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struck a chord with a post he made. So, I respond here:

A few points here from someone hoping to become a professional in related matters.

1) There is an enormous demand to get to manhattan (and a bunch of the rest of NYC, but especially manhattan). There is a limit to the capacity that can feed into and through manhattan without making manhattan so overwhelmed with transportation systems as to do detract from the coolness of manhattan. Even ignoring the people such a system would bring in, if you broaden the roads, you’re going to have to take out sidewalks and/or buildings. And there’s only so many subways that can be built.

2) I’m betting buses don’t get [much] special right of way over cars. If they did, there’d be a never-ending shitstorm over it, and a bunch of people getting the fuck out of their cars, and onto buses (thereby taking up vastly less highway space).

3) The job of public transportation is to provide cheap movement for a person with limited baggage. I doubt it’s failing in that regard. It may not be doing it quickly, or efficiently, but if it were really not doing it’s job, nyc couldn’t exist as it currently does. The tidal volume of people into and out of manhattan is enormous, and presents an ungodly challenge.

4) Congestion will exist so long as road space is unpriced. They will soon be pricing a lane of HOV to allow SOV access to in Minneapolis. It goes up with congestion to maintain freeflowing speeds to a maximum of $8/trip, before it decides that it shouldn’t charge anymore, and kicks all the would-be payers out. It won’t even come close to paying for the upgrade to the system, let alone for the construction costs for the lane. When faced with the actual costs of a highway system, motorists don’t want to pay. (Of course, the only reason there are significant maintenance expenses on roads is because we use them for big heavy shipping things.)

5) Highway congestion will suck as long as public transit sucks. If public transit sucks, nobody’s going to get on it, they’ll get on the highway instead, voila, congestion. Until it gets so fucking congested, that people who might otherwise drive start taking public transit. If you make public transit so that it’s almost as good as an uncongested highway, you’ll have uncongested highways.

Jesus, I wish I could write like this when I had papers due.

Warning, commentary on capitalism ahead: this is from the 80’s, and it’s just so … perfect

I did a back handspring with no spotter today, a couple times. Whee! So much easier than front handsprings and front tucks. Must feed the hunger.

Last ditch procrastination effort.

So, after my interview with the GAO, and subsequently beating myself up, I came to an important realization that I number of you probably think is so overwhelmingly obvious, I might as well talk about the color of grass. I’m pretty clear that a number of people have identified it as my most annoying trait, and I’m starting to see how it regularly fucks me up. the chip on my shoulder

So, for Saturday, I think, and some of Sunday, I was messing around with ffxi, and managed to convert that 100k gil into about 10 points in alchemy, and 30-40k gil of stuff sitting in my auction house. More expensive than originally planned, sadly. FFXI may well run up against my impatience at some point. Also went for a bit of a walk with and watched a movie late in the evening with Joe. Something about a bisexual Irish immigrant worker in NYC being screwed over by his uncle, and messing his life up. Bleak, not recommended, sadly I’ve forgotten the name, so I can’t properly disrecommend it.

For “Zombie Jesus Day” as called it, I can’t remember what I did in the morning, but our table went away with its rightful owner. In the afternoon, I went with to le chateau de and . They played all flesh must be eaten, while I introduced myself to WoW with a truly hideous undead warlock chick. It was fun. I can’t wonder how much my visual impressedness with the game was due to superior programming and how much was due to the gargantuan size of the flat panel. Still not getting it until I finish the semester.

My finances are indeed fucked (rice and potatoes level fucked), but today I mailed the check from mom to the bank, so perhaps things will be better soon. This reminds me that I need to make the time to post about my most recent self-improvement personality project.

posted an article about nuclear power, and asked what it was missing. I started this as a reply to ‘s response, but it rapidly mushroomed into a fully formed post. And so here you have it.

My take on nukular power, and the current energy status

I was searching for maps for the 1980 census in the government documents department of the library, and my librarian guide couldn’t locate what I wanted, so she suggested that I head down to the map department (1 floor down, on the other side of the building) to see if they could help me. Turns out the map department has that $1000+ cd with the entire 1980 census on it. You know, the same thing that’s taking up more floor space than my building holds, all on cd. With convenient mapping utilities. =) Yay!

Still, paper draft due next monday (or is it wed, I have the syllabus, I can find out). I hope to have it done by friday.

The relationship between a graduate student and their faculty mentor
represents a very personal and dynamic partnership. The imparting of
knowledge and experience combined with support for and encouragement of
creativity and individuality are fundamental contributions of the
successful mentor. For their part, successful graduate students
ultimately provide new insights, challenge conventional thinking, and
extend a mentor’s perspective and experience. Because of the
interdependence between mentor and student, their relationship is of
necessity very personal and highly individualized. Success of such close
personal interactions is predicated on accessibility, open-mindedness,
mutual respect, honesty, and trust between these two individuals. In my
experience no two students have been alike. Hence, my relationship with
each of my students has been unique to them. Insertion of
intermediaries, surrogates, or union representatives is incompatible
with the essential one-to-one nature of mentor – graduate student
relationships.

Yeah, a personal and dynamic partnership with set wage rates and benefit schedules brought to us courtesy the university administration. They’re already inserting themselves as intermediaries in that “essential one-to-one” relationship. They just want to maintain their monopoly. Good gods, that explanation takes me from mildly to ambivalently in favor of unionization to strongly in favor. Doublespeaking weasels.

After pointed me to a response to a recent article in city pages, I started reading it. Then I kept on reading it. It’s good stuff.

St. Paul Democratic state senator needs head examined
My TA in local politics (I already knew about it, but it’s good to get a third party evaluation)
Gambling for state funds and senator fuckup strikes again.
Gore Vidal on modern America
Military propoganda documentary, also contains reference to a perhaps less propaganda-ish representation. I’d like to see the latter. And maybe the former as well, under the principle that ignorance is bad.
Lamers protest smoking ban (t-minus 1 week, yay!)
Childrearing, (s)mothering, and independence

I may have to start reading it regularly. =)

So, yesterday evening marked the first of my real troubles with the mac. Wireless wasn’t working. I couldn’t figure out why. When I ran into the same problem here at school, I switched to the desktop and did a little investigatory work. It’s not dhcp’ing. It’s decided to supply its own ip address and screw the servers. Turns out others have had this problem before. The solution? Reboot. Fortunately, firefox allows me to set a homepage of several tabs. =) What’s so great about this? It’s been two months, and this is the first significant problem I’ve had with wireless. =)