http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/18/what-are-these-strange-barcode-like-images-visible-in-aerial-pictures-of-the-u-s/

WHAT ARE THESE STRANGE BARCODE-LIKE IMAGES VISIBLE IN AERIAL PICTURES OF THE U.S.?

Feb. 18, 2013 3:17pm Liz Klimas

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Many might not know it, but there are dozens of large, barcode-like paintings across the United States. Just how long have they been there though and what do they do?

Fort Huachuca in Arizona. (Image: Google Earth/Center for Land Use Interpretation)

You might remember the strange structures spotted via Google Earth in China’s Gobi desert a couple years ago that were ultimately thought to be satellite calibration structures. According to a recent report by the Center for Land Use Interpretation, these two-dimensional structures in America perform a similar function.

A target in Maryland. (Photo: Google Earth/ Center for Land Use Interpretation)

They’re aerial photo calibration targets, most of which were put in their current locations in the 1950s and 60s by the Air Force and NASA and some are still in use today.

Here’s more about the targets:

The targets function like an eye chart at the optometrist, where the smallest group of bars that can be resolved marks the limit of the resolution for the optical instrument that is being used. For aerial photography, it provides a platform to test, calibrate, and focus aerial cameras traveling at different speeds and altitudes. The targets can also be used in the same way by satellites.

Eglin Air Force Base, Florida (Photo: Google Earth/ Center for Land Use Interpretation)

The report stated that most of the targets fall within restricted groundspace: Eglin AFB, Florida; the Nevada Test Site; St. Inigoes, Maryland; and Fort Huachuca, Arizona; Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio; Travis AFB, California; Beaufort Marine Corps Base and Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina.

The Center for Land Use Interpretation reported the largest concentration of the barcode targets — 15 in a 20 mile range — falls within Edwards Air Force Base.

Edwards Air Force Base (Photo: Google Earth/ Center for Land Use Interpretation)

“There is some variation in the size and shape of the targets at Edwards, suggesting updates and modifications for specific programs,” the report stated. “A number of the targets there also have aircraft hulks next to them, added to provide additional, realistic subjects for testing cameras. Some of these planes are themselves unusual and rare military jets, officially in the collection of the base museum, despite being left out on the range.”

The ones in the Mojave desert, the report stated, have been used to calibrate A12, SR-71 and U-2 planes. Drones also could use these targets to calibrate their surveillance cameras and sensors.

Most of the targets, CLUI stated are on concrete or asphalt consisting of black and white paint in a 78 foot by 53 foot pattern of parallel and perpendicular bars at different sizes.

The CLUI stated that it picked out images of the barcode-like calibration targets from The Art of Citizen Space Exploration, which is running at the University of California Riverside Sweeney Art Gallery from January 19 to May 18.

Look what happens when you let corrupt dems run the train

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/the-breathtaking-then-and-now-photos-of-an-abandoned-detroit-high-school/

THE BREATHTAKING THEN-AND-NOW PHOTOS OF AN ABANDONED DETROIT HIGH SCHOOL

• Posted on December 10, 2012 at 11:42am by  Liz Klimas
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Editor’s note: We’ll be discussing this story and all the day’s news on our live BlazeCast at 1pm ET:

Some would argue the city of Detroit has experienced a boom and bust like no other in the last century. With the automotive and factory industry in the 1920s and onward spurring the city’s population, infrastructure to support it followed. But industry changes led to economic downfall that depressed the city, causing much of the population to leave, while its infrastructure remains, crumbling.

The website Detroiturbex.com is featuring the dilapidated state of the city. It states that “Detroit has no other option but to change.” The project is on hand “documenting that change.”

One of its projects is of the abandoned, original building of Cass Technical High School. The project put together eerie then and now images. Here are just a sampling of those:

Detroiturbex Cass Tech Then and Now

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  /Detroiturbex.comThe 1917 entrance, early 1920's and present day.
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  /Detroiturbex.comA librarian helps a student.
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  /Detroiturbex.comVolleyball in the gym
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  /Detroiturbex.comSecurity station on the first floor.
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  /Detroiturbex.comThe couch on the top left is actually still there today
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  /Detroiturbex.comFirst floor of the old auditorium.
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  /Detroiturbex.comA school dance in the gym.
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  /Detroiturbex.comMusic room in the new wing.
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  /Detroiturbex.comLibrary with computers
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  /Detroiturbex.comThe gymnasium in the new wing.
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  /Detroiturbex.comOne of several biology labs.
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  /Detroiturbex.comThe former book store.
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  /Detroiturbex.comVolleyball in the gym.
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  /Detroiturbex.comDance hall in the new wing.
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  /Detroiturbex.comSecond floor hallway.
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  /Detroiturbex.comA 1988 basketball game superimposed over the present-day condition of the old gymnasium.
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  /Detroiturbex.comThe 1919 structure was supposed to be torn down after the new building's construction, but as of 2010, is still standing.

The group also takes you through an interactive photo tour of the building’s 10 levels (a cool feature is as you click each each level it builds the school up higher). The imagery for the interactive Cass Tech model was created with Google Sketchup Pro. Detroiturbex constructed it using blueprints, student records and a survey of the buildings in 2010 when they photographed each room.

(Image: Detroiturbex.com)

The entire get-up took more than a year to finish. Be sure to take the interactive tour through the school on Detroitturbex’s website here.

The school itself was founded in 1907 with the original building being completed in 1919. The new Cass Tech building was constructed in 2004 and the old school experienced a fire in 2007. Detroiturbex states that just five years after opening, the new school suffers from “shoddy workmanship and poor planning.”

You can see more of Detroiturbex’s photos of the school in a then-and-now slideshow format here.

The Detroiturbex project as a whole is intended to “raise awareness of the social and economic challenges the city of Detroit faces through photography.” The artist acknowledges that many of the places documented, like many urban exploring adventures, have not been accessed legally.

Detroiturbex has cased churches, neighborhoods, parks, schools and other buildings extensively. Find more about them here.

(H/T: Business Insider)

THE SLOWEST SLOW-MO VIDEO EVER SHOT OF CHEETAHS RUNNING IS MESMERIZING

• Posted on November 29, 2012 at 7:17am by  Liz Klimas
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For the first time, video footage has finally caught up to cheetahs running at full speed.

Captured by National Geographic in collaboration with the Cincinnati Zoo, the team is showing the slowest slow-motion video of the fastest land animal (sounds like a bit of an oxymoron) using three high-speed cameras shooting at 1200 frames per second. The more frames per second that are shot, the better the slow motion.

(Image: Vimeo screenshot)

(Image: Vimeo screenshot)

(Image: Vimeo screenshot)

(Image: Vimeo screenshot)

According to the video’s description, five cheetahs were filmed for three days. Filming the fastest land animal running at full speed requires some impressive technology and rigging, according to Pop Photo in an article last month, it took 400 feet of dolly track that held three Canon 1D X DSLRs and a Phantom high-speed video camera. After seeing the footage, which was released last week, Pop Photo called it “everything we’ve hoped for.”

Check it out for yourself (Note: Stay tuned in until the end to see a time-lapse of the equipment set-up):

According to National Geographic, the cheetah going by the name Sarah ran at 61 miles per hour covering 100 meters in 5.95 seconds in June 2012. This broke all records for this distance.

At this speed, “the team captured every nuance of the cat’s movement,” Greg Wilson wrote in his description of the video.

In order to keep ahead of Sarah, National Geographic reported that the cameras on the track moved at 100 miles per hour.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/the-slowest-slow-mo-video-ever-shot-of-cheetahs-running-is-mesmerizing/

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT ‘SPIGOT CITIES’ THAT MAY PUMP VOTES TO The caliph خليفة Benedict Arnold?

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT ‘SPIGOT CITIES’ THAT MAY PUMP VOTES TO OBAMA?

• Posted on November 1, 2012 at 9:11pm by  Liz Klimas
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Editor’s Note: This article is based on “The Machine,” a documentary that aired on TheBlaze TV Nov. 1 as the first of an occasional news magazine series called “For The Record.” An encore broadcast is scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 4 at 8pm ET.

President Barack Obama’s campaign team could have more control over the outcome of the 2012 election than you think, according to a report by TheBlaze documentary team that reveals the potential for highly targeted voter fraud in key cities that could determine who gets the electoral votes from many swing states.

The potential fraud would be focused on major, decisive cities that are believed to help keep states blue, and therefore earning them the electoral college’s votes. They’re called “spigot cities.”

Voters cast their ballots at St. Martin’s de Porres high school,Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, in Cleveland. (Photo: AP/Tony Dejak)

J. Christian Adams, an author and former attorney for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, spoke about the spigot cities on the BlazeTV documentary — “The Machine” — which delves into various forms of voter fraud and how it’s being perpetuated. Many believe it is ultimately resulting in a loss of freedom through a corrupt voting system.

Adams believes spigot cities are managed by the Obama campaigned with some involvement by the Voting Section of the Justice Department.

“Without the spigot being opened in Philly, without the spigot being opened in Saint Louis, without the spigot being opened in Detroit and Fort Lauderdale and– and– and places around the country like that, Milwaukee– Cleveland, Cincinnati, those states would not go blue,” Adams said on “The Machine.” “It requires massive turnout– in large unopposed numbers in those urban centers for those states to remain in– in the blue column. What you have, unfortunately, is pervasive systemic voter fraud in many of those places. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

(Image: “The Machine” screenshot)

Calling upon the 2008 election, Adams pointed out that Republican Sen. John McCain’s campaign had a policy to not call the Justice Department’s voting section. The campaign for then-Senator Barack Obama, on the other hand, is believed to have made frequent calls to the department requesting these cities have an adequate number of voting machines in case a precinct received a large amount of voters at one time.

“So you had one side using the DOJ as a potential lever to help them gain power, and you had the other side fleeing from the battlefield,” Adams said.

Flooding the polls would be a necessary factor to create a spigot city. In the documentary, Adams discussed how voter manipulation would be employed for these record poll turnouts, which he says are generally reported in a positive light by the media.

“You have election officials telling voters for whom to vote,” Adams claims. “You have forced assistants. You have bus loads of people who are losing their right to vote as they’re marched into the polling place and have somebody else mark their ballot for them.”

John Fund, author and writer for National Review, said in the documentary that “people will do it for the 20 bucks that are handed at a homeless shelter, and they’re told to get on a bus and go from polling place to polling place, casting votes.”

Voters wait in line to cast their votes at a polling place in Philadelphia in 2008. (Photo: AP/Matt Rourke)

TheBlaze recently reported about a DNC staffer who was fired for allegedly helping a person cast their vote twice. Some have expressed worry that electronic voting machines with calibration issues could be robbing citizens of their votes too.

A general aversion to voter identification requirements and support for same-day voting registration is believed to contribute to this practice of flooding polls as well.

Watch this clip from the documentary discussing spigot cities and voter fraud:

“Same day voting is an engraved invitation to voter fraud,” said Fund, who wrote the book Who’s Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk. “Because let’s say it’s Minnesota, anybody can show up at the polls, register to vote, and then immediately vote. They don’t have to show ID. Somebody has to vouch for them. So anybody can come in who’s a Minnesota resident and say, ‘Well, I vouch for this person. I know Joe.’”

With same day voter registration, as Adams pointed out, checking voter eligibility is virtually non-existent.

The requirement of a voter ID has been making the rounds in the news during this entire election cycle. Those against imposing a requirement, calling it unconstitutional, argue that it woulddisenfranchise minority voters who have a hard time obtaining identification. At the same time though, TheBlaze reported a Washington Post poll that found near 75 percent of Americans believe the requirement of a voter ID is reasonable.

Although some might deny the existence of voter fraud, fail to see issues with same-day voter registration and at the same time balk at the idea of an ID requirement, there are real consequences of corruption if it occurs.

One example included recently on TheBlaze has Fund discussing how he believes Sen. Al Franken was elected in Minnesota under fraudulent conditions and, if that’s the case, points out that Franken was the deciding vote that passed Obamacare. Some of the controversy surrounding the election between Franken and incumbent Norm Coleman for Minnesota in 2008 — which was won by Franken by only 312 votes after months of litigation following an initial 725-vote lead by Coleman — is that a conservative group Minnesota Majority found evidence of voter fraud, which included voting conducted by ineligible convicted felons.

Watch Fund talk voter fraud with Mallory Factor earlier this month:

So what can be expected of “spigot cities” and alleged voter fraud with the 2012 Presidential Election?

“Well, the problem is– voter fraud is– cyclical,” Fund said. “If the election isn’t close, then people care about less voter fraud. If it’s perceived as very close, there’s an enormous temptation to put your thumb on the scale of democracy. I think this election is gonna be very close.”

You can watch an encore broadcast of the documentary Sunday, Nov. 4 at 8pm ET on TheBlaze TV or on Dish channel 212.

​Carousel image courtesy Shutterstock.com

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/have-you-heard-about-spigot-cities-that-may-pump-votes-to-obama/