[VIDEO] Beetle Cubes: Unboxed Beetle Box
Posted: October 2, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment, Mediasphere | Tags: Archie McPhee, Artist, Audi, German language, Plea, Sculpture, Twitter, Volkswagen, Volkswagen Beetle, Volkswagen emissions scandal 1 Comment
Let’s go for a joyride in one of these impossibly spherical or cubic Volkswagens created by Indonesian sculptor Ichwan Noor. These awesome sculptures are made from actual vintage VW components.
“Noor carves a spherical polyurethane replica of the vehicle’s body which he then casts in aluminum. A separate spherical interior is then produced to fit the cast exterior. The final result is enhanced with the original car parts provided by the manufacturer.”
Watch this video to get a closer look at one of Noor’s VW Beetle cubes:
EPA Gave Employee $9,000 in Bonuses After Less Than Three Months on the Job
Posted: December 2, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, U.S. News | Tags: Aliso Viejo, Audi, California, EPA, Former Region 9 (Johannesburg), Inspector General, Office of the Inspector General, Research Triangle Park, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Volkswagen 1 Comment
Elizabeth Harrington reports: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave a new employee $9,000 in bonuses after less than three months on the job.
“The award justification stated that the director ‘…took extraordinary initiative to assist the Acting Chief Financial Officer in a final decision to transition the EPA to a fully automated invoice processing system…’”
The agency’s inspector general called the payments “unprecedented” in a new audit, and raised questions about how the EPA’s chief financial officer uses its power to award bonuses.
“On June 25, 2015—6 weeks later—OCFO gave the Director a second award for $4,500.”
The EPA intended to give the employee, a director at the Research Triangle Park Finance Center in North Carolina, a third bonus but decided against it after the inspector general began their investigation.
The investigation began after a complaint that the newly hired director was going to be paid $250,000 because they moved for the job. The relocation bonus was not paid, though one manager was “disappointed” the EPA did not spend a quarter of a million dollars to hire the employee.
“However, the Director did receive two individual cash awards of $4,500 each within [three] months of her start date,” the inspector general said.
[Read the full story here, at Washington Free Beacon]
“[The EPA’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer] OCFO’s unprecedented award of $9,000 in bonuses to a director less than [three] months after being hired raises questions about the reasonableness of the awards and how the OCFO uses the awards process,” they said.
The investigation found that the director was given the first bonus worth $4,500 in May, within six weeks of being hired. Read the rest of this entry »
Ted Kennedy: National Lampoon, 1974
Posted: March 30, 2015 Filed under: Comics, Entertainment, Humor, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: 1970s, Chappaquiddick, Iowahawk, Mary Jo Kopechne, National Lampoon, satire, Ted Kennedy, Twitter, Volkswagen 1 Comment
Justice Thomas Is Right About America’s Obsession With Race
Posted: February 22, 2014 Filed under: Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Civil War, Clarence Thomas, Jim Crow laws, MSNBC, Savannah Georgia, Supreme Court, Timothy Noah, United Auto Workers, Virginia, Volkswagen Leave a comment
Photo by Alex Wong/Getty
It’s become a compulsion to use the label for any political opponents—and it’s destroying our cohesiveness as a society. Is no one proud of the progress we’ve made?
“The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites. The absolute worst I have ever been treated… The worst things that have been done to me, the worst things that have been said about me, by northern liberal elites, not by the people of Savannah, Ga.”
From firsthand experience, I know exactly what Justice Thomas is describing…
Ron Christie writes: Are we obsessed with race and racism in our society? Before you answer the question, consider how issues of race are brought up in the media and discussed around the proverbial water cooler. Do we disc
uss the remarkable progress we’ve made as a country since the dark days of segregation and Jim Crow?
Do we consider how blacks lived in the South in the not too distant past—like my grandparents, who ran the risk of being lynched for looking at someone white? That’s given way to interracial marriage no longer being a taboo. The Supreme Court didn’t repeal the statute banning interracial marriage in Virginia until 1967.
Unfortunately, very little of the dialogue involving race in America today is positive, uplifting, or inspirational. Instead, there is a compulsion by many on the left to brand their political opponents as being racist. Two specific events occurred in the past week that have me firmly convinced that there is an obsession with race in America today that is destructive to our societal cohesiveness.
Something is wrong with my Coke
Posted: September 3, 2013 Filed under: China | Tags: Allegedly Unethical Firms, Business, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Coke, Recreation, United States, Volkswagen Leave a comment
Brand integrity issues in Hong Kong. Exhibit A: Bottled Coca Cola appears somewhat questionable.
“Just goes to prove that it is really tough to manage your channel when you are one of the biggest. Not going to buy my Coke here.”
Is this the new, new Coke? –The Butcher
Brilliantly documented by emba_ron
China’s German Ghost City
Posted: August 31, 2013 Filed under: China | Tags: Asia, China, Chinese, German, Shanghai, Thames Town, United States, Volkswagen Leave a comment
It was a German town, designed by German architects next to a Volkswagen factory on the outskirts of Shanghai. The place had everything: housing, parks, canal-side promenades, benches, fences, shops, roads, town squares, statues, office blocks, even a church, but it lacked the one ingredient that makes a city: humans. My species seemed out of place in our own creation here, I felt like an intruder tramping upon a 1:1 scale Teutonic themed still life. Besides a stray car or motorcycle passing by every five minutes or so and an older guy pushing a baby in a stroller three blocks back, I felt all alone while walking through Anting New Town.
This development was conceived in 2001 as part of the “One City, Nine Towns” project which transformed Shanghai’s suburbs into a contrived menagerie of internationalism. In addition to this German town, Shanghai built British, Swedish, Canadian, Spanish, Italian, American, and Dutch styled suburban districts which give the impression of being a remedy for some kind of post-colonial empty nest syndrome. But this cosmopolitan montage had one little quirk:
Nobody really came.
pundit from another planet 