Mucking up Downtown

Now, just so you know, I wrote this post using my new voice-recognition software, Dragon Naturally Speaking. So, since it's basically a spoken post, it's not as coherent as I'd like. But I wanted to cook dinner, and it was easy to do. I bought the software so I could write and do other things at the same time, and also because I've been having pain in my right hand, between my ring finger and pinkie finger. I don't know what it is, but if it's a result of too much typing, then I don't want to make things any worse.

Anyway.

So the powers that be in Tampa have decided that they no longer need to have one-way streets in downtown. As one of the few people who actually lives in downtown (a fact that our fantastic Mayor Pam Iorio seems to ignore from time to time), I would like to offer some insight on this rather thorny topic.

Supporters of this idiotic plan offer several justifications. The first is the safety. The St. Pete Times article—which is a news article in name only, it is really an editorial—begins with a couple of stories of people who were involved in auto accidents in downtown. As if the fact that there are a couple of one-way streets in downtown causes all of the accidents in the entire city to occur there, when in fact the worst intersections in town are the intersections of two two-way roads.

The real safety problem is roads like Dale Mabry—three, four lanes in each diretion, medians in between, no reasonable sidewalks on the edges, constant heavy traffic moving in both directions and making multiple turns in both directions with and without traffic lights. This is what causes accidents people, this is what makes it unsafe to walk down the street. It certainly is not a simple matter of one-way streets with high-speed traffic. That's absurd.

More after the jump.

There is much higher speed traffic on the two-way streets elsewhere in town than on the one-way streets in downtown. And if you're genuinely concerned about the speed at which traffic moves through downtown—on Tampa St. and Florida St. in particular—then why is it that this proposal really is only dealing with Polk, Madison, Twiggs, and Zack, the cross streets. If you're concerned about the speed on Tampa, you should do something about Tampa. You will not fix the speed on Tampa St. by changing the direction of traffic on Zack St. The two are not related. The logic these people are using to take to make this argument astounds me. It's a series of non sequiturs—state a problem, devise a solution having nothing to do with the problem at all, and then state that the solution solves a different problem which was really the first problem. This is a classic case of people who know that what they're telling you is bullshit but don't know how to put it over on you.

Anyway so were talking safety. Now in the RPPI study that I linked to earlier, the much vaunted a safety issue is discussed at some length. It cites evidence that two-way streets are significantly more dangerous for pedestrians than one-way streets—in one case, I believe it was 163% worse on a two-way street than on a one-way street. That's a fairly significant number; I’m not sure how the two-way proponents are justifying saying two-way is safer in light such facts. But then they’d probably rather just ignore facts.

The study also says that two-way streets suffer far the larger number of automobile accidents, and points out that when streets were changed from two-way to one-way back in the 50s and 60s, it was largely under the guise of safety. Any reasonable person can look at traffic accident reports in downtown and see the number of accidents at the intersection of, for example, Tampa St. and Kennedy Blvd., two one-way streets. Pick another intersection of two-way streets with approximately the same amount of traffic—say, Gandy and Manhattan—and check the traffic accidents there. You will find that there are two to three times the number of automobile accidents at the intersection of two two-way streets, vice the intersection of two one-way streets. The simple fact that the mayor doesn’t want the city transportation engineering department to produce these reports to prove her point is evidence that she's already aware that her point won't be proven—and she doesn’t want to look like an idiot for advocating a pro-safety idea that is actually blatantly unsafe. That is to say, she’s lying.

Aside from studies and facts, simple common sense would tend to show you that one-way streets are safer. The intersection of one-way streets is safer than the intersection of two-way streets. Most accidents are the result of people turning—attempting to make a right or left-hand turn against traffic without a signal into a driveway or onto a minor road. People get tired of waiting for traffic to clear before turning and try to “beat” another car to make their turn. Blammo, accident. With two-way streets, you’ve got eight possible directions for turning vehicles. You can add green arrows for left and right turns, which makes the light cycle longer and slows traffic down even more, or you can ignore the turn arrows and force people to try to turn sharp before oncoming cars. Now, with one-way streets, you’ve got a total of two possible turning directions. That's a lot fewer turning vehicles, it's a lot fewer directions for drivers (who are notoriously distractible). Fewer things for them to have to watch and look at. The less work you make drivers do, the fewer accidents you have.

As a cyclist, when I take my bike up to Tampa St. I only have to look in one direction before I cross. This is great, because with the synchronized lights in downtown I know that if I wait for just a minute—I won't need to wait long—if I can wait for just a minute, traffic will clear on Tampa. It may be a very busy street--it's three lanes and it carries a great deal of traffic into downtown from the north—and it may have this traffic going through but I can pull my bike up to the intersection there at Fortune St. and in no time at all I have a clear path, all three lanes free, and I can just ride right on across (a pedestrian could walk across in the same situation).

Now you make it a two-way street. Well, I can sit there at Fortune waiting for the southbound lanes to clear, and if the southbound clears but there’s traffic still coming northbound (because it’s much harder to synchronize traffic on a two-way street), I have an unpleasant choice. I can ride into the middle of the road and wait for northbound clear. Or I can pass up the opportunity to cross the street and wait until both directions are clear, which may never happen on a busy two-way. I’d have to ride down to a light to cross. Or I just might not bother at all—I’ll take my business elsewhere if it’s too difficult for me to get across the street.

The safety argument is bunk.

As for light synchronization, the supporters of de-synchronizing the lights say that people move too fast through downtown. My suggestion would be lower the speed limit to 25 and start ticketing offenders. I drive through downtown at 45 miles an hour now. That's 15 over the speed limit on Ashley and 10 over on Tampa. If I ever got a ticket for that it would be $185 and four points. I never have to worry about getting a ticket, though, because nobody ever gets pulled over in downtown (it’s hard to find a place). How about putting those little speed sensor cameras on top of all the traffic signals? People speed through downtown, then next week they get a little traffic citation in the mail and picture of them at the wheel. Yeah, people hate that—but it would stop folks speeding through downtown without forcing them to stop and idle in traffic all the time, spewing exhaust fumes throughout downtown.

Numerous studies have shown—and the RPPI study points this out—that vehicles burn more gas at very slow speeds than at moderate speeds, and burn even more when idling. Thus, cars produce more exhaust fumes when they spend time sitting in traffic and creeping along the street than they do when moving down the road at a decent clip as they do now. If you desynchronize the lights because you want to slow the traffic down and make people stop more as they go through town, all you’re doing in increasing the amount of idling fumes spewed into the atmosphere.

It's worth pointing out, too, that that is an entirely a restrictive action—it does not liberate anyone, it does not make anything better. It is specifically designed to slow traffic down and make people wait more. The only possible justification—safety—we’ve already debunked. No positive social or community benefit comes from doing so. That is the absolute definition of bad public policy.

So the end result of this desynchronization and two-waying of the streets is, you get more people, more cars, sitting in downtown idling at lights all the time, sitting in traffic waiting for the left turn arrows so that they can make a left, or trying to turn against the light and probably getting smacked by an oncoming vehicle the process, or making all these other cars stack up in a line behind the guy who’s waiting to turn; people trying to swerve down into traffic causing more accidents, not looking where they’re going, running over pedestrians because they’re not looking, getting upset at everybody and impatient because they’re waiting for no reason, making them do ill-considered things and not looking at what they’re doing, not thinking about safety, and all the while the exhaust fumes from all the idling engines are slowly building up, making the downtown air foul and unbreathable. Wow, doesn’t that just sound like a pedestrian’s paradise?

More idling in downtown means more exhaust fumes in downtown means worse air pollution in downtown means worse air quality in downtown, and there's no possible reasonable justification for doing that. It does not make a city more pedestrian friendly to make its air more polluted, and in downtown, with a lot of tall buildings, you have less airflow and it takes longer for pollutants to blow away or settle out of the air. So not only are you now increasing the amount of pollution emitted to buy cars, you're doing it in the worst part of town to do it in. Bad air quality does not make a town more pedestrian friendly. Hell, science has proven all this but you don’t need a study; it’s just common sense. Except, apparently, to the mayor.

Then there's the issue of what is the real cause here was, what is it that we’re really trying to do. Do we want to make downtown safer and more pedestrian-friendly, or are you just trying to reduce the number of automobiles in downtown. To be blunt, it’s the latter. Safety is just an excuse. So we figure, add some “traffic calming” devices (which is to say, congestion-making devices), slow the people down, it’ll be safer and more pleasant.

That’s another thing, this whole notion of traffic calming. That’s the biggest lie planners have ever perpetrated (usually it’s the planners who are getting lied to, though, so I guess they deserve it). What traffic calming does is actually make people less calm. They irritate people. They make drivers mad. Think about it. This is Tampa, this is the road rage capital of the United States; we've held that title for years. We have people killing each other in traffic because, you know, you didn't signal a turn or you had the wrong bumper sticker on your car. We had somebody actually threaten somebody's life in traffic last year just because they had a Kerry sticker on their car instead of a Bush sticker. This is insane. Road rage is genuine problem around here. And what causes the most road rage? Traffic. So you're saying you want to increase traffic congestion in downtown. And this is going to make anybody safer?

Now, the St. Pete Times article tends to frame this in the sense of making downtown a more vibrant and active “neighborhood.” Someone is quoted as saying that we made one-way streets so that people could get out of town faster, and a lot of them got out of town and never came back. Senseless, idiotic, and cute, that’s all that statement is; it is utterly devoid of fact or sense. The fact of the matter is, we made one-way streets so that people could get into town faster, there’d be less traffic in downtown, faster speeds, less waiting at lights, easier to navigate, make the place more pleasant to come to. All these things will actually cause more people to transit through downtown, not fewer people.

The leap of logic required here is incredible. Somehow these people are blaming the one-way street, and the “high” traffic speeds (35 miles an hour on average) for making downtown a place where the sidewalks rollup at night. I guess that's putting the cart before the horse? I’m not sure. What it really is, is trying to cover up your own idiocy. Stupid zoning laws and poorly conceived planning ideas are what killed downtowns in the first place. We decided that downtown was a place where offices would live, not where people would live. We didn't build, for 20 years in this country from, you know, hell, thirty or forty years, from the 60s on we did not build residential units in downtowns in any medium sized city in the entire country except for housing projects. If you weren’t in New York or Chicago or Boston you didn't live in downtown unless you were poor. It is absurd take the result of 50 years of social engineering and misapplied urban planning practices and idiotic politics, and blame the end result of all of that foolishness on our having made the streets go one way. As if making the streets go two-way will suddenly make people want to come back to downtown. There is no conceivable logical leap that allows this.

What people have got to realize is that downtown is dead because city leaders, for many years, worked to segregate land uses. In such a way that when people went home at night, they went home and stayed home, and none of them lived in downtown. This is history, this is the way we did things from the 1950s on. We brought this upon ourselves, our leaders and our planners did. Now they want to blame the whole mess on one tiny little thing.

Well, what they're really doing here is trying to make downtown hostile to automobiles. This is the new planning theory (believe me, I did a semester in grad school in urban planning), the idea that if you make a place auto hostile, everything will be better, overnight. Planning does not follow transportation—land use, urban development, and so on, these things do not follow the transportation. If you believe this to be true then I ask you why do you think the growth management system in this state is so adamant about making developers pay for transportation upgrades etc.

Development does not follow infrastructure; infrastructure follows development. That may not be the way we wish it was, but it’s the way things are. Changing that fact would require a sea change in development practices, and that ain’t very likely. Merely changing the infrastructure in downtown is not going to make the place more active, more like a neighborhood.

Here’s the way things work in real life. Drivers have said in surveys that they are less inclined to drive at high speeds when there are pedestrians about. In other words, the presence of pedestrians makes drivers more cautious. It is not that cautious drivers increase the presence of pedestrians. We’ve got to make A follow B and not vice versa in this argument.

More pedestrians will also mean there will be more businesses. More people will be driving slower to see what's going on, pay attention to passing scene, and to the pedestrians. The way these people make it seem, most drivers would just drive right over a pedestrian and not even notice, but that’s just not the case. A driver in a congested environment pays more attention to what he's doing than one in a non-congested environment. In other words, more pedestrians equals better-behaved drivers.

Now, how are we going to go about getting more pedestrians? Two-way roads will not increase the number of pedestrians in downtown. The only thing that will result in more downtown peds is the addition of residential and retail into the downtown area. Developers are already taking care of this for us—once again, noting that the development is preceding any infrastructure changes. People came in and looked at downtown and said, “I want to build condos here, I think people will like it.” They’re building a grocery store now; even Wal-Mart wanted to move into the urban center. This is development preceding infrastructure. If the mayor wants more people downtown she need only sit back and wait for the condos currently under construction to be completed.

The fact is, if infrastructure changes are needed, they will only be made when the market says it’s time. Marked forces are really in control here (and so as P.J. O’Rourke says it really all comes back to money). The pedestrians are going to come because the residences are going to come. Once the pedestrians have arrived, new retail will open. The retail will stay open later hours, and the sidewalks will no longer roll up. This will occur regardless of whether we make any changes with the one-way streets or not.

But not being satisfied with letting the market fix matters absent government coercion, here in the land of the free, we’ve come a with a plan to make traffic worse in downtown and make drivers avoid downtown. That's the whole goal—fewer cars in downtown. This is not necessarily an admirable goal, because unless you do live in downtown and work in downtown, you’re going to be driving into downtown every day. Is the goal to make non-residents avoid downtown? Hell, if we make driving into town bad enough for the folks out in the burbs, they’ll probably start looking for jobs out in the burbs. And since the corporate higher-ups who lease the office space in downtown live in the burbs, too, maybe they’ll just start renting some cheaper office space up in New Tampa or out in Brandon. So now you're going to have more difficulty filling the office space in downtown—where the preponderance of office space is—spreading the population more evenly throughout the urban area and eliminating the need for a downtown in the first place. If your goal is revitalizing the downtown, this is actually counterproductive.

In any urban center, you want to have density of population, a mix of land uses, smooth traffic flow for all forms of traffic, adequate traffic capacity for the planned density and population. Eliminating traffic capacity does not accomplish this. What needs to happen is already happening. If the mayor wants to make things better for pedestrians et al in downtown, she’ll start by bulking up our pathetic mass transit system and stop trying to make things less pleasant for the drivers around here.

The city already does a fair job of being pedestrian-friendly: the sidewalks are generally fairly broad and free of obstructions. Bicycling is not illegal on the sidewalks. There are bike racks available at most buildings and parks. No traffic light stays green or red so long that pedestrians must wait very long for a WALK light (and when that light comes, they don’t have to worry about cars turning in from six other directions). But more can be done: how about looking at extending that trolley line up Franklin Street into the middle of downtown, and even across the Cass St. Bridge to the UT campus? That would be worthwhile. How about re-examining the Downtown Connector, giving it more stops closer to where people live and work? It’s a bitter irony to me that the one extant residential area—two condominiums up on Laurel St.—are not on the Downtown Connector’s route. The city just isn’t trying very hard.

You want safety? I think we've already discussed that one-way streets are safer than two-way. You want friendly? Here's an idea: a traffic snarled street with accidents happening all the time and people sitting, idling, getting angry, is far less friendly for driver and pedestrian alike than smoothly moving synchronized traffic on one-way streets. Get people to where they're going as quickly as possible, so that they can be there, so that they can get out of their cars and walked around downtown, just like you want them to.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that the two-way one-way proposal lacks any merit whatsoever. I greatly look forward to a public hearing at some point in downtown about this conversion plan. I plan to go there with a stack of bound, printed copies of that RPPI study, and give them to everybody that walks in the door, and then stand up and make a fuss. These peoples’ logic is so contorted, so indefensible, that if I poke just the tiniest little hole in it the whole thing will collapse like a damn house of cards. I’m salivating at the prospect.

Idiots in Tampa

Yes! There are idiots in Tampa! I know it's hard to believe.

I actually had work to do tonight, writing and such (gotta put a sex scene in the novel, you know) and packing for a trip tomorrow, but then I got into this debate on Bayciti, a terrific Tampa development blog, regarding a proposal that has been floated to two-way several of Tampa's one-way streets in downtown.

Justin over at Bayciti links to several valuable articles on the subject: one from Tampa Bay Business Journal about a recent meeting of the Downtown Tampa Partnership; another about a month old from the St. Petersburg Times singing the praises of eliminating one-way streets; and this terrific study by the Reason Public Policy Institute (Reason is a libertarian think tank).

Now I have to write up a big post about all this silliness. As a downtown resident I think I have a valuable insight into just how moronic this idea is.

Reporters in jail update

Big news today. As I recently reported, the Supreme Court has declined to hear a case wherein reporters associated with the Valeria Plame affair (but not responsible for outing her) sought relief from a contempt-of-court ruling for refusing to release the names of their confidential sources.

This afternoon, Time, Inc., the publisher of Time magazine among numerous others (and a division of AOL-Time-Warner), today caved in and released documents that named reporter Matt Cooper's source. This gets Cooper off the hook, of course, but is nonetheless a distressing development. Time finally agreed to give up the documents only after they were threatened by the judge in the case with "very large fines," and after the special prosecutor threatened individual members of the corporation with contempt.

While the company was willing to let Matt Cooper go to jail without offering him much in the way of support (they did at least pay his legal bills), but as soon as they were threatened with fees and, God forbid, with personal consequences for executives, they caved right on in. It's great the way Time stands up for journalistic integrity, isn't it?

The New York Times Company, on the other hand, made an announcement criticizing Time and stating that they will absolutely not be giving up documents, fees be damned. This means Judith Miller, their reporter in this mess, probably is looking at jail time. That Ms. Miller is willing to accept jail rather than divulge her source speaks highly of her. But that the situation even exists speaks badly of our judicial system and our respect for press freedom.

Supreme Court nominees

It seems Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid wants best buddy Bill Frist (majority leader and all-around putz) to know that at least some sitting members of the Senate are finely-suited to the Supreme Court as far as he's concerned. He even went so far as to choose only Senators from states with Republican governors, so that the GOP could be assured the Senatorial replacement would be a Republican.

It's worth noting that the two Senators occasionally mentioned as potential Supreme Court nominees, Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas, are not among Reid's choices. This is Reid's way of telling Frist that Kyl and Cornyn will not get free passes just because of Senatorial courtesy.

Reid's picks? Mike DeWine, the pudgy balding fellow from Ohio who was one of the Magnificent 14 who struck the filibuster deal a few weeks ago; Mike Crapo, of Idaho, whose name is pronounced KRAY-poe and hasn't done anything noteworthy; Mel Martinez, of Florida, who is Hispanic (Bush has said he wants to nominate the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court--Alberto Gonzalez is usually the guy mentioned); and Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, another of the Magnificent 14 and by a wide margin of the smartest and most reasonable members of the Senate. This is an interesting list. None have ever been judges (neither was Chief Justice Earl Warren, former governor of California), though that is not a requirement for Supreme Court membership.

More after the jump.


Martinez was a trial lawyer (and a graduate of FSU Law, my emergency-backup school), a job that's normally anathema to Republicans. I posted a letter from Martinez' office on this blog not too long ago. I'm still working on my response to it, which I'll also publish. Martinez would be the first Hispanic named to the Court. Whether he'd be more conservative than Alberto Gonzalez is not known; Gonzalez' presumed moderate leanings make him quite unpopular among conservative mouth-foamers. He is very close to George Bush, which helps (but not as close as Gonzalez); the ugly 2004 campaign did a good job of exposing all the potential skeletons in his closet so half of the lengthy background investigation is already done. And Bush could probably press his brother to appoint Katherine Harris to Martinez' seat and get her out of the way for the race against Bill Nelson.

Crapo is a Harvard Law grad and would be the first Mormon on the Supreme Court. He was a partner in a law firm for a few years in Idaho but I don't know what he did. That he was a lawyer of some sort is not unusual in the Senate, so I'm not at all sure why Reid pointed to Crapo as a potential nominee.

DeWine graduated from Ohio Northern Law School and served as a public prosecutor in Ohio early in his career. In addition to his work with the filibuster deal, DeWine is regarded as the Republican Senator most concerned with poverty issues, and is thus fairly popular with the left. Like the rest of the folks on the list, though, DeWine's judicial stances are a mystery.

Lindsey Graham is a great American. He'd like to be President, but I think Chief Justice of the Supreme Court might be an acceptable consolation prize for him given that he has very long odds of ever being elected nationwide. He went to the University of South Carolina law school, and served six years in the Air Force as a JAG; he is still a member of the Air Force Reserves. Like John McCain, he is widely liked by Democrats for his independent streak and willingness to defy his party, but he's also more conservative than any of the other men on this list. The SC GOP bench is very deep and almost anyone could be named to replace him.

I don't know why I bothered to go into all that, since there's pretty much zero chance any of those folks would be named to the Court. And none of the Justices have announced an intention to retire. Still, it's fun to see all the maneuvering going on.

And it just gets better! (For Scott Maddox)

I know, I'm sure this isn't that interesting to many of my readers, but this story is just too good. I said way back when than Scott Maddox shouldn't enter the governor's race, and every day brings fresh evidence that I was right.

To recap: First, Maddox is criticized for failing to register as a lobbyist when working in that capacity for a developer in Leon County while still serving as state party chairman. Next it turns out that in his last week as party chairman, he gave a $100,000 contract to a friend of his for party-planning services (that must've been one hell of a party) without taking bids for the contract. Then, the federal government puts a lien on the party Maddox just got finished running, for failure to pay federal taxes. Then, the party's own internal audit finds that over $900,000 is unaccounted for. Later it turns out that the Leon County Democratic Party, which Maddox also chaired, failed to pay some $60,000 in taxes while he was leading it. And today comes word that Maddox failed to pay over $2500 in property taxes on a house he owned in Leon County.

He has blamed almost all of these problems on a low-level functionary and friend of his, one Debbie Griffin-Bruton. Maddox bought the house in question now from Ms. Griffin-Bruton. And there's more--while he was chairman of the county party, the party was fined by the county elections supervisor for failing to adequately or accurately report campaign finance matters.

Maddox has said he has no intention of dropping out. He blames all of the problems on Griffin-Bruton, who says she concealed the errors out of embarassment. How convenient for him that an old family friend should accept all the blame for all the horrible things that happened on his watch. Hmm.

I said Maddox was an idiot before. I'm saying it again now. Maddox is the reason why the next governor of Florida will be a Republican. He should ponder that.

Supreme Court developments

Well, before I rant breathlessly about the Grokster decision, I have to say I haven't actually read the decision yet. I am somewhat disappointed in how it all fell out, and based on the actual argument transcripts (which I have read, because they're easier to read than the actual decisions most of the time) I had expected Grokster to win. Shows me. I've been told that the decision itself is in fact very narrow. I know that Justice Souter's opinion specifically says that P2P applications in general are a neutral entity; Grokster lost the case because the company--at least according to MGM--specifically encouraged its users to share copyrighted material. Per the decision, product designs that allow for illegal uses are not litigable absent specific evidence that the illegal use was encouraged by the producer.

I was rooting for Grokster, primarily because MGM and every company associated with the RIAA and MPAA are inherently, violently, and unredeemably evil, and every decision against is thus by definition a decision for goodness and virtue. Therefore I am disappointed in the decision. But if it's as narrow as it seems to be, then all is not lost. Yet.

The Kelo decision of last week is another decision like Grokster. It seems to have gone badly for property rights advocates, but at the same time Justice Kennedy's concurrence narrowed things down somewhat. Since his was the 5th vote in the majority, his requirement for extra diligence in eminent domain matters more than the actual opinion of the court. I suspect some city somewhere is going to condemn some property to give to a good ol' boy developer, and this whole thing will end up right back in front of the Court and will be overturned or, at any rate, narrowed slightly. So this may not be all that bad either.

The decision that bothers me the most from the Court is the decision not to review a case brought by two reporters in the Valerie Plame case. You'll recall this as the case where Bob Novak outed Ms. Plame as a spy in a column... well, look it up if you need more. In the ensuing journalistic investigation of the affair several reporters made use of "secret" sources, folks who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. Folks like Mark Felt (aka Deep Throat).

The two reporters in question refused, during grand jury hearings on the incident, to reveal the names of their sources. They were held in contempt of court and are both in prison at present as far as I know. They brought suit because they hoped the Court would agree that journalists have the same right to maintain their sources' anonymity as lawyers and doctors do to protect their clients. The Court, clearly, doesn't agree.

By a wide margin, this is the most problematic decision to come out of the Supreme Court this year. On this basis, knowing that a reporter could go to jail for not revealing your name as his source, how inclined are you going to be to tell that reporter anything? If you were Mark Felt and you knew Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were going to have to choose between getting cornholed in the clink or revealing your name to Congressional investigators, would you tell them anything at all? Would you even consider it? Let's hope I'm only being melodramatic.

Veni, vidi, vici

At some point recently, I believe I engaged in a wee bit of premature celebration over having finished the LSAT. I am now permitted to engage mature celebration.

I received my score today. Yes, on a Saturday, and two days early to boot. (You can tell the Law School Admissions Council isn't a government organization, or it would have come on a Tuesday eight days late, and been incorrect). My score was...

178!

Hoo-ah! So whaddaya know, I did kick its ass. Yaay, me! I rule! I must celebrate!!!

But... but... but I'm alone tonight. I've no place to go and no celebrating to do. So I guess whenever I next get the opportunity I'll just celebrate then. Yaay!!!

Now of course I must set my sights a little higher. Screw applying to FSU and South Carolina and Georgia State. If the Air Force is going to pay for it, I'm applying to Emory and George Washington and Georgetown, and maybe George Mason, and probably Virginia. Why the hell not?

Grotesque

I've made a grotesque thing.

I've been mucking about with clay for a few months now over at St. Pete Clay. It took about two months for me to get back to something like the skill level I had back in college, but now I can crank out a series of fairly decent items of reasonable size. I'm still working up to really large things, three gallon jars and such, but I'll get there eventually.

The three gallon jars have been my toughest project of late. Jugs I can handle (though the biggest I have now is one gallon and is far too heavy); pickle jars and apple butter pots are coming along, and the pitcher I made this afternoon actually looks rather nice. But the three-gallon jar... ah, it's very hard.

The way the old folk potters would have made such a jar (and larger ones; one North Carolina potter is known to have turned a 15-gallon jar, which is just incredible) is, they'd throw a tall but fairly stout cylinder, remove it from the wheel, and set it aside. Then they'd throw another one the same width but slightly less stout. Then set that aside. Work on other things for a few minutes until the clay sets up slightly, then take the stout half and set it back on the wheel, score the rim and add slip, and then cut the base off of the other half and attach it to the lower portion. After fusing the two halves, you could then make one pull on the lower half to give a little extra size, and then push out the sides to make an appropriate form.

The way I've been doing lately is, I throw two cylinders, fuse one to the other, and then destroy the result by working it too hard. The first one I made, I didn't let the clay stiffen up and it sagged down and fell over. The second I made, I left the walls of the bottom half too thin and it collapsed under the weight of the top half. The third one I made Monday evening; everything was going great, but then I accidentally jabbed the side of one of my rubber throwing ribs into the pot and set the whole thing off center. Try as I might, I couldn't save it. But, since it never actually fell apart or fell over, I went ahead and saved it until today to see if I could do anything to make it better.

Well, I couldn't. There was nothing to do; it was off-center, had two thin patches in the walls that are in danger of breaking anyway, and the rim wasn't even close to level. But it's really damn big, and I like big pots, so I decided to salvage it.

Back in the 19th Century (the era I draw my inspiration from), potters occasionally made a series of jugs and jars of various sizes with horrible disfigured faces on the side. Big round eyes with scary-looking pupils in them (off-center, too), hooked noses, fat sneering lips--the things are awful. They're called "grotesques." Their exact purpose is not entirely clear, but it's assumed that you'd put things in there that you didn't want the children getting into.

This jar seemed to be the perfect candidate to be a grotesque, so I made eyes and a nose and lips and little pointed beard (because, you know, in Star Trek parallel universes, everyone in the evil universe always has a little pointed beard). It's very ugly. I had one of the other potters at the studio verify this for me ("Why did you do that?" she asked). And it's just bloody terrific. So I'm going to take my camera to the studio tomorrow so I can take pictures of some of these things before they sell. They must be seen by the wider world

Follow the bouncing check

Today, Scott Maddox said that if anything had happened he takes full responsibility for it, and that nothing happened, and furthermore that whatever happened was somebody else's fault. Here's an article on the situation.

This man still thinks he'd make a better governor than the two other members of the party he used to run who entered the race before he did (and who he now blames for "fanning the flames" of this issue in an effort to bring his campaign down, even though neither of them (Rod Smith and Jim Davis, for the record) has said a word about it). Delusional!

Bad news for Maddox

This is becoming the pre-eminent anti-Scott Maddox blog. Yaay me! I still maintain that I have nothing against the man personally, but in light of this latest revelation about the financial status of the Democratic Party when he left it, I wonder how he can continue running for governor as if nothing were wrong.

Basically, the federal government today put a lien on the state Democratic Party to the tune of $200,000. That's the value of unpaid federal taxes plus employee back pay. And, party financial records show almost $1 million in missing and unaccounted-for funding. The federal lien relates to financial dalliances in 2003 and 2004, the precise period of time when Maddox was running the party.

So, the guy took over a party that had been out of power in the state for just under a decade, had trouble raising funds, and needed a steady hand to turn things around. He left the party unable to pay its bills, a couple hundred grand in debt, guilty of not paying pay federal taxes or its own employees, and still without any actual electoral succes to speak of. Now he thinks he's qualified to run for governor?

Actually, in Florida, he pretty much is. But that's still no excuse.

So much to do

So little time.

I had some time to think on Sunday driving home from Orange Park. It was the standard drive; I could probably make it in my sleep and suspect that I may actually do so from time to time considering how many miles I've put on the car the last two years (26,932 since June 23 of 2003). So while I drive I tend to think.

One thing I thought about was how many of the people I had hoped to see at the reunion who didn't actually show up. In fact, I think most of the people I had hoped to see didn't show up. And one of the people I had most hoped to see and who did show up and who I spent most of the night with... um... well, it wasn't all I had hoped for. But I suppose my hopes were modestly unrealistic.

I'd love to try to get together with many of those folks. A lot of the no-shows actually still live in the Jacksonville area so it wouldn't be hard--it might even be possible to have a reunion of sorts, at a place like Dave & Busters, where people wouldn't have to spend $91 just to get in the door and then have to endure a cash bar (seriously! A cash bar at $91-a-ticket event! Even politicians don't have the gall to try that) and outrageously loud music. But finding the time to coordinate such an event while holding down a job is very difficult, especially considering the numerous other things I have on my plate these days.

I guess I shouldn't complain. I'm being pushed to crank out as much work as I can at the pottery studio in advance of our big summer sale in mid-July. Oh no! Don't twist my arm! And I've shamed myself into reconnecting with the novel that has seen little progress since I started on the medication back in April. I even went out and bought voice-recognition software so I wouldn't put so much stress on my right hand, which has been consistently painful for about the last month. Between these two time consumers I'm constantly trying to find time just to go on bike rides and go kayaking so I don't go mad from being cooped up indoors. And though I've had great intentions, I've as yet not managed to get myself back into the gym on a regular basis.

Where does the time go? It's not as if I'm trying to do everything at once. I must be wasting an awful lot of time somewhere. My first guess is work. I'm not sure I'm doing anything there that fills me with meaning and happiness. But the thing about work is that's where the money comes from, and I do need money to get by. Hmm.

What a week

This has been a very busy week. We had a major exercise earlier this week, and tonight I'm off to the Airman Leadership School graduation (which I'm assured is a hoot). Then this weekend is my 10-year high school reunion.

I point all this out not because you're so enthralled with every aspect of my daily existence but because I haven't posted anything here in a week and won't do so until Sunday evening at the earliest. Sorry.

Expanding the reading list

I didn't want to have to drop some of the books off the end of my "Recent Reads" list, so I've expanded it to ten. I put Frankenstein and the Martian Chronicles down at the bottom even though I read them after numbers 7 and 8. But since I've already mentioned them on the blog, I figure it will be no great loss if they drop off the list first.

But maybe you're curious about some of the other things on the list.

Number 8 there is Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. I read this on my last deployment, and I loved it. It is a terrific story, entertaining and sometimes funny, and it always makes you think. Martel is a lyrical writer, almost as good as Michael Chabon, and it's a pleasure to read his words. The story, of course, is somewhat fanciful--at least, it might be. The ambiguity of its reality is part of the fun. Of the fiction books on this list, I would give this my top recommendation for all my readers.

Number 7 is Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. It's the first Heinlein book I've read; this is the "uncut original version" and I'm not sure how the abridged version would read. This is certainly an interesting book. Heinlein's views on sexuality and religion are...different. But certainly of some interest. This is an absolute classic of the genre so any sci-fi fans who haven't read it would be encouraged to do so... but bear in mind that the subject matter is a bit out of the ordinary.

Number 6 is A Court Divided, by Mark Tushnet. Tushnet is a law professor and Supreme Court scholar. His book is about the Rehnquist Court, and the various factions thereon and how they've affected the conservative legal agenda--namely, it's been variously thwarted in some circumstances (property rights) and moved forward in others (religion in the public sector). This is an interesting study, especially combined with the fourth book on the list, but would be of interest mostly to people already interested in legal issues.

Number 5 is Age and Guile beat Youth, Innocence, and Bad Haircut, by P.J. O'Rourke. O'Rourke is one of my very favorite writers; he practices what you could call gonzo journalism," though he's not quite so ridiculous about it as Hunter Thompson was (though Thompson is fun to read anyway). This is a book of some of his older pieces, the type of thing that you publish after you've published a lot of other books, which O'Rourke has. It's not his best, but it is entertaining.

Number 4 is The Supreme Court, by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. This is one of the classic popular studies of the Court's history and function, and is far and away the most strongly recommended book on this list for every reader.

Number 3 is O'Rourke's All the Trouble in the World. This is one of his best, maybe his very best, but it's hard to say. Chapters include Plague, Poverty, the Environment, Famine, Overpopulation, and the various other of the world's ills, and O'Rourke travels to countries around the world to report on what causes those ills, what they look like first-hand, and what is and can be done about them. I love this book; this was probably my fourth reading of it. It would be really cool to follow in O'Rourke's footsteps but, oh well, guess that ship has sailed.

Number 2 is poo. But book number 2 on this list is the Count of Monte Cristo, which I've already discussed. Read it, it's good.

Number 1 I just finished last night, O'Rourke's Eat the Rich. This was his next book after Trouble and, if you read them in order, you can see how he gets from one to the next. After visiting Haiti (Plague) in the previous book and discovering that the plague there was secondary to the crippling poverty and governmental mismanagement, he wrote that the real solution to Haiti's plague was to make the Haitians rich. In Eat the Rich, O'Rourke travels to such places as Wall Street, Sweden, Cuba, and 1997 Albania (after the pyramid schemes collapsed) to look at what makes wealth, what wrecks it, and how to go about making everybody in the world rich.

P.J. O'Rourke was once a self-described conservative, but in the last 5 years he's been working as a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and preaching some degree of the libertarian gospel. What would make him unusual as a conservative Republican is the desire to see everybody in the world get rich. A lot of conservatives (casting aspersions here, but conservatives do it to liberals all the time) seem not to be terribly concerned about getting the rest of the world--or even the poorer parts of our country--rich. Of course, a lot of traditional lefties feel the same way. Wanting everybody to get rich is definitely a libertarian ethic, and O'Rourke sells that gospel very well.

So there you have it, my recent reading list. I'll discuss the other books as I finish them.

Expanding the reading list

I didn't want to have to drop some of the books off the end of my "Recent Reads" list, so I've expanded it to ten. I put Frankenstein and the Martian Chronicles down at the bottom even though I read them after numbers 7 and 8. But since I've already mentioned them on the blog, I figure it will be no great loss if they drop off the list first.

But maybe you're curious about some of the other things on the list.

Number 8 there is Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. I read this on my last deployment, and I loved it. It is a terrific story, entertaining and sometimes funny, and it always makes you think. Martel is a lyrical writer, almost as good as Michael Chabon, and it's a pleasure to read his words. The story, of course, is somewhat fanciful--at least, it might be. The ambiguity of its reality is part of the fun. Of the fiction books on this list, I would give this my top recommendation for all my readers.

Number 7 is Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. It's the first Heinlein book I've read; this is the "uncut original version" and I'm not sure how the abridged version would read. This is certainly an interesting book. Heinlein's views on sexuality and religion are...different. But certainly of some interest. This is an absolute classic of the genre so any sci-fi fans who haven't read it would be encouraged to do so... but bear in mind that the subject matter is a bit out of the ordinary.

Number 6 is A Court Divided, by Mark Tushnet. Tushnet is a law professor and Supreme Court scholar. His book is about the Rehnquist Court, and the various factions thereon and how they've affected the conservative legal agenda--namely, it's been variously thwarted in some circumstances (property rights) and moved forward in others (religion in the public sector). This is an interesting study, especially combined with the fourth book on the list, but would be of interest mostly to people already interested in legal issues.

Number 5 is Age and Guile beat Youth, Innocence, and Bad Haircut, by P.J. O'Rourke. O'Rourke is one of my very favorite writers; he practices what you could call gonzo journalism," though he's not quite so ridiculous about it as Hunter Thompson was (though Thompson is fun to read anyway). This is a book of some of his older pieces, the type of thing that you publish after you've published a lot of other books, which O'Rourke has. It's not his best, but it is entertaining.

Number 4 is The Supreme Court, by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. This is one of the classic popular studies of the Court's history and function, and is far and away the most strongly recommended book on this list for every reader.

Number 3 is O'Rourke's All the Trouble in the World. This is one of his best, maybe his very best, but it's hard to say. Chapters include Plague, Poverty, the Environment, Famine, Overpopulation, and the various other of the world's ills, and O'Rourke travels to countries around the world to report on what causes those ills, what they look like first-hand, and what is and can be done about them. I love this book; this was probably my fourth reading of it. It would be really cool to follow in O'Rourke's footsteps but, oh well, guess that ship has sailed.

Number 2 is poo. But book number 2 on this list is the Count of Monte Cristo, which I've already discussed. Read it, it's good.

Number 1 I just finished last night, O'Rourke's Eat the Rich. This was his next book after Trouble and, if you read them in order, you can see how he gets from one to the next. After visiting Haiti (Plague) in the previous book and discovering that the plague there was secondary to the crippling poverty and governmental mismanagement, he wrote that the real solution to Haiti's plague was to make the Haitians rich. In Eat the Rich, O'Rourke travels to such places as Wall Street, Sweden, Cuba, and 1997 Albania (after the pyramid schemes collapsed) to look at what makes wealth, what wrecks it, and how to go about making everybody in the world rich.

P.J. O'Rourke was once a self-described conservative, but in the last 5 years he's been working as a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and preaching some degree of the libertarian gospel. What would make him unusual as a conservative Republican is the desire to see everybody in the world get rich. A lot of conservatives (casting aspersions here, but conservatives do it to liberals all the time) seem not to be terribly concerned about getting the rest of the world--or even the poorer parts of our country--rich. Of course, a lot of traditional lefties feel the same way. Wanting everybody to get rich is definitely a libertarian ethic, and O'Rourke sells that gospel very well.

So there you have it, my recent reading list. I'll discuss the other books as I finish them.

A new game Part II

We have more entries in our new game about presidential pussyfooting. As you'll recall, Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel has already set the bar pretty high, but I think you'll have to agree the next entry is pretty good.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former UN Ambassador and world-travelling Congressman, has been bruited about as a Democratic candidate for president for some years now, including in 2004. He's been equivocating a lot, as we'd expect, about whether he'll run in 2008. Well, like all presidential candidates he's visiting New Hampshire. Here's what he had to say at one speech while there:

"I want to be very clear to the media in the back of the room. No I will not run for president in 2008. Pero, estoy si."
For non-Spanish speakers, what he said there at the end was, "But, yes I am."

I think he's giving ol' Chuck a run for his money.

Then, there's Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, a potential competitor of Richardson's for the Democratic nomination. His name has also been floating around for some time, including in 2004, but at that point Bayh felt he had not spent enough time in the Senate (John Edwards didn't feel the same way and he nearly won the nomination, so Bayh may have been wrong). He's usually one of the top three names on a list of likely 2008 candidates in the Democratic party.

Now, I think Evan's entry into our contest is a little weak compared to the two previous ones, but it's worth putting in just for comparison. Earlier this week in Fort Wayne, he had the following exchange, apparently with himself:

"Am I doing the practical things that would allow me at some point to make that decision?" he said. "Yes, I’m doing the practical things to keep that open as an option."

So, there you have it. The game continues!

More third party backers

Must Read Article

This is a quick little three paragraph article over at TPM Cafe about third parties. This just echoes what I've already said before on this blog: The time is now! We need a third party now! Who will step up?

Laws: how much is too much?

I read a fascinating post over at Honourable Fiend, a British politics blog. The post isn't about anything earthshattering or even of much interest to most Americans, but for the following quote:
"...on the sole principle that any government which wants to pass nearly fifty laws a year is simply doing too much legislating..."

This is a fascinating concept. The very idea that our government should wish to pass fifty laws a year--as opposed to tens of dozens--is incredible. That other fully effective governments around the world are capable of doing so--and of having citizens who think 50 laws are simply too many regardless of their content--should give us some pause. How nice to imagine that our legislators could get by with only considering 50 laws in a year. How much pointless and inane legislation would not get passed? How much more streamlined would the government be?

I am reminded of a passage in P.J. O'Rourke's excellent book Parliament of Whores. "The mystery of government is not how Washington works, but how to make it stop."

I don't like Dick

Ah, sweet irony. I guess it’s irony. It isn’t coincidence. Maybe it’s just snafu. Anyway, I learned today that this Friday morning I get to sit in an unairconditioned hangar in the Florida heat for four hours, to get a chance to listen to… Dick Cheney! Hooray! One of my least favorite public officials! I can hardly wait.

That’s what I get for being DNIF, though (that’s Duties-Not-Including-Flying for the unacronymed). The timeblock on the schedule just says “Rent-a-crowd,” usually an indication that you’re going to have to sit and listen to a dreadfully boring brief because they need a crowd for either A) cameras or B) the self-esteem of the briefer. I can assume in Cheney’s case that it isn’t B.

Now seems a highly appropriate time to point out this post I wrote a while back. It deals with GWB’s policy of not allowing dissenters into any of his “town hall meetings.” I posited at that point that, being a dissenter to most things this administration does, I should be exempted from the next visit by the prez or vp or similar official since I occasionally (in a non-official capacity, of course) say bad things about them. (Except Colin Powell; I never said anything bad about him. Or Norm Mineta.) Obviously I was mistaken.

But unlike the last presidential visit to MacDill, this is being done with rent-a-crowd; the whole base isn’t expected to turn out. So I’m wondering the point of this is. Will we be able to ask questions? This administration has classically had a problem with assuming that any military audience will necessarily be pro-Bush; it’s caused a few amusing exchanges when Rumsfeld travels overseas. Could this be an opportunity for an amusing exchange with Dick Cheney?

Since Cheney’s heart is as black as the furthest reaches of outer space, I don’t think it’s possible to get him rattled. Hence there would be no amusement value to asking a loaded question. But I suppose I will bring a notepad and a pencil and take notes.

I hope they aren’t going to expect me to cheer and clap like the crowds in the background of every Bush-Cheney visit to “the troops” or “the people.” I won’t do that. I’ll sit quietly; I’m perfectly willing to do that. But if they tell me I have to cheer and clap, I’ll ask them under what authority I have to do that. In uniform or in any official capacity, I’m not permitted to say anything negative about the pres, the vp, or any of a host of other administration officials. But I am not required to like them, or indeed to say anything positive about them. It’s right there in DOD regulations. Call it the Bambi rule—if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. I’m perfectly happy with that. But cheering and clapping as if I actually respected or agreed with anything Cheney says? That’s crossing the line into coercion, and I don’t have to put up with that.

With any luck, if I’m to be forced to cheer and clap, I’ll manage to get myself sent away before the speech even begins. This would be good since I have a lot of work to do.

In any event, you can bet I’ll file a report Friday afternoon.

Krazy Kat!

Well, this pretty much seals the deal. Unless one of my friends decides to run for office (Dexter), I'll be devoting all of my political donations for the 2006 campaign cycle to Bill Nelson. Maybe I'll even find time to volunteer. Anything, anything at all that I have to do to not be represented in the U.S. Senate by the idiot Katherine Harris.

Yes-if, No-because

One of my eight different bosses (eight, Bob!), the cool one who’s not like a boss at all, today said something about the difference between the Marines and the Air Force that I thought was pretty interesting. He related a couple stories about Marines he’d had to deal with on deployments and so forth and how a Marine just gets a job done and doesn’t worry about whether it’s exactly the right way to do it or not. The Air Force does worry about that, a lot. Too much. Anyway, he said he’d had a boss when he was younger who told him that what he really wanted was to have “Yes, if” people working for him, instead of “No, because” people.

That’s a pretty good characterization. If somebody asks you to do something, do you say yes if? Or do you say no because? We had pretty good chuckle about how the entire Air Force is a no-because organization, and that extends to most of the individuals, too. Marines, of course, are yes-if types, because by the time you finish saying no-because somebody’s probably dead. That’s not true in the Air Force; by the time you finish saying no-because here… well, nothing’s happened. It’s not a really big deal, actually. Seven other people have already given no-because reasons anyway. This goes a long way to understanding the Air Force tends to think of more problems than it solves.

I like the idea of trying to be more of a yes-if person. But it might be really hard. We’re conditioned to think of excuses and not solutions; I see it every day in meetings and just on a personal basis with colleagues—the first inclination, it’s almost instinctual actually, is to examine why something won’t work, rather than to think of how to make it work. What a sad state of affairs. So tomorrow, I shall say yes-if, and never no-because.

Premature Celebration

Took the LSAT today. Kicked its ass. Gonna go out and celebrate on Friday, maybe Thursday too.

Of course it's all terribly premature at this point. The scores are supposed to come in my email on the 27th of June, so I only have three weeks of agonizing waiting to see whether or not I did well enough to not take it again in October. I'm setting the threshhold at 160, so we'll just see what happens.

Wish me luck

If you're reading this Monday at around 12:30, wish me luck. It's LSAT time!

Apple Butter

I wanted to write about the gross doublespeak coming out of the Bush Administration this week regarding the Amnesty International report, and perhaps I will. But it will require some time because the examples of the doublespeak are so good they have to be quoted directly. But I don’t plan to spend the time on that right now, so…

So you see why I haven’t posted anything in the last week. There just hasn’t been a whole lot going on that I feel the need to comment on. Yeah, the Senate compromise is great. Sure, the Dutch echoed the French and put another nail in the coffin of the EU constitution. But so much has and will be said about all of that; I just don’t need to add to it.

Instead, I’d like to direct your attention to the following website.
Old Timey Apple Butter

This is an article about how they used to make apple butter, back in the day. The article was written in 1973, which is not at all back in the day. In fact, it's worth noting that the author's great grandmother and great aunt are responsible for the recipe, and they started making apple butter 50 years before. That would be 1923.

I happened upon this article in looking for apple tree cultivation tips (an apple seed I planted in a pot last September has suddenly sprouted), and being a fan of apple butter I was intrigued. If you've never had real apple butter, or even the fake kind you get in the store, you are missing out on of life's sublime culinary pleasures. The basic idea of it is apple butter that's been cooked down and spiced, but that simple description is woefully inadequate. It's a thick, spreadable butter that's great on cornbread, pancakes (and healthier than syrup), English muffins, toast, just about any kind of bread really.

But lately, I haven't had any really good apple butter. The stuff you get in the store pales in comparison to apple butter made the traditional way, and always has too much cinnamon and a sharp, unpleasant aftertaste. Most apple butter you can buy in "country" stores these days is cooked in a crock pot, using a recipe like this here. It's better than the store-bought, but still a far cry from the real thing--especially if, God forbid, you actually add Red Hots. That's just wrong.

What's had me pondering lately is the very unlikelihood that I will ever get apple butter made the way Aunt Helen and Great-Gran were making it in 1973--which means I'll never get really good real apple butter again. Unless, that is, I decide to make it myself.

Time, they say, is money, and it's true enough to all of us. I value my time far more than money, because you can make more money. Making time, despite our constant references to doing so, remains out of the reach of science and probably always will. But I wonder about the things we value our time for these days, myself included. Nearly all of us "make time" for television shows that will be replayed and eventually come out on DVD anyway when we can watch them while cleaning the house on a rainy day. Many of my friends "make time" to get fall-down drunk on Fridays, and then make time to sleep off the hangover on Saturday. Most people seem to make time to sit in traffic on the way too and from work every day, instead of moving closer to work or changing their hours around. But nobody that I'm aware of makes time to get together with the whole family and spend one Saturday a year making apple butter, keeping the generations connected and keeping old traditions alive.

I wonder about that. The world is little enriched even by very good television shows; it is much the poorer without good old-fashioned apple butter.