The Obelisk of Theodosius: Erected 390AD (In Istanbul, Turkey)

Transit Rate Hikes

Once again, Metro Transit, which provides public bus transportation to the greater King County area and a little bit further in the greater Seattle area, is raising rates. Once again, it also seems like a tough time to do this. The economy is still ailing throughout the country and the Seattle area is definitely feeling it. It seems like a tough blow falling mostly on those that are already hardest hit, those that are riding public transportation due to financial reasons. It is starting to get a lot more expensive to ride public transit and when it starts getting closer to the cost of driving a car, the convenience of driving a personal vehicle can easily offset the slightly lower costs of public transit for many.

Unfortunately, Community Transit, which provides service more to Snohomish County (north of King County) and into King County, is also talking about rate hikes. They are currently discussing a rate hike and also no service on Sundays. That seems like it could be a real deal breaker for some people who need to be somewhere on Sundays if there is no transit service on Sundays. I think this would be a worse idea than cutting other service a little deeper throughout the week. Also, Community Transit has started their Swift service, a faster commuter bus that stops at fewer stops between Shoreline/Edmonds and Everett. It doesn't seem to ever have much ridership and although it is a new program, perhaps cutting that down to fewer runs could allow for Sunday service for at least the most used Community Transit routes, if not more.

It seems like with joblessness at a higher level and less money all around, rate hikes are a terrible idea at this time. I'm sure that ridership is down due to less work commuters, as I know many people who are now out of work and not daily riding with me to work. Still, there seems that there must be ways to keep transit fares affordable for everybody while still making it feasible to maintain these services...

Google

Google has been coming out with some great offerings lately! I have been really impressed with a number of the free offerings, especially the fact that they are free!

Google Voice is probably my favorite application that Google has come out with. Google Voice allows you to connect all of your telephone numbers and have them ring to a single phone. It offers voicemail transcribing and sends the transcribed message to your email and/or via a text message, which is definitely a cool (and fun) option! It could use some work on recognition, but I don't expect it to pick up some of the messages I get, especially when I can barely understand them myself. Some people are just a little incomprehensible in general... You can send text messages from your Google Voice page online, through a Google Voice app that is offered for Android phones, and text to many places for free! You can also get great long-distance rates to many countries via Google Voice! You just add money to your account and use that already allocated money in the call, so you don't end up with crazy unexpected bills at the end, which can really ruin an otherwise great phone call!

Google Sky Map, which I have on my T-Mobile G1 cell phone, is an amazing app! It's another Android app by Google and it basically maps out the skies and can show you what stars you are seeing, just by pointing your phone towards the area of the sky you are seeing stars in. This is truly amazing, I think...

Google Maps, as another Android app, is also truly amazing! It was pretty cool before, but with directions, speech capabilities, and also the familiar street views, and other options, this program is loaded up and ready to guide you to victory! It's another one of my many-used Google apps that I've found invaluable!

Google Wave... Hmm, I just finally got my invite to Google Wave and haven't gotten a really good feel for it yet. I'm not 100% sure of all of the benefits of it, but I know many people have talked about how great it is. I just signed up for it, so I hope that it turns out to be pretty cool, as well as the rest.

Google is staying on a great path in leading the way, with their Gmail, Google Voice, Google Wave, and more to lead the market. Google's search engine has become the standard and people generically talk about "Googling" something to look something up, much like "Kleenex" has replaced "tissues" in many conversations as a generic term instead of a brand name. I hope they continue to keep developing such great (and free!!) applications in the future, as I'm definitely a believer in them as of now! I'm not really one to worry too much about all of my stored information out there that they may have, so that hasn't been a real issue for me, though I know people do talk about it. Keep up the good work, Google!

Swine Flu!!!

The Swine Flu, the H1N1 virus, is still keeping people talking. It has been one of the top topics of the news for quite some time, paralleling the economy for longevity. There is a vaccine out that is becoming more available that has also become a hot topic. This strain of influenza has not really proven to be more fatal than the typical annual flu viruses that come through, but it is seeming to be more infectious and spreading to healthy people more easily. It has been said that it is more dangerous to children and younger people and the H1N1 vaccine is being offered only to children and pregnant women in some areas. There are many who are also refusing the vaccine and decrying it as foul. People seem to mention Swine Flu each time someone mentions being sick, whether it's flu symptoms or something entirely different. Hospitals are limiting visitors in an attempt to slow or prevent spreading throughout their buildings. Well, the Swine Flu lingers on and will no doubt remain in the headlines for some time to come... Will you get the vaccination? For healthy people, there is a swab vaccine that is swabbed in the nose, else there is also the standard needle injected route. I've never gotten a flu shot before and so I don't really see a reason to do it now. I've had the flu maybe a couple times, but not very often. Ah, the fear continues as we move into the heart of flu season!

Summer's Over

I was terribly busy this Summer working crazy 12+ hour days at Fun Forest Amusements. I have been back to working as a carnie, supervising an Amusement Park and taking care of amusement park rides. It has been fun as always, but I knew that this would be the last Summer there, at least for the big rides.

The City of Seattle has been moving to eliminate the Fun Forest for some time and it has looked like this would definitely be the last Summer for the whole park to remain intact. The big rides, such as the large roller coaster (the Windstorm), the water ride, the Galleon, and Orbiter are no longer going to remain at the park. That part of the park is going to be changed and apparently taken away from the Fun Forest. In the city's "plans" for the Seattle Center, it looks like most of the whole area occupied by the Fun Forest is intended to be redeveloped into park area and some of it given to the Space Needle. The amusement park area seems to be intended to go away, which is unfortunate since it has been present since the 1962 World's Fair, when the Space Needle was built. The other unfortunate thing about this is the loss of jobs. There are many Summer and part-time positions that are offered by the Fun Forest that are now no longer going to be available because of the city's redeveloping of the Seattle Center. These positions were also often positions that required little experience, so they were good for unskilled workers and high school students and were available to almost anybody. It's tough to think about job losses, especially when the Seattle Times just ran a cover last week that claimed that 1 in 20 jobs were gone in the Seattle area. I guess this either helped contribute to that or it will for next year's statistics, since that will be when jobs will no longer be available. Aside from that, people are already losing jobs due to this.

One thing I don't understand, is where the city is getting money to redevelop something like the Seattle Center when there are such budget shortfalls. It seems that money coming in would have been better for the city than to have a project waiting for money to be infused into, that I can only imagine will sit by the wayside for some time. It seems that with libraries running short on money, schools closing due to similar issues, and economic problems that are spanning across the board, Seattle cannot afford to get into this "project".

As of yet, the fate of the Fun Forest still seems a bit unsure, though the skill-based games booths have been mostly stripped clean and dismantled and rides have been sold or are on the market. Still, will the city continue with this plan? Will a new Mayor change things at all? Will money go to this developing park project as other parks are forced to shut down? It's all a waiting game at this point, I guess...

Beautiful Summer

This has been a beautiful Summer so far in the Seattle area! There has been practically no rain at all, aside from maybe 3-4 days, since May! The beautiful weather has really been getting more people outside! While I can't say that it's been getting more people out of their cars, it has been getting more people onto bikes and out walking, jogging, running, and such! It's been pretty great!

There hasn't really been a massive increase in bus ridership, but it is pretty hot on a lot of the buses and many Metro buses do not seem to have a/c, so it's not the biggest pleasure ALL the time! Aside from the ORCA card coming out for public transit in the Seattle area (one card that holds data about your account and any money you put on it for all Greater Seattle area transit systems), Sound Transit finally opened up the light rail system and it is up and running! I know that more than a few people are excited about the system, especially people who regularly commute from the southend into downtown Seattle. It is apparently much faster than the quickest bus routes into town.

One night, about a week ago, I was around Denny Way where it crosses over Aurora, waiting for a bus. It was a pleasantly warm night at 10:30ish in the evening and people were passing by with their car windows open. One minivan, which looked like a Honda Oddessey perhaps, that had the Washington state license plate "102-UAL" was approaching the bus stop that I was waiting at with about 3-5 other people and threw what looked like a can or bottle right out the passenger window onto the sidewalk. I sat there staring at the van, dumbfounded (although I apparently gathered my wits enough to look at the car), as it kept on rolling by, but was slowed down by a red light. It pulled up near to where all the "bus waiters" were standing and both seemed to be looking the other way. It was some preppy looking white guy and a blonde-haired woman and they didn't want to check out the crowd after they were stuck stopped next to them. I don't know why I didn't go up and talk to them before they drove off, but I didn't, so I figured I would at least tell the tale. I wanted to go see for sure what had been thrown, but the bus was only a few cars behind and I didn't get the chance. Lousy litterers ruin my relaxed Summer evenings some days...

Recycling

Coming from a place like Seattle, where recycling is pretty much ingrained into most everyone nowadays, it's hard to deal with people who think completely different about waste. It's even hard to imagine, when going to other places, how little gets recycled and how much less is offered in the way of recycling in other cities/states/countries.

In some places I've been, it's just terrible. Some places have practically no recycling, or at the least, no consumers with a mind towards recycling. I can look a little crazy digging through the garbage to pull out what seems to be garbage and I'm not very fond of doing that, per se, haha...

I have recently started working at Seattle Center, where recycling was never very big in the sense that there has not been a whole lot of recycling receptacles around the park grounds. There was mostly cardboard and garbage and recycling bins would come out during festivals to collect cans and bottles. People have apparently grown accustomed to this (mostly employees and people who frequent the grounds) and much goes unrecycled. Now, there are numerous receptacles for cans and bottles, plastic, glass and aluminum! I was excited to see this upon starting to work back at the amusement park, as I always wanted this to happen! I was a little sad at the little usage these bins get. People are still just used to taking the easy way and throwing everything in the garbage, it seems, unless it is just as convenient with a recycling bin equally as close or closer. So many cans and bottles are just thrown into the garbage and it always pains me just a little bit to see it. I AM now getting paid to hang around the grounds of the Seattle Center all day long again, so I figure that I am a little more justified in digging through the trash or at the very least, picking up the recyclables before the street sweepers come through in the morning and just sweep them into the trash.

I was/am working on trying to get a bill for a water bottle deposit for Seattle, so that people would be paying an upfront added deposit on water bottles and that deposit would be returnable on recycling the bottle. I think it might be a better idea to try to push with a deposit on all cans and bottles. This ensures much higher recycling rates in states where this deposit is in place. It creates jobs and reduces waste and energy usage. While I keep working on this bill writing very slowly, I think I'm hoping that someone else with more and/or better experience will jump in, haha! I do need to start pushing harder at at least writing up the stuff necessary to possibly put it together enough to put on the desks of local politicians!

Plant a Tree for Free!

Just join Plant A Free Tree.com for free and sign up, confirm that you've received their email and a tree will be planted. You can also go through and complete other deals and offers to have more trees planted! Green up the Earth a little more with little effort!

Plant A Free Tree

Obama's First 100 Days in Office

With all of the news outlets and most everybody talking about the swine flu, this has overshadowed that we've reached the 100th day of President Obama being in Office. The NY Post put up 100 Days, 100 Mistakes, in which they list out 100 supposed mistakes made so far in the first 100 days of President Obama being President of the United States. They list everything from "11. The picture of Obama and Hugo Chavez shaking hands" to "62. Not adopting a dog from a shelter". According to a Gallup Poll, however, 65% of Americans approve of how President Obama is doing, while only 29% disapprove. Out of many categories that the figures were broken down into, it looks like the only two categories that Obama didn't have the majority of approval from are Republicans and self-proclaimed Conservatives. In every other category, President Obama had the majority of approval.

Well, as President Obama moves into his second 100 days as President of the United States, he will obviously have his plate just as full as crises from the swine flu to the economy to health care to the "war" in Iraq still are on the forefront of the American people's minds.

Swine Flu Panic

As the talk of the Swine Flu has drowned out the cries about the economy for a while, there is a great deal of worry and a great deal of misinformation that is being spread. Widespread panic is hitting some areas, as the fears of a quick-spreading pandemic become more pronounced.

This Swine Flu epidemic is reported to have started in Mexico, which is already feeling the brunt of this financially. As we are approaching summertime and people are contemplating destinations, Mexico, already troubled with the news of outbreaks of violence and trouble related to drug trafficking, is looking less and less appealing.

Now, unfortunately the pork industry is also feeling the effects of this pandemic. Pork sales are dropping and the pork industry made it known that they would like this influenza strain to be renamed. In Egypt, the Health Ministry decided that all pigs in the country, roughly 300,000 animals, would be slaughtered! This is despite the fact that there have been no confirmed cases of the swine flu in animals or humans in Egypt. I am not sure if this was to allay the fears of the people or was an action of the Health Ministry panicking, but it is very severe. This seems crazy to me, but as worries rise, things will probably become more worrisome. The biggest spread of this strain is face-to-face contact of people, but the pigs are really taking a beating on this one.

Today, the pandemic flu alert level was raised to Phase V, the second highest level on the scale. This is indicative of more person-to-person infections being seen by the World Health Organization. Surely this is going to continue spreading for at least a while before it ceases, so there is going to be a lot of interest in most every detail that comes out on this for at least the near future...

Earth Day 2009

If you had $20,000 to make your own community greener, how would you spend it? Well, National Geographic and SunChips have teamed up and want to hear your answer! If your answer is chosen, you will receive that $20,000 to go ahead and do it! Click here for more information.

Earth Day 2009

Earth Day is tomorrow, April 22nd. Earth Day as an awareness day has become a much more recognized "holiday", as environmental issues have come more and more into the foreground and global warming and greenhouse gases have become more of a recognized issue. Recycling is no longer a strange idea, alternative energies are much more seriously looked at, and people are taking the idea of helping to protect the Earth and environment as real goals now.

All too often, people start to feel like the global problems we are facing are way too big to be able to affect. People have that "one person can't make a difference" mentality, but it's totally not the reality of our situation. Every little thing you can do to make a difference helps and when every person does one tiny thing, the compounded effects can be overwhelming! For example, right now the population of the U.S. is approximately 306,263,646 people (population count is not a static thing, so it will be different at any other time after this and is only an estimate). Now, if each of the people in the U.S. gave one penny (assume a parent can give $0.01 for children, haha) to any cause, that would amount to $3,062,636.46! Over three million dollars and people seem to often throw pennies "away" and many will not stop to pick up one on the ground. Now, if each person picked up just one piece of litter off the ground to clean up, think about how overwhelming the difference would be. It'd be like filling a landfill!

That all being said, there are many many things that we can each do to help make a difference on Earth Day and everyday! Many things are just common-sensical things that you hear and are aware of. Others might be some things people haven't given a try to.

Compact fluorescent lights (CFL's) have been one of the biggest innovations in power saving! CFL's use just a fraction of the energy of standard incandescent bulbs, cutting energy costs for households (and seriously, who can't use a break on the bills right now?) and greenhouse gases that would have been produced to feed the hungrier incandescents. The color spectrums have vastly improved as well, which used to be an issue for some people with fluorescent lighting. The small amount of mercury that is in each bulb is also an issue, but there are many places to recycle these bulbs so that this can be safely managed. LED lighting is another development and could be the answer to this issue, though LED lighting tends to be more directed light, which is good for floods and spotlighting over lighting up an entire room and more reflective devices would be necessary for such applications. LED's last considerably longer than both incandescent and CFL bulbs, but the costs are higher due to much smaller productions at this time. Hopefully, a greater demand will soon lower initial costs.

If you can just change out one bulb in your house from incandescent to CFL, you will be saving yourself money AND reducing the production of greenhouse gases with just this one simple step. With government subsidies on the costs of CFL's, you can also get them for pretty decent prices and not feel like you're breaking the bank to save a over the long run. Costco has packs of various bulbs for excellent prices and thanks to their deals, I finally accomplished my goal of replacing all lighting in my house away from incandescent bulbs. If every household replaced 3 60-watt light bulbs with CFL's, the effect would be the same as taking 3.5 million cars off the road! If we all make a change, the difference will be astounding!

This is one simple money-saving, energy-saving, and quick-to-accomplish idea, but everybody knows of little things that they can do to make a difference. There are now many ideas such as this that will not only help the environment, but the wallet, and especially with a lot of government tax breaks on environmentally friendly ideas as well!

Tax Man Got You Down?

Well, it's that time again... Time to pay the taxes. Well, if you're down in the dumps about owing a bunch, Taco Del Mar might be able to lighten the blow, even if it's just ever so slightly! Click here, get their coupon, and print it out for a free taco today! "Free" is just the word people like to hear in these economic times...

Binghamton Shooting Leaves 14 Dead

In a horribly unfortunate news story yesterday afternoon, a single shooter in Binghamton, NY entered a community center after barricading the back door and opened fire on a room full of immigrants who were taking a citizenship class. In local coverage of this news story this morning, the local newscaster commented on this story:

"We know more today about the shooting that led to 14 deaths in NY. Some say that the shooter was recently laid off from his job. We haven't confirmed that. We do know that he was an immigrant... (pause) and a gun owner."

Sounds like a troubling combo...

Madonna Denied Chance to Adopt Second Child From Malawi

After weeks of talk and much criticism for her attempts at adopting a second child from Malawi, a judge rejected Madonna's bid to do just that. It was based on a residency requirement that was apparently overlooked/bypassed when she adopted her first Malawian child.

Protests from human rights activists, the media, and a lot of the general public had been ringing loudly for the past number of weeks, since it was reported that Madonna was attempting to adopt a second child from Malawi. Much talk has been about how there are so many children in need of adoption in the United States that could be her "targeted" children. Also, the topic of taking the children away from their own cultures into other countries has been another issue. Madonna has been vocal in bringing the problems of poverty, AIDS, and other troubling issues in Malawi into focus.

While it is most definitely true that there are children in other countries who are also very much in need of adoption, it is hard to understand why so many people would be outraged that Madonna is attempting to adopt this 4 year-old girl from Malawi. I would agree with the rejection of her bid to adopt the child on the grounds that she didn't meet the residency requirement, but that's about it. For someone to take a child out of an orphanage, to provide that child with a home and love and try to improve that child's life, is really an amazing thing. It's true that Madonna could just send the family money to assist, but so could so many of the people protesting her adoption. She wanted to give of herself to the child, though, providing much more than the child can probably ever have otherwise. Her bid to adopt this young girl having been rejected means that the child will continue to live in an orphanage. Of course it would be nice if this child were taken care of by her own family or someone else locally, but this is not happening. The family cannot afford to raise her and local residents aren't clamoring to adopt children in what is one of the poorest countries in the world. It's an unfortunate situation all around. While I don't think that Madonna should use who she is to bully her way around into adopting a child, I don't think that she ever had any intentions but to love this child and provide a home and family that aren't there now.

Earth Hour 2009

Earth Hour 2009

Tomorrow night from 8:30pm until 9:30pm local time for wherever you are is Earth Hour for 2009. This is a callout to all people to turn off your lights for this one hour in an effort to get 1 billion people to shut off the lights for an hour, which would save an unimaginable amount of energy and save the environment from tons of pollution in just one hour. This started in Australia in 2007, when a little more than 2 million people and businesses turned out the lights for an hour, grew substantially in 2008 and now, hopefully even more this year! Check Earth Hour's website for more information.

New Recycling Policies for Seattle

There seems to be a few problems about Seattle's new recycling policies, at least as according to news coverage interviewing Seattleites. The biggest problem, as illustrated by news coverage, seems to be the "threat" of policing of garbage cans. If someone is not following the plans and recycling as instructed, the garbage will not be taken. The biggest complaint(s) in interviews with "ordinary people" seemed to be that people felt forced to recycle. One woman claimed that she already did all that she could to "help" because she was riding the bus instead of driving, but that she would follow the new recycling rules because she didn't have any other choice.

I think that policing is an unfortunate yet realistic need in ensuring that recycling is happening. I hate to admit it and will usually do it when no one is looking, but I'll dig through someone's garbage to pull out recyclables from their trash to put in recycling when it's possible. The idea of policing isn't even an immediate enforcement policy, but one that may be enacted later on down the road. If policing of people's trash is used at some point, it should hopefully only be necessary for a short while until people develop the habit of sorting out their garbage and recyclables properly. After that, it should just be the habit and people will no longer have to consciously think about it, but it's forming that habit that might take some policing. I think it's a necessary evil and don't even really think of it as an evil.

The End of a Reporting Era

Today marks the end of the print version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Post-Intelligencer, or "the P-I" in Seattle, was one of two major newspapers printed and distributed in the Seattle area, the other being the Seattle Times.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had been around since the late 1800's and there seemed to be people who followed one or the other (the P-I or the Seattle Times) for their news pretty regularly. Some people really preferred one over the other and I definitely preferred the P-I over the Times, though I would tend more to just read whatever was available. Due to financial losses (the Hearst Corporation, which owns the P-I, claimed the paper had taken losses every year since 2000, including $14 million in 2008), the Hearst Corporation announced in January of 2009 that the P-I was being put up for sale and would no longer be able to operate its print paper if not purchased. With the nation's economy still heading down in what feels like the worst economic crisis many have ever seen, buyers were not to be found. The March 16th issue of the P-I announced that today's paper would be the last printed edition of the paper before it moved to a web-only version.

The Post-Intelligencer is the largest US paper to switch from a print to web-only newspaper. This move is unfortunately also bringing more layoffs to Seattle, as the staff is being reduced from 165 down to 20 people. Surely many other papers will be watching the results of this change as the printed newspaper industry has been in decline for years with the availability of news access readily available from internet/TV/radio/cell phones/etc. As many others are watching the results of the P-I's switch, hopefully this is not bringing Seattle closer to having no local newspaper.

The P-I's famous rotating globe that sits atop their building will continue to sit (and continue to rotate) for the time being, which is a relief to many in Seattle as this has become a well-known icon, much like the Space Needle, to Seattleites.

While the P-I and Hearst Corporation had to worry about publishing costs and the $14 million loss from 2008, American International Group (AIG) was able to give $165 million in bonuses, mostly to its executives, despite having received over $170 BILLION in federal aid last year. AIG claimed that they were contractually obliged to pay out these bonuses and that their hands were tied, which seems so incredulous, considering they only had the money for these bonuses via the federal aid. Perhaps the P-I should have pushed the government for a financial bailout of its own...

A Blatantly Racist Comic?

This cartoon above ran in the New York Post yesterday. Since then, there has been a lot of rumbling and talk about how this was a horribly racist comic that is comparing President Obama to a chimpanzee, touching on horribly racist ideas that likened African Americans to monkeys in the past. Is that really what this comic seems to be doing, though?

Big in the news this week was the story of a woman's chimpanzee she kept as a pet, violently attacking another woman and being shot to death. It was an awful story and horrible to think about. Also, President Obama signed the stimulus package bill into law this week. Does it seem too simple to connect the two stories into the comic's bottom line? I don't really think so. I think it can be read into comic that there are racist undertones if you try, but that is the case with so many issues/comments and I think that "racism" is called way too often on things that are not really being racist. I think this comic really is picking at the stimulus package itself and basically hinting that the thing may as well have been written by a bunch of monkeys or some crazed chimpanzee. I guess I could see it being more sinister of a message, but it's a bit of a stretch of the imagination to go there. It doesn't seem to have that intent and I think the author would have been very foolish to try to say that as his underlying message. It's all in the reading and we can't just know the intent of the creator, but I have a hard time believing it was more than a criticism of the stimulus package that hit on current events.

Reverend Al Sharpton had comments about the comic, arguing the other side. I wasn't surprised by that and while the stimulus package has become somewhat synonymous with President Obama, he's not the author and I think that Sharpton was taking advantage of this situation to remain in the limelight. I don't, by any means, think that we have reached an end to racist times or that racism doesn't still remain a prominent problem in the US/World, but I don't think that each and every idea that can be twisted and construed to be a racist one necessarily is.