Archives for November 2007

Flying back from Philadelphia last night I sat next to a man suffering through the second leg of a grueling transatlantic journey from Germany to Seattle, shoehorned into a seat that seemed designed to taunt his 6-foot, 4-inch frame. I suppose I should have shown him more mercy considering his sleep deprived state, but I couldn’t help myself, and so we ended up talking politics. He was on a rare trip back to the states after spending most of the past three decades as a civilian military employee in Germany, and I just had to ask about the German attitude towards the US these days.

“They hate us,” he replied without hesitation. And not just the Germans he said, but throughout Europe, the United States as a nation (as opposed to individual Americans) is feared and loathed. Thank you Mr. Bush.

Since squandering the near global goodwill lavished on us in the tragic aftermath of 9/11, the US has become a nation without political allies. Indeed, being identified as an ally of President Bush has become a recipe for political suicide, with first the UK’s Tony Blair biting the dust, and then Poland’s hateful Kaczynski twins. And yesterday it was Australian voters’ turn to repudiate Bush’s disastrous policies:

Bush’s closest ally, Australian neanderthal John Howard “suffered a humiliating defeat” today. Kevin Rudd, a moderate left candidate will be the new prime minister and he has promised to overturn the ultra-reactionary Bush-like policies of his predecessor, particularly in regard to Global Warming and Iraq. Bush’s only ally left in the entire world on Global Warming is now Oklahoma crazy right-wing senator, James Inhofe. Rudd won a clear parliamentary majority and it looks like Howard may actually lose his own suburban Sydney seat to boot! […] Rudd campaigned on promises that “his first acts as prime minister will include pushing for the ratification of the Kyoto climate agreement and to negotiate the withdrawal of Australian combat troops from Iraq,” both seen as repudiations of George Bush’s embarrassing leadership.

And oh yeah, with Rudd’s victory it now seems likely that Midnight Oil singer (and Senator) Peter Garrett will join the new cabinet as Environmental Minister.

Darcy Burner and friends discuss the 8th CD race:

(This and some 60 other media clips from the past week in politics are now posted at Hominid Views.)

This week’s Birds Eye View Contest is a tough one.

The last time I enjoyed regular home delivery of a daily newspaper was back in 2003, when I ended a three-month subscription to the Seattle P-I after accumulating stacks of recycling and a six-inch diameter rubber band ball. It’s not that I didn’t read the P-I, it’s just that I mostly read it online, and the satisfying hand-feel of the dead-tree edition simply wasn’t worth the extra clutter or cost. And so it was with some nostalgia this week that I drank my morning tea while shuffling through the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer, a big city paper that despite a noticeable decline over the past couple decades, still puts its smaller Seattle cousins to shame.

Even on this notoriously slow news day, the Inquirer’s front page once again finds room for five stories, four with bylines from staff reporters, while the Seattle Times features two articles from the LA Times, one from USA Today, and a column by Jerry Brewer. I’m just sayin’. The P-I’s front page is a bit more encouraging, with all three articles sporting bylines from staff reporters, including one actual local news story. Wow.

But it’s not the news or the op/eds that caught my attention this week, but rather the ads. Of course today is “Black Friday,” and the Inquirer was so chock full of ads and inserts yesterday that it had to be bagged and delivered in two parts. I’ve written before about the experiential difference between reading a paper online versus reading it in print — they often emphasize entirely different headlines — but online readers almost entirely miss the usual Sunday circulars, let alone the deluge of holiday advertising. And I’m guessing online publishers miss the revenue windfall from the holiday season as well.

This highlights just one of the many challenges facing publishers and the communities they serve as the newspaper industry continues to transition from print to web. Unless newspapers can find a way to maintain or replace such traditional revenue sources, newsrooms will continue to experience cuts, and overall quality will continue to decline. Meanwhile, consumers and retailers alike risk losing what is after all, a valuable service. No, I don’t particularly like having my living room cluttered up with circulars for stuff I’ll never buy, but I don’t mind learning about a 32″ LCD HDTV for $399, or an 8GB USB flash drive for $28.95.

Happy Black Friday Frank Blethen and Roger Olgesby.

There’s little doubt what the top news story of the past, and probably ensuing, 24 hours is: Black Friday shopping. Yesterday’s papers and TV news worked in repeated references to the bold new national initiative to “allow” Christmas shoppers into the malls early, some of them waiting till a full minute after midnight so as not to show disrespect for our most sacred of American holidays, Thanksgiving. KIRO 7 even had an hourly breakdown on early-morning weather conditions (there could be ice on those windshields, folks) for the frenzied hordes. This morning the P-I already has a full report on the rampaging minions (forecast headcount: 20,000) at Alderwood Mall. One promising quote: ‘”I think this is the dumbest idea they have ever had,” said Matt Carter, 28, of Snohomish.’ And why? Because, you know, Christmas is a holy time of worship in the name of our Lord? Because Christmas has been corrupted from a season of reflection, fellowship and glad tidings into a sickening seige of cutthroat consumerism where all that matters is the best markdown and highest retail profits? Because the notion that thousands of people have nothing better to do on the night after Thanksgiving than troll mall aisles is just plain insane, if it weren’t so desperately sad?

Not quite. It’s the dumbest idea because “they need more security.”

So verily, do not say unto me, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Hey buddy, the line’s back there.

In other so-called news:

Prop 1’s failure raises the timeline of when to institute tolls: ‘ “There’s no question about it,” Senate Transportation Chairwoman Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, said. “The issue is whether you toll early”…’ Or as the Prop 1 vote should’ve been framed: Pay us now, or pay us later. We can look to the toll–riddled Bay Area for guidance. Most bridges are $4 and headed for $5, the Golden Gate is $5 and headed for $8 or $10. They put out feelers to gauge public opinion on rate hikes, and most of the time it’s a shrug. Voters there understand you have to get the money from somewhere. Here I doubt reaction will be so blithe. A lot of motorists apparently think bridges should be free. Little do they know, $3 is a bargain!

East of the mountains may be clear and cold, but the air is ugly. As are, surprise, the politics. Now we all know that anonymous bloggers, especially on this site, have nothing but the highest regard for truth, honesty, justice and the American way. But in Yakima, apparently they don’t cotton to the idea. The mayor thinks a newly elected council member should resign simply because his wife dished dirt on his opponent in an anonymous blog. And get this: some of it wasn’t even true! Anonymity is a cancer on Web dialog, of course — one reason identity-authenticating Facebook is so hot right now…which is why top Google (fully vested, it should be noted) execs, according to TechCrunch, are actually leaving the search giant for riper opportunities with the younger, smarter set. Somewhere Steve Ballmer is smiling…

And thanks to Erica C. Barnett for answering the question I posed Thanksgiving eve on whatever happened to the Amazon play for SoLa? Um, nothing. Although I have to say, it looks like the neighbors are getting suckered. Hey, maybe they’ve just been overwhelmed by the spirit of giving this holiday season.

Shop on, ye Christian soliders! Or as Dan might put it in his ongoing series, “O they will know we are Christians by the Black Friday discount tags on our shrinkwrapped baubles…”

Mom’s oven was broken, so no turkey for me. To take the edge off, I prescribed myself a quart of whiskey mixed with milk, and this video. Enjoy!

Share your favorite lines from the video in the comments!

Please note: When riding an escalator, there are rules to be followed. While folks from actual “big cities” understand escalators and their proper use, folks in Seattle have managed to avoid learning escalator basics. Here we go…

If you want to stand still on the escalator, stand on the right side.

If you want to walk on the escalator, please do so on the left side.

Now that the Seattle Transit Tunnel has reopened, I’m finding the exact degree of “cluelessness” that exists. On some of the longest escalators in Seattle, I’ve been hung up behind balloonheads who don’t seem to understand that yes, I’d like to get where I’m going faster than this steel horse, all by itself, will take us.

The folks who will reply with “why are you in such a hurry? blah blah blah”… Look, the rules exist to make things run smoothly. I’m asking for basic courtesy. I don’t like getting the stink-eye when I politely ask, “can you please step aside?”

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has Santa’s back:

SEATTLE – Mayor Greg Nickels today launched “Operation Save Santa” to help protect the North Pole from the ravages of global warming. The mayor will enlist helpers in Santa hats to hand out 2,000 free energy efficient light bulbs prior to the tree lighting celebration at Westlake Center at 4 p.m.

The mayor kicked off the campaign today with an open letter to Santa. Concerned by the record ice melt in the Arctic Ocean this summer, Nickels reassured Santa that Seattle and 728 other U.S. cities are making progress protecting their communities, the planet and the North Pole from global warming. As he pointed out when he launched the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in 2005, Nickels is convinced that in the absence of federal leadership, cities must take action together.

“Some say that if we don’t do something to cut greenhouse gas emissions soon, the North Pole might be ice-free in summer as early as 2030. That’s why we’re launching ‘Operation Save Santa,’” Nickels wrote in his letter.

Nickels asked Santa to recognize that Seattleites should be on his “nice” list for all of their efforts to conserve energy. They helped make Seattle the first city in the nation to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 8 percent below 1990 levels. And they continue to make a difference through Seattle Climate Action Now, a grassroots campaign to help people reduce climate pollution at home, at work and when making transportation choices.

“I’m really proud that Seattle is making progress on protecting our climate. I know a few light bulbs won’t fix the ice maker at the North Pole, but it’s a start. And when we all work together, we can make a difference,” Nickels wrote.

It might be too late:

Sign the petition.

I’m a cynical guy, but even I wouldn’t have imagined this. The following is the report from Conservapedia (the wingnut equivalent to Wikipedia) of their most popular pages (via Balloon Juice):

Main Page‎ [1,906,378]
Homosexuality‎ [1,570,736]
Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [517,071]
Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [420,676]
Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [388,110]
Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [377,941]
Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [364,763]
Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [331,548]
Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [290,437]
Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [265,317]

“Surprising findings“…?

A preliminary report on Seattle school closures includes some surprising findings — including that 157 students chose to leave the district entirely when it closed five school buildings this summer. […] Students at the closed schools were expected to merge into designated neighboring schools — but the report found that happened only half the time.

[…] The district didn’t survey parents to find out why their students chose not to enroll in the merged schools, and it’s difficult to draw any conclusions from the numbers alone, said Holly Ferguson, a district manager who has supervised the school closures and who wrote the preliminary report.

“When you look at where the kids went, it was all over the map,” she said. “To me, it says parents just exercised the normal (school) choice process.”

Yeah, maybe. Or, if they had bothered to survey parents, they might have learned that parents were just sick and tired of having their children’s education sacrificed for the sake of political expediency. And they also might have learned that a lot more than 157 children left the Seattle Public Schools in response to the district’s ill advised and mismanaged closure process. Like, for example, my daughter.

The day we learned the shocking news that Graham Hill Elementary was on the preliminary closure list, was the day my ex-wife started looking for houses on Mercer Island. My daughter had attended the Montessori program at Graham Hill since she was 3 years old, and we all loved the school, but middle school was approaching and we weren’t thrilled about our neighborhood choices. We had reluctantly applied to transfer Katie to TOPS for fourth grade, hoping to beat the rush of parents seeking a middle school slot in the popular K-8 program, and while she was high up on the waiting list, it was no sure thing. Then the closure list came out.

Long time readers are well familiar with my obsessive blogging on the topic during the summer of 2006 as we fought to save our school from closure, but despite our eventual victory the process left many of us parents disillusioned with the district and its ability to meet the needs of our children first, and our politicians second. Two days into the start of the 2006-2007 school year Katie was offered a slot at TOPS, but exhausted from the closure fight and emotionally invested in our recently saved school, we turned it down, choosing to keep Katie at Graham Hill for fourth grade. A few weeks later her mother purchased a house on Mercer Island. Katie transferred to the island for fifth grade, so as to ease next year’s transition to middle school.

Katie was fortunate to have at least one parent with the means to make a choice like that, but I know for a fact that we weren’t the only Graham Hill family to leave the district after the emotionally draining closure battle. Several families who had been struggling to make the best of limited middle school choices simply gave up the fight, opting for private school despite the financial hardship. Others picked up and moved out of the city entirely, including one classmate who joined Katie this year at her new Mercer Island school. And I’m sure there are several others I don’t know of, as I’ve never seen such turnover at Graham Hill as I’ve witnessed over the past two years.

Perhaps Graham Hill was unique in that no other school was more misrepresented nor its parents and teachers more bitterly slandered by the district than Graham Hill was in justifying its closure. A handful of administration officials — including a thrice-failed principle with an ax to grind — had concluded that Graham Hill was a racist program, and were determined to cynically use the closure process as a cover for shutting down our neighborhood school. The Citizens Advisory Committee was force fed misleading, cherry-picked, and downright incorrect information, as well as, apparently, a fair amount of innuendo. Our PTSA, arguably the most active in the South End, was wrongly accused of draining resources from the conventional classrooms to benefit a less racially diverse Montessori program, and our school was publicly humiliated for failing to meet the educational needs of our minority and economically disadvantaged children, a charge that was demonstrably untrue.

Just last month Graham Hill Elementary was honored by the state as one of only six Seattle “Schools of Distinction,” recognized for dramatic improvements in reading and mathematics over the past six years — and one of only three such Seattle schools with over 50-percent of students qualifying for free or reduced price lunch. And yet this was the same school the district vociferously argued should be shut down for failing to educate its disadvantaged students… the same school that was held in such disdain by the district for its alleged racism.

And you wonder why parents like me find it so difficult to trust the district?

I was volunteering at the school when Raj Manhas made his final tour of Graham Hill before including it on his final list of recommendations, and I briefly spoke with him, without acknowledging who I was or what I had been writing. There were a lot of things I wanted to say to the superintendent, but instead I simply admonished him for missing a golden opportunity. I pointed toward all the hard work and enthusiasm communities around the district were expending in their efforts to save their neighborhood schools, and suggested that he could have harnessed this energy to fight Olympia for adequate funding, rather than pitching us against each other in a battle over diminishing resources. What a waste. The fight to save Graham Hill and the other schools was a heartbreaking experience that cost the district much more than can ever be quantified on a financial balance sheet. And the balance sheet doesn’t look so good either…

Already, though, the short-term costs have been higher than anticipated. The original plan called for the district to spend about $500,000 over two years on closing schools. The actual general-fund costs over the past year and a half have been $927,364, according to the report — and an additional $500,000 to $700,000 still may be needed.

The extra money was needed to pay for “transition activities,” from hiring moving coordinators to paying staff members at the merged schools to attend team-building retreats.

“I was a little surprised by the actual operating expense of getting the schools closed down and everyone moved,” said board member Michael DeBell, who heads the board’s finance committee. Still, he said, the district expects to see a net financial benefit of about $1.9 million a year because of closures.

But if enrollment continues to slowly decline, district leaders will need to take action, he said.

Future school closures are an option, but not the only one, he said: “I don’t want it to be the first thing we turn to.”

It’s exactly what we argued in the first place, that closures would never save the district anywhere near the money it was estimating, and would inevitably lead to further declining enrollment. Declining enrollment would lead to more closures, which would lead to more declining enrollment, and so on and so on.

Let’s hope we learn from this failed experiment, and reinvest in our neighborhood schools rather than shutting them down.

I was traveling and missed the big Kindle announcement from Amazon, but my initial reaction was: They’re gouging huge holes in South Lake Union for this? I mean, if Amazon really is the “secret” tenant holding the city hostage over further hi-rise development in Allentown, then it should hardly be mired in the vision of yesteryear, foisting on its weary clientele yet another iteration of 1990s technology no one has ever indicated they wanted or would actually use. As anyone who reads books knows, it’s virtually impossible to improve on a book. Think of all the time, for example, you don’t waste booting up. To be fair, I haven’t actually seen a Kindle (and at $399 won’t be putting one on my Wish List). But if Amazon is going to further desecrate one of Seattle’s remaining shapeable people zones, it had better be talking technology that deposits new books directly into my brain via ubiquitous wireless transmission, so I don’t even have to read. (Didn’t you love the New York Times headline, “Amazon Reading Device Doesn’t Need Computer” — to which should have been appended, “Neither Does Moby Dick.”) Maybe Jeff Bezos, who has always reminded me of what a grown-up Harry Potter, having lost his hair and gained contacts (or Lasik), might look like, should get together with one of Puget Sound’s other fun-loving CEOs, Craig McCaw, and hash this out.

The problem with eBooks isn’t technology. “Paperless ink” could read just as well as print (it doesn’t), and a hand-held device could simulate pages so well you’d find yourself automatically reaching for the pen to underline (it’s been done, but you know, the experience just isn’t the same with pixels as really going to town on dead trees). The problem is that people aren’t reading books, and the future leaders of our doomed society don’t seem inclined to reverse the trend. I found morbid irony in Kindle being announced with great fanfare on the same day as results of a depressingly “alarming” National Endowment for the Arts study showing “the percentage of adults who are proficient in reading prose has fallen at the same time that the proportion of people who read regularly for pleasure has declined.” So Jeff, the booming market for Kindle is what, exactly?

That kind of impertinence got me put on Amazon’s “Do Not Call” list almost from the get-go back in the ’90s, although no reporter I know ever had much luck with its Public Irritations department. As The Times’ Brier Dudley pointed out, his paper wasn’t even invited to Kindle’s big New York hoo-hah. It may have been because Brier beat up on Amazon’s MP3 eulas in a recent column. Or maybe because hometown papers don’t have the headcount and cachet of The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. My pet theory is that Amazon wants to drive The Seattle Times out of its South Lake Union headquarters so it can…

Of course, none of the press’ leading lights present at the rollout apparently had the presence of mind to ask Bezos about the decline-in-reading study. It might’ve shown disrespect.

OK, I’ll give the Amazin crew a benefit of the doubt here. What Kindle is has nothing to do with what it’s meant to be. It’s simply placeholder, spaghetti-on-the-wall technology for Amazon to be a player as reading technology evolves. Note Newsweek’s reference to an iPod of reading. eBooks are the focus simply because to show off anything else would’ve gotten Bezos laughed off the stage. For now, the market is people who have to carry around a lot of books — academics, students, avid readers — and may find convenience in having them on a device, whatever its drawbacks. That isn’t a very big market, and from the study is apparently a dwindling one, but it’ll do while literature and books figure out where they stand in the still-chaotic business model of the Web. Google has an obvious stake in this, so does Apple (the iPod Touch and iPhone make pretty good book readers, too), as does the publishing industry (which includes newspapers, don’t forget, even ones that aren’t invited to the rollout). The more deep-pocketed players, the better the opportunity for someone coming up with the true iPod of reading.

P.S. Did I miss it, or has the mystery tenant for SoLa been announced? It was supposed to happen “within days” in early October…

P.P.S.For an alternative viewpoint, Danny Westneat feels Kindle’s burn.

You return from a couple of weeks in the Bay Area, you expect to have a lot of catching up to do on the news of the day. But sheesh, after a daily diet of oil-spill scandal, Barry Bonds indictment, gas prices passing $4 a gallon and real estate tanking in the one place you’d think was recession-proof (besides Seattle)…well, coming back home is a little like leaving a Quentin Tarantino premiere party for an evening with the Cleavers.

So let’s see…a local former high-school basketball star turns up dead in Brazil. Coming home in the middle of this I was trying hard, reading the updates, to figure out who Tony Harris even was, let alone how he wound up in Brazil, and what in God’s name had happened to him. I do happen to know, however, who his former coach is, and his name is not spelled Al Hairstone, as Q13 had it. Finally, The Times ran a pretty good overview, apparently from a freelancer. I’m still not sure why this is such big news. I guess the answer is, bigger news just ain’t there. Or it ain’t being reported.

I mean, if we want to talk former basketball stars, I found it interesting that John Johnson, or JJ to the many Sonics fans who remember him as one of the best passing forwards basketball has ever produced (at a time when the competition was stiff, what with Larry Bird, Rick Barry, Bill Walton, Magic and other purveyors of that fine art among JJ’s contemporaries)…now where was I? Oh yeah. It turns out JJ was robbed in Redwood City, and it made pretty big news in the peninsula dailies. Robbed by a 74-year-old man, apparently, and robbed of his 1979 championship ring! O the pain, the outrage, the embarrassment! But not a word in the Seattle dailies, from what I can tell using their admittedly lame Web search engines (other than some random forum mention). I mean, you don’t call this news?

Then there’s the case involving, from what I can tell, a UW student who is somehow entangled in the murder of a British college student in central Italy. Whew, can someone do an org chart on this story? Again, I’m not sure what places this convoluted tale, sordid though it be, in the realm of headline buster. Maybe when it’s all investigated and tried it will make a good True Crime report, but without more details right now it’s hard for me to know why I should care. My suspicion is that TV coverage drives the print “make good” factor on stuff like this. I remember when it was all just the opposite.

Then there’s the Fun Forest. Guess it’s time for the old arcade to head off to that great amusement park in the sky. Many fond memories there. But none of them even remotely recent, of course; and there you have the whole problem in a nutshell.

Oh well. At least I was spared even a passing mention of the David Copperfield-aspiring model nastiness in the Bay Area news media.

One measure of how truly significant a piece of news is has to do with its geographic reach. From what I gather, Barry Bonds was a big story up here. The oil spill got a few mentions, too. And California gas prices, outrageous as they are, probably popped into the roundups. As far as the Bay Area’s housing collapse, that probably didn’t get much play up here. We’re not there yet, folks, and let’s hope we don’t get there. Except for the tony legacy neighborhoods (Marin County, S.F. proper), it’s a real meltdown in the making. Of course, down there The Chron doesn’t sugar-coat. The bare hungry cryin’ truth, with corroborating stats, is all laid out. By comparison, the Seattle dailies are kind of tiptoeing around, from what I can tell. At street level here, I’m starting to hear the ugly stories of defaults and flips gone bad and, worst of all, overbuilding in a time of real-estate downturn. When already-constructed condos aren’t moving, why is DPD still rubber-stamping every townhouse and hi-rise development coming in through the door? There’s a real-estate story I’d read.

But somehow, I still expect the next Seattle headline I see on the subject to read, “Housing market showing growth despite national trend.”

In any case, getting back to my original point (two weeks away perhaps has given me a mild bout of blogorrhea)…Cali headlines made it all the way to Seattle, but I have to say I cannot recall a single Seattle headline making it down to the Bay Area. Even the sensational, and sensationally covered, FCC hearing on media consolidation failed to raise a 2/18bi (ancient newsie talk for filler). So perhaps our mild, gray climate bespeaks a certain news temperament as well. Or maybe it’s that our news outlets are failing to find and report the real good stuff. A wise editor once told me a reporter’s job was to “tell me what happened, and make me care.” It’s so much easier to just leave off that second part.