Lawrence Lessig Accuses U.S. Congress of Corruption

American political activist and Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig stressed the need for a constitutional convention to address rampant congressional corruption during his speech at Kenyon on Tuesday, Sept. 27. Lessig focused his attention on the pervasive corruption plaguing the U.S. Congress. Lessig's most recent book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It, is set for publication in early October. He shared his thoughts on the corruption of the American republic in his presentation sponsored by Kenyon's Center for the Study of American Democracy.

Lessig began by accusing the U.S. government of losing efficacy. Citizens are understandably frustrated with their representatives in light of this inaction, he said. The only federal government institution to enjoy the support of a majority of Americans is the Supreme Court, according to a recent poll. The Supreme Court, he pointed out, is also the only undemocratic organ of the federal government.

Lessig also spoke about the continual extension of certain provisional parts of the U.S. tax code that began under the Reagan administration.

Essentially, Lessig said, lawmakers raised funds for their reelection campaigns by projecting the illusion that tax provisions were in jeopardy of not being renewed.

Sugar tariffs, corn subsidies, shadow banking and government guarantees of financially troubled businesses were among the other issues that Lessig touched on during his overview of congressional corruption. Incidents like the ongoing recession and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill have caused 75 percent of Americans to believe that money produces results in Congress, according to Lessig. As he pointed out, more Americans trusted the British crown in 1776 than trust Congress in 2011.

Members of Congress, Lessig said, have developed a "sixth sense" about how their legislative decisions will affect their prospects for reelection. He considers this incessant focus on reelection a distraction from the purpose of Congress.

The effect financial contributions have on congressional decision-making also has undemocratic aspects, Lessig said. He noted that the preferences of America's most affluent citizens tend to become policy, which usually puts the course of American affairs at odds with the wants and needs of the bottom 90 percent of Americans. The country's founders, he said, wanted Congress to depend on the will of the American people, but this principle has been lost.

Tevatron Closing: Shutdown Casts Shadow Over Fermilab's Future

In the coming months, the eyes of the physics world will be focused here to see if researchers can confirm the startling findings announced last week in Europe – that subatomic particles called neutrinos traveled faster than the speed of light.

But this is also a time of transition for Fermilab. On Friday, physicists will shut down the facility's accelerator called the Tevatron, a once-unrivaled atom smasher that has been eclipsed by the Large Hadron Collider buried beneath the border of France and Switzerland.

For some in Batavia, it will be a somber moment, akin to losing a family member. Others wonder whether it signals a lack of commitment to high-level particle science on U.S. soil.

Fermilab leaders say they hope that's not the case, because there's plenty of research to keep Batavia at the cutting edge.

That point was underscored after researchers using equipment at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, revealed their finding that cast doubt on Einstein's theory of relativity.

Fermilab – named after Enrico Fermi, who helped develop atomic energy at the University of Chicago – is one of only two other labs in the world that could try to replicate the work. The other, in Japan, has been slowed by the earthquake and tsunami.

Fermilab saw similar faster-than-light results in 2007 while shooting a beam of neutrinos to a lab in northern Minnesota. But the scientific significance of that observation was undercut by a large margin of error. Now the lab hopes to upgrade its own "clock" to see if it can confirm or debunk the European findings.

But long after the light-speed question has been answered, Fermilab hopes to make neutrino research one of the centerpieces of the post-Tevatron era – and retain its standing as one of the world's premier research labs.

That would involve building a new accelerator to study the universe in a new way – by producing the most collisions, rather than the most powerful. The accelerator also would be capable of producing neutrino beams more intense than anywhere else to help study the particles that scientists theorize helped tip the cosmic scales toward a universe made of matter.

"The idea is to look for things that happen very rarely, and the way to find them is to create lots of examples and see if you find something," said Steve Holmes, who's in charge of the new venture, called Project X.

Meet the Candidates: Donna Short Woodham

ECONOMY - I will focus on bringing living wage blue-collar and white-collar jobs to Smyrna. As mayor I will become a member of the Green Chamber of the South, which was created by two Georgia Tech professors. Their intent for the Green Chamber of the South is to bring all green companies under one roof. Being a member of the Green Chamber of the South has its advantages. It will keep me updated to the ever-changing green technology. I will have first knowledge when green companies want to expand or start-up here in the south. Being mayor means you are the spokesperson for your city. When green companies are looking to expand to other cities, having a mayor who is updated and knowledgeable about green technology will be to Smyrna's advantage. Also, being a member means our city can be a host to future conferences.

EQUALITY - No matter where we live or the income we make or the different backgrounds we all have, we deserve respect.

ENERGY - We must reduce the cities consumption of water and electricity. Other cities are doing this in the simplest ways. One simple way is to change the street lights and the school flashing lights to LED lighting. Cities that have changed to LED lights have saved thousands of dollars; these dollars can be returned back into the general fund to keep the city strong financially.

ENVIRONMENT - A wise government should provide a balance between the built and the natural environment. We need stronger tree ordinances and compassionate development. The city could be a leader in becoming green; it also, could be a host for green education and seminars. It will only start now if I am elected mayor.

ENGAGEMENT - The first 100 days I will assess my surroundings. I will get to know my office staff, and all my city employees. I will have an open door policy. You my neighbors will always be able to reach me. I will go back to the neighborhoods, and have informal listening parties. I will continue to meet with the citizens until we get Smyrna right.

In addition to the five E's, I would focus on:

SPLOST PROJECTS - As mayor, I will have a sign at all SPLOST projects. The sign will state the following information: the start date, the finish date, the cost of the project, and a picture and or description of the project. Transparency and honesty should matter to all. With the right leadership this can happen.

Latest Trends in Hotel Refurbishment

UK hoteliers are looking forward to 2012 with a "cautious optimism" – something that has been distinctly lacking in recent years. Some hotel owners can see the light at the end of the tunnel and many are considering expanding their businesses next year, according to the Frank Knight Hotel Operator Sentiment Survey 2011.

The findings showed that just over 50 per cent of the operators questioned said that they would be spending on refurbishing their existing stock.

Typically, guest room refurbishment can fall into two broad categories, refreshment and re-branding.

Refreshment is commonly required every five to seven years and involves adding new elements to the rooms to ensure that the hotel remains competitive in its target market. This will include redecorating, replacing furniture, fittings, equipment and minor works that improve the ease of operation.

Although Royal Garden Hotel has a rolling refurbishment programme of this kind, May saw the luxury hotel bring its 45 million refurbishment project to a close. The result is an excellent example of a well-executed refurbishment programme that responded to the needs of guests and sharpened the brand's competitive edge on London's luxury hotel scene.

"We implemented the refurbishment in stages," explained deputy general manager, Jonathan Lowrey in a recent interview with hotel-industry. "We have re-fitted guest rooms floor-by-floor and conference and events facilities were refurbished in stages as well. We carefully timed these stages to minimise disruption to our guests and customers."

A photo gallery of the Royal Garden Hotel's refurbishment is also available on hotel-industry.

While the Royal Garden Hotel favoured the partial-closure approach, the Savoy Hotel closed down completely between 2007 and 2010 to conduct one of the most talked about ambitious hotel refurbishment projects of recent times.

The 220 million restoration incorporated the entire building, including its iconic entrance and all 268 guestrooms and suites. Our photo gallery of refurbished Savoy Hotel will guide you around the newly designed property.

Re-branding or re-modelling aims to move the hotel into a different sector and increase room rates. This can involve creating new guest rooms using redundant space, replacing services and bathrooms, changing room and area layouts or introducing new guest facilities, such as IT and in-room entertainment.

When the Grosvenor Hotel, Victoria fell into the safe hands of the Guoman collection, the company set about bringing the property into line with its brand's standards, yet preserving the aesthetic essence of this famous railway hotel. No corner of the property has been left untouched, with all bedrooms, public areas, restaurants, meetings and event spaces refurbished.

Mild to wild: Customizing your bike can make it new again

With the end of the riding season nearly here, many of you may be thinking about winter projects and some neat new things to add to your bikes.

The fact that most riders store their bikes for the winter anyway makes winter an ideal time to undertake big projects without cutting into prime riding time in the spring, summer and fall.

Many of these projects involve customizing bikes to make them your own. This is one of the key reasons people customize — to make what they already have, and love, new again.

"There are two (main) reasons you customize a bike — you have to because you smashed it up or you have a bike that you have paid for, and you can either buy another bike, or spend (some money) on yours and make it new again," Mike Geislinger of Slinger Cycles in Dartmouth tells me.

Mike is a custom bike builder and self-taught airbrushing artist who has been building bikes since 2005. He started in his mother's single-bay garage while off work with an injury from racing Superbikes, and opened up a full shop in 2007.

In the world of customizing, there really is something for everyone now. You can find a project to fit nearly any budget, and get a variety of effects, from mild to wild. Some of the key trends right now are 'fat' rear tires, air ride suspension, chrome, billet accessories, stereos, custom paint and lights.

"This winter will be a lot more electronics on bikes," Mike predicts. "Not just stereos — full audio, navigation, GPS and screens."

Since Slinger Cycles has been open, Mike has become a go-to guy for custom airbrushed paint, custom swing arms, custom moulding for electronics installations, and he has even cut apart a gas tank to put speakers in it. He also does one 'trike' a year, converting a motorcycle to a three-wheeled machine. This winter he's building an independent suspension Harley-Davidson based trike. He's also in the process of building the fastest street bike in Canada, based on a Suzuki GS1300R Hayabusa, for a shop bike with tons of modifications, including a turbo motor.

Mike also started a trend with 'theme' bikes. He's now done more superhero and movie bikes than he can name — including Batman, Joker, The Incredible Hulk, Wolverine, and one for the Saw movies. The bikes are a complete theme, including paint and accessories.

If you're looking for something a little more 'mild' ride, you can add some accessories like levers, 'slip-on' exhaust pipes, frame sliders, rear sets, and custom paint. There is a huge industry of third-party aftermarket parts for Japanese motorcycles, available through nearly any motorcycle retailer. For Harley-Davidsons, there is even extensive factory support, with Harley-Davidson branded products available for customizing and modifying your ride.

"Paint is always a good first step," Mike tells me. "If you have a $600 budget and you want to make your bike personalized, or you have a $10,000 budget, you can always fit paint into anyone's budget to make it their bike. Just to change the wheels on your bike is twice as much as painting your bike."

PI design for 15W downlight is flicker-free

Power Integrations has a reference design for an 85%-efficient, 15W PAR38 downlight driver that it claims will deliver flicker-free dimming without the use of electrolytic bulk capacitors.

Based around the firm’s LNK405EG LED driver IC, it is designed to provide flicker-free performance across a broad range of triac dimmers.

Typical TRIAC dimmers were designed for incandescent lights that use an order of magnitude more power than LED lights of equivalent lumen output.

According to the supplier, the low current requirement of LED lights, especially when dimmed, can cause triacs to switch off unexpectedly or oscillate, creating an annoying flickering effect.

This can be addressed by storing energy in an electrolytic bulk capacitor, with bulb lifetime implications, or by allowing a continuous flow of current into the bulb, wasting energy and thereby defeating the main benefit of LED lighting.

The DER-281 reference design provides an alternative approach without the need for electrolytic bulk capacitors.

Referring to the first box installed in Moscow, he added: 'This Sleepbox has attracted such a great deal of interest from passengers and big companies that the chances are first commercially operated boxes will be installed at airports and in the city by the end of this year.'

Other possible locations would include railway stations, exhibition centres and shopping centres.

In countries with a warm climate, Sleepbox can be used outdoors.

The spokesman continued: 'It allows everybody in unforeseen circumstances to spend a night safely and inexpensively or simply to kill a few hours without leaving the luggage.

'Currently we offer one, two, or three-bed Sleepboxes, which can be made of MDF , metal, and glass-reinforced plastic.

'The price varies depending on the number of hours in use: the more the user pays for, the less it costs per hour.'

Cyclists need be cowboys no more

I have commuted by bicycle to school and work in Montreal for at least 25 years. The last seven years have been specifically on bicycle paths, due to the proximity of my home to a bike path, and due to the fact that I have a new young cyclist in the family: my son. This ratio of years on and off bicycle paths is probably comparable to most in the city, as the path network has grown.

For those who hadn't biked in Montreal prior to its recent transformation into a bicycling city, I would like to explain how it was to be an urban cyclist. Cyclists had to take on a different mentality; some would say they had to act like cowboys. We became cowboys because there was no place for cyclists in the city. There were no apparent regulations for cyclists, so we had to make our own rules.

We'd go through intersections on walk signals; no one wanted us on the roads, so we'd follow the rules of the sidewalk.

We'd go on green Led light with a no-walk signal; no one wanted us on the sidewalk either, so we'd follow the rules of the road.

We had to jostle our way between parked cars and speeding traffic, keeping a careful eye out for parked cars opening doors.

We'd dread having to play tag with city buses, which ride at the same pace as a bicycle, weaving in and out of the path of bicycles to reach bus stops. The only way to get out of bus tag is to get ahead by running red lights.

Cycling through red lights was also a necessity in order to get ahead of the adjacent traffic that would tend to turn right as soon as the light would turn green without signalling or checking for bikes.

Thankfully, through the perseverance of the bicycling community in co-operation with the cities on the island of Montreal, an incredible network of appropriate bicycle paths has been built, giving access to a growing population of urban bicyclists.

With this transformation there is a slow but sure change in the mentality of cyclists.

We now have a dedicated place on the roads. With this newly established sense of place comes pride for our space and a desire to hold onto it and ensure that these paths are not taken away from us.

We have a place to commute without jostling amongst opening doors and bus routes. We are seeing (in most places) that priority is given to cyclists at intersections and that traffic lights take into account the requirements of the cyclist. At first we had to yell at cars and pedestrians to remind them to heed the newly paced traffic lights, but now even the other cowboys on the road are starting to follow the rules set up around cyclists.

‘You Can Never Tell’: Cluttered stage robbed play of its magic

If there is a chair on the stage and a person in a wig sits on it and reads out a sentence, you will believe that this person is a judge in his courtroom.

And if the person exits and two people in white coats walk in immediately discussing the health of a patient, you will not question how this very space has transformed itself from a courtroom into a hospital in a matter of seconds. This is because once you take your seat in a theatre auditorium, you consciously or unconsciously slip into what is known in theatre circles as suspension of disbelief.

I rather hoped that theatre directors in Nairobi would have more faith in the audience’s suspended disbelief, when I watched Strathmore University Drama Society’s production of You Can Never Tell (1897) by Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw on Friday, September 9.

Though I am now well acquainted with Dramsoc’s use of stage space, this time, the play was staged in the Strathmore auditorium where the lighting is not suited to theatre productions but rather to lectures and other forms of public speaking.

Thus, it did not allow for Led light off on the sets that were not in use. Also, the arrangement resulted in too much clutter and the cast being limited to a very small part of the stage at any given time, which was a shame as the stage is very large. This led to awkward movement around furniture, which greatly compromised the actors’ performance.

This insistence on realism — that there must be a dentist’s surgery that looks as much like a dentist’s surgery as resources can allow, and a dining room and a hotel room suite and a window overlooking the seaside, all at the same time, robs the stage of its magic.

And after all that, the play lacked the attention to detail that realism demands, though it wasn’t clear if this was due to negligence on the part of the director, Nick Muthama or the stage manager, Paula Bosire. The dining table — in an upmarket hotel — was set with an uncharacteristic mix of goblets and wine glasses, Mrs Chande did not sit facing the table squarely and primly in a manner that reflects her social class, ginger beer came in a Smirnoff bottle, scotch was served in mugs, and the audience even succumbed to unsolicited mirth when water was poured out of a green plastic jug.

Mrs Chande and her children Gloria (Nicole Dusenge), Dolly and Philip have returned to Kenya, having lived in South Africa for 18 years. Dolly and Philip finally meet their estranged father Cosmas at the dentist’s surgery and invite him to lunch without knowing who he really is.

Boulia revives Min Min light festival

This is to be the first time in 35 years the event will be held.

The festival kicks off tomorrow morning with a morning tea held at the Stonehouse Museum.

Later that night, tourists and residents will gather at the Boulia Rodeo Grounds to dine under the stars.

An expert guide will take them on a tour of the Outback night sky's constellations.

Friday morning's festivities will start with breakfast and target shooting at the gun club before competitors battle it out to be named Outback ironman and woman at the town's aquatic centre and sports centre.

Organiser Shelley Norton said the event would be a test of strength and bush skills.

"We don't want to give away too many details but all the events are to do with the Outback and will have a bush twist," she said.

A street party will cap off Friday's events with a talent show, thong throwing competition and more.

A camel tagging competition will be held Saturday morning as will a dirt bike display.

The event's highlight, the Min Min Gala Ball, will be held on Saturday night.

"We've got four girls doing their debut and we'll have music and entertainment through until late," Ms Norton said.

Ms Norton said it was the first time in recent memory the town had held a debutante ball.

Kalinda Cluff, whose daughter Kayla is one of the four young ladies to make her debut, said she was thrilled to witness her daughter dressed up for the occasion.

"They've all got their white dresses and will be wearing their white gloves," she said.

"It's a nice special occasion for them and it gives us all a chance to get dressed up and get our hair done."

The girls will dance four dances and be presented to several Boulia legends who have returned to the town for the occasion.

"Jim Grimshaw is the oldest one we've got coming back and he's 90," she said.

Power line expansion needs scrutiny now more than ever

An Electric Reliability Project.” They claim the line is necessary for reliability of our grid, and that PJM Interconnection — the grid operator — deemed the expansion necessary.

PJM operates the grid in New Jersey and 14 other eastern states, and is supposed to be an independent company charged with maintaining the grid’s reliability. In reality, however, PJM is a conglomerate of transmission line owners and power companies — like PSE&G — that generate electricity, mostly from coal-fired power plants to the west of New Jersey. Naturally, PJM is going to try to promote projects and policies that will generate income for their member corporations.

Recent studies by independent research firms — including ERPI and Synapse — have determined that consumer energy demand is falling, and will likely continue to fall or remain flat over the next decade. This drop in demand is not simply due to the depressed state of our current economy, but is more attributable to the efficiency of newer appliances and gadgets being introduced. New refrigerators use only 25 percent of the energy that they did years ago. LCD flat-screen TVs — despite their larger size — use less energy than older TVs. And increasing numbers of people are switching over to compact fluorescent and LED light bulbs.

Perhaps the largest contribution to decreased energy demand — especially during peak use periods — comes from “Demand Response,” a procedure where large energy consumers are paid to curtail energy use during times of high demand, essentially selling the unused surplus energy at a profit and reducing overall peak demand. Since Demand Response is used when transmission lines have the greatest potential to be overloaded — on really hot days with high peak demand — it alleviates most if not all of the need to build costly new transmission lines to cover peak usage, as the proposed Susquehanna-Roseland project is intended to do.

Sam shines a light in New York

Stosur's intoxicating mix of strength, spin, movement and court craft was the performance of a worthy US Open champion. She made the sport seem simple in New York, yet nothing about Stosur's story is that.

To reach this final, Stosur succeeded in the longest women's match ever played in New York and then prevailed in the lengthiest tiebreaker in women's tennis.

She was welcomed to New York by Hurricane Irene, shunted to an outside court for her semi-final victory, faced repeated rain interruptions and then showed up Serena with both her tennis and sportsmanship.

It is the obstacles that Stosur has overcome, including the debilitating Lyme disease just four years ago that could have killed her career, and the courage and humble manner in which she did so that makes this success the sweetest, that defines her as a worthy champion.

The victory was obviously well received at home given it ended a 31-year drought dating back to Evonne Goolagong Cawley's second Wimbledon title in 1980, with Margaret Court's title triumph in 1973 in New York an eternity ago. It resonated in the political halls of power, with Julia Gillard quick to congratulate the Queenslander.

But, in a testament to Stosur's popularity on tour, the success was most warmly welcomed by her peers and champions of both genders, among them former world No 1 Lindsay Davenport who said the Australian "played so well and handled it all with class".

The poise and grace she displayed against Williams (in stark contrast to another atrocious outburst from the American that may see her banned from next year's US Open) is a feature of her character far beyond the baseline.

As her former coach Craig Morris, who watched the match with dozens of Tennis Australia employees at Melbourne Park, says: "Sam is now a grand slam champion on court but has always been a grand slam person off it.

A little civic-minded flash in Tremont: editorial

Around 8:30 Friday evening, during the Tremont neighborhood's monthly Art Walk, something very cool is going to happen. A switch will be thrown and 17 LED light fixtures attached to buildings along Professor Avenue will come to life.

That moment will mark the culmination of a 2-1/2-year grass-roots effort to make a neighborhood that includes some of Cleveland's hippest restaurants, galleries and boutiques feel even safer and more welcoming.

And the driving force has been a group of (mostly) young professionals who call themselves 10,000 Little (micro) Ideas to Keep You Believing in Cleveland.

The group's goal is pretty simple: Make this a better place to live.

When 10,000 Little (micro) Ideas held a civic brainstorming session in 2008, one idea that quickly gained traction involved better street lighting, for aesthetic and safety reasons. After some consideration, they picked Tremont.

As volunteers, they sought expertise from the corporate world, neighborhood groups and City Hall. They raised money with help from Tremont restaurateurs, and immersed themselves in the study of lighting systems. There were setbacks and disappointments, but tonight, in the city where Charles Brush introduced the electric arc streetlight in 1879, 10,000's tenacity is going to pay off.

The array of lights that will fire up may not be as extensive as originally hoped, but, as 10,000's co-President Erin Smith says, it's a start -- and if stakeholders in Tremont or other neighborhoods want to expand on it, she and her colleagues have shown them how.

It is easy to complain about what isn't being done or what someone else ought to do to make Cleveland better. But it's inspiring when passionate volunteers show that, through hard work and tenacity, this city can find ways to renew itself.

Countdown Begins for UT Team in Department of Energy Solar Decathlon

In just three days, Team Living Led light begins transporting the stunning, state-of-the-art, zero-energy house to the Washington Mall to compete in the US Department of Energy’s 2011 Solar Decathlon.

epresenting more than 200 students and nine academic programs, UT’s team will face off against nineteen other teams in a series of ten events beginning September 23. Winners will be announced October 1.

More than two years of work have gone into qualifying, planning, designing, and building the 750-square-foot home, inspired by Appalachia’s cantilever barns.

Along with being on display, the house will be part of ten competitive events to judge design excellence, sustainability, energy production, solar energy efficiency, consumer appeal, and cost-effectiveness. The house’s energy source must power its appliances and heat water and one event involves cooking and hosting a dinner party.

Visitors to the Washington Mall will tour the houses and learn how energy-saving features can help them save money. UT students have been preparing to give tours and have been advised to plan for seeing an average of 400 people an hour through the home.

These final days have been spent testing all of the home’s systems, practicing for tours, and moving the structure to its specially designed trailer attachments. Alumnus Bill Powell, of Powell Companies in Johnson City, has provided his expertise and the resources of his company to help the team move its self-contained house to the nation’s capital.

UT students designed the structure to be transportable on its own and to avoid extensive construction and set-up that they’ve seen teams struggle through when visiting the past Solar Decathlon competitions.

Living Light began with students and faculty in the College of Architecture and Design and is led by faculty members James Rose, Edward Stach, Richard Kelso, and Barbara Klinkhammer in the college, along with Deb Shmerler in the School of Art, Leon Tolbert in electrical engineering, and Stan Johnson and Bill Miller in mechanical engineering.

Road rules apply to cyclists, too

Durango resident Anne Carine pedaled her bike through a red light this spring at College Drive and Main Avenue.

"I thought I was going to get a warning," she said. "The price of the ticket was a little outrageous."

Police said bicyclists have to follow the same rules as motorists. If officers see an infraction, they'll stop the cyclist and decide whether to write a ticket or issue a warning – the same as with motorists, said Lt. Ray Shupe, with the Durango Police Department.

"(A bicyclist's) duty is the same as a driver," Shupe said. "So if they're coming up on a red light, they need to stop for it. The same with a stop sign."

The police department was unable to provide numbers of citations issued to cyclists, saying its records system does not separate bicyclists from motorists.

Durango Municipal Judge David Turner estimates he oversees six or seven traffic violations per month involving bicyclists. That number stays fairly steady throughout the year, he said.

"It's generally stop-light violations," Turner said. "It's generally downtown at night."

The Herald spent one hour Tuesday at Ninth Street and Main Avenue. Fifty-eight bicyclists passed through the intersection from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Of those, 15 stopped for red lights and three pedaled through Led light. Two turned right on red lights without coming to a complete stop. The others either hit green lights or walked their bikes across the intersection at the appropriate time.

Bicycle advocates agree cyclists should follow the rules of the road in every instance – no excuses. But some admit the rules are often broken, and some even admit to being the scofflaws.

Diane Shaline, who works at Mountain Bike Specialists on Main Avenue, said she always stops for red lights and typically slows down for stop signs.

Shaline said she has ridden with some people who brazenly violate stop signs and red lights.

"It's amazing how many people – they don't even think twice about it," she said. "But if they were in a car, they would stop."

L-A residents get innovative after Irene

More than 55,000 Maine residents, some of them in highly populated residential areas of Lewiston and Auburn, were forced to rely on camping skills as they waited for their power to be turned back on in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene.

“The old-fashioned skillet comes in handy,” said Donna Manson as she baked a shepherd's pie on a gas grill in the backyard of her Granite Street home in Auburn on Tuesday evening.

The storm has left Manson and her husband, Clayton, without electricity for the last 48 hours. They've been cooking meals on the grill and making trips out for coffee in the morning.

“Thank goodness it's not hot, and it's not cold, so we've been able to keep comfortable,” Manson said.

When the sun goes down, the couple uses a combination of battery-powered fluorescent lights, oil lamps, and book lights to see, she said. They pulled out their old Scrabble board to pass the time, Manson said.

“You dig out all the old resources when there's no TV and no computer,” she said, adding that they're using an iPad to keep up with the news.

A few blocks away on Davis Street, the neighborhood has banded together to make sure that everyone is getting by, Bobbi Bubier said.

One family came by before the storm and asked if they had everything they needed, and another offered to pick up ice after the storm, said Bubier, a diabetic who needs to keep her insulin injections chilled.

The level of community involvement has been refreshing, she said, and the lack of distractions has forced people to slow things down for a few days. “It's nice, we've been able to sit and talk and visit; to take a break from our busy lives,” she said.