Riders climb down Cyclone rollercoaster after it breaks mid-ride

RIDERS have had to climb down a clackety old roller coaster after it became stuck at a US theme park.

Coney Island’s Cyclone screeched to a halt mid-ride on Saturday for the second time this season.
Michael Osborn, 36, and his girlfriend, Jessica Laux, 34, were in one of the Cyclone’s rear cars when it stopped in its tracks around 2pm.
“The car stopped. We heard a sudden click and a brake and the car just stopped — that’s it,” said Osborn.
“Luckily, it stopped before the big drop. … We were mildly concerned, sure,” he said. “That [the walk off the Cyclone] was worse than the stop. The ladder — the rungs aren’t too stable.”
“I’ve lived here for eight years and I’ve never ridden this thing,” Osborn said. Despite the mishap, he’ll ride the Cyclone again.
Brooklyn artist Sophia Flood, 30, wondered why the iconic coaster, which opened in 1927, is still in operation.
“If you are riding the Cyclone, you should know you are taking a chance, and if you are not willing to take that chance, you shouldn’t ride it,” Flood said.
Lise Streit, 46, said she and pal Tom Babel hoped the ride would be fixed soon.
“We bought tickets. We want to do the historic thing. We are from Austria — we saw movies and Coney Island was in it,” Streit said.

Another rider, Matt Levin, 27, said the roughly 24 riders were stuck for about five minutes before being led down.
“It was a little scary. I mean, you look down and you’re pretty high up. And so it was a little bit scary,” he said. “But at the end of the day … you know, I always wanted to go on the Cyclone. Some people had warned against it and now I know why. This is my first time.”
Levin wasn’t sure he’ll give the Cyclone another chance.
“It might take some coaxing — I don’t know,” he said.
The ride was expected to be reopened later Saturday.
Luna Park in Coney Island, which manages the ride, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Cyclone also got stuck on March 29 during its season-opening public run as it climbed up a 60-degree incline to its first big drop.
More than 12 riders were left suspended dozens of feet off the ground for about 10 minutes, until they were forced to walk hand-in-hand with rescuers down the steep slope of the track to safety.

Motorists being asked to consider user-pays model

CONGESTION impacts all drivers so why are some motorists paying more than others when it comes to funding new roads?
Experts highlighted the “unfair” system that is currently used to help fund new roads in Australia at the National Infrastructure Summit in Sydney this week.
The current system benefits those who drive fuel efficient cars, and improved technology is reducing the money that governments collect from fuel excise and can use to build essential infrastructure. The introduction of driverless cars could see the government’s funding base slashed even further.
Motorists are now being asked to consider contributing more towards the cost of the roads that they use.
Countries such as Singapore and the United States are already trialling new technology including satellite tracking, to raise more money.
It’s an idea that federal Assistant Infrastructure Minister Jamie Briggs thinks that Australia should be considering, to help get new road projects off the ground and improve gridlock.
“In Singapore, there are plans to implement a pricing system based on satellite position tracking by 2020,” Mr Briggs said at the summit hosted by the Australian Financial Review.
“This will mean that road users will be charged based on distance, location, time and type of vehicle.”
In the US, Oregon is testing a pilot scheme to replace fuel tax with a mileage based tax to help fund its main roads.
Mr Briggs said he understood that some might be wary about new types of road pricing but these types of ideas needed to be on the table if Australia was serious about funding the infrastructure that was needed in the future. Congestion could cost Australia $53 billion a year in lost productivity by 2031.
“In today’s world we generally accept that you pay for the service you receive. Road pricing remains the exception,” he said.
AN ‘UNFAIR’ SYSTEM
Currently motorists contribute to road costs mainly through registration fees, tolls and fuel excise. But this contribution goes no where near covering the cost of building and maintaining the roads, which are mostly funded by state governments with help from the federal government.
The problem of funding is made worse by declining car use and the rise in popularity of fuel efficient vehicles.
Scott Charlton, chief executive officer of toll company Transurban said Australia once relied on fuel excise to fund transport infrastructure but this source was drying up.
“Every time you replace a 20 year old sedan with a late model car we lose approximately $350 fuel excise per annum,” Mr Charlton said at the infrastructure summit.
He believes the way that Australia funds transport is past its use-by-date, is not fair because those who cannot afford to buy the latest model car, as well as rural drivers who drive long distances, are paying the most.
“No one understands how unfair the current system is,” Mr Charlton said.
“The driver of a late model fuel efficient car is paying far less in fuel excise than the driver of a less efficient car ... despite them having the exact same impact on congestion and on infrastructure,” Mr Charlton said.
But Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister Warren Truss said he didn’t think tracking Australians using satellites would “pass the pub test” and the public weren’t ready for congestion and time of use charges for roads.
“I think people still like to be able to visit their girlfriends without the whole world knowing,” Mr Truss joked.

NSW Premier Mike Baird acknowledged that doing unpopular things such as introducing tolls on Sydney’s WestConnex motorway project would likely to spark a public backlash, but said governments had to be prepared to explain the benefits.
“I think the community and public is up for these honest discussions,” he said.
He said his government had inherited a road pricing system in Sydney that was “all over the place” and which featured different priced tolls in different areas. His government is now looking at ways of making the tolls more efficient, which does not necessarily mean introducing new charges.
Mr Baird also acknowledged the issues with cost recovery saying the state’s train system only got back 20 to 25 per cent of its operating costs.
NEW FEES TO BE TRIALLED
The Productivity Commission and the Harper Review have both recommended “cost reflective” road pricing be introduced in Australia.
Transurban will soon launch a pilot study in Melbourne to test three types of user pricing and how they impact on motorists’ behaviour. These include distance per km charge, a one-off charge based on anticipated kilometres and a price per trip/access charge. It will also test time of day charges, and a one-off fee for entering the CBD.
The data will be shared with the federal Department of Infrastructure. Mr Charlton said he believed that people would support user pay charging if they could see the benefits, including the time savings on their commute time.
“This is all about making a decision about the quality of life we all want as Australians,” he said.
“We simply cannot keep building our way out of congestion, and we have to change the attitudes that existing infrastructure is free once it’s built.”
Meanwhile the development of new technology such as driverless and electric cars could also have a huge impact on Australia’s reliance on fuel excise to fund infrastructure projects.
Mr Charlton said the automotive industry was just five to 10 years away from driverless cars entering the market, with mass adoption expected by 2030.
The mining sector is already testing out autonomous trucks, according to infrastructure development company Transfield chief executive officer Graeme Hunt.
“If the technology becomes mainstream ... the driverless car could conceivably drop off dad and mum at different workplaces, and the kids, one by one, at different schools,” Mr Hunt said.
“The need for a second car in the typical family diminishes and with the reduction of vehicles in households you might find that some of the road investments, which we’re making today, may be redundant tomorrow.”
A WARNING
Another complicating factor is the phenomenon of “peak car”.
Grattan Institute chief executive John Daley said falling car use was one of the most important trends when considering infrastructure investment.
He said Australia was following a global trend in developed countries of stagnant car use. The most recent Bureau of Transport Infrastructure and Regional Economics data suggested passenger kilometres travelled in Australia was falling or stable.
“We should be very careful about the assumption that road usage is going to keep rising in the future at the same rate as it has in the past,” Mr Daley said.
DOING NOTHING IS NOT AN OPTION
But speakers at the infrastructure summit have warned of the damaging costs to Australia’s productivity if nothing is done to address congestion and infrastructure that is not keeping pace with population growth.
“If nothing changes, by 2035 Sydneysiders will face congestion levels on par with Mexico
City and will waste 110 hours a year in traffic,” Transurban CEO Scott Charlton said.
Mr Charlton said that congestion in Sydney and Melbourne already ranked alongside London, Los Angeles and New York, despite these cities being three times their size.
Congestion is estimated to cost Australia $13.7 billion a year, and this expected to rise to $53 billion a year by 2031.
Assistant Infrastructure Minister Briggs said Australia needed to embrace more innovative ways to fund infrastructure.
“We desperately need to improve our infrastructure so we can deliver goods across the country and to the rest of the world more efficiently – otherwise congestion will continue to act as a handbrake on our economy,” he said.

Bank boss accused of harassing ‘hot worker’

A FITNESS model claims her boss at a Brisbane bank called her “sexy” and “hot” and suggested her boyfriend “should go easier” on her during sex when he noticed she had difficulty walking down stairs at work.
Mary Molloy, 23, a bodybuilder from St Lucia, has sued the Commonwealth Bank and Frank Lopez, the former manager of the bank’s flagship Queen Street Mall branch, for sexual harassment.
The former bank teller claims father-of-three Mr Lopez once compared her to actor Kate Winslet when she strips nude in a scene with Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, The Courier Mail reports.
According to Ms Molloy, Mr Lopez was a sleaze who admired her breasts and joked about her sex life in front of co-workers. The bank and Mr Lopez are defending the case

In documents filed with the Federal Court, Ms Molloy claims Mr Lopez repeatedly harassed her over several months in 2013 including by telling her “your boobs are so perfect” and “you look hot wearing a dress like that ... I love seeing you in the morning”.
He allegedly sent text messages to her outside of work hours saying he would kiss her if he was with her.
He is also alleged to have compared her to a nude Winslet in Titanic after viewing a photo of Ms Molloy on sharing platform Instagram.
Ms Molloy says he commented on her dresses and her lipstick choices, and she felt pressured when he asked her to the movies, the statement of claim alleges.
They went to the movies twice and to dinner at Beach House Bar & Grill in Brisbane’s CBD.

After one evening out together he allegedly told her “I’ll get you where you need to go in the bank” and chose her for a prestigious secondment with another area of the bank.
Ms Molloy resigned in May last year after she never got a promised promotion and pay rise. She lodged the harassment allegations in July.
In its defence, the Commonwealth Bank denies Mr Lopez sexually harassed Ms Molloy.
The bank claims Mr Lopez’s comments were “not unwelcome sexual harassment” as they were friends. It claims Ms Molloy went on a fishing trip organised by Mr Lopez and to a staff barbecue.
Mr Lopez was stood down from his job on July 17 last year and is “no longer employed” at the bank.
He is now the manager of a Mount Isa caravan park. A mediation hearing has been set for July 29.

Facebook user caught out sharing transgender man’s photo in attempt to shame Caitlyn Jenner

A MAN who used a picture of two army soldiers in the heat of battle to shame Caitlyn Jenner’s “brave” transition has been humbled after an amazing discovery was made about the post.
Terry Coffey found a picture of what he thought was a war battle and posted it on Facebook with the caption “This is what real American courage, heroism and bravery looks like”.
He was posting after getting upset that Caitlyn Jenner was labelled a hero for revealing herself as a woman and it was shared more than 800,000 times.
But it turned out the picture was fake.
The ‘men’ in the picture turned out to be toy figurines.
In an ironic twist, those figurines were created by a cross-dresser who turned out to be the biggest hero of them all.

Mark Hogancamp’s amazing story was revealed in The New York Times in May. It turns out the 53-year-old was the victim of a vicious assault outside a bar in 2000 because he was transgender.
He was left in a coma for nine days and awoke with brain injuries and post traumatic stress disorder.
To help in his recovery, Hogancamp turned his attention to creating an entire city using figurines. It was celebrated in a documentary titled “Marwencol” in 2010. It shows him creating scenes of war but also of peace, including a marriage.
“I needed a way to work things out, for me,” he said.

When his photographs were spotted by an art dealer and displayed at the Allouche Gallery in New York City, Hogancamp turned up in military gear and his favourite heels.
As for Terry Coffey, he had to eat some humble pie.
He redeemed himself with a post the next day.
He wrote: “This is the photo I shared yesterday in the spirit of spotlighting ‘true bravery’.
“This photo that accompanied my words, was chosen from a quick image search. Just wanted something to fit my words. I wanted to find out who the photographer was, so I could credit his work.
“In an ironic twist, I have discovered that the photo is part of a documentary created by a man who was beaten nearly to death outside of a bar in 2000. After spending nine days in a coma, suffering severe brain damage and being unable to walk or talk for a year, he chose to try and cope with his pain from the tragic event, by creating a world of stories and characters and photos set in WWII.
“Why was he nearly beaten to death by five strangers? Because he was a cross-dresser.”
He said he could have chosen one of hundreds of other photos but believes it happened for a reason.
“What happened to this man was wrong, cruel, and unforgivable. Hate helps nothing. Love wounds no one. And God heals all.”
He finished by saying: “Irony makes us think”.
And Mark Hogancamp - you win the internet.

How the Reddit button captivated millions

THE Reddit community has finally explained the mystery behind its baffling button.
On April 1, a mysterious button appeared that sent users of the popular online community into a spin.
A simple timer appeared and counted down from 60 seconds with a button.
Users could press it to reset the timer back to 60 seconds.
The rules were simple. “You can only press the button once. Only accounts created before 2015-04-01 can press the button. We can’t tell you what to do from here on out. The choice is yours,” Reddit stated.
So the game began.

Fascination about the button grew fast as people from around the world began to click it.
As each user clicked, they were given a colour code called a “flair”, depending on how fast they pressed the button within the timer limit.
Soon, the Reddit world became divided into camps of colour — those who hit the button early, those who held off as long as possible, and those who refused to press the button at all
Colour was everything. It determined levels of respect among their press-happy peers.
While there was no structure, the colour code created a hierarchy of button elite.
Red became the hottest colour in Reddit town. It was reserved for those who could hold out the longest and click between 0 and 11 seconds. They were hardcore.
Purple became a colour for those who would cave to the pressure to click less than eight seconds into the counter. Or as one user referred to it: “Purple is the colour Vegas is made out of”.
As Reddit user RamsesThePigeon — a grey flair who chose to abstain from pressing the button altogether — stated in the video: “It was one of the most attractive ‘what ifs?’ I suppose you can have out there. It’s a ‘what if?’ you can be personally involved in.”
The experiment was intense
As the button started to make headlines across the globe, the Brookings Institute even suggested there may actually be some awesome science in it. They said the experiment reflected ideas about prestige and that people would engage in boring tasks online for a reward.
Users also created a load of apps and browser extensions around the button.
But button was not without technical glitches. There were several times when issues caused the button to reach zero, despite ample button pressers giving it their best — yet the button did not expire.
It led to speculation it had been gamed by Reddit administrators.
In an NBC explainer video, Reddit product producer Josh Wardle said the idea of the button came to him as he was falling asleep, but he said it wasn’t designed to be a prank.
“It was kind of an art project or a social experiment,” he said.
“I didn’t have any, like, distinct goals or expectations going into it. I just wanted to put it out there and let the Reddit community decide what to do with it.
“People were really imaginative and we just gave them an avenue to be creative.”
Behind the success
As one user explained in the video, there may be a simple reason for the success of the experiment.
“That human instinct, we like to watch numbers, especially, we like to see number go up,” he said.
“When you see them going down, it’s kind of instinctively stressful.”

As time went on and awareness of the experiment grew, hundreds of threads popped up on Reddit, just to talk about the button, the future of the button, the meaning of the button, the importance of keeping the button alive, and the fear of the button finally being over.
There were even Knights of the button.
The BBC penned a piece What Reddit’s ‘ridiculous’ button tells us about mortality.
But, as the button was only available to those registered before April Fool’s Day, the button was always going to end, as the Independent pointed out.
“What if the April Fool’s joke is that it’ll never run out?” eboyblue3 asked. He was purple.
By the time the clock finally did run out on June 5, 1,008,316 Reddit users had pressed the button.
“I was here when it ended, and let me tell you, it was not barely as exciting as I thought it was going to be,” declared TehRainsOfCastamere, a mid-range button presser, permanently flared in green.
And the end result?
Button fans were left with a special kind of empty feeling.
It was a complete fizzer. Nothing happened. The timer just stopped. The end.
Since the button’s demise, there’s been assessment of the button, the statistics of the button and reflection of the button.
Now the dream is over, it seems Reddit users are even more captivated, pondering the bigger questions of the universe.
What does it all mean?
Josh Wardle had this response.
“I think in art it is sometimes a mistake for an author to try and put too much meaning on what they’re doing because the real meaning of this for me was what the community created. We just made a button. They made it successful,” he said.

What the button colour meant.
Purple: 60-52 seconds
Blue: 51-42 seconds
Green: 41-32 seconds
Yellow: 31-22 seconds
Orange: 21-12 seconds
Red: 11-0 seconds
Gray: no click

The guy with too many Facebook friends

IF your Facebook friend count is anything to go by, then Justin Tayler (JT), 24, is one hell of a popular guy.
The Melbourne nightclub promoter has hit the Facebook friend limit of 5000 friends and admits he has to do regular culls when he meets new people.
“It’s like my morning newspaper and my email,” he told news.com.au.
“If I leave my Facebook alone for 10 minutes, I have about five private messages and 30 notifications. It’s how all of my friends and my industry contacts get in touch.”

He joined the social media juggernaut in 2009 when he’d just turned 18 and for the first couple of years maintained an average friend list of about 300.
At the time he was studying PE teaching at university, but when he realised he loved clubbing more than teaching, he left uni to start working in nightclubs four or five nights a week, meeting thousands of new people who he usually ends up connecting with online.
“People always ask how I know so many people, but it’s just the industry I’m in,” says Tayler, who has since become a part-owner of the Orange Whip nightclub in Ringwood.
“People want to add you to find out what is going on in the scene.”

Only 15 per cent of Facebook users have more than 500 friends. The median number of Facebook friends for 18 to 29-year-olds is 300, and for 30 to 49-year-olds, it’s 200.
Tayler’s been able to put his network to good use. Earlier this year, 17-year-old Nick Stokes made headlines for throwing underage parties and raking in up to $1200 in entry fees, and through Facebook, Tayler saw a mutually beneficial opportunity.
“I saw this kid getting tagged in all these stories,” he says.
“I private messaged him and he started working for me, running an underage party. I thought, ‘Let’s get him away from the police and put him in a controlled environment where he can do his own ticket sales and still make money’.”
Tayler’s also been able to use Facebook as a modern form of hitchhiking, lining up lifts between the different clubs he works at.
“It’s amazing how far people will go to skip the line and get some free drink cards,” he says.
But it’s not always him doing the culling.
“When I first started posting about going to clubs every night, some of my close mates were like, ‘I love you dude, but I can’t handle reading about you partying all the time,’” he says.
“You don’t take it personally — you just go, ‘No dramas’.”

Brazilian ‘human Ken doll’ Celso Santebañes, 20, dies of leukaemia

EVEN before he found global fame as a human Ken doll, Celso Santebañes’ physical appearance had made him a star in his native Brazil.
As a child, Celso Borges Pereira (the name he was born with) was feted for his beauty, his perfect features refusing to fade with each year that passed. At 15, he started entering — and winning — modelling competitions, eventually catching the eye of a Sao Paulo talk show talent scout.
The show gave him an entry into the world of celebrity and within a year he’d taken up acting and changed his surname to Santabañes after his favourite Mexican sitcom character.

It was around this time that people started telling him he looked like a Ken doll. It happened so often that Santabañes became fixated on the toy, lining his bedroom shelves with dozens of the plastic figurines. He later explained that his family’s endorsement of the bizarre comparison inspired him to recreate himself as a “human puppet”.
“Obsessed with the perfection of physical beauty, Santebañes started to identify features of his face that didn’t look like the Mattel brand doll,” the Latin Times said.
“(He believed) his nose was too wide and his philtrum — the crease of the upper lip — simply too natural.”
Multiple plastic surgeries and an estimated $60,000 later, Santebañes had fixed his “imperfections” and joined a growing number of adult men aspiring to look like Ken.
Before long he was charging up to $20,000 for public appearances, even launching a line of Celso dolls in Los Angeles, much to the envy of rivals Justin Jedlica (aka Ken 1) and Rodrigo Alves (aka Ken 3).
“He daydreamed about making a film with Valeria Lukyanova, the Ukrainian ‘Human Barbie’,” the Latin Times said.
But late last year, Santebañes received a reality check in the form of an unexpected cancer diagnosis. A rare and aggressive form of leukaemia had been detected during blood tests in preparation for surgery to repair a leaky filler in one of Santebañes’ legs.
He was only 20 and suddenly he was dying.

The impact was immediate.
“Today, I start a new cycle in my life,” he told reporters in January.
“I am starting chemotherapy and I admit I’m a little concerned about some side effects, like hair loss, nausea, my body’s rejection (of chemotherapy), among other things, but I am no longer concerned with the issue of aesthetics. For me that doesn’t matter. What matters is my health now, and I will fight for it.”
The Times observed: “In his five-month battle with cancer, Santebañes immediately had to confront his own physical deterioration, the undoing of what had become his personal identity and national image. It started with dark spots on his skin and bleeding gums, symptoms of the blood cancer. Once in treatment, his hair fell out. He’d later be confined to a wheelchair, a scrawny pale shadow.
On May 18, Santebañes, wearing a hat and heavy makeup and close to death, reflected on his tragic quest for physical perfection.
“Everyone who wants to be pretty, who wants to be perfect, to call attention to themselves, to supplant this lack of … of love, perhaps,” he told Hoje Em Dia.
If he survived, he said, he wouldn’t do any more surgeries: “I wouldn’t do any more, what’s done is done.”
Santebañes died last Thursday after contracting pneumonia. He was buried in his native Sao Paulo at the weekend.
His father, Celia Borges, told reporters: “When he was starting to fulfil his dreams, he discovered his illness and his dreams were interrupted. He had plans but God had others.”