Once upon a time, I was trying to gauge interest among a group of friends in splitting the cost of a newly-announced Eclipse 500 jet. Turns out that my earnestness was a little optimistic, but I still think that we’re likely to see both the production of a (relatively) affordable Eclipse 500-like jet and the development of an alternative to the big-jet spoke and hub travel system in the US. If this is an area that interests you, author James Fallows is your man. Start with this post at the Atlantic.
Month: November 2008 Page 5 of 8
If you live in DC, please give a few moments of your time demonstrating support for the Bicycle Safety Enhancement Act. Its provisions include:
1) A requirement that blind spot mirrors be installed on all DC owned heavy duty vehicles
2) New bicyclist and pedestrian awareness training for DC heavy vehicle operators
3) A new law requiring that motorists give three feet of space when passing cyclists
4) A fine for the use of restricted lanes (bus/bike lanes or bike lanes) by unauthorized vehicles
How can you demonstrate that support?
A hearing on the legislation has been scheduled for Friday, November 14th at 2pm. WABA urges you to contact the DC Council to express your support for the Bicycle Safety Enhancement Act. [WABA has] provided a sample letter for you to send to the Council, but please remember that personal messages are much more effective. If you’d like to testify in person at the Council hearing, please contact Maria Angelica Puig-Monsen at 202-724-8195 or email mpuigmonsen@dccouncil.us by November 12th. Written statements of support for the bill can also be sent to Ms. Puig-Monsen’s email address.
Looks like we’ve got an intra-neighborhood race going on for the House of Delegates 47th district seat. The challenger – Miles Grant – is facing a pretty steep climb, though. Just about everyone who’s ever voted in Arlington over the past 20 years knows the incumbent – Al Eisenberg. They also likely have a generally positive – thought not particularly strong – view of Eisenberg. Combine that with no recent Eisenberg missteps or positions out of sync with Arlington, and I think Grant will find himself with a lot of work ahead of him.
Suggestion for the Grant campaign and its supporters: setting the tone like this is generally not how you want to do it.
Also: Miles Grant’s environmentally focused blog, TheGreenMiles.net.
When you walk through the garden
you gotta watch your back
well I beg your pardon
walk the straight and narrow track
if you walk with Jesus
he’s gonna save your soul
you gotta keep the devil
way down in the hole
As these pages have noted before, I was a huge fan of the television series The Wire while it was on. Its music was among the many wonderful things about the show. For Midweek Makeover, we’re going to start with The Wire’s theme song – Way Down in the Hole. The original is by Tom Waits. This is him performing it live and, well, being Tom Waits:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw2MjRcVO4g[/youtube]
But it’s not Waits’ version that kicked the series off. The cover by the Blind Boys of Alabama is what originally opened the show:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzIuUW9VUr0[/youtube]
For the second season, though, they brought Waits in. This is how that translated into the show:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipaV4k2n__I[/youtube]
Worked very well, I think. The artist changed each season, and future versions went to the Neville Brothers and Steve Earle (who also ended up acting on the show, and doing a damn good job of it). I thought that the end of the series would also bring an end to covers of Way Down in the Hole. And then just the other day, I stumbled on this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87HHQmIQ8U8[/youtube]
That’s M.I.A. and Baltimore’s Blaqstarr. I think it does perfect justice to the spirit of Waits’ original work.
In perhaps its greatest service to the public since Watergate, the Washington Post WashingtonPost.com’s work resulted in this:
A U.S. based Web hosting firm that security experts say was responsible for facilitating more than 75 percent of the junk e-mail blasted out each day globally has been knocked offline following reports from [WashingtonPost.com blog] Security Fix on evidence gathered about criminal activity emanating from the network.
I think I’m only slightly exaggerating the good involved, here.
The European Union (finally) comes to its senses:
If there has been one truly effective stick to beat the EU with over the years, it has been the bizarre and Byzantine reams of regulation it is accused of promulgating.
The classic anti-EU story is that “faceless eurocrats” were banning the curved cucumber. It was all the more powerful for having a solid basis in truth. Namely, Commission Regulation (EEC) No 1677/88 of 15 June 1988.
Class I cucumbers must “be reasonably well shaped and practically straight (maximum height of the arc: 10 mm per 10 cm of the length of cucumber)”. Class II “slightly crooked cucumbers may have a maximum height of the arc of 20 mm per 10 cm of length of the cucumber”.
These are allowed to have some blemishes and discolourations. Any cucumber more crooked must be packed separately and must be otherwise cosmetically perfect.
So if a cucumber is crooked and has a blemish on it, it cannot be sold in a shop or market. It is allowed to go for processing, but often the cost of transport to a manufacturer is prohibitive and the produce is simply allowed to rot.
As of next summer, this regulation (for cucumbers and 25 other similarly regulated fruits and vegetables) will be repealed. And it only took 20 years!
If this holds up, a lot of the work that’s been going on in DC in the past couple of months will be for naught:
Last May, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten instructed federal agency heads to make sure any new regulations were finalized by Nov. 1. The memo didn’t spell it out, but the thinking behind the directive was obvious. As Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute put it: “We’re not going to make the same mistakes the Clinton administration did.â€
President Bill Clinton finalized regulations within 60 days of the 2001 inauguration, meaning Bush could come in and easily reverse them.
It could take Obama years to undo climate rules finalized more than 60 days before he takes office — the advantage the White House sought by getting them done by Nov. 1. But that strategy doesn’t account for the Congressional Review Act of 1996.
The law contains a clause determining that any regulation finalized within 60 days of congressional adjournment — Oct. 3, in this case — is considered to have been legally finalized on Jan. 15, 2009. The new Congress then has 60 days to review it and reverse it with a joint resolution that can’t be filibustered in the Senate.
Ouch. Bonus point? The CRA was a product of the Contract With America.
(For those of you interested in the mechanics, this appears to be a good summary.)
Back to the familiar Democratic circular firing squads:
Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) has called his challenger for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), an “anti-manufacturing, left-wing Democrat”.
So comforting.