Saw this posted to UrbanPlanet today. Unfortunately, to get in on the discussion there, you need at least 100 posts to the forums before you have access to the Coffee House there. You can still watch the video (it’s YouTube). Basically, it says that the mainstream candidates for president, from both parties, are no different than each other. If you want real change, there are only 2 candidates, Dennis Kucinich (who currently has my support) and Ron Paul (who I would not be opposed to seeing in the white house). The others are basically in favor of keeping the status quo with very minor changes. Watch the video, it’s enlightening.
It’s rare that I post something that’s so restricted to the general area, but this is a very important issue facing the city of Providence and the state of Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, aka RIPTA, is seeing some of the highest ridership ever, yet the state senate and the governor don’t seem to care. RIPTA cannot afford, on their current budget, to add buses to the bus routes that need increased service. What they end up doing is shuffling buses around from the routes with lower ridership to the overcrowded routes. This means that if you rely on one of those low demand routes, your bus may never come because RIPTA needed the bus for a route with higher demand. This happens quite frequently and leaves people stuck on the curb.
To any state senators and representatives that might see this, increase funding for RIPTA. RIPTA is not just something that does its thing and can be ignored. It’s a major asset to the state of RI and the city of Providence. When people who rely on the bus can’t get a bus, they must rely on other methods of transportation. This means more cars on the road. RIPTA is necessary for many people who do not have cars, who are not able to drive, or who just prefer not to use the cars they have. It should be a viable option for 100% of the people who live and/or work in the city of Providence to get to and from their jobs in the city. People should be able to step out to a bus stop in the city, wait no more than 10-15 minutes, and get on a bus. They should not be watching buses pass by because they are full. They should not be missing buses because the bus was moved to a different route. The continued success of the city of Providence is very dependent on the ability of RIPTA to meet or exceed the needs of the residents and workers in the city of Providence and the surrounding communities.
If you live in Rhode Island (this includes all you college students who came from out of state to attend one of our fine institutions), please contact your state senators and representatives in the General Assembly and urge them to give more funding for RIPTA. There is a reason it is called PUBLIC transportation. Just as the roads are public roads, the buses are public buses and must be funded by the state and not solely by the fares. Imagine if the roads were funded solely by the gas and car tax. The roads would be one giant pot hole, requiring an off-road vehicle to traverse the state. Contact Governor Carcieri and tell him why RIPTA is important to you and why the state needs to give them more funding.
More info:
Bus rides now a tough ticket (Providence Journal, 11/1/07)
Transit 2020 Transportation Project
Why don’t more people use RIPTA? (UrbanPlanet | Providence)
Transit 2020 Discussion (UrbanPlanet | Providence)
Public Transit in Providence (UrbanPlanet | Providence)
Car Free in Providence? (UrbanPlanet | Providence)
So I wanted a good one for my 100th post (which this is). I couldn’t figure out what to write about until I came across a nice article about California’s Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger (via Okfuture.net, via Boing Boing). When asked about his obvious use of marijuana in the documentary “Pumping Iron”, he replied saying that marijuana is not a drug, but rather a leaf. Now say what you will about Arnold, but I have to agree with him on this one. Anyone who knows me knows that I am very much in favor of 100% legalization of marijuana. Many scientific studies have shown that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol and tobacco (which, by Arnold’s reasoning is also “just a leaf”). Marijuana does not cause a chemical dependency like alcohol and nicotine, found in tobacco products. It has been proven to have many medical benefits, the reason why medical marijuana is legal in several states (including, thanks to our General Assembly that had to override out governor’s veto, my home of Rhode Island).
I might be shooting myself in the foot for admitting to this on a public blog, but I truly believe in personal privacy rights. The propaganda that the anti-drug people give is nonsense. I have heard of several reasons for the prohibition of marijuana, among them that William Randolph Hearst was going to lose money because hemp is stronger and easier to grow than cotton to be used in paper or that it was racially motivated in a bigoted move against Mexican migrant workers. Whatever the reason truly was, it has no basis on scientific fact. The reason cigarettes are still legal, while doing more bodily harm, is because of the big money the tobacco companies give to political campaigns and the strong lobbyists they have in Washington. I ultimately support the legalization of marijuana because, for the same reason that alcohol is regulated and taxed by the government, it, too, can be regulated and taxed. I don’t see anything different about someone smoking pot as opposed to getting drunk. It’s all about personal responsibility. If you are high, you don’t get behind the wheel, same thing as if you were drinking (of course, I also don’t agree with the use of BAC as a determination factor to your driving ability, as devices exist that can test your fine motor skills related to driving rather than infringing on your privacy).
Perhaps this will be a step in the right direction. I don’t see marijuana being legalized outright in this country right away, but the more states that decriminalize possession for personal use, the more likely we are to move in the right direction. Marijuana alone has never killed anyone. You cannot overdose on pot like you can on legal prescription and over-the-counter drugs. Contact your senators and representatives in congress. Support NORML. End the stupid criminalization of people who are not harming anyone else. Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol and it’s not working with pot. The so-called “war on drugs” started by Nancy Reagan is a losing battle.
There’s a nice article over on Slate (via Slashdot) about how Google’s presentation software doesn’t even come close to the much loathed MS PowerPoint. The biggest reasons behind this are the following:
- Google’s software only works with an active internet connection. While you can save them as HTML files, you can’t edit them. This means that you can’t edit them on the plane when flying to a customer to make a sales presentation.
- PowerPoint offers a whole lot more in the way of customization, including animations; drawing on the slides; custom templates, fonts, colors, etc.; different types of slide transitions.
The only thing that Google offers that PowerPoint does not is live collaboration. However, as I reported before, MS is releasing something in the near future that will allow for that. While I said it comes up short, that only applies for people who aren’t already using MS Office.
However, the ultimate presentation software, according to the article is Apple’s Keynote. The reason being that it offers even more fine tuning over PowerPoint. While I seem to be an Apple hater based on previous posts, that is very far from the truth. Keynote is a pretty impressive piece of software.
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