Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Memories Of Past Roosevelt Island Bridge Sailboat Collisions - WATCH OUT

Tom Sakmar provided this eyewitness report last Friday of:

A large bi-hull sailboat was de-masted today (September 26, 2014) at about 2:47 p.m. when it hit the Roosevelt Island Bridge. The boat was in the East Channel of the East River heading South propelled by a rapid tidal current...

... The metal mast and all the rigging and struts came came crashing down to the deck within seconds as the two adults on the deck, a man and woman, scrambled to stay clear. Neither of them appeared to be injured,...

Image From William S
which triggered these memories of similar sailing accidents from Roosevelt Island residents.

Christopher Scott Knell remembers a time long ago:
Back in the "early days" (daze?) of Roosevelt Island when the park was brand new (What is now called Cappobianco Park), there was always a huge amount of kids and parents playing with all the new toys....Full Court Basketball games, The Mens RI League Softball, Hippies with Frisbees, New Paddleball courts..

And we all begin to notice a rather large sailboat heading North in the East Channel being carried quite swiftly by the afternoon tidal flow.

Suddenly, we all hear the sounds of a big motor racing it's engines and begin to realize that the huge 30 to 40 foot sailboat is trying it's best to avoid hitting the bridge with it's very tall mast.

They didn't make it.

With what sounded like a huge crack of Lightning, the 40 foot mast came crashing down onto the boat as it's passengers dove into the river.

Collectively, all 200 people in the park said "OH SHIT!!!" all at once and in perfect unison. I think we were all just as surprised at our perfectly shouted and echoing expletive as we were at the boat's demise.
and Al Short has a more recent memory:
I live atop Manhattan Park looking south. One 4th of July, back when the fireworks were down off 34th St, some guests and I were looking down on the 4 hr traffic jam to get out of the Motorgate and also the big flotilla of pleasure boats coming up East Channel afterwards. One sailboat clipped the bridge with its mast. It did not break but it sent the boat into an almost surrealistically slow set of 360's. The boat almost hit the rocks behind the Motorgate but recovered in time.
If I had a boat



I'd make sure not to hit the Roosevelt Island Bridge.

13 comments :

Christopher Scott Knell said...

Did I forget to mention I was one of the Hippies playing frisbee?

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OldRossie said...

This is amazing... Suggesting you're wrong that all of the top 1% earners hate socialism, does NOT suggest they are are in favor of socialism!!! Can you understand that or do things have to be all or nothing in your mind?

CheshireKitty said...

Here you are making no sense. The rich, or the 1%, have the most to lose from a 90% tax bracket - which is a way to redistribute wealth, and equalize income inequality. It is very likely that those with wealth would oppose a 90% tax bracket. I think it is a question that is easily answered, even if these same people pride themselves on philanthropic giving, they would still oppose the 90% tax bracket. As generous as they may be with regard to philanthropy, do you really see any of them lobbying for the return of the tax brackets of the 50s?


As far as all or nothing, certain questions can be answered in yes or no terms, such as questions regarding taxation.


Many elections are decided on candidates' stance on taxation - lowering or raising taxes. Tax cuts are popular. To advocate a huge tax hike on the wealthy may be a popular move as far as the majority of the population, which is not wealthy, is concerned, but then the candidate will be depicted in negative terms by the media, which is largely owned by conglomerates controlled by the wealthy/1%, which does not see its interests served by an advocate for the less-wealthy masses. The candidate might also be starved of donations, and then might not be in a position to pursue a competitive campaign.


A major tax hike, or re-calibration of the brackets, probably would require a charismatic politician to orchestrate an effort in Congress - no small task as every representative would then face opposition based on their vote to change the tax brackets so radically.

OldRossie said...

You're not following. Try reading this slowly. Not. All. People. Have. The. Political. Opinions. You. Assign. Them. Purely. Based. On. Their. Income. There. Are. Rich. People. Who. Would. Welcome. Tax. Hikes. And. Poor. People. Who. Would. Discourage. Them. The. World. Is. Not. Black. And. White.

YetAnotherRIer said...

Oh, no! Did you say "black and white?" Cue Kitty to supply some racial aspect into this "discussion."

CheshireKitty said...

LOL. In fact, the world is not B&W! The largest racial bloc is, if I'm not mistaken, Asian! And the #2 economy - probably soon to overtake ours - is (Communist) China's! Welcome to the real world, Yet!

CheshireKitty said...

If. That. Were. True. You. Would. Not. Have. Bottom-Feeding. Servants. Of. The. Rich. AKA. The. GOP. Blocking. Every. Single. Progressive. Initiative. Of. Pres. Obama.

OldRossie said...

10 points to Yet for the prediction. -10 from CK for missing yet's point.

CheshireKitty said...

Oh, I would say they hate much, much more than that, which is why it's so important to call them out at every opportunity.


They hate labor unions, they hate women's rights, they hate gun control, they probably hate peace since it's bad for business, and so forth and so on.


If you think of any good we have in this country, you can be sure these guys hate it or hate some aspect of it. The creeping privatization of the water supply, maybe not so much here (yet) but happening in Europe. You don't want your water contaminated with fracking chemicals - well these guys don't care if it is. You want affordable housing, these guys hate affordable housing. You want a living wage, these guys hate the concept of a minimum wage. You want to make enough money to live a decent life; nope, these guys would rather dismantle the factory and ship it to Asia where they can pay a fraction of the money they pay workers in the US, they would rather strip the US of manufacturing than pay US workers a decent wage (which is why you see all the de-industrialized areas of the US).


This is why you see progressive initiatives stymied in Congress time and time again. The anti-progressive agenda of the conservatives, who serve the 1%, is breath-taking.

CheshireKitty said...

I got Yet's point, Rossie, but of course chose to ignore it.. Anyway, black & white isn't exactly the point of our discussion - money is. We're discussing the attitudes of the rich, and what they can do to ensure that they pay low if not zero taxes, and why that is not a good thing, since it contributes to income inequality (although it's not the only reason there is income inequality, a 90% tax bracket would go a long way to reducing income inequality).


We somehow drifted into a discussion of why many functions or benefits of gov seem to be socialistic, and why they were opposed from their inception by the 1%. You can say it's OK for masses of people to live from paycheck to paycheck and to have to have multiple jobs to get by, I disagree, I think this would not be necessary if the owner took less profit/income and paid the workers more. You and I disagree - there's nothing wrong with that. At least that much we can agree on.

Frank Farance said...

OldRossie, you've hit upon CheshireKitty's ongoing flaw in logic, might give insight on why she has difficulty with arguments/thinking.

Essentially, her illogic repeats as follows: someone says P => Q, so she will go disprove not(P) => not(Q) and claim victory. Of course, the two aren't equivalent. The contrapositive of "P => Q" is "not(P) => not(Q)", e.g., "if X is a Bat, then X is a Mammal" has its contrapositive "if X is not a Mammal, then X is not a Bat".

However, CK believes the inverse (not(P) => not(Q)) is equivalent, which is not true, e..g, "if X is not a Bat, then X is not a Mammal", is not true (a Dog is not a Bat, but IS a Mammal).

So that's how you get CK's illogic of OldRossie's claim that "%1ers hate socialism" is wrong, is translated into "%1ers favor socialism" in your argument with her.

Now (from a computing perspective) if you ran a reasoning/inference engine for a long while with the same kind of inputs the rest of us see, but the engine suffered the illogic above ... you might end up with the kinds of false/erroneous inferences/conclusions that CK has expressed in her posts.

For example, in the faulty Motorgate cameras (which are still faulty), I've complained that the cameras are pointing AWAY from Objects Of Interest (e.g., customers' cars). However, CK says that I can't know what the camera sees unless I go into the PSD offices and see what is on the monitors there. The same kind of faulty twist in her illogic: her claim "you can't know what is actually being seen in the direction of the camera pointed (without going to PSD's offices)" she believes (illogically) rebuts my point "you know with certainty that the camera is NOT seeing what the camera is pointed AWAY from".

CheshireKitty said...

Rossie: I'm not saying that. I'm saying that as a class, the top 1% would not be in favor of 90% tax bracket. Is this something we can finally agree on? The moneyed do not want to see their wealth transferred to the less well-off by means of taxation - I think that's a fair approximation of the thinking of the 1%. Do you agree?