Hassan Astaneh’s research concludes MnDOT and the consulting firm it hired could have prevented the collapse. Astaneh is a professor in University of California Berkeley’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department whose work includes studies on the collapse of the World Trade Center for the National Science Foundation.

Is the ‘corn boom’ expanding Gulf of Mexico’s ‘dead zone’?

Some fear an ethanol-fueled harvest in the Midwest may be behind the hard times for marine life at the other end of the Mississippi River.

Law enforcement seized key-making equipment, computers, utility uniforms, badges, lock-picking tools, keys for U locks, an Xcel Energy credit card, radios, a U hospital pager, Northern States Power padlocks, Xcel Energy hard hats, padlocks from various businesses and much more from the mastermind of the operation.

From the Pioneer Press:

# A special investigative team made up of police, the FBI and Xcel Energy staff was created to look into a series of thefts, vandalisms and disruptions of power grids across the Twin Cities. It eventually involved as many as 10 jurisdictions.

# Unknown individuals had been cutting or disabling the locks to the “overhead throw” switches, which are used by emergency crews to cut power to areas. There were 27 incidents where these locks were tampered with and the switches thrown, killing power for hundreds or thousands of homes and businesses.

# Glennie said he met McCombs through online “urban exploring” Web sites. Urban exploring involves going into underground or off-limits areas. He met Walter through McCombs.

# Their criminal activity “accelerated a great deal” from early 2007 and “became almost like an addiction,” Glennie said. All three worked to defeat locks belonging to Xcel Energy, Qwest and Comcast, cutting service to customers.

# Glennie told a probation official that he had “always had an obsession to having access to things.”

# Walter, one of the co-defendants, told police after his arrest that the threesome would collect the locks like trophies, he said.

# On the night of the November incident, they had wanted to “mess with” another urban explorer who had said something bad about McCombs online. So they attempted to disrupt the phone service where the man lived.

Otherwise, the targets were random.

“This is really just a senseless, senseless act,” Vlieger said.

For his plea of guilty to damaging utility property, Glennie was sentenced to 90 days in jail. He will have to serve another year if he does not abide by the terms of his probation.

A 19 year old twin cities resident and NWA flight attendant lit some paper towels on fire to set of the plane’s smoke alarm and bring the flight to an early end because he was frustrated with the MSP to Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada route.

KARE11.com reports:

The charge of setting fire aboard a civil aircraft carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Pilot Steve Peterka told authorities that an indicator light came on about 35 minutes into the flight, showing smoke in the rear bathroom.

Peterka called Rojas, who was assigned passengers in the back of the plane, and asked him to check the bathroom, documents said. Rojas, another flight attendant and a passenger were credited with quickly putting out the flames with fire extinguishers, authorities said.

Investigators later found a lighter in one of the overhead bins. Rojas confessed after authorities interviewed him, the complaint said.

Following the ruling, Bullseye owner Robert Ripley said he is asking his bartenders to prevent smoking indoors and remove all ashtrays.

But he also seized on a footnote in the ruling speculating that some performances may fit within the statewide ban and that they may be considered on a case-by-case basis.

“I think we’re going to start writing our own scripts,” Ripley said.

February, customers in bars from the Iron Range to the metro area — with the bars’ encouragement — started dressing in Renaissance costumes or calling themselves Garth Brooks and lighting up.

Many bars said it was an often-successful attempt to win back patrons after seeing steep declines in revenue after the ban took effect last year. Notices about the smoking performances were posted on doors outside the establishments, and customers would typically buy a pin for $1 or $2 designating them as part of the show.

But Abrams didn’t buy arguments made in court last week that the performances are a form of protected free speech that fit within the law’s exception.

“The criterion for selection of the cast appears to be people with $2 and a desire to smoke in the bar. There is not the slightest suggestion that talent or an interest in conveying a message, other than smoking, is sought from any actor,” he wrote.

Twin Cities bars can stay open extra late during the Republican National Convention, thanks to a state measure signed Thursday by Gov. Tim Pawlenty. The provision, part of an omnibus liquor bill, allows bars within the seven-county metro area to stay open until 4 a.m. from the evening of Aug. 31, through the early morning of Sept. 5. The border cities of Northfield and New Prague are included.

Cities can decide whether to allow the later bar closings and what areas or license and zoning classifications would be affected. And they will be able to charge bars a fee of up to $2,500.

Because 2AM just isn’t late enough for national Republican big wigs. Or maybe it’s an attempt to make the city more protester friendly?

To use a Freewheelin cycle, participants would register with credit cards to ensure that they don’t make off with the bikes, which otherwise are expected to be free to use. They then can go online, too, to track how many miles they’ve logged and calories they’ve burned.

Humana also is making 1,000 bicycles available to Denver during the Democratic National Convention, in turn giving Denver and the Twin Cities the opportunity to join Washington at the forefront of communal two-wheel initiatives.

Although wind power is very clean and very cost competitive with other sources of electrical power, the unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of the wind is its biggest drawback and prevents it from being more widely used.

Given that, I bet most people would be surprised to find out that environmentalists are the biggest enemies of wind farms. And you can’t really blame them either – according to a recently published report, at the Altamont Pass wind farm in California, the number of actual dead birds found among the four targeted species (burrowing owl, American kestrel, red-tailed hawk and golden eagle) increased nearly 90 percent from 2005-06 to 2006-07, which is between 1,839 and 2,906 bird deaths per year.

Below, an unidentified dead bird of prey found below the Altamont Pass wind turbines in the San Francisco Bay Area:

More from Wired.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get up early enough to see it in person, but several of my friends did and they said it was awesome!

You can read more about it here.