[VIDEO] This new "railcam" began streaming on September 18, 2019 so basically just yesterday. Thankfully this is sponsored and thus for the forseeable future this site will continue to be streamed onto YouTube hopefully.
What's exciting for me about this site is that you will see Amtrak trains here. Of course on most railcams operated by Virtual Railfan you will see a number of trains passing along which will include commuter, passenger, and freight trains.
So going through the Santa Fe Junction located in an area of Kansas City, Missouri (KCMO) known as West Bottom. If you click the link in the brackets to view the video you will see the number of rail lines that pass through at any given time. Kansas City Union Station which is a stop for Amtrak's Southwest Chief (with a decent layover according to the schedule) is said to be directly east of this junction. It's expected to see the Chief coming to and from Chicago and the Missouri River Runner between KCMO & St. Louis, Missouri passing through.
If this railcam has staying power it's probably very likely to be included on my Railcam page although what's shown in the vid itself isn't a regular station stop. We're just seeing all trains pass through.
[VIDEO] I've got a bit of catching up to do on these protests in Hong Kong. HK is essentially an auntomous area of China which was up until 1997 a dependency of the United Kingdom. It's known as a very capitalistic society which probably could do very well in a China that has increasingly accepted capitalism except it remains a single party state ruled by the Communist Party of China.
So basically these protests (which have lasted three months) began when China considered an extradition bill which sparked these protests. Now the protests are over whether or not Hong Kong should be able to elect their own leaders.
Hong Kong is so autonomous they utilize their natural right of free speech by booing the Chinese national anthem. What's emphasized in this video is that in the rest of the People's Republic of China booing the nat'l anthem is illegal. I can only imagine what happens if you do that in Shanghai or Beijing.
Either way what do you think about what's going on in Hong Kong right now? Do you support what the protests are attempting to achieve over there? Do you think it's good that the America response could basically support the HK protestors?
I have a post up at The Sixth Ward about 9/11 and another one will be up at exactly 2:30 over at the Shedd School blog (which I've been putting a lot of work into lately).
I know that History had a program about Air Force One on that day though I don't know when it aired or if it will air today. However as I've done for years I will avoid any programming that involves in footage from that day. There are only so many times I want to see jets crash into skyscrapers or skyscrapers collapse due to fire.
[VIDEO] I've slipped on my consumption of Mark Dice vids. He talks about the publicity surrounding Dave Chappelle's latest stand-up comedy special. He contrasts Chappelle's comedy with what's going on in comedy today. Too many have gone political and comedians as artists have to toe the line between what's politically correct.
I'm glad I'm not a comedian now.
BTW, this will always be my favorite recent piece with Dave Chappelle. It just shows what he's up against now... [VIDEO]
[VIDEO] I don't yet know how I feel about this coming "call-up" as a staple of programming on the WWE Network will now have greater exposure on USA. I'm happy for the many talented NXT superstars to have a larger audience to show off their talents.
And the design with this is to better compete with an emerging rival promotion known as All Elite Wrestling. From what I have seen AEW is deep with talent from the indie scene of pro-wrestling. It will be exciting to see what AEW's talen will do against the largesse of the WWE which is the premiere promotion in the world of pro-wrestling....err sports entertainment.
NXT is WWE's developmental brand and has over the years signed talent from the indies. I get the idea that as many of these performers learn the WWE style what got them there is the craft they developed on the independent scene. What has always been true is you don't become a WWE superstar without experience elsewhere.
So all the same the NXT TV program will be live on USA and will be shown the same night as AEW's TV program which will air on TNT in October. This will be the closest to the Monday night wars as we will get for now. Perhaps NXT with some of their indie talent will compete with the indie talent of AEW. For this I'm very much looking forward to this move.
Let's just hope that Vince McMahon doesn't get too involved with the NXT brand and turn it into something longtime fans won't recognize. It doesn't need to become a new version of Raw or SmackDown or better yet the original third brand of WWE the former ECW....
Finally another note AEW has another PPV coming up this weekend called All In which will take place at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, Illinois (which is not exactly Chicago, but certainly surburban Chicago). On the same day NXT's UK brand will have their own TakeOver event in Cardiff, Wales. It's interesting to see two competing events although they won't be airing at the same time, I would be curious who gets the most eyes.
I'm guessing it won't be NXT UK TakeOver on the other hand it's curious that this was scheduled the same day as All In. It will be most interesting indeed.
Greyhound travel has changed from back in the day back when I was taking the bus to Atlanta, Georgia for school. It was likely easier to just take a ticket and use it to board a bus anytime as long as I got a ticket, especially if it was good for a whole year. Just last month on the way to Jacksonville, Florida I ran into a snag.
Well in the ensuing decade since I graduated, Greyhound had evolved to utilizing e-tickets. Last month I had bought tickets for my mother and I from Jacksonville to Atlanta while on the train on the way down to Jacksonville. They would be e-tickets, however, I made one error I had bought tickets for the wrong day which wasn't the day we'd arrive in Jacksonville. By the time we would arrive in Jacksonville our tickets would already have expired...
I needed to change the date we were leaving by bus from Jacksonville. The ticket agent at first said because our ticket had expired there wasn't much she could do unless she talked to a manager. Thankfully the manager gave her the go ahead to change our tickets. My tickets would have to be re-printed with our new departure date and thus we could leave on a bus later that afternoon.
What this means is that once we arrived in Jacksonville, FL in the morning around 9 AM from the Amtrak Station we'd have a long layover before our bus would depart by 4 PM. I walked around the area near the Greyhound terminal and got some footage in the general area. Some of which I have since posted to YouTube.
We boarded our bus after 4 PM and then were on our way to our next destination to change buses in Savannah, Georgia and finally to our final destination and the end of our traveling in Atlanta, Georgia.
The new Morehouse College Student Success Program will solicit and accept donations made specifically to reduce or eliminate students' debt load. Administrators at the historically black institution say they hope the program "becomes a new model for HBCUs and other liberal arts institutions seeking strategies to offset the stress of student debt on alumni and their families," according to a statement released by the college. A study of student loans among HBCU students found that they are more likely to seek loans from more costly sources and have more difficulty repaying them.
Morehouse's Office of Institutional Advancement is in talks with philanthropists, corporate partners and other supporters who have expressed interest in donating to the new program. College officials did not say whether the new initiative was related to the widely covered announcement in May by a billionaire businessman, Robert Smith, that he would pay off an estimated $40 million in college loans owed by students in Morehouse's graduating class of 2019. (He also gave Morehouse $1.5 million in January to fund an endowed scholarship program.) A spokeswoman for the college said details about the total debt of that year's class, and a formal process for paying off the various types of loans the students hold, are still being finalized.
I just got to do some more digging on this. From Black Enterprise:
In light of America’s massive student loan debt crisis, which has ballooned to a whopping $1.5 trillion, Morehouse College announced a new program designed to help relieve the burden of debt for its graduates.
According to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), 80% of HBCU students use federal loans to fund their education, compared to 55% of their peers at other private and state institutions. HBCU graduates also borrow nearly twice as much than non-HBCU students, while 1 in 4 HBCU students borrow at least $40,000 to attend college. At Morehouse, the average graduate owes between $35,000 and $40,000 in student loans.
It's great to see some attention given to this subject. What can any higher education institution do to lower the student debt burden of students? And how do we stabilize the cost of higher ed?
[VIDEO] On July 17, 2019 I rode Amtrak's Silver Star through Ashland, Virginia which surprisingly is one of the sites of many Virtual Railfan webcams around the country. I expect this won't be the last time this happens. It was cook to see some of the landmarks especially the storefronts that I've only seen only if I tune into one of these cams.
I tried to see if I can find my train on the site, but I had failed to find the time frame where the train passed through. Bummer, but as I stated this probably won't be the last time. Who knows I might be going to the west coast again in the future. You can check out the three cams that I do show on this blog of three stops on the way...
Here's the live webcam from Ashland, VA. On VR's YouTube channel they do show some interesting things such as bears or even cars running onto the tracks for example. Of course you will see special trains or what not also.
[VIDEO] This clip starts off with talking about how WWE's Vince McMahon (he runs and owns the company if you want to know) handles people who sneezes around him and how McMahon himself sneezes. I've heard over the years he frowns on sneezing around him.
This clips ends after about 7 minutes talking about who might run WWE when McMahon either retires or passes. The answer from Prichard who currently works for WWE (and he's been a longtime employee ever though he's had years where he was a part from the company) has a more interesting answer. It's not as simple as Triple H will run it or Shane McMahon will run it. It's possible the WWE will remain in that family however as Triple H married into that family and Shane McMahon is his brother-in-law.
[VIDEO] I've been trying to just post videos to my YouTube channel more lately. When I do post it's often video shot from my iPhone.
So far I've been posting video from my latest vacation. So I took a train to DC changed trains there to take a train to Jacksonville, Florida (there is a pro-wrestling reference here as the owners of the upstart company All Elite Wrestling are based in Jacksonville as they own the local NFL club there). Then took a bus from Jacksonville, FL to Savannah, Georgia to take another bus to Atlanta, Georgia where my family had a family reunion.
Then we left Atlanta by train from a picnic to return to DC so that we can take the Amtrak Train back to Chicago. So basically the trains we took to get to and from Chicago to our various points we started out trip on the Capitol Limited and then transferred to the Silver Star we took Greyhound to our next destination and then later took the Crescent back to DC and finished our riding with a ride on the Capitol Limited back to Chicago. Whew!
So anway, I wanted to share this vid of my day at DC's Union Station where I saw the hustle and bustle during the week. It's super raw footage and this I didn't edit much, but it's an excuse to utilize my YouTube channel. It's time to come up with a real plan.
I probably should've started this process earlier, but after getting some notice with blogging this is probably the next step beyond that. As I said come up with a real plan to utilize YouTube and create some content people could enjoy.
