Crowding — sweet, sweet crowding

One of the pleasures I’ve had since resuming bus ridership a couple of weeks ago is seeing the buses so full.
Last winter, I took the bus to work every day.  Usually, there were no more than five people on the bus at any one time, including me and the driver.  On the ride home, the [...]

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…and the benefits of easy community-forming

A couple of days ago, I voiced a little suspicion about the many new “social software” devices and applications that make forming connections so easy.  Today I want to amend that.
I’m reading Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (New York: Penguin, 2008), an exploration of the ways new technology allows [...]

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The danger of easy community-forming

It finally got cold enough in Fairbanks — three degrees Fahrenheit this morning — that I decided to forego riding my bike to work and to take the bus instead. Truth be told, I don’t mind the cold or the dark so much as all the damned dressing and undressing. Lazy, I guess.
Riding [...]

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Lower standards and half-baked ideas

I need to lower my standards enough to let out a few half-baked ideas.
If you read my last post (on the crime rate in Fairbanks), you may have left with the feeling that it was not the most thorough piece of argumentation you’d ever read.  Frank Cox called it a “rough and ready first cut [...]

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Why crime in the city?

A couple of weeks ago, in a comment to my post “Home insecurity system“, Brian wrote,
On the other hand, I haven’t had a shooting in my neighborhood in the ‘burbs….. ever. You have shootings, assaults, and assorted nonsense in yours THAT NEVER EVEN MAKES THE NEWSPAPER. Would you go to Weeks Field after dark, unarmed?
I [...]

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