The Right Side of Seattle

Seattle comes across, to many people, pretty liberal place. It's pretty easy to argue Washington is a Blue State because of the very high percentage of Democratic voters in Seattle and its immediate suburban area. (You see a similar pattern in many states with large urban populations that completely dwarf the demographics of the rest of the state.) But, no matter what anyone says, Seattle isn't "completely" liberal. Like any place, it has its share of conservatives - even if they are few in numbers. To give you an example, I've mentioned before the groups of people that get together on Saturday mornings in Lake Forest park, to demonstrate either in support of the troops (and to a lesser degree, the administration) or to end the war and to criticize the administration. One day, when I actually counted heads, I found the that end the war crowd outnumbered the support the troops crowd by about five to one.

Many of them, to pass the time, it seems, hang out on the Seattle Post Intelligencer's Sound Off pages, making bitter and mean-spirited comments, and complaining every time they feel that the newspaper, or it's readership is being too liberal for their tastes - which is quite often. There are several regulars, some of which are probably more accurately labeled "trolls," who spend a lot of time making nasty comments about even trivial topics. There is a lot of heat, but very little light, which is a shame. Convinced that they won't be listened to - and often seeming to put a lot of energy into ensuring just that - they rarely post anything enlightening or thoughtful - settling instead for knee-jerk Limbaugh-esque invective, being quick to point out problems and make ad-hominem attacks on other posters, but rarely offering anything by the way of actionable or verifiable information. There are also a lot of anonymous posts that exhibit many of the same characteristics, but without having set usernames attached to them.

Not to say that they are the only ones. They have their counterparts on the other side of the political divide. But with the larger community on the political left, the flamers and trolls don't generate the appearance of representing most of the group.

Bot Kicking

"Sticks and stones may break my drones, but they can't hurt me."
William Saletan. "I, LawnBott" Human Nature, the Blog. Slate Magazine, Thursday, May 08, 2008.

As Mr. Saletan points out, the military uses drones as a way of being present, but without having someone there who can get hurt. The creator of "BumBot" applies the same logic - sort of. Rather than driving the thing around remotely from the safety of his business, he walks around behind it. But the same general idea does seem to apply - people target the "robot" instead of him, so it collects all the dings and scratches.

Pushing Safety

A survey says that 81 percent of parents in Britain don't allow their children to ride their bicycles freely. That's too bad. I remember all the time that used to spend riding my bike. If nothing else, I was in MUCH better shape then than I am now.

I found this tidbit to be interesting - although only 3 percent of parents surveyed knew someone who'd been in an accident, 36 percent of them claimed safety as the reason why they restricted their children's cycling. (Although I doubt that there is 100 percent overlap there.) What strikes me as interesting about these numbers is the idea that people are much more careful about their children than they are about themselves. If roughly three times the number of people who knew someone who'd been in an automobile accident swore off driving, would there be any personal automobiles left on the roads in many places? Even if you started from people who knew someone who'd been killed in a car crash, there would be significant reduction in driving.

We Knew That

When does pointing out an obvious and extreme imbalance of power between two nations become a de-facto threat? Let's face it, the United States COULD "obliterate" Iran. I'm pretty sure that we've got a large enough nuclear arsenal to make the entire country (and most of the surrounding area) uninhabitable for the next twenty million or so years. And while Iran and Iraq fought each other to a standstill throughout most of the 1980's, the United States military crushed the Iraqi army seemingly overnight (in what was jokingly termed by one commentator "Operation Almighty Ass-Kicking"). Of course that might mean letting Iraq free-fall into Chaos...

So now the Democratic candidates are sparring over whether or not bluntly stating what any 12-year-old could tell you is a form of "Cowboy Diplomacy." Yawn.

Not With the Bridges Again

The practice of making sex offenders live under bridges has spread from Florida to Washington State. A sex offender who is currently being sought for cutting off his ankle monitor and going underground had been living under a bridge, because the Washington State Department of Corrections couldn't find another place for him to live. While parole officer Mary Rehburg seems to have no problem with saying that David Torrence had been ordered to spend his nights under the bridge ("Under a bridge is the best of the options we had left."), with a rain poncho and a sleeping bag, Anna Aylward, the Department of Correction's program administrator instead characterizes it as "permitting" him to live out in the open.

One of these things is not like the other. But what strikes me as interesting about this story is that the fact that Torrence was living under a bridge didn't come to light until after Westneat's column came out. While I suppose that you could make the case that where he had been living had no bearing on the fact that he'd gone on the lam, I do think the fact that the Department of Corrections is sending people to live under bridges is newsworthy, especially since as Westneat rightly points out: "It's about the worst outcome possible, for public safety." And if this is a dubious idea in Florida, it doesn't make any more sense here. Being a native of Chicago, I tend to scoff at the Seattle brand of "cold." But the rainy season here lasts for a good 6 to 8 months, and while it's not a steady downpour or anything like that, I don't imagine that it's pleasant to be out in night after night. Sounds like a sentence to death from pneumonia, or something equally unpleasant.

I suspect that sooner or later, someone is going to accuse me of having more sympathy for perpetrators than victims for advocating for a better solution. But I do think that poor work re-integrating people leads to higher recidivism rates. Sentencing people to lives of quiet desperation may make some people feel better about sticking to the "bad guys," but it's got such a poor track record, I'm amazed that anyone still sees it as a credible option anymore. News coverage tends to paint Torrence as someone who doesn't want to do his time, or is looking to re-offend. But it also seems pretty likely that he just wants to find a warm place to spend his nights.