Subterranean Christian ministry, midtown subway walkway.

102nd Street and West End Avenue, looking towards a recently erected glass tower on Broadway.

I’ve been noticing hard bangs vibrating through my apartment building for the past hour. It’s not that unusual for this building to shake from heavy truck passage. Looking out the window, a pothole is forming, no wonder from all the salt they’ve been putting on Houston Street lately. An early evil thought was set up my camera, this constant parade of flats would be a great Youtube video."

But instead my inner adult called 311, the system NYC uses to drain the strain from the 911 emergency system. First you listen to a heat complaint message that tells you to push 1 to make a heat complaint or wait for an operator. An operator comes on, I report the location and severity of the pothole, and suggest that at least an orange cone is needed, fast. The operator then asked me if I want to report a pothole, a bit stunned, I reply yes. She then proceeds to mumble in monotone some script that goes on and on, and at indeterminate points require some sort of answer from me. I determine that she is reciting some obscure legal definitions that distinguishes types of potholes. A few increasingly incredulous questions from me later, she asks me if I want to talk to an expert at the department of transportation. I ask if this is what I need to do to report a pothole. She says yes. Shortly, I am able to talk to someone off-script who knows what a pothole is. He also seemed to understand the concepts of location and and severity. But It’s been about a half hour, the cars are still slamming into the pothole. No accidents yet, but I’ve heard several tires hissing tales of upcoming flats.

Update: After writing the above, I got out of my flannel pjs and dressed for the outdoors. A bunch of orange cones are on the street reserving parking for some damn film shoot tomorrow. I took one of them and put it next to the hole. I had to document of course. Angel Orensanz , out for a stoll noticed my flash. I told him a shortened version of my 311 tale, he asked me if this was my work of art. No, I explained, it is a pothole. As he walked away I said, "art as well."

Morning update: The cone worked, it’s still there and the minor earthquakes have ceased.

I think you can see how the hole is just the right size to nicely knock up a tire.

These lectures are great, they’re the physics class I wish I had in High School, lots of demonstrations, concentration on concepts, real world applications, and formulas are offered, but not required, if you are interested in the math. But I’m not sure I would take his nutritional or political advice, which he does offer.

In this episode he offers the most plausible explanation (or cover story) for what the Roswell crash was really about. It was a balloon carrying radar reflectors and microphone to a level where atomic explosions could be detected. There is an altitude where a cold air/warm air/cold air boundary creates a sound conducting channel. This allowed the US government a way to detect Soviet atomic explosions. It was a technique used only for four years, until it was supplanted by seismographic detection.

Physics 10: Physics for Future Presidents. Spring 2006. Professor Richard A. Muller. The most interesting and important topics in … all » physics, stressing conceptual understanding rather than math, with applications to current events.

One of his most well known proposals is the Nemesis hypothesis suggesting that the sun could have an as yet undetected companion star, whose perturbations of the Oort cloud and subsequent effects on the flux of comets entering the inner solar system could explain an apparent 26 million year periodicity in extinction events.

But what of the noble sacrifice of the elite dwarf microphone aligner corps lost in that crash. Few remain who witnessed those gray anoxias forms, broken on the desert floor. Who speaks for them. The truth is out there!
Search for Physics and Muller on Google Video