Memorial for Victims of the Massacre, Madison Market Co-op. Click to enlarge.
Then again, as I mentioned, the seats of power tend to corrupt whomever happens to sit in them.
It just doesn’t scan. A telephone network is a natural monopoly. Always has been, always will be. Can’t be otherwise, really. On the wireline side, it simply costs a huge amount of money to construct a comprehensive network. On both wireline and wireless sides, the value of the network is that it’s an interconnected network; the fewer arbitrary boundaries between different segments of it, the more seamless and logically it operates.
If a bunch of free-market ideologies try to assert otherwise, what they broke asunder will eventually revert to its original form.
No, not back to a big Bell System yet, but it’s headed there. And no mumblings about cable TV being a competitor — AT&T has their finger in that pie, too.
Cell service is only a partial competitor at best. Many locations have spotty or poor cell coverage, even in major cities. I know; I’ve had cell-phone-only friends who were a pain to talk to because calls would always get dropped or have poor quality. Not to mention that the new Ma Bell (surprise, surprise) has her finger in the that pie too: one outcome of this buyout is that Cingular Wireless will be no more.
If there’s any doubt that Seattle and Washington politicians have all ability of a pack of trained baboons, this should clear up the confusion.
Seattle is the only place I know that is incapable of backing out of a boondoggle (the monorail) without creating a bigger boondoggle (throwing away a valuable right-of-way). No argument that the monorail was wildly impractical and deserved to be put out of its misery, but that land could have made a very nice bus rapid transit roadway (and, later, a light-rail line).
Instead, they simply throw the land away. If they really cared about solving regional problems, those leaders would have figured out a way to retain the land and utilize it for another more practical transit project.
Actually, I’m being unfair to trained baboons here. I’m sure if we replaced state and political leaders with trained baboons, things would significantly improve. Everyone would know the official leaders are a bunch of first-class incompetent nitwits, and folks would organize alternative structures of governance in response.
Instead, the crowd of humans trapped in the systematically broken system occasionally manage to say and do semi-intelligent things, which maintains a false sense of confidence in their abilities.
Testing MacEmacs: cliché, Española, “quote”
Amazing. The brain damage appears to have been fixed.
Not the wars between advocates of different editors, but the wars between editors for use on my computer. Earlier chapters in the saga were the inability of anything in the vi family to handle UTF correctly, the now decades-old inability of the nvi development team to code screen updating properly, and the (up to recently) way Gnu Emacs was hampered by its legacy in ways harmful for UTF-8 character entry.
The latter seems to have been fixed in the latest version of OSX Gnu Emacs. That’s good news, because an extremely annoying jEdit bug has come to light: sometimes it apparently treats a search for a string as a search-and-delete-this-string command. I suppose (given how it tool so long to come to light) it may be a case of operator error, but it sure doesn’t seem so; I’ve been taking pains to watch what I do when searching and have still been bitten by the issue. And it’s a real PITA to repair the damage it causes.
This appears to be a pretty reality-based report from Iraq. Yes, it’s via the mouth of someone doing something that’s more than a little distasteful (essentially being a mercenary working in a support role). It is, however, a classic logical fallacy to claim that the truth of a statement is based on how much you like the person making it.
Such as this particular one about some of the “valuable” allies in the “coalition”:
The International Zone - AKA “The IZ” or “The Green Zone”. The IZ is just that, it is where a lot of coalition partners are located that don’t make much sense sending anywhere else. The Fijians are there, the Georgians are there, etc.That’s right, many of the so-called allies in this endeavor aren’t doing anything more than keeping some seats warm inside a fortified compound. It was always transparently obvious that they were there strictly for propaganda purposes, and there primarily by virtue of acts of bribery or blackmail against their national governments. Now we see just how hollow a façade it was.
Regarding mercenaries, the piece’s author probably doesn’t consider this encouraging, but I do:
Civilian Personal Security Detail (PSD) Convoy. These are also generally well equipped and maintained, but simply substitute dickheads with machine guns (remember Blackwater?) riding in Chevy Suburbans for Military folks in HMMVs. These have the same “attack me” letters floating above them, but they seem to be a little brighter and larger [than normal convoys of GI’s -ed.] — these guys get shot at all the time. I have never traveled via PSD convoy, and will not unless there is simply no other way.There are many reports of stupid attacks that kill more civilians than occupiers and now all the squabbling between rival ethnic factions that’s threatening to escalate into civil war. Many of the US military aren’t there completely voluntarily — there’s a fair amount of economic compulsion that propels the less well-off into the services. That’s almost never the case for the mercenaries. They were in the military, got discharged honorably, and thus have their GI Bill ticket to higher education and a good civilian job.
I find it heartening that there’s enough Iraqis with their heads screwed on right that the most evil of the occupiers — the ones who could easily be doing something else but instead chose to kill for money — get especially singled out for attack.
Whatever it is, I duly note that resident anarchist-turning-Establishment-liberal Geov Parrish has signed up enthusiastically behind the Alaskan Way Tunnel.
It’s a horrible proposal. It will cost billions, money that nobody has completely figured how to raise yet. And that’s assuming the initial cost estimates hold, which of course they won’t. Just look at the cost overruns for Boston’s Big Dig project.
The Big Dig was bad enough. The Alaskan Way tunnel will be worse. Boston at least had a viable mass transit system before its highway boondoggle bled the local transport coffers dry. Moreover, it’s not a metro area that’s growing terribly rapidly. So it’s not that big a deal that there’s so many taxes going to pay for the Big Dig that it’s unlikely the “T” is going to get any big improvements any day soon.
Not so in Seattle, a city unique in the US for being as big as it is and doing as little as it has with respect to transit investment over the past three of four decades. Spending billions on that tunnel means spending the needed billions on transit would result in unacceptably high tax reads. By implication, it is nothing more than a long-term commitment to continued underinvestment in mass transit.
Not that rebuilding the viaduct is an option, either. There’s always been a “damn the community, get rick quick” attitude in Seattle. It’s probably a result of how Seattle became a big city by selling overpriced provisions to argonauts heading north to gold rushes in Alaska and the Yukon. One result of this history is that Seattle in undersupplied in park acreage compared to its neighbors. The land for many city parks in Portland was donated by its pioneers; Seattle’s pioners were generally too interested in making every last buck off their land claims to do that. Thus there is, for example, nothing like Portland’s park blocks here.
Getting rid of the viaduct offers Seattle a rare second chance. Once the freeway is gone, there will be room aplenty along the waterfront for both a boulevard and a linear park running the length of downtown. It speaks volumes to the lack of urban consciouness in Seattle that rebuilding the viaduct is even being mulled as a possible option.
The best option is to follow in the footsteps of Portland and San Francisco and replace the waterfront freeway with a boulevard and a linear park.
As for the traffic that currently uses the viaduct, it will go to the same place all the traffic came from when the new, wider I-90 got clogged to capacity in the early 1990’s when the old floating bridge was replaced. The first few weeks will be painful, then folks will discover ways to get along well enough without it
So what to do when (as it appears) us voters will be offered the Hobson’s choice of replacing the viaduct or building a tunnel? First, the most important thing is to get rid of the damn viaduct. A fortnight after that happens, the traffic fact mentioned in the previous paragraph will be evident. At that point, it’s vital to not have an easy way to replace the freeway; if one exists, the path of least resistance will be to ignore the alternatives and build as planned.
The easiest way to replace the freeway is to build a new viaduct. Therefore, the strategic vote is one for a tunnel. To reiterate, it gets rid of the freeway and offers no easy option for replacing it. Moreover, it’s a vote against a viaduct and for a park, since one would be built on the tunnel lid.
Parrish’s conclusion is OK; it’s the reasoning and mindset behind that conclusion I take issue with.
About my bizarre food sensitivities. The cantaloupe and honeydew sensitivity are explained by both ragweed and grass allergies. Grass allergy is also linked to tomato allergy (another big one for me).
On the subject of grasses, I’m very much looking forward to missing the Willamette Valley grass pollen season this year. Only major pollen producers in the Seattle area are trees and I’m not that sensitive to tree pollens. The alders are putting out great clouds of pollen right now and I don’t notice it a bit.
Though I must point out that the article is dead wrong about carrots and potatoes being in the same plant family.
Sometimes it makes me ashamed of the skin color I happened to be born with when I get reminded yet again how terminally stupid so many who share it are about race issues.
The past weekend, I attended the gay longhair lunch in Seattle. One of the attendees had lived in New Orleans and was commenting on mayor Ray Nagin’s “Chocolate City” speech.
What’s really offensive about it is how an elected official in a purportedly secular republic keeps working references about a sky god into his rhetoric. Of course, that’s not what your average clueless white person takes offense to.
Get it straight: it’s not racism to express an anti-racist wish. It is racism to have one racial group be disproportionately represented amongst a city’s poor. It is especially racism to have that ethnic group die disproportionately because a classist evacuation plan that left the poor with no means of escape is also a racist one.
I repeat: to express the desire that New Orleans’ racial makeup not be permanently altered as the result of the policies of a racist society is not racism. It’s a stand against racism. Got it?
Which is not to say that Nagin is free from the stain of racism. His racism, however, is not a racism against whites. It’s classism-bred internalized racism directed against his fellow blacks. Nagin was part and parcel of the racist government apparatus that left low-income blacks to die. Nagin is one of the creeps who (before the hurricane hit) spoke of those who evacuated and those who “chose” to stay. Buses under Nagin’s control flooded while sitting unused in lots guarded by New Orleans police who threatened to shoot anyone who used them.
That’s the real racism of Ray Nagin.
Unfortunately, I was too absorbed in listening to what a past resident of (and recent visitor to) New Orleans had to say about the aftermath to cut in with a dose of reality (and was having difficulty getting a word in edgewise in the whole conversation anyhow).
That’s my initial take on the group that recently invaded San Francisco.
I mean, really now, who can deny that popular culture and the media are full of images advocating promiscuity? Of course they are. They’re run capitalistically, and sex sells. That, however, is just about the only point they’ve got right.
Being products of a capitalist society, popular culture and the media are also full of politically reactionary ideas; those who advocate sexual repression are given more airtime than those advocating less overtly repressive policies (truly liberatory ones being almost completely absent). End result is a mass culture that’s completely schizoid about sex, simultaneously glorifying it and portraying it as dirty.
It doesn’t help that much of the movement advocating greater sexual freedom got coopted by the forces of business into what is now a largely apolitical and consumerist culture. If you doubt me, just head on down to a gay ghetto and observe the dominant values being exhibited.
It’s one of the reasons it took me so long to acknowledge to myself that I was queer. I didn’t know what I was, but I knew that I certainly didn’t have much in common with a bunch of men who busied themselves engaging in precisely the same forms of self-oppression straight women in our society are propagandized into.
As I had been planning for several months, I finally had the chance to a day in Tacoma. No time to write a full account or download pictures, so I’ll just type in a list of a few random thoughts in no particular order:
None of which means that I’ve made any decision to move there yet, just that Tacoma is certainly still under consideration as such.
Memorial for Victims of the Massacre, Madison Market Co-op. Click
to enlarge.
Police are still unclear on the motive, but am I alone in thinking that homophobia might be a motive for Seattle’s worst mass murder in over two decades? Consider the circumstantial evidence:
So, a newcomer from a different part of the country decides to see what a rave is all about, gets invited to an after-hours party, gets hit on by another man, this provokes an internal crisis and he snaps. No, there’s no hard evidence to support this theory yet, but it does fit the general picture and furnish a motive.
Two quotes in this article caught my attention:
Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske cautioned that a motive may never be known but it is critical to try to determine one, “with the hope that we can learn from this terrible incident,” the worst mass killing in Seattle in 23 years.Contrast with the demonizing of anyone who dared ask “why” in the aftermath of 9/11. It was one of the things that really stuck in my craw about the whole ruling-class orchestrated reaction to it. Any detective who isn’t concerned with the motive behind a crime is rightly regarded as incompetent. And nobody accuses the police of taking the side of the perpetrator when they try to determine a motive.
In the absence of fact, theories have sprung up on Web blogs and in news accounts. Some suggest that Huff met at least one of his victims at a rave weeks before the shooting. A Seattle psychologist wondered if Huff, who appeared to have no girlfriend, acted out of sexual frustration.The whole “no girlfriends” supposition dovetails with an earlier conjecture of mine.
And then we come to Seattle Weekly’s Knute Berger, who apparently bought into the whole post-9/11 garbage of “if you consider motives, you’re taking the perp’s side” so enthusiastically he’s still in that mindset over the recent mass-murders.
The ironic thing is that he’s doing it in an attempt to defend the subculture that some idiots are blaming for the whole thing. Which is totally unnecessary. Raves and post-rave parties happen all the time without any msss-shootings. Part of the reason the crime was such a shock was that it happened so unexpectedly, after all.
If one wants to call for the abolition of things that are associated with mass murders, the state and its wars would have to be No. 1 on the list. Less dramatically, high schools and mail sorting facilities are statistically much more correlated with mass murders than rave culture. It would suffice to point out that nobody’s ever advocating regulating either out of existence; adopting the Bush regime’s idiotic know-nothing rhetoric about criminals is not only stupid and anti-intellectual, it’s completely unnecessary.
Fear of facts is never a good idea; fleeing from the facts is a sign of weakness and insecurity. Far from condemning a subculture, the facts are far more likely to condemn establishment values like heterosexism.
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