Pretty tricky quiz!

Interactive Quiz: Think You Know Our Nation’s Budget Problems?

Recent polls suggest that Americans are woefully in the dark when it comes to balancing the federal budget. Test your budget IQ by taking the Center for American Progress’s quiz below.

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With a few exceptions (including my alma mater Burley) most of the bicycle industry has not been on the cutting edge of sustainability. I’m really happy to see one of the world leaders in both sales and innovation taking a strong stance.

But Trek, in conjunction with Materials Innovation Technology (MIT), has implemented a solution to recycle carbon fiber scrap from its US facilities. This will make the material less of an environmental burden, diverting a projected 54,000 lbs of material from landfill to re-purposed use each year.

This little review escaped our notice lat spring… Thanks Flicksided!

100 Words Or Less: Skatopia: 88 Acres Of Anarchy

Steve DiMatteo | May 12, 2010 | 0 comments

Skatopia: 88 Acres of Anarchy is a documentary that follows Brewce Martin, the man who has brought anarchy to a small Appalachian section of Ohio. He runs the aptly-named Skatopia, a haven for skateboarders, misfits, and all those who live a nomadic lifestyle. This self-sustaining community of people who never seem to stop getting drunk or beat the hell out of each other during a live punk song on a tightly-packed stage also manages to put together one of the best areas to skate in the entire country. Martin’s personal quirks and issues make this a perplexing, almost tragic, but ultimately engrossing look at a true subculture.

This short video was created by a first-time producer/shooter/editor who took one of RosenblumTV’s video journalism courses. It’s got story, pacing, music, humor and great cinematography. According to Rosenblum the student had “never touched a camera or an edit before” in her life. A little training, some lightweight equipment and some desire can create great outcomes.

This weekend watch MTV’s True Life to see how a newcomer handles Skatopia…. lets see how Reality TV meets reality! You weigh in… did they get it right or not?

Skatopia and ‘True Life’

RUTLAND — Skatopia is a destination with its share of myths, rumors and reality – all captured in an upcoming episode of MTV’s long-running, Emmy award-winning series “True Life.”

The episode is slated to air on April 9 on MTV and consists of footage shot at last year’s Bowl Bash – an annual weekend of music, skating and tired eyes watching the sun come up over an amphitheatre in Rutland Township.

Skatopia Mastermind Brewce Martin said he’d been in talks with a production company to shoot the episode in 2009 but due to an injury he sustained, the filming was pushed back to Bowl Bash 2010. The film crew was on location at Skatopia for around two weeks in June of last year, again, focusing on the annual bash.

Martin hasn’t seen the finished episode though he says he hopes it captures what he feels several people have missed when it comes to Skatopia by focusing on the sensationalist aspect of the place – a place captured in the documentary “Skatopia: 88 Acres of Anarchy” and within the pages of “Rolling Stone” magazine.

“It’s not just a place to party and 99 percent of the time out here it’s just normal life going on,” Martin said.

Poking fun at what some see as Skatopia stereotypes, Martin said his skating Mecca isn’t full of “poverty-ridden dirt bags” though he admits to attracting a diverse population when it comes to those who make the pilgrimage.

“This is the funny thing, there are all kinds of people here just like when you go to Wal-Mart…you don’t know who you’re going to see,” Martin said.

“True Life” is notorious and celebrated for showing viewers an intimate view of life, reality and the versatility (and often ingenuity) of its narrators. The series began running in 1998 and attempts, according to MTV, to provide a window into the struggles, hopes and dreams of young people – episodes are narrated by its characters and each episode documents the unusual (and often remarkable) circumstances of real individuals.

Skatopia will join a long list of episodes which have examined everything from soldiers returning from Iraq to young people living with tourettes or struggling with food addictions – the topics are endless. As for how Rutland Township’s Skatopia will translate with the MTV audience – if the episode is real, it’ll be classic “True Life.”

Wow, knowing this, I can finally buy that Caribbean Island I’ve been looking at…

iStockphoto/CT757fan/Salon

Apparently Americans want to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting because they think 5 percent of the federal budget goes to NPR and PBS. That was the median guess in a CNN poll released Friday. If that were true, Talking Points Memo noted, that would mean the CPB would receive $178 billion a year from the government. (And that’s not even counting what they get from Archer Daniels Midland and viewers like you.)

BBC, the largest broadcaster in the world, takes in $7.5 billion in income a year. If Americans were right, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would have a bigger budget than every military on Earth besides our own. NPR would beat China in an arms race.

What would the Corporation for Public Broadcasting even do with that kind of money, besides continue to have a liberal bias and support the establishment of sharia law? We have some guesses:

• “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” would be broadcast live from a moon base.
• PBS would require a donation of at least $100,000,000 before sending you a DVD box set of a Fleetwood Mac reunion show.
• $250,000,000 gets you a genuine Thai silk tote bag filled with precious stones. And one DVD documentary on the making of “The Red Green Show.”
• “Frontline” would always be in IMAX 3-D.
• Robert Siegel and Neil Conan voiced at all times by Kiefer Sutherland and Morgan Freeman.
• Childrens Television Workshop would purchase the entirety of Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in order to film Sesame Street live on location.
• Click and Clack would be androids.
• “Are You Being Served?” would be painstakingly digitally altered until funny.
• Terry Gross would conclude interviews by deciding if the subject lives or dies.
• Ken Burns documentaries would be produced with original footage obtained via time travel.
• Every home, office and classroom in the nation would have a radio that can be turned down, but never completely off.
• Juan Williams would be missing and presumed killed by an unmanned CPB drone.
• “And part three of our show: What do you do when your mega-yacht’s death ray disintegrates your mother-in-law? It’s David Sedaris on the best Thanksgiving ever.”
• Garrison Keillor could finally get that thing with his sinuses cleared up.

Can you say Dorky and Awesome in the same breath!

This reminds me vaguely of The Prisoner… only less linear (!?)

There’s nothing to say… just sit back and let your jaw drop… then hit replay.

This video is full-blown inspiration… and pretty fun.