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TagsAnd now a video preview of what you're likely to see tonight, once the roads ice back up. People, charge your cameras! If you're driving, a safety tip: Avoid really steep hills.
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Our Flickr pool's shawnmebo is already back with snow day shots! That's fast!
UW meteorologist Cliff Mass has been putting out updates fast and furiously regarding the snow forecast for today, which is changing hourly as snow accumulates. Now he's concerned about "serious snow."
His latest post (titled "Humility") says we're pretty much guaranteed "2-4 inches south of the city, with roughly 1-2 inches on the north side. More as you head towards the Cascades and south." (Let's go to the radar!)
But looking at the way things are setting up, that might not be the worst in store:
The 11 AM surface map...just available shows a 1002-mb low over the NW tip of the Olympic Peninsula and the latest visible image show VERY unstable air offshore. If the low goes south of us and draws some of that cold, unstable air in...and it meets the cold stream from the north, we are talking about serious snow (6-12 inches).
Mass was earlier led astray by models which had the low farther south of Seattle, bringing us a blast of cold air but not much in the way of snow. ("Clearly, this was not a great success for the models--clearly more is getting farther north than forecast this morning.")
Might as well head home and fire up the hot chocolate, and wait to see what transpires.
Our correspondent Mindy Jones is a Seattleite living in Paris for two years. When she's not busy trying to figure out what the French are saying, she's busy trying to figure out what to say to the French. She posts frequently at An American Mom in Paris.
Seattle has a fine aquarium. We’ve spent many hours of family fun on Pier 59 and we were happy to hear we wouldn't have to give up the fish when we moved to Paris; Paris has an aquarium, too. It wasn't long before we jumped on the metro to go visit, joking that the Paris aquarium was probably full of deformed creatures snagged out of the Seine.
Of course that's not true. They have nice fish. But there are other issues.
It was a strange visit from the get-go. We saw a large "Tickets!" sign in the entry. Under the sign were several touchscreen machines. We assumed, I don’t think irrationally, that we were supposed to buy our tickets at the machines.
Alex put a credit card in the card reader but no menu appeared. Instead, we got either pictures of fish or trivia questions about fish, which we dutifully answered assuming we had to prove some knowledge of fish in order to be worthy of admission. After answering a few questions and watching some fish swim by, we eyed each other and suspected we were doing something wrong....
Seattle, WA. November 3, 2010 – Voters in the King County Council District 8 elected former State Senator Joe McDermott to the Council; while at the same time voting to reverse legislation passed by McDermott during his time as a State Senator.
McDermott defeated 15 year front-line King County employee Diana Toledo in the race for King County Council by winning 68% of the vote as opposed to Toledo’s 32%. But at the same time, voters said NO to Joe’s platform and previous legislation.
- I-1107 Voters said YES, but McDermott Said NO. (Voters reversed Joe's tax on candy, bottled water, and other foods)
- I-1053 Voters said YES, but McDermott Said NO. (Voters require the Legislature to have 2/3 majority vote to pass new taxes)
- Prop 1 Voters said NO, but McDermott said YES. (Voters stopped a new 2% sales tax)
- I-1098 Voters said NO, but McDermott said YES. (Voters stopped a state income-tax)
The results puzzled many in the District 8 community;...
Seattle Shakes' "Hamlet." Photo by John Ulman.
This weekend when it comes to theatre, the big news is the opening of Seattle Shakes' stunningly cast Hamlet (tickets $22-$38). Directed by John Langs, Seattle Shakes tackles the play that's just too big to ever be fully performed with a cast of amazing Seattle actors, including Adam Standley (in several roles, including Fortinbras), Charles Leggett (as the ghost of Hamlet's father), Shawn Law (Laertes), Brenda Joyner (Ophelia), and the incredible David Pichette as Polonius. With a set design by Jen Zeyl and sound by Rob Witmer, this is about as fantastic a group as you could bring together in Seattle, and I'd be more than willingly bury my longstanding dislike of seeing Shakespeare performed to head over for it.
Of course, the Rep's production of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women is pretty stacked, too (tickets $30-$52). Directed by Alison Narver, the show stars Megan Cole, Alexandra Tavares, and Suzanne Bouchard in the titular roles. And yes, I dig Tavares, but Bouchard has been one of my favorite Seattle actors for quite some time--since at least ACT's The Women a few years ago. Last weekend, I also missed calling out the opening of Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter (tickets $15). Produced by small and new-ish Seattle theatre company Azeotrope at Theatre off Jackson, Rapp is a playwright whose star's been rising in NYC for quite a while, since he clambered out from under the shadow of his older brother Anthony (of Adventures in Babysitting and Rent fame), and the show features Richard Nguyen Sloniker (Azeotrope's founder, who I don't think I've ever seen), and Tim Gouran (who's a strong actor)....
Coffee table books, especially ones on photography, are one of my favorite things. So when I heard that Seattle photographer and social artist, Chase Jarvis was due to publish his latest labor of love SEATTLE 100: Portrait of a City, (published by Peachpit, a division of Pearson) it prompted me to get in touch and arrange some time to talk about his passion for democratizing creativity. The book is available now through Amazon, Borders and Barnes & Noble.
The two-hundred-plus page body of work is "a curated collection of leading artists, musicians, writers, scientists, restaurateurs, DJs, developers, activists, entrepreneurs, filmmakers, and more, all of whom are defining and driving culture in Seattle." As Jarvis points out, the list is not the definitive list, but a list and one that he hopes will be expanded through future contributions on the related website.
If you have a similar interest, you’ll agree that it’s a rarity to find a book by a photographer of Jarvis's caliber for such a reasonable price. Then when you learn that Jarvis specifically negotiated the price and committed to donate his proceeds to www.4CULTURE.org , a local non-profit which provides public support of cultural programs, you just feel good about the purchase.
Jarvis's philosophy is broadly appealing. Local businesses Theo Chocolate and Small Lot wine distributors jumped on board with contributions to the project in the form of a special edition chocolate bar and custom blend red and white wines. Darin Williams of Small Lot commented, "It was an easy decision. We signed up for the project because of where the proceeds were going. Generally, people pay attention to where they spend their money to support local businesses that's why I love this community."...
It turns out I made good use of my time by leaving last week's waterfront design presentation just after James Corner had a go. Today the City of Seattle announced that James Corner Field Operations (unsic) would be lead designer for the central waterfront project.
JCFO is a New York firm, but on this project it has eleven collaborators, four of which are based in Seattle: Mithun, The Berger Parnership, Herrera Environmental Consultants, and Jason Toft, who is a person and not really a firm.
Coming up next, says the Department of Planning and Development:
The City will select the project manager and engineering team for the Central Waterfront project next week. Design work will begin in October 2010 with a conceptual design expected in 2012 and a final design to be delivered in 2015. Construction is scheduled from 2016 to 2018.
A few things impressed me about Corner, most notably his evident desire to create something people talk about--(review "high line" on Google Trends)--and enjoy, whether or not they could articulate that desire.
His references to his native Manchester's working class and Seattle's working waterfront felt like a requisite attempt to establish bona fides, as were put-downs about homogenization, but I was struck more by his off-the-cuff observations (one about how Seattle was "immersed in weather" suggested an early and important realization that this isn't San Diego). ...
I know, the recession is over. But here's the first line of a Seattlepi.com article this morning: "King County Executive Dow Constantine announced Tuesday morning that his proposed budget would eliminate all general fund support for human services." It would also cut ten percent of the sheriff's budget.
That's in response to the county's $60 million deficit. Seattle's projected deficit is now $67 million. The state of Washington, $520 million. Reports Bloomberg: "Washington has reduced spending by $5.1 billion in the past three years, Gregoire said last month. Yesterday, she said the state faces a deficit of almost $4.5 billion in the two-year budget cycle that begins in July." The cuts will come from social services, corrections, and community colleges.
KIRO quotes Arun Raha, the state's chief economist, saying, "In Washington, the job recovery this time around has been slower than in any of the previous four recessions. If you compound that with the fact that the hole we're in is the largest in living memory, you begin to comprehend the magnitude of the problem."
The irony, of course, is that the city, county, and state don't spend that much, proportionally, on social services to begin with. When Constantine zeroes out social services spending--sorry, battered women and anyone who has been raped--he's addressed about one-third of the problem.
But the state is pushing ahead with a plan for a larger replacement of SR 520's floating bridge--work is underway, despite there being $2 billion in funding missing from the $4.65 billion project. (How much larger? "The current SR 520 is 60 ft. wide through Foster Island in the Arboretum. The plan calls for an 133 ft. wide structure," wrote Mayor McGinn in a letter to a group protesting the new bridge's size.)...
Open any coffee table book of historic photographs, particularly one with old photos of your hometown, and the experience as you flip through the pages is always the same.
First, it’s whimsically nostalgic as you wonder how people could have every lived in such an age. Then, it’s curiously nostalgic, as you look closer at the workings of life in earlier times. Finally, it’s painfully nostalgic as you come to realize what has been lost forever, a building, a mindset, a way of life.
Turner Publishing Company has just released a new coffee table book that, for any long term Seattleite, has equal doses of all three types of nostalgia. Historic Photos of Seattle in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, with text and captions by David Wilma, is an excellent black-and-white trip down memory lane. And like all such trips, there are some good and some bad memories.
First of all, kudos to Wilma and Turner for selecting pictures from the recent instead of distant past. Pictures from the Victorian era are, for me, too hard to place in context. The city they represent is long gone, paved over and lost.
The photos in this book feature earlier lives of buildings, streets and festivals that are still close at hand. And by choosing this era to document, Wilma creates a much more evocative series of images.
Pike Place Market Street Fair, 1975, courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives
The book documents Seattle’s rise from a coastal hub of timber and fishing to a powerhouse city that flourished after the Second World War. Companies like Nordstrom and Boeing really came of age in these thirty years and this book does a nice job of reflecting the city’s rapid economic rise.
Wilma has selected a large number of photos from various archives reflecting the construction of the interstate highway system through Seattle, including our two floating bridges. It’s interesting to see how these roads dissected our city and reshaped it and it’s poignant to reflect that, just 30 to 60 years later these are the structures that we are currently arguing about replacing and repairing. ...
The "he said/she said" in my Twitter feed
The Seattle Times has a habit of reporting on accidents involving the light rail thusly: "Car hit by light-rail train in Seattle." (For more instances, go here.)
In reading the story, you learn that the car "attempted to make a turn onto Othello Street against the light" and collided with the train. Seattle Transit Blog writes it up that way: "Car Collides with Link."
For contrast, try to imagine if the Times reported on car accidents in ways that gave no indication who caused the accident: "Car hit by other car in Seattle this morning." Doesn't seem newsworthy does it?
But in the Times headlines, light rail is always implicitly the agent of destruction: light rail "injures two" (who tried to make an illegal left turn in front of a sign marked No Left Turn), a woman "sustain[ed] injury" when she ran into the light rail, and a girl talking on her cellphone who stepped into the trackway was "struck by light-rail train." In none of these cases did the illegality, incompetence, or obliviousness of the person who caused the accident make it into the headline.
"Light-rail train hits pickup"--making an illegal turn, as it happens. From the Times headline (not even in the passive voice this time), you'd have to assume the light rail was at fault. Otherwise you might have read an investigative story about how Seattle drivers' illegal left turns are costing a cash-strapped Sound Transit a bundle further damaging light rail's reputation for reliability.
While we were down in Columbia City the other day visiting the Columbia City Theater, we stopped in for lunch at Geraldine's Counter and had a bowl of three-meat chili ($6.95) that it took some digging to reach the bottom of. After a quick conference, The SunBreak Breakfast Team moved Geraldine's up to the top of our breakfast hit list.
Geraldine's Counter (4872 Rainier Avenue South) is right around the corner from a lot on South Ferdinand Street full of 2-hour parking spots that cost exactly $1. (It's also, I will estimate, a 7-minute walk from the Columbia City light rail station.) That's almost thrill enough, but the ambiance of the place--booths to your right as you walk in, light pouring over tables set next to windows on your left, and just in front, the eponymous counter seating--exceeds expectations.
The place is rated highly by the Surly Gourmand, which makes sense because our lunchtime waiter, if not surly, must have made some crotchety vow of silence. There was never any warning or explanation for the fact that two bowls of chili, a cup of tomato soup, and three-cheese sandwich ($6.50: cheddar, Havarti, gruyère) ) took over half an hour to arrive. (In some circles, half an hour is lunch.)
Everything is better with breakfast, though, and that included our service. I asked the waitress for help deciding between the biscuits and gravy ($9.50) and corned beef hash ($8.75), and she gave it real thought--it's a dilemma!--and said hash. I will have to return for biscuits and gravy to be sure, but they serve up a mighty plate of corned beef hash....
It's a relatively quiet week for the Seattle literary scene, due to the closure of all Seattle Public Library branches, and the hoopla of Bumbershoot. On the bright side, this means that no Library materials are due and no late fines are accrued, for a week. On the less bright side, the Library is closed! Oh, the horror. And there is horror aplenty on this week's calendar, with genocide, environmental destruction, and yet more evidence that U.S. immigration policy and procedure has been less than stellar for many, many shameful decades.
Next week there will be a happy, fluffy bunny reading if I have to make it up.
08/30/10 12 a.m. The Seattle Public Library
The Seattle Public Library system is closed Aug. 30 through Sept. 6
In order to help meet $3M in budget cuts, the entire system is shutting down for a week, saving about $655K. This year, as opposed to last, some online Library services will be available. To leave a comment for the city librarian or the Library Board, call 206-684-0471. Be polite.
08/31/10 12 p.m. Seattle Mystery Bookshop
Jayne Castle (Jayne Ann Krentz)
Midnight Crystal
The (not very) pseudonymous author will sign book three in her Dreamlight Trilogy.
09/01/10 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Judith Armatta
Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosevic
I have to admit, the whole genocide thing really freaks me out. The last time I tried to read one of these sorts of books, I had screaming nightmares for weeks, after getting through only a few dozen pages. I can't imagine what the journalist who reported on Milosevic's trial could talk about that wouldn't send me back into therapy. I'm not proud.
09/01/10 7 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Matthew Kahn
Climatopolis
The author will talk about "Urban Life in a Hotter World." Soylent Green is PEEEEEEOPLE! You heard it here, first....
SPACE Venue and Education Center is proud to present an amazing class on July 31 in Greenwood. We will be hosting a Reiki class for kids.
Reiki Class for Kids is a one-day class offered for children ages 5 to 14. Students start with Level I training and may return to Level II at their next class. Any former students may retake the class at a discounted price. It is the same material and attunement as an Adult Reiki Class. We use art and experience in a way that reaches children and helps them to work with their strengths for being a more positive and productive young people.
Reiki is an ancient method of Japanese energy healing. This class teaches the fundamentals of this healing system along with exercises that help children feel better about their environment. By taking a closer look at how they would like to be treated and how they treat others in the world, a healthy, expanded sense of awareness elevates children to a more positive view of their world.
We have found our young participants...
Seth prepared all of us for this week's managerial match-up of "Sweet" Lou Piniella and "Dynamic" Don Wakamatsu, and I am happy to report that Lou did not disappoint at today's Mariners game. In the bottom of the tenth inning, Chone Figgins stole third (and Mike Sweeney stole second). I thought Figgins might have been out, but the umpire called him safe. Faster than my eyes could register, a blur of Piniella erupted out of the dugout to discuss--calmly, rationally--the pros and cons of the call.
Teens today have so much more stress than I remember. A week ago, there weren't eight pages of YouTube results for "Seattle cop punches jaywalker," and now there are.
It's become an international story--though Al Jazeera has yet to take note. Slackers. But thank you, Paris Match: "Un agent de police frappe une jeune femme."
A week ago, 17-year-old Angel Rosenthal didn't have a legal team, per se, just acquaintances with public defenders. It seems safe to assume that she wasn't on speed dial for Urban League President James Kelly, or Rev. Reggie Witherspoon, Pastor of Mount Calvary Christian Center.
But that's life: One moment you're blithely ignoring a pedestrian overpass to jaywalk across a 4-lane boulevard, with cars routinely hitting 45 mph, and the next you're pushing around a Seattle police officer and getting punched in the face. Could happen to anyone--as luck would have it, it was someone previously charged with second-degree robbery and third-degree theft.
Finally comes the media event with Interim SPD Chief John Diaz, Deputy Chief Nick Metz, and Rich O'Neill, President of the Seattle Police Officer's Guild, where you apologize to Officer Walsh, while facing charges of third-degree assault. If you have always wanted to be in a drama, this is pure political theatre. Listen as the Chief speaks:...
From the cover of the July/Aug 2008 issue of "Poets & Writers," back issues of which can be purchased here. And come on, if there was ever a frameable magazine cover, this is it!
Saturday last, I was in Park Slope, Brooklyn, doing my best to pub-hop NYC's Bloomsday festivities, which organizers had the good sense to move to the weekend. I didn't make it to more than a couple pubs, but still, it's something else to find yourself in a crowd of beer-swilling literati taking turns reading from one of the most famously difficult-to-read books in the English language.
Set 104 years ago today, James Joyce's Ulysses didn't do much besides follow the mentally anguished Leopold Bloom as he wanders Dublin for eighteen hours or so. But in the process of exploring Bloom's tortured emasculation, Joyce pushed the boundaries--or rather, shattered them--of what a novel could do, or even should be. Epic, multi-layered, densely referential and complex, it stands out as perhaps the greatest achievement of literary Modernism, and every June 16, around the world, people get together to celebrate the day that changed literary history.
Seattle, unfortunately, doesn't have a pub crawl. However, it does have the Wild Geese Players, a small volunteer company that gets together every year to do public readings from Ulysses for Bloomsday. Tonight starting at 7 p.m., they'll be taking the stage at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford to read from the "blue" chapter of the novel, Part II, Episode 15: Circe, which follows Bloom and Stephen Dedalus through the red-light district. (The event is intended for adults--or at least mature audiences--only.)
If you've never actually been to a Bloomsday reading, I highly encourage it. Like too many people, I've never actually finished the novel, because the dense allusions and complex prose eventually overwhelm my ability to enjoy it in its own right. But despite all that, Joyce was also a master of voice and tone, and listening to it read out loud (the Circe episode is actually written as scripted dialogue, too) can add immensely to your experience and enjoyment.
Unfortunately, I don't know that they'll be serving drinks during the reading, but if a pint of stout or a Bushmills rocks is a necessary component of your Bloomsday entertainment (of course it is!), Good Shepherd's not too far from Murphy's Irish Pub, which should be having its Wednesday night music showcase to boot.
Courtesy University of Washington Center for Public Health Nutrition, "The Supermarket Gap"
MSNBC has repackaged the results of the Seattle Obesity Study--by the University of Washington's Adam Drewnowski, who studies relationships between social class and obesity--to make it sound a little sexier, but in a way that also obscures the study's findings.
MSNBC's headline is "Pricey grocery stores attract skinniest shoppers," and the story contains a sidebar that lists grocery stores by customer obesity (a BMI of over 30): just 4 percent of Whole Foods customers are obese, followed by Met Market (8), PCC (12), QFC (17), Fred Meyer (22), Safeway (24), and Albertsons (38).
This is actually the opposite of what study wants to show you, which is that poverty drives the food choices that result in weight gain, not the stores you shop at.
The UW release says simply: "Obesity remains an economic issue." (And there's no photo of a slender blonde loading groceries into her SUV, there's bar graphs.) The study itself is titled, "The Supermarket Gap," and follows up on earlier research that found that "people who lived near supermarkets consumed more fresh produce and were less likely to be obese." Fine, everyone thought, we'll just build more supermarkets in so-called "food deserts" (places served only by convenience stores or fast food)....
The National Weather Service has a wind advisory out for the Seattle area, in effect from 1 p.m. today until midnight:
LIGHT NORTHEAST WINDS ACROSS THE REGION THIS MORNING WILL SHIFT TO SOUTHERLY MIDDAY AND RISE QUICKLY DURING THE EARLY AFTERNOON...WITH LOCAL WINDS OF 30 MPH AND GUSTS TO 45 MPH CONTINUING THROUGH LATE EVENING. THE WINDS WILL EASE AFTER MIDNIGHT.
It's a little disconcerting, the all-caps format from the NWS, isn't it? You can almost hear the Telex chattering as they stare into a monochrome CRT monitor. Anyway, expect wind, cooling temperatures, and some rain in your face as the afternoon progresses.
Cliff Mass has been watching this storm's development--it's primarily aimed at the coast, and models show an even stronger storm on the way than forecasted yesterday:
Here is the latest forecast for 5 PM tonight...pretty amazing. 989 mb low and a huge pressure gradient to its south and southeast. The simulation indicates even stronger winds than last night, with areas immediately offshore experiencing 60 kt sustained winds and hurricane-force gusts.
Yesterday he explained the wind-generating dynamics. While the low moving in doesn't pack the punch of a winter storm, our springtime "environmental pressure" is high, so there's a big differential between the two air masses. That, friends, means wind with a capital W! The coast will most likely see power outages--and we could see local outages, too, from small trees or big branches.
Noting on TechCrunch that they have writers in "Silicon Valley, New York, London, Brussels, Paris, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and, absurdly, Chicago," blogger and "serial entrepreneur" Michael Arrington tries to justify moving to Seattle, which he has previously portrayed as an underperforming tech outback--the "minor leagues," in fact. (Though he admits the skiing is superior.)
The justification doesn't really take. He ends by saying, "to be honest the biggest reason I've moved is to simply mix things up in my life. Like many people I tend to get bored if I stay in one place too long--five years is the longest I've lived anywhere since high school. It was time for a change." Hey, just like Mark Emmert!
TechFlash, our homegrown, indefatigable tech blog, didn't miss a beat in securing an interview with Arrington, wherein he reveals he really does have a heart--adding that he also wanted to be nearer his parents, who retired up here.
And, we may be getting him for the long haul: "The house that I had in Silicon Valley, I was renting. It was time to buy a house, and so that is a pretty permanent thing buying a house."
A TechCrunch commenter supplied this Wolfram Alpha comparison of relocating to Seattle from the Bay area. Turns out a dollar goes a lot further here.
The Seattle Police Chief Search Committee has named eleven candidates for Seattle's top cop spot, and it's time to narrow the field to three. Being as how the committee is likely worn out after hiring the Police Executive Research Forum to do their looking for them, The SunBreak has decided to handicap the race. That way, the committee's interviews on May 8 to determine the finalists for mayoral review will likely be just a formality. Here's the tip sheet:
Interim Police Chief John Diaz is one of three candidates from the Seattle Police Department, who obviously have a leg up. His local competition is Clark Kimerer, Deputy Chief of Police and a classics and philosophy student in his Great Books-y St. John's College days, and Jim Pugel, also Assistant Chief of Police and an English major--I feel like these guys may have just tossed their shields in because you need to show interest in advancement. Diaz seems to have the broader command background, but if you pick him, Kimerer and Pugel feel sad, which is not the Seattle way.
Anne Kirkpatrick, possible ardent anti-communist
Our next group is made up candidates who would bring "experience" and are motivated to leave their present post: Rick Braziel, Chief of Police from Sacramento; Adam Burden II, former Assistant Chief of Police from Miami; and Ronald Davis, Chief of Police from East Palo Alto. If you subscribe to the Seattle Times view that we are a city under siege, you would look hard at this bunch (except I think Capitol Hill has more people than East Palo Alto). They've seen la guerre. Sacramento, man. That's in the shit.
Finally, the pack has some auslanders, which may make culture clash a significant issue. Seattle is a city second only to San Francisco and Berkeley in terms of requisite pothead-hugging, Officer Friendly-ness. There's the climate, some people just don't take to it. And finally, we don't like outsiders.
So these are wild card choices: Judy Bradshaw, Chief of Police from Des Moines, Iowa; Rick Gregory, Chief Administrative Officer/Acting Public Safety Director from New Castle County, Delaware; John Romero, Chief of Police from Lawrence, Massachusetts; and Lisa Womack, former Chief of Police from Elgin, Illinois. I feel sorry for police chiefs from Iowa and Illinois looking for jobs elsewhere. They may well have mean streets, but honestly, your first thought is "Corn thieves?"
Frankly, a lot of so-and-so-at-local-event photos don't do much for me. (Exception: Good concert footage.) But Libby Lewis's shot of Michael Chabon would look snazzy even if Mr. Chabon hadn't been in town. Kudos, and thanks to her and Seattle Arts & Lectures for dropping this shot in our Flickr pool.
Sure you have a firewall, but what about people photographing you through the window? Thanks to Flickr pool member mangpages!
It's like the Los Angeles Times only cares about Seattle if we're jumping off bridges or exposing ourselves to cybercrime. The story now is one of those virally successful PR efforts, based on computer crime busters Symantec rating 50 U.S. cities "using 24-million security sensors that monitor malicious-attack activity around the globe."
They counted up PC attacks, viruses and worms, and bot-infected computers used to send spam or transmit malware, checked the frequency of the attacks, and weighed behavior like connecting to public Wi-Fi shopping online without a secure connection.
Says Symantec, Seattle is top of the charts on almost every risk factor. But let's take this with a grain of salt. I asked Mark Rushing, systems analyst and open-source pusher at Orbis Lumen, for his take. Mark would have wanted to confirm that we're talking about actually illegal acts, rather than the sexy, all-purpose "cybercrime," and to know more about the role of false positives in "attacks" reported by virus software. But here are his initial responses.
So, cybercrime mecca Seattle: hooey or not hooey?
Probably a little of both. It's marketing. You're supposed to be scared and buy Norton/Symantec products. I notice that Fox News seems to have taken the largest interest in this story.
Is security even possible any more?
Complete security has never been, and will never be, possible. You can only take precautions. The more precautions you take, the more inconvenient and impractical your experiences can become. And interestingly, the more privacy you seem give up.
What are some basic precautions people just don't "get around to"?
The best protection is increasing your awareness. If you want to be safer, you must be aware of your environment. Learning is the best thing you can do. Alas, people prefer packaged conveniences, it seems, so they buy Norton/Symantec products, or buy AVG products (or use their free one). But this lets them observe all you and your computer is doing.
Better to use an operating system that is based upon best practices in the underlying science and technology, rather than predominantly marketing forces. Your conveniences always come at a cost, and those conveniences are rarely the best (and often not even the simplest) way to do things.
And of course, don't use the same password for every site. Use unique, harder passwords for sites with access to your bank accounts. Don't install software from places you do not know or trust. Etc., etc....
Great Beyond shared this photo of "typically trippy Fremont sculpture," which if I recall correctly is across the street from the north end of the Fremont Bridge. (Also note: shot on film!)
Gun-free summer theatre at Volunteer Park.
U.S. District Court Judge Marsha J. Pechman ruled in favor of the City of Seattle against plaintiff Robert Warden, of Kent, and dismissed his case. Warden had brought suit against the city and Mayor Greg Nickels for banning guns in parks, arguing that the state constitution expressly prevented that limitation. The King Co. Superior Court agreed in February, calling the ban illegal.
But here's where it gets interesting: Warden's success in that case rendered his complaint moot in U.S. District Court. So he couldn't argue the more straightforward claim that the state constitution preempted local law. ("The court was presented only with the issue of state law preemption, and here Plaintiff expressly removed his preemption claim from his complaint," wrote Pecham in her decision. )
So Warden was left arguing Second and Fourteenth Amendment issues. Pechman countered that the Second Amendment does not (yet, there's a case coming before the Supreme Court) constrain the actions of municipalities like Seattle, only Congress. And she did not find Warden discriminated against. Warden was able to cite no inalienable right to carry a gun in a park.
Pechman moved on, though, to give her thoughts as to the legitimacy of the preemption argument anyway. In her view, there's precedent for a parks gun ban:...
Sunset on the Portland to Seattle trip
President Obama's plug for high speed rail in the State of the Union address was followed by AP reporting, tonight, that Washington state is one of the thirteen major corridors in line to see faster service: in our case, from Seattle to Portland.
Sen. Patty Murray says we will receive $590 million, and extra Amtrak trains. Seattlepi.com say the improvements on the Seattle to Portland line will allow Amtrak trains to pass BNSF freight trains, the slowpokes that often cause delays currently. The ultimate goal is a top speed of 110 mph.
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