Archive for June, 2006

For those of you who didn’t hear, Washington was almost impossible to get to this morning. Metro had delays on almost all of the lines due to track flooding in multiple stations. I managed to get to work at roughly the same time I do everyday, thanks in part to a phone call from a bus buddy warning of the snarl and also to the Georgetown Connection. Sadly, the little blue bus doesn’t take SmarTrip and costs an extra $1.50 (the website is slightly out of date), but it was definitely worth it today.

This article attempts to predict where the next technology hub will appear. This unsuprisingly shallow piece quotes that all you need are “rich people and nerds,” and blithely proceeds to list population and job statistics from the same two sources ten times over.

There are multiple flaws with this analysis. First, the classification of a “tech job” is extremely vague. At the end of the article, Las Vegas is mentioned as a possible contender due to bearing a large number of call centers. If we were go to by this definition, Tulsa should have been San Jose by now. It would seem that according to eWEEK, anyone who uses a computer at work could be classified as a “tech worker.” Next, they assume that Northern California will fade as a hub due to the high cost of living. Ironically enough, Seattle, Boston, DC, and Los Angeles are then mentioned as potential “next hub” contenders. While the SF Bay is definitely expensive, these cities are definitely not cheap. Also, their own analysis doesn’t even match up to their thesis that you only need “rich people and nerds” as they have no statistics on wealth in the article. Finally, they ignore factors such as nearby colleges, Internet connectivity, and R&D spending by local firms.

I wouldn’t typically bring up such a thin article, except that it’s the same thought process used by most cities trying to revitalize themsevles. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the State of California ever offered financial incentives for Hewlett Packard, Apple, Oracle, or Intel to locate in the Bay Area. Yet you see cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Cleveland attempt to land a big company by handing over wads of cash. These deals are usually tied to some promise to stay in the area for X number of years, which may or may not be kept. In the end, the “revitalization” is usually very limited and localized. Meanwhile, roads go unfixed, schools decline, and public services are cut. How long will it be before these cities realize that they have to actively create an environment that will attract talent?

Evidently, there’s a bigger push to install composting and low-impact toilets than I had first realized. In this article, we see huge fights developing over such proposals. I’m surprised that even dual-flush systems (two buttons for two different water amounts) are tough sells; office building managers aren’t giving up touchless toilets.

The best part of the article is the description of a composting toilet at the end:

The toilets are white and sleek. The compost pile lies about 10 feet beneath a plastic chute. Near each toilet stands a pail of wood chips, with a sign inviting people to toss in a handful after each use.

That’s not really necessary, Foster said. It’s for people, he said, “who want to flush.”

“They want some kind of closure.”

According to the Washington Post, local schools are reducing or eliminating recess, if they haven’t done so already. However, some are adding it back, but in the most ridiculous forms:

In the rush to fight obesity and get kids moving, some schools are adding mandatory activities and exercise time during recess, guided by teachers. They say kids aren’t as spontaneous as they used to be, perhaps because they spend so much time in front of televisions, computers and video games. So some schools are asking teachers to lead the way three days a week.

Methinks some school administrators are a little overeager to show “results.”