eclecticism

Y’know, it’s really sad that this kind of polite, civil, and amusing discourse is so rarely seen these days. Two people on very different sides of an issue who, rather than loudly proclaiming their absolute certainty that they are right and the other is wrong, are able to amiably chat and joke with each other about the differences in their viewpoints.

Part one:

Part two:

Reprinted in full from the Slog because it freaked me out: You think the Minnesota bridge was bad?

So you know how all those news stories about the Minneapolis bridge collapse have highlighted the fact that the bridge received a ranking of just 50 percent on a federal scale of 1 to 100, making it “structurally deficient”?

The central portion of the Alaskan Way Viaduct was ranked on the same scale. Its score: Nine percent. And if that doesn’t make you want to stay away from the viaduct until they tear the damn thing down, perhaps knowing that the National Bridge Inventory (which provided the Minnesota number) considers it “basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action,” will. (Fun bonus fact: The 520 bridge across Lake Washington received a rating of 44.8 percent, just meeting the “minimum tolerable limit to be left in place as is.”)

Gah. Freaky. I didn’t like the viaduct before all this stuff. I’m even less fond of it now. Just tear the fool thing down (and don’t rebuild it, and don’t dig some stupid tunnel…as long as we’re going to have to move to surface streets eventually no matter what happens to the viaduct, we might as well just stick with that option and do it right).

I wish more newscasters would do something like this. Kudos for Mika Brzezinski, and it’s a pity she has to work with shmoes like the two guys who just won’t let this drop and keep pushing it in her face.

The Clothesline Project is a program started on Cape Cod, MA, in 1990 to address the issue of violence against women. It is a vehicle for women affected by violence to express their emotions by decorating a shirt. They then hang the shirt on a clothesline to be viewed by others as testimony to the problem of violence against women.

There’s been a CLP display on the NSCC campus for the past few days. I stopped by yesterday after class and took a few photos. Every time I see this, I’m struck by the heartbreaking and uplifting power of the stories represented by these shirts. Incredible things to see.

I’ve also created a Flickr CLP Project group, as a tag search led me to quite a few other photos of CLP displays around the country.

Can’t keep all the various options or points of view on Seattle’s ongoing “what do we do about the Viaduct” battle straight? Here’s a handy-dandy guide to the various species involved, thanks to SLOG reader ‘Golob’.

Read the rest of this entry »

On March 13, vote NO and NO. Seattle citizens have been offered two unacceptable options for replacing the Viaduct: a hideous elevated structure that will be taller than the existing one and 50% - 200% wider, or a late-breaking, financially questionable “tunnel lite” option. Seattle can do better, and telling leaders neither on this non-binding advisory ballot makes that point clear. Vote NO and NO.

This is an all-mail election. The last day to postmark your ballot is Tuesday, March 13. King County will be mailing ballots to voters starting on Wednesday, February 21. There are two separate questions on this advisory ballot. Vote NO and NO.

(via Metroblogging Seattle)

Nice rant on Metroblogging Seattle yesterday regarding the ongoing, neverending mess of a fight between Greg “Big Dig Seattle” Nickels, Christine “Viaduct? Vhy not a duck?” Gregoire, and the people of Seattle who just want this all over with…

But let me tell you anyway what I think, because damn it, I’m a Seattleite and I’m going to give you my opinion because I demand to be heard.

1. Tear the goddamned viaduct down.
2. Do all the multimodal work you should have done decades ago to hook the working port and industrial areas into rail and road.
3. Make Alaskan Way into something like the Embarcadeo — with the Benson streetcar running down the middle of the boulevard, parking lots replaced with public parks, and a no-new-construction zone on the waterfront keeping Martin Selig and those other condo-building town destroyers from ripping down all that historic architecture.
4. Lean on the state to fix traffic flow on southbound I-5 so I can get to the airport. You know, like MOVE THE DAMN 520 ONRAMP TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD SO WE CAN STOP THIS DAMN MERCER WEAVE CRAP. Or fixing it so there’s MORE THAN ONE TRAVEL LANE THROUGH DOWNTOWN. The state can do this, and it will be CHEAPER than the $15 billion the tunnel’s now going to cost because Tim “when I was a third-grader I never learned how to carry a one” Ceis didn’t know that CONCRETE ISN’T BROUGHT TO CONTRACTORS BY THE MAGIC BUILDING MATERIALS FAIRY WHEN THEY LEAVE A PIECE OF BRICK UNDER THEIR PILLOWS AT NIGHT.

Looks like Dan Savage agrees.

Given that I think the Viaduct is ugly and intrusive enough as it is, and don’t really want to see a bigger one (good summary here, and that it seems like Seattle getting its own version of the Big Dig (and, apparently, a more dangerous version) seems pretty stupid, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for just getting rid of the Viaduct and moving everything onto the street. Sure, not easy, and will take some serious rearranging. But from what I’ve been reading, it sure seems to be cheaper, safer, and a lot more visually attractive once all’s said and done. Besides, as many have pointed out, that’s the option we’re going to have no matter what during Viaduct removal, rebuilding, or tunnel digging — so why not just commit to it as a permanent measure and do it right?

A couple of disclaimers to start with:

1. I don’t use digg (outside of setting up an account which has rarely been touched).

2. The analogy is probably quite strained, and I keep bouncing between two ways of expressing it, neither of which I think are quite right:

• internet : politics :: digg : internet
• neocons : politics :: diggers : internet

That said…

Wil went on a rant today about diggers dragging the ‘net down to somewhere below the least common denominator.

I’ve been a Digger for a long time, and always felt like I could rely on Digg’s homepage to reliably and consistently direct me to interesting and useful content, accompanied by insightful, funny, and interesting commentary.

My, how things have changed in just a few months. The links (that make it past the bury brigade) are still pretty good, but for whatever reason, the maturity and behavior of the average Digger has evolved into, well, something resembling a middle school lunch room. While Digg has always been a great way to share your creation with a large audience on the Internet, the associated grief that frequently comes with being exposed to Digg’s userbase has lead to several sites blocking Digg, shutting off comments because of abusive Diggers, and using complicated .htaccess rewrites to send Digg’s traffic away.

This struck me as being the same basic premise of part of what Mike was talking about here (some of which I mentioned yesterday) only applied to neocons and the internet in relation to politics, rather than to diggers.

I think this is a specific result of the rise of neoconservatives to cultural and political power. Note that I don’t attribute this to conservatives or conservatism, but specifically to neoconservatives. I don’t believe that the neoconservative political or social culture is interested in conducting their affairs with civility or with any degree of compromise — and therein lies the problem, as it creates a culture of war. I may not have written about politics in quite a long time…but during that interim, I’ve constantly linklogged to neoconservatives’ actions throughout the American political and social culture, and they are always extremist and seemingly operating under the slogan of “no quarter given.” And although I had hoped this extremism might die with the end of Bush’s Presidency, it seems as if moderates are willing to metamorphose into extremists if it gets them the power they seek (McCain) or that other extremists are ready to jump into the situation the moment a void forms (Romney).

It’s that same all-or-nothing, no-quarter-given, us-or-them, black-and-white viewpoint that our culture is rapidly sinking into. No matter whether the arena is politics or the net, online or off, there seems to be no room left for people who actually want to talk to each other, even if they don’t agree. Respectful discourse, on the whole, doesn’t exist anymore — and how can it, when we’re too busy shouting down the opposition to actually listen to what they have to say?

Generally speaking, I tend to like the Seattle PI better than the Seattle Times. However, when a crane collapsed in Bellevue last November, I was disgusted by the PI’s response: an immediate front-page article digging up and detailing five-year-old accounts of the past drug use of the poor guy operating the crane that day. As if this guy’s day wasn’t bad enough — he goes to work, climbs to the top of a tower crane, and then rides the thing down as it collapses into nearby apartment buildings — he then has to endure the ingominy and public humiliation of having his past transgressions dug up, splashed across the front page of the newspaper, and implicitly blamed as the cause of the accident. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t had a drug conviction in five years, nor that his employer required drug tests that he had reliably passed, nor that there was no indication of drug use at the time of the accident. What mattered was that he was guilty! Guilty, guilty, guilty!

This morning, the PI reported on the official determination of the cause of the crane’s collapse:

A poorly designed foundation was the primary cause of the tower crane collapse in Bellevue, a deadly construction accident that spurred state lawmakers Friday to introduce crane-safety bills that would rank among the toughest in the nation.

A three-month investigation into the crash by the Department of Labor and Industries has found that the crane’s steel foundation failed, and that the 210-foot-high structure would not have toppled if it had been bolted into concrete like most other tower cranes, sources close to the investigation told the Seattle P-I.

I, along with more than a few other people, feel quite strongly that the PI owes the crane operator an apology. Easy as it may have been to do, their public vilification of the crane operator — based on nothing more than sensationalistic items in his past, not through any verifiable current information — was a slimy, sleazy way to grab eyeballs and sell papers at the expense of his reputation. Trial and conviction should be handled in the courts, not in the headlines.

The Sonics — who used to be the Seattle Sonics until Seattle voters passed Initiative 91, “which prohibited the city from using tax dollars to subsidize a pro team unless the subsidy generates a certain profit for the city,” and are now searching for another city to house them — want to build a $530 million dollar arena…and they want taxpayers to pony up for $300 million of it.

The Sonics can kiss off, as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve always been flabbergasted at the amount of money poured into professional sports, and especially the amount of money thrown at professional athletes. It just makes my head hurt when those people in charge of such things then ask that the public — many of whom couldn’t give two figs for professional sports in general, let alone any particular team — essentially be required to pay to support them.

You want $300 million of my tax dollars? Put it towards education. Put it towards actually doing something to improve transit in Seattle, instead of half-assing your way through a series of stopgap measures, or instead of bickering about what to do for so long (or stubbornly insisting on ridiculous, expensive, impractical options, like the [thankfully, now dead] tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct) that nothing ever gets done. Put the money towards something — or anything — that would actually benefit everyone, not just those who get their rocks off by watching other people play a game.

Way back when, just after the 9-11 attacks, when the anthrax scares were going on, I was convinced that the people behind the anthrax mailings were going about their job all wrong. Mailing envelopes of powder to major names in major cities was good for immediate headlines, but really, did any of you really worry about coming across a packet full of anthrax? I know I didn’t. As long as they were targeting Dan Rather, it was obvious that most people didn’t have anything to worry about, unless they happened to be along the route of the envelope during its travels.

No, if these terrorists really wanted to get under people’s skins, they should have chosen anywhere from one to five small, out of the way, podunk little towns in the midwest. Some little burg in the middle of Nebraska, or Idaho, or Kansas, or Oklahoma. Pick one of those, grab the local phone book, and do a mass-mailing for whatever you can come up with, and dust all the mailers with anthrax (or your weapon of choice). It’s not immediate headlines, but once people realize that an entire town (or a few towns) in the middle of nowhere has been targeted (and potentially decimated) by a bioterror attack…that’s the kind of thing that is likely to get people’s attention.

Because that would be truly random. That would have been an American analogue to the bombings in the mideast — random, unpredictable, and deadly to anyone, not just Big Names.

And for the past week, that little mental exercise has been running through my head over and over as the current E. Coli spinach scare continues on. Each day more people get sick and reported contaminations pop up in more and more places — according to CNN, we’re up to 111 people ill, one dead, and cases reported in 21 states.

When the news reports started breaking, I thought that, while unlikely, this would be the perfect sort of terrorism attack. Don’t worry about having to get your ‘sleeper cells’ set up with bombs, pilots licenses, or anything that’s already been tried. Instead, just figure out enough biology and chemistry to mix up an effective E. Coli solution, put together some simple form of distribution mechanism (heck, today’s Super Soakers can be fitted with water-filled fanny packs…it doesn’t seem terribly hard to adapt a rig like that) with a tube running along the arm, then send your agents shopping. All they have to do is shop like they normally do, only as they’re handling the produce, they’re spraying a fine mist of bacteria over everything they touch or get near.

Simple. Effective. Random. And nearly untraceable.

Obviously, I have no idea if such a thing is actually what’s happening now, and it’s probably rather unlikely. The news reports briefly mention bioterror, only to say that it’s currently not a likely source (but it hasn’t entirely been ruled out, either). Still…it’s a possibility, and one I find a lot more likely than someone mixing their shampoo and conditioner into a high explosive that gets triggered with their iPod.

“Squirt” by Fluke from the album Risotto (1997, 6:15).

Meh. Not a happy thing.

Reports on the decision:

• Washington Courts: Press Release

  This morning, the Washington Supreme Court issued a decision in Andersen v. King County, a consolidated case regarding Washington’s Defense of Marriage Act.

  The Court’s lead opinion was authored by Justice Barbara Madsen, holding the Washington Defense of Marriage Act does not violate the Washington State Constitution. This decision overturns trial court decisions in King and Thurston Superior Courts in this case.

• Seattle PI: State’s high court upholds ban on gay marriage

  The state Supreme Court today upheld Washington’s law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, rejecting the argument of 19 same-sex couples that they’ve been unfairly denied the right to wed.

  In a splintered decision, Justice Barbara Madsen wrote that the state’s marriage law was enacted to “promote procreation and to encourage stable families.”

  “The legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers the State’s legitimate interests in procreation and the well-being of children.”

• Seattle Times: State Supreme Court upholds gay marriage ban

  The decision came as a sobering defeat for gays and their advocates, who’d hoped the court would strike down the so-named Defense of Marriage Act — DOMA — which restricts marriage to one man and one woman.

  Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Barbara Madsen said DOMA is constitutional because in establishing DOMA “the legislation was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to the survival of the human race and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by children’s biological parents.”

  As such, DOMA does not violate the state Constitution’s privileges and immunities clause, which requires that any benefit granted to one group must be granted equally to all. “Allowing same sex couples to marry does not, in the legislature’s view, further these purposes,” she wrote.

It’s all about the children. Meh. What a crappy argument. Admittedly, I haven’t read the official arguments yet (the court documents are linked to in both newspaper articles), so maybe there’s a bit more to it than that, but from what the papers boil it down to…meh.

So marriage is about procreation and the survival of the human race? What about married couples who either cannot or choose not to have children? Does this mean that according to our state Supreme Court, it’s better to be in an unhappy, unfulfilling, loveless relationship that’s pumping out another child every ten months than it is to be in a happy, committed, healthy, loving relationship that happens to be childless?

And if we’re “encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by children’s biological parents,” then shouldn’t we be outlawing adoption? Sorry, you had the kid, it’s better for the kid if you raise it, even if you’re a teenager, unable to support yourself, on drugs, or any number of other reasons why you might not want to raise the child you just bore. Don’t even get us started on gay couples adopting children!

Sorry gays. We don’t care if you love each other. You don’t have children, and marriage is all about the children, so you can’t get married.

Meh. What a stupid, weak, cowardly cop-out. I expected better.

“Son of a Gun” by K.M.F.D.M. from the album XTORT (1996, 4:23).

> At about 3:30 Saturday morning, as the rave at Capitol Hill Arts Center (CHAC) was winding down, the young people who lived at 2112 East Republican Street scanned the dance floor for people they could invite to their afterparty. They made a habit of welcoming strangers—it’s how they had all met one another in the first place. They had almost finished with the invitations when Jeremy Martin, 26, spotted a hulking, solitary figure. > > “Go ask him,” Jeremy said to his best friend, Anthony Moulton. > > Another person who lived at the home, 24-year-old Jesiah Martin (no relation to Jeremy), remembers having seen the man that night—conspicuous not just for his 6’5” 280-pound frame but for the fact that he wasn’t dressed up or dancing. “He was by himself mostly, fly on the wall style,” said Jesiah. > > Anthony, who is disarmingly goofy in the way of most in their group, approached the man and said, “Do you know the difference between Scotch and beer?” Most at the party were drinking beer, but Anthony handed the man a flask full of Macallan. The man took a swig and grimaced. But he liked it. He even smiled, leading Anthony to say, “Hey, what are you doing after this? We have half a keg at our place…” > > And that is how Kyle Huff came to visit the house on East Republican Street.

I’ve mentioned before that The Stranger has been consistently doing the best reporting on the Capitol Hill shooting. They continue with this feature story on the events of the night.

“24 Hours (part 1) (full mix)” by Kleptones, The from the album 24 Hours (full mix) (2006, 1:02:13).

• A semi-automatic assault rifle.
• A pistol-grip shotgun.
• An aluminum baseball bat.
• A machete.
• Over 300 rounds of ammunition.

All but the shotgun were recovered from Aaron Kyle Huff’s truck after the massacre on Capitol Hill; the shotgun is one similar to the one Huff used during the shooting. Not pictured is Huff’s semi-automatic handgun, also used in the attack.

All legal to own.

For God’s sake, why?!?

NRA members and “right to bear arms” wingnuts, feel free to brand me as a gun-control nut. I’m fine with that.

There is NO good reason why this sort of weaponry (specifically, the assault rifle and pistol-grip pump action shotgun…obviously, it’s a bit hard to get worked up over a baseball bat, and while I personally find a two foot machete pretty damn creepy, it’s nowhere near the same league as the guns) needs to be openly available to the general public. You want to hunt? Fine, hunt. Buy a hunting rifle and go slaughter as many deer as you want. But this kind of stuff?

Seattle Chief of Police Gil Kerlikowske has it right:

> As many as 30 people were in the house when the man approached, draped in bandoliers of ammunition and armed with a handgun and a pistol-grip, 12-gauge shotgun — a weapon Kerlikowske pointedly said was “not for hunting purposes, but for hunting people.”

What actually happened was bad enough. It makes me ill to consider what could have happened if a police officer hadn’t been in the area and on the scene after only five minutes of shooting.

“24 Hours (part 1) (full mix)” by Kleptones, The from the album 24 Hours (full mix) (2006, 1:02:13).

When Prairie came home last night, there were a couple police cars in our parking lot, along with a couple of large black SUVs. She wasn’t sure why they were there, but after an hour of them sitting in our parking lot, she got a little nervous and decided to come up and wander the mall until I got off of work.

Today, as more news about Saturday’s shooting in Capitol Hill was released, we found out why they were here.

> A Seattle Police SWAT team and bomb squad raided a North Seattle apartment Saturday night looking for evidence that neighbors say is tied to the shooting on Capitol Hill that morning which left seven dead. > > KOMO 4 News has learned that inside the apartment, police found guns, ammunition, and a hand grenade. > > […] Police came to search an apartment where twin brothers have lived for the past four or five years. When one of them came home, police put him in handcuffs and took him away. > > “Well, they said it was in connection with the shootings down on Capitol Hill that happened,” said apartment manager Regina Gray. > > The folks who run the apartments tell us police told them little else. But, we do know, officers evacuated the entire third floor of the complex where the brothers lived. > > We’ve also been told, police collected weapons, numerous rounds of ammunition and a grenade out of the apartment.

Later in the day, more confirmation came out.

> Seattle police believe the man responsible for Saturday’s Capitol Hill massacre is Kyle Aaron Huff, 28, who had lived in North Seattle since moving from Montana with his twin brother about four years ago. > > The assistant manager at the Town and Country Apartments where the brothers lived said police told him that Huff was the suspected shooter. > > Jeff Green, a dispatcher for the Whitefish, Mont., police also said that Seattle police contacted the department Saturday and told them Huff was the perpetrator of Seattle’s worst mass murder in 23 years. Huff previously lived in Whitefish. > > […] Police raided the apartment Huff shared with his twin Saturday evening. They arrived at the Town & Country Apartments in the 12300 block of Roosevelt Way Northeast with a battering ram and a shield, but they were apparently let in to the apartment by the suspected killer’s brother, said Jim Pickett, assistant manager of the apartment. > > Police brought out three rifles and what appeared to be a grenade, Pickett said. > > […] During a news conference this afternoon at Seattle police headquarters, Whitcomb said police recovered a semi-automatic rifle, a machete and hundreds of rounds of ammunition from a Dodge Laramie pickup belonging to the suspect which was found near the Capitol Hill house where the shooting occurred. > > […] Pickett said the Huff brothers had never been a problem for him. > > “They were very friendly, very friendly, very polite. They said ‘yes sir, no sir’ and they were always glad to help.”

So…yeah. It appears that the Capitol Hill shooter was a neighbor of mine. The next building over, and I don’t recognize him from the picture in the Times article, but still one of my neighbors.

Freaky.