There are different ways to "suppress" a voting block. Some of them are perfectly legal, and I'm not certain they're against the rules of the political game (as currently played.) It's legitimate to advertise messages like, "Voting is important! Get out there and vote!" Why isn't it equally valid to broadcast disagreement and say, "Voting doesn't matter, you might as well stay home and play video games. Don't let any of the scoundrels think you approve of them."
The main problem I see, in general, and thinking as someone who used to live near Detroit, seems to be racism. Most of the anti-voting propaganda I've seen is aimed at young people, or poor people, or people in non-traditional family arrangements. (Does anyone remember the brief fuss around Urban Outfitters, this past winter?) Some of it is geographic, but geography can translate to race, in resegregated parts of modern America.
So nice to see the power of copyediting elevated to high office and used for good. Somewhere, I expect James Warren's English teachers are very proud.
I continue to marvel at the way the word "stakeholder" has changed meaning in recent years. Gamblers used to want a trustworthy person, who was NOT involved in the game, to hold their stakes while they finished playing. I don't know when "stakeholders" started meaning "everyone with an interest in the outcome." It doesn't have exactly the same stock market connotations as "shareholders," but it's much closer to that than what "stakeholder" used to mean.
Clark,
Thank you for summarizing what I like about this design. It's very text-focused. Having come to the web, somewhat reluctantly, from entirely text-based media, I'm comfortable here. It's not terribly surprising, really, to see Nielsen Haydens celebrating text...
What do you mean by "Remember you, or forget our brief encounter?" An answer of "yes" would seem to cover all bases. (Given my memory, it would seem most appropriate, but I know you're working from your computer's memory rather than your own.)
Kevin, I'm sorry about the misunderstanding.
Mary Kay, my intent was to invite you to visit Our Fair City, not order you to move. I realize that my situation is unusual (both in the way I value public transit, and the way I saw Boston for the first time at Arisia '97, and moved here in the summer of 1998.)
Adamsj, I doubt Kevin's decision to garden makes that much difference wrt sprawl. Zoning boards in some areas are requiring half an acre of land per single-family home, for new construction. Or even more. If you want to live in that area, you need a home that comes with a lot of land, and your only choices are lawn, garden, or parking lot. A lot of people choose where they live based on distances to work and various friends and relatives they want to see often. And school districts, and neighborhood features, and home prices. Abstract considerations like sprawl vs environmentalism come way down on the list, life being as short as it is.
Kevin,
I don't approve of "urbanites telling suburbanites to get rid of their cars." Did you think my previous comment was an order, or even a suggestion, for people who are happy to be driving? Or are you reacting to some preaching urbanites who are not part of the current discussion? I haven't heard anything like that before...but it could be a NYC thing.
I depend on public transit because I have health issues that make it painful and somewhat dangerous for me to drive. People with other kinds of issues sometimes find that driving gives them the freedom and peace of mind I've found with mass transit. I want there to be enough flexibility so people can choose the kind of lifestyle that works for them and makes them happy, rather than being stuck with a default.
When I hear people talking about how they "can't" do something that I've done, I often want to explain how it can be done. Even if nobody act on the possibilities, I perceive a big difference between, "I can't do that, it's impossible," and "I don't want to do that, the tradeoffs would not be worth it to me." It's important to know when there are tradeoffs, and that you're making a choice.
(lumping together several comments about mass transit)
Kevin Murphy lamented the impracticality of relying on mass transit in our car-focused world.
"Unless you are superbly well located on both ends of the chain, public mass transit does not give you door-to-door service. It often does not give you same day service."
I live in the Boston area, in large part because of the transit. When I was job-hunting, one of my criteria was transit-accessibility. When I found a good job that required an absurd number of connections to reach from where I used to live...I moved. Now I can commute via 2 buses, almost door to door. Or 1 bus, with a 25-minute walk at each end. Home addresses are variables, in the grand scheme of things. Some lifestyle choices are worth moving for.
Mary Kay wrote:
>I'm newly in love with Tokyo and its mass
>transit. I won't soon forget sitting opposite
>a woman on the subway wearing Chanel clothes,
>Ferragamo shoes, and carrying a very very very
>large Mikkimoto bag. Someone like that would
>never ride mass transit in the US. So far as I
>can tell everyone in Tokyo does.
Come to Boston! While I don't have the fashion sense to recognize the outfit you describe, I can tell that a huge variety of economic and social classes use public transit. The weekend I came to town to look for an apartment, before moving to the area, I was half-terrified by the mere idea of riding the subway. I'd grown up knowing that "respectable people" had to drive their own cars. Nothing else could possibly be safe. In the course of a few hours, I saw students, professors, doctors (doctors! not just medical students!) people in suits.
It takes an awful lot more to shock me now, or even catch my eye. Like the time on the subway I saw a man in formal highland dress, and it was only midafternoon. (On a Saturday evening, I'd have thought he was going to a wedding, and I wouldn't have been so startled, but this was a weekday.)
It's my impression that LA is a terrible city for mass transit. It's not just that there is relatively little in the way of public transit or support for transit (though that's a big part of it.) The local culture supports and encourages sprawl -- big houses, big yards, malls, everything zoned in big sections devoted to one purpose so efficient living requires a personal car to get between homes and workplaces and shopping. Other cities put them closer together, or even mix them in. If a person wants to live independently without a car, it seems foolhardy to attempt it in LA.
Graydon, why should we be charitable towards Secretary Powell? Do you have reason to believe his character has changed significantly since My Lai?
Powell has certainly done less damage than others in the Bush administration. But he's been so ineffectual that "less damage" is hardly a charitable interpretation. (And it's awfully faint praise, in any case, considering the company.)
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 1 |
| 2004 | 5 |
| 2003 | 4 |
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