida César Chávez to rehab a storm drain system.
