Filed under: Entertainment, Fun n Games, Sports | Tags: 41 Stories Tall, Sheer Terror!
This is the Insano (well named) Water Slide in Brazil’s'Beach Park. It is 41 meters high — the height of a 14 story building. You go down at a 105 kilometer/hour speed. Looks popular! It is the world’s tallest water slide. You may click to enlarge and see the scary descent even bigger. The landing is not shown.
(h/t: Vanderleun)
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Fun n Games, Law, Liberalism, Politics, Progressivism, Statism | Tags: Big Government Failure, Government Red Tape, Regulation
The heavy hand of Big Government has descended upon swimming pools. The Justice Department has deemed to regulate all pools in the mindless effort to be “fair” — this time to the disabled, to make sure they have access, even to those things to which they have no wish to have access. The DOJ says this will cost $ 1 billion over each of the next 15 years. Here’s Heritage’s brief description.
The new rules require (for the first time) that swimming pools, wading pools, and spas—some 300,000 of them—be made “accessible” for the disabled. But the folks who actually own the pools have no say in how to comply. On the contrary, the government dictates every detail (e.g., “A transfer space of 60 inches minimum by 60 inches minimum with a slope not steeper than 1:48 shall be provided at the base of the transfer platform surface and shall be centered along a 24 inch minimum side of the transfer platform.”)
These regulations were published on September 15, 2010, after a rulemaking that stretched six years. Shortly thereafter, manufacturers began furious production of the various components needed to retrofit pools. Hotels and the like were racing to meet the compliance deadline despite lacking clarity on key elements of the regulation.
The regulators clearly have no comprehension of the nature of swimming pools. Your typical municipal pool serves many purposes. Swim lessons for kids, and for all ages. Competition swimming for swim teams, competition diving. Lap swimming for swimmers who want exercise. Water exercise classes. Red Cross safety swimming lessons from beginner through life saving. Water ballet. All that before you get down to ordinary swimming which involves exercise, play, cooling off, teaching babies to swim.
The city where I live in the Pacific Northwest has a population of just over 122,000, lots of parks, nestled between two lakes. It has one indoor city swimming pool that serves multiple populations, including all of the above. It is usually crowded, busy, and heavily chlorinated. The times that you can use it depend on your particular need.
A number of years ago, a group of citizens who had disabled members requested facilities for the disabled. The building housing the pool was enlarged to accommodate another pool, and a special pool was built with gentle ramps. The pool is shallow, probably 4 feet in the deep part, with good hand rails. The water is kept at a warmer temperature than the active pool. Cost was high with the new building. redesigned facilities and redesigned parking lot.
The city also has a YMCA, a number of private swim clubs, and in recent years a proliferation of health clubs, many of which have pools for members. There is some pressure on the city to build another city pool, as the existing one is really too busy.
Even the pool specially built for the disabled serves many purposes: there’s a baby swim class for mothers and babies, and a water movement class, aside from whatever classes they have for the disabled. It is a nice pool, and well designed for its uses. The rules would require the city to retrofit the other pool, unused by the disabled.
The disabled can move more easily in warm water, and can move in ways that they cannot outside the pool. Regular use is therapeutic. What they do not need is to be in a crowded swimming pool with all sorts of swimmers and splashers. My grandmother was badly crippled with arthritis, but could swim (slowly with a gentle side stroke of sorts) in warm water and it was very beneficial.
Some 120 regulations taking effect in the past year require enhanced accommodations for disabled individuals at 65 different types of public and private facilities—encompassing 7 million privately owned sites and 80,000 units of state and local government—including stadiums; convention centers; auditoriums; airport terminals; public parking facilities; theaters and concert halls; jails; prisons; bowling alleys; fishing piers; amusement parks; hotels, motels, and spas; restaurants; stores; health care clinics; and office buildings (to name a few).
Pools were required to be in compliance by March 12, 2012. But the DOJ came up with another rule about how lifts were to be attached to pool decks that meant that many pools that had retrofitted had to do it over, so they got a 60 day extension.
There are hot spring pools throughout the Rocky Mountain West that are were open to the public. Retrofitting as the DOJ demands is probably more than they can afford.There are several books available listing hot springs in the West with pictures and facilities described. The vast majority will probably have to shut down. The vast majority have probably never had a disabled customer — because they are not “disabled accessible” or because there is no interest? I don’t know the answer to that.
I do know that the kind of facilities that truly serve the needs of a disabled person require more than a lift. They require a little intelligence from the rulemakers. and some understanding of the nature of swimming pools. One rule for all may be “fair” from the view of the rulemakers, and devastating to the people.
Like this:
Filed under: Fun n Games, Science/Technology | Tags: Building Stuff With Lego, lego robot, science models
(click to enlarge)
Those wonderful little blocks do more and more. Max Shepherd, a biomedical engineering major built a robotic Lego arm that mimics a human arm and hand’s range of motion. He has been building Lego models since he was 10 years old. His Lego limb can flex and spread its fingers, curl its thumb, make a fist, rotate its wrist, and if desired— flip people off.
This article from Wired has sixteen fascinating science models; things undreamed of when you were ten years old. So if your kid gets all wrapped-up in making models from his Lego blocks, it may be more than just a game — it may be a fabulous future career.
Just don’t leave them on the floor. It really hurts when you step on a block in your bare feet.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Entertainment, Fun n Games | Tags: Look but Do Not Touch, New Rules For The Beach, No Playing
Never fear, parents who fear for the safety of your children, The federal government, as represented by the fearless EPA is on the job. They are working on new regulations about digging in the sand, building sandcastles, or burying body parts.
People usually take sunscreen when they go the beach, they stay away from big waves if they are not strong swimmers, but beach sand could contain more harmful bacteria than the beach water. EPA researchers and their counterparts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and John Hopkins University found a positive relationship between sand exposure and gastrointestinal illnesses as a function of fecal microbial pollution in beach sand.
They collected 144 samples of wet sand from Fairhope Municipal Park Beach in Fairhope, Alabama and Goddard Memorial State Park Beach in Warwick RI. They asked 4,999 people who visited these beaches about their contact with wet sand. Both beaches are located less than 2 miles from an outflow from a publicly owned waste treatment-works outfall. Two weeks later they called participants and asked about any diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, and/or stomach ache that members of the household might have experienced. They also asked about any other activities since the initial interview, even including raw or undercooked foods. No sandcastles.
Los Angeles County has banned Frisbees, footballs, and any other object to cast, toss, throw, kick, or roll, except a beach ball or volleyball — upon or over any beach between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to raise fines to up to $1,000 for anyone who throws a football or a Frisbee on any beach in Los Angeles County.
In passing the 37-page [!!!] ordinance on Tuesday, officials sought to outline responsibilities for law enforcement and other public agencies while also providing clarification on beach-goer activities that could potentially disrupt or even injure the public.
Also forbidden is the ability of little kids to dig any hole deeper than 18 inches in the sand, so leave those little shovels and buckets at home. But now that beach volleyball is an Olympic sport, there are some limits.
There was some controversy here in Seattle about banning bonfires on the beaches. Seattle Parks and Recreation received this memo from staff:
The overall policy question for the Board is whether it is good policy for Seattle Parks to continue public beach fires when the carbon … emissions produced by thousands of beach fires per year contributes to global warming.
As far as I know, that one succumbed to public laughter; but you never know, there are a lot of loons here.
Filed under: Architecture, Freedom, Fun n Games, Law, Sports | Tags: American Playgrounds, Safety or Challenge?, The Challenge of Tort Law.
There was an article in the New York Times a week ago about playgrounds, titled “Can a Playground Be Too Safe?” by John Tierney. Do follow the link, for there is a lovely picture of a real jungle gym. I searched Google images for a good picture of a jungle gym, and jungle gyms have not only disappeared from the nation’s playgrounds, but there aren’t apparently any old pictures of them.
The playground in one of my neighborhood’s parks has become so safe that it appeals only to two and three-year-olds. I don’t know whether at some point my city was sued successfully, or whether the city attorneys just warned of perilous possibilities. Some maker of playground equipment that runs to little houses with holes in the wall for kids to climb through apparently came to the city with a big dog and pony show, convincing city officials that kids would love to play make-believe in little houses.
Well, the little ones are too little for make-believe, and the bigger ones quickly get bored after climbing on the roofs of the little houses. Watching kids there, you can sense their boredom and frustration.
Boise, Idaho has a hot spring somewhere under the city. They once had a splendid set of two near-Olympic size pools adjacent to each other. The water was warm and the pools were popular. I suppose it was liability insurance that made the city fill them in and plow them under. Fullerton, California once had a privately owned set of pools, wading, soaking and swimming, that were lovely and popular, but the land probably became too valuable and the liability insurance too costly. All gone.
When my daughter was young, there were stables where little girls could take riding lessons and love horses devotedly. All gone. Mr. Tierney’s article quotes a professor of psychology from a university in Norway:
“Children need to encounter risks and overcome fears on the playground,” said Ellen Sandseter, a professor of psychology at Queen Maud University in Norway. “I think monkey bars and tall slides are great. As playgrounds become more and more boring, these are some of the few features that still can give children thrilling experiences with heights and high speed.”
After observing children on playgrounds in Norway, England and Australia, Dr. Sandseter identified six categories of risky play: exploring heights, experiencing high speed, handling dangerous tools, being near dangerous elements (like water or fire), rough-and-tumble play (like wrestling), and wandering alone away from adult supervision. The most common is climbing heights.
“Climbing equipment needs to be high enough, or else it will be too boring in the long run,” Dr. Sandseter said. “Children approach thrills and risks in a progressive manner, and very few children would try to climb to the highest point for the first time they climb. The best thing is to let children encounter these challenges from an early age, and they will then progressively learn to master them through their play over the years.”
Most adults have lost the perspective of childhood. They can’t remember the thrills and the challenges unless they were one of the many kids who tried to jump off the roof with an umbrella or by flapping their arms. Society has become much scarier. Backyards are disappearing along with vacant lots. There were lots of vacant lots in my neighborhood when my kids were growing up and neighborhood kids had unauthorized treehouses on most of them.
Playgrounds are designed so that toddlers won’t hurt themselves, thus depriving older children of healthy exercise. What happens in playgrounds is determined by tort lawyers. Asphalt surfaces are gone, replaced by bark and rubber surface. Some kids may hurt themselves, they may fall, they may break a bone. We have too many lawyers. Some people are too ready to sue. Loser pays would help. Surely we can find ways to make playgrounds that offer real challenges while removing the real dangers.
Perhaps childhood obesity is not due to kids eating too many happy meals. “Let’s Move” is good advice, but kids need better playgrounds on which to get moving. Somebody tell Mrs. Obama.
Filed under: Freedom, Fun n Games, Heartwarming, Music, Pop Culture | Tags: Flash Mob, Fouth of July, Stars and Stripes Forever
The whole “flash-mob” phenom has begun to wear on this particular pachyderm to the point of irritation. Yes, I get it, you can get a group to congregate in public, occasionally dressed as zombies, and recreate, en masse, the dance steps from piped-in 1980′s music videos or lip-sync to last month’s episode of “Glee”.
Bully for you! Boring for me.
It was amusing the first hundred or so times, but the novelty has long since worn off. Especially painful to watch are those “spontaneous” mobs where participants outnumber onlookers by a factor of 10-1 or more. How is it a flash mob, when everyone there is in it?
But I digress.
There are still, on occasion, instances where one of these groups does something worthwhile — surprises a crowd with real talent or something truly novel.
Such an event occurred just days ago in old Cape Cod:
At 5pm on July 1st, 2011 in Orleans, Cape Cod, MA, shoppers stocking up for the 4th of July got a surprise shot of patriotism to start their weekend!
This flash mob was organized by Spirit of America Band to wish everyone a happy 4th of July!
A charming show of public patriotism. Which is, alas, something we don’t see that much of anymore. Enjoy!
Filed under: Fun n Games, Pop Culture, YouTube | Tags: Chihuahua, Dancing, Ozomatli
‘Cus it makes me happy.
I think, but am not sure, the song is by Ozomatli — who rock. That is all.
Corrections: The video came to me via @Toraradical on Twitter, who has a great blog of his own. And the song is by Juanlu Montoya. Thanks to SooperMexican, blogger AND illustrator, for that.
Filed under: Cool Site of the Day, Freedom, Fun n Games | Tags: A Treehouse to Die For, Every Kid's Dream, Ontario Canada
This treehouse was built in Ontario, Canada, featuring little over seven-hundred square feet of platform spread over eight levels. There are two cabins, a 50-foot rope bridge, a 120-foot zip-line, an elevator, a full bar and a barbecue. It was built over several summers, totalling about a month. The song in the video is the Flower Duet.
I once had a treehouse when I was small. Well, more of a tree platform, about four feet square. It sat about seven feet up in a cottonwood by the river. Our trees were largely either Ponderosa pines or Douglas fir, and that cottonwood was the only non-evergreen of any size. I found it very scary because it was so high. Wimp, yes, but I was little, probably 6 or 7.
(Borrowed shamelessly from The Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys)
Filed under: Fun n Games, Pop Culture, Sports | Tags: Easter, Easter Bunny, Holidays, Rabbit Show Jumping
Filed under: Architecture, Art, Entertainment, Fun n Games | Tags: Sculpture, Toothpicks, Toys
Since I was small, I’ve always had a deep love of marble machines and things of this sort. There was one on the boardwalk in , I believe, Seaside, Oregon. Another at our local Arts & Crafts fair. Could sit and watch them for hours on end. I want this in my living room!
Scott Weaver’s amazing piece, made with over 100,000 toothpicks over the course of 35 years, is a depiction of San Francisco, with multiple ball runs that allow you to go on “tours” of different parts of the city.
(h/t TBSBFB)
Filed under: Fun n Games, Pop Culture, Sports | Tags: Human Castles, Ouch!, Tarragona Spain
They do lots of interesting things in Spain besides dancing the flamenco, fighting bulls and building wind farms and solar arrays that are a financial and environmental disaster. They build human castles just for fun in Tarragona, Spain, where they do this every two years. (corrected to get the city right)
