moonlog

I like how Texas = Canada. And, oddly, D.C. = New Zealand.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:26:03 -0500

I like how Texas = Canada.

And, oddly, D.C. = New Zealand.

The Three-Phases of Computer Ownership

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:53:20 -0500

Odd how personal a personal computer can be:

Watching someone else use your computer is like watching a drunk Orangutan solve a Rubix cube. They have no idea what they’re doing and you wish they’d just hand you the damn thing so you can do it yourself.

I’d like to add that getting netbook doesn’t really have Phase One. It’s ultra light and portable — but you get used to that, and now I think it’s not so light but I don’t understand how people carry around laptops. Software-wise, it’s just Windows XP for petessake. (Yes, I know, I should put a netbook remixed Linux on it, and I’ll do that soon, but I’m lazy.)

And my desktop has been in Phase Three so long it’s ready to graduate to Phase Four. I’m open to refurbing and accepting donations of unused post-9/11-era computers.

Transforming a Suburban Church into a Neighborhood

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:38:00 -0400

Transforming a Suburban Church into a Neighborhood:

I gave blood Saturday at the local church. There is a trail that dead ends within sight of the church but that last long stretch is a soggy field. Other than that the church has no walkable access to anything. It’s an island only accessible by car. (I politely made the suggestion that they connect the trail.)

That’s the problem with some suburban churches. Instead of physically connecting to the community, they are outposts of the highway that cause traffic on Sundays. Churches are meant to be spiritual centers for a community, but what if they were actually a center for the community. What if churches acted more like the churches of olden times and became focal points of towns? Instead of people being segregated by what church they go to, they could be brought together by what church they live next to, in addition to the church they go to.

That’s why this idea posted on GGW is so alluring.

No, Facebook. You’re the only one confused because...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:12:42 -0400

No, Facebook. You’re the only one confused because you’re not sure which products to market to me.

"In certain instances, private-public partnerships have added value, but not in this case. Northern..."

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:16:52 -0400

“In certain instances, private-public partnerships have added value, but not in this case. Northern Virginia represents 42 percent of the tax base in the entire state, and should have a say in how money allocated to transportation is spent, especially what works best for moving people living in the region. Clearly this project does not. The council’s vote sends a strong message that Alexandria citizens, and most importantly taxpayers, oppose this project.”

- Heather Rogers, co-chairwoman of the Parkfairfax High-Occupancy Toll Lanes Task Force, voicing Alexandria’s opposition to HOT lanes on I-395/95.

Driving a Porche within a Sustainable Lifestyle

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:11:20 -0400

Driving a Porche within a Sustainable Lifestyle:

This is great. But for all the people who can do this (and the many who can but don’t), there are plenty more who can’t because of where they live.

Something tells me that neither of these authors live within lower-income brackets and thusly they have chosen to live in the expensively-priced walkshed of rapid rail. As long as you can afford a million-dollar rowhouse, condo fees, or Metro-accessible rent, you can save money commuting so that you can put a Porche in your garage. AWESOME. EVERYONE SHOULD TRY THAT.

Early adopters have to be rich, and this guy’s wisdom applies to everyone who lives within walking distance of a Metro station. But had he been relegated to a bus corridor, he wouldn’t be in the position to sing transit’s praise.

"I went to church, so I always dressed up and would ride my bicycle…so that’s why I do it..."

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:26:00 -0400

“I went to church, so I always dressed up and would ride my bicycle…so that’s why I do it that way — I do it that way naturally. That’s the way I ride my bike.”

- Lan Yin Tsai, 84, of New Jersey, talking about her outfit when she rides 150 miles for charity.

"In the 1940s, scientist were advocating direct taxes on people who were overweight. The idea was..."

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:06:25 -0400

“In the 1940s, scientist were advocating direct taxes on people who were overweight. The idea was that if you had to pay a tax for being overweight, you would start dieting until you got to a tax-neutral poundage. Their thinking was that if you ate less, more food would be available to fight the Nazis.”

- David Brunori, about to get into a tirade about junk food taxes. State Tax Notes, Oct. 19, 2009, p. 189.

Pothole Gallery

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:43:05 -0400

Pothole Gallery:

If you aren’t gonna fix ‘em, might as well repurpose them as mock art. (Via GGW.)

Which reminds me kinda of proposals to turn the abandoned streetcar subway under Dupont Circle (a really big pothole?) into an underground art gallery (or museum or bike station or, uh, a streetcar subway).

"In this history, bikes are the American Indians to the car’s Christopher Columbus. Everything..."

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:51:58 -0400

“In this history, bikes are the American Indians to the car’s Christopher Columbus. Everything about our road system, from the lanes to the signs to the traffic lights, is designed for the car, often at the expense of the bike.”

- Chris Beam, on bicyclists and traffic law.

Why is America so slow?

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:00:00 -0400

Why is America so slow?:

Queue up but first pause the mental Monorail tune for just a minute.

Now enter Japan’s plans for a maglev train between Tokyo and Osaka. What’s already a fast bullet train trip would be reduced further to just over an hour - and the distance covered is farther than that between New York and Washington. But the Japanese have always been train happy, and they’re Japanese.

Americans can’t stomach the cost of high-speed rail by either the rest of the world’s actually-faster-than-cars definition or by the paltry Acela Express faster-than-slow-Amtrak-train definition. (Yet they always have appetite for wider highways, more complex toll road networks with sophisticated occupancy-presence detection, vehicle-miles-driven tracking, and tiered-price schemes.)

But if the Northeast corridor (or your favorite corridor for that matter) had the infrastructure for two-hour-or-less affordable trips between, say, Union and Penn stations, suddenly D.C. becomes the southern-most borough of New York and Phily becomes one of the inner ones. With really-high-speed rail, an intercity commute could be shorter than many a conventional single-occupancy-vehicle commute from ‘burb to city core. More importantly employers would have access to huge markets of talent, job seekers would likewise have more options, and commercial centers and tourism industries would welcome more out-of-towners as if they came from across the river.

That’s a lot of capital cost, but increasing accessibility especially in and between transit-oriented metropolitan areas will lead to much more long-term cost-effective environmentally-sustainable growth than (vainly?) trying to maintaining growth and mobility in areas where transportation was cheap in the days of $1/gallon gas.

Kind of like that scene in Big. This could never happen here...

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:16:49 -0400

Kind of like that scene in Big. This could never happen here because (1) someone would get sued (or the fear of lawsuits itself would work its wonder) and (2) the many Metro stations don’t even have any conventional staircase. Thank the 1960s planners who thought stairs had no place in a technologically modern Great Society.

Geek Out (Lubuntu)

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:23:28 -0400

Geek Out (Lubuntu):

Just found out about yet another (promising!) flavor of Ubuntu, this one called Lubuntu, which sounds like everything I’ve always wanted from Ubuntu and Xubuntu but haven’t been getting. Ubuntu works on my old pre-9/11 desktop but not much better than XP, and this article confirms what I’ve always thought of Xubuntu — it doesn’t really run any zippier.

My parents live in one of those communities where drying clothes...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:46:00 -0400

My parents live in one of those communities where drying clothes outside is forbidden. A neighbor once left a towel on his deck (in his backyard) after swimming and was fined. I kid you not. Stop the madness.

Real Estate that Survives a Recession with Flying Colors

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:43:00 -0400

Real Estate that Survives a Recession with Flying Colors:

Even The New York Times says so. Arlington-style transit-oriented development is the way to go.

Wardrobe Suggestions for Men

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:51:37 -0400

Wardrobe Suggestions for Men:

My wardrobe is pretty shakey and on its last legs. I’ve avoided clothes shopping for years. Yes, years. Mostly because I still haven’t lifted a budgetary crisis measure I implemented back in 2006. I’m mentally (and financially) preparing to change this, but I’d like wardrobe reformation to be premediated. Coincidentally, this guide is mostly stuff I want to get anyway.

I’ve been meaning to go through all the clothes I have and get rid of stuff I’ll never wear. But I’m afraid I won’t get around to either of these projects before autumn, my favorite season fashionwise, is over.

"Metro’s builders faced a challenge equal and opposite to that of their [oil] pipeline..."

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:00:00 -0400

“Metro’s builders faced a challenge equal and opposite to that of their [oil] pipeline counterparts. The obstacles they faced were human — both physical artifacts and living opponents. As workers in Alaska built 800 miles of pipeline through wilderness all but uninhabited by humans, workers in Washington took up the challenge of pushing 100 miles of rapid transit through a long-settled region densely populated by lawyers.”

- Zachary Schrag, on the history of the Washington Metro. On a personal note, my father worked on the construction Interstate 66 inside the Beltway, which includes the Orange Line, so that’s pretty much the 20th-century equivalent of saying my papa worked on the railroad (all the live-long day).

"It turns out that old people especially care about living less car-dependent lives and that the..."

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:00:00 -0400

“It turns out that old people especially care about living less car-dependent lives and that the demographic growth of old people in the coming decades will be epochal. […] It has created the amusing effect of making America’s senior citizens a kind of New Urbanist vanguard.”

- The Infrastucturalist on retrofitting the suburbs.

"In Stockholm, San Francisco, and Milan, as in Washington, builders of rapid transit systems hired..."

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:00:00 -0400

“In Stockholm, San Francisco, and Milan, as in Washington, builders of rapid transit systems hired architects and other designers to ensure not only that subways wouldn’t disgrace their homes but also that they would exemplify a modern city beautiful. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Toronto got jazzed up, and attempts were made to redesign prewar systems in Boston and Philadelphia. Washington took the notion of beauty the furthest, for only in Washington did a powerful federal agency have the mission of approving architectural plans without reference to cost. The Commission of Fine Arts may have gone too far in its intervention.”

- Zachary Schrag, The Great Society Subway (2006), p. 93, describing how only in Washington does beauty trump cost under government bureaucracy. Weird.

TMI? Wapo Rolls It Out on the Front Page

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:32:27 -0400

TMI? Wapo Rolls It Out on the Front Page:

I was too busy to see this last week, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late for you.

(I always buy generic and/or cheapest when recycled is unavailable.)