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Calvin & Hobbes

I am so happy that Calvin & Hobbes is back in the newspaper.  It is my favorite comic strip of all time.  Bill Watterson is a genius.  I’d rather read a thousand reruns of this strip than one new “Brevity” panel. 
 
One of my favorite Calvin & Hobbes strips is the one where Calvin is throwing snowballs at Susie — missing her every time.  She turns and yells, “Ha ha!  You’re such a bad shot, Calvin.  If it weren’t for gravity, you couldn’t hit the ground!”  Just then — POW — a snowball hits her dead on.  Calvin exults, “I DID IT!  I DID IT!  Just when it really counted, I did it!”  Next panel, he’s taking his boots off after returning home and announces, “Bad news, Mom.  I sold my soul to the devil today.”  His mother responds, “Oh?  So recently?”  Ha ha ha!  I love that one. 
 
I wish Watterson would start drawing Calvin again . . . . 

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Blogging will be lighter than usual

We’re moving.
 
We currently live in a two-bedroom home (great starter house), but have three kids.  My son’s bedroom has been the living room the past four months.  So, as they say on The Jeffersons, “we’re a-movin’ on up” to a bigger house. 
 
If all goes as planned, we’ll be closing on the sale of our current house and the purchase of our new house on Thursday.  The big move will be Saturday.  That means, not much blogging for the next week or so.  But I’m sure I’ll have lots of fun moving stories to share when I get back to blogging!

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Expect shorter obits, more ads

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The Journal Star came out with their new obituary policies today.  Starting September 1, the Journal Star will only report “details of the person’s death, time and place of services, burial and visitation” for free.  Anything more than that will cost you $15 per column inch.  Some things for which they will now be charging include:  picture of deceased, survivors, where the person worked — all the “cold, hard, verifiable facts” they’ve been printing for free all these years.
 
They put a positive spin on it, naturally.  “At last,” I paraphrase, “our readers can say whatever they want about their dearly departed.  We wouldn’t let you do it before, but now we will.”  I would hope so at $15 per column inch.  A truly generous gesture would have been to provide the same service they always have for free, but charge those families who wanted to include additional information.  Let’s call a spade a spade:  this is nothing more than a cost-cutting, revenue-increasing strategy that they’re trying to pass off as an improvement in service. 
 
It’s a win-win for the paper — if the bereaved don’t buy the space, other advertisers will.  And since the PJS is the only daily paper in town, keeping advertisers happy is their primary concern.

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Deep thoughts about blogging

I was reading an excerpt of Yuval Levin’s essay from the journal The Public Interest on how the speed of technology adversely affects American politics. He has a paragraph on blogging I’d like to share here for your discussion:

Another example of the quickening of politics in the Information Age — and its mixed consequences — can be found in the first real new political institution of the Internet: the “blog.” Many blogs — or “web logs,” online diaries and sites of instant commentary and opinion — are homes for genuine political reflection. And in their interactions with one another, bloggers sometimes resemble a genuine community of citizens. However, this burgeoning institution embodies many of the Internet’s deficiencies: It often has the feel of an echo-chamber; it is placeless; and it thrives on instant responses to the latest events. Above all, blogging is immediate. This is part of its charm, for both the writer and the reader. But it is also its greatest drawback as a forum for political discourse and action. Blogging is a new outlet for political opinion, but for the most part it is unreflective opinion. Insulated from refining influences and institutions and unconnected to the direct political life of any particular place, blogging is mere instantaneous reaction. But the institutions of political life exist, to a great extent, to mediate, and hopefully to elevate, public opinion. This is why their practical effect is often to slow things down, and why the rise of unmediated institutions like blogging is a mixed blessing at best.

[ . . . ]

The framers of the Constitution certainly perceived a need for dispatch and energy in government, and the system they designed reflects that concern in some respects, particularly in its relation to foreign nations. But at the same time, they understood the danger of too much speed in politics. In its internal operations, the American system seems designed to work at a snailÂ’s pace, to avoid, as Alexander Hamilton put it, “haste, inadvertence, and a want of due deliberation.” The politics of the Information Age will break down these barriers to haste.

What do you think? Is blogging “unreflective opinion” for the most part? Does public opinion need to be “mediated”? Is blogging too instantaneous — too knee-jerk — to be of value in politics? If you accept Levin’s critique, what do you think can be done to keep blogs “homes for genuine reflection” and avoid “the Internet’s deficiencies”?

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City votes against water buyout

The city council, to my surprise and delight, decided not to pursue the water buyout tonight on a very close vote (6-5). Here’s how they voted (a “yea” vote was to pursue the buyout):

Yea: Grayeb, Gulley, Manning, Sandberg, Van Auken
Nay: Ardis, Jacob, Morris, Nichting, Spears, Turner

Jacob, who had hardly said anything thus far on the council, made perhaps the most succinct and compelling speech against the buyout. He was concerned about the debt load the city would be carrying and the fact that just adding revenue doesn’t address the city’s root problems with fiscal responsibility or the lack thereof. He and several others who voted against the buyout still are balking at the price. They feel it was appraised too high and isn’t really worth the amount of money we would have to pay for it at this time. There may be legislation and grants that we could use to our advantage if we wait. Another concern of several council members, including Ardis, was that this vote was too rushed; the vote to pursue due diligence needed to be made in May, not August. There simply isn’t enough time to make a responsible decision.

Grayeb made an eleventh-hour, end-run substitute motion to pursue due diligence with the private Peoria Area Advancement Group (PAAG) loaning $250,000 toward the cost of the process. However, it went down to defeat 7-5, with even Manning (to his credit) voting against it.

Thank you to all the council members for their conscientiousness on this issue. Obviously, I’m happy about the outcome, but I know that those in favor of the buyout also had the best interests of Peoria at heart. My thanks again to you all.

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Water Buyout: Just Say No (Again)

Dear City Council,

There seems to be some confusion over the city residents’ wishes regarding the proposed water buyout, so this letter is to give a little clarification. When we voted “no” in the most recent referendum, that meant that we didn’t want the city to purchase the water company. It’s as simple as that.

Since then, there have been all kinds of crazy ideas regarding the voters’ intent. Some say the voters were ignorant of the facts, that too many of us thought the city was going to actually manage the water company, or that what we were really voting against was the price and terms of purchasing the water company at that time.

Wrong. We voted “no” because, frankly, we don’t trust you. Not you personally, but the council that will exist in various configurations over the coming decades. You have a long track record of using our money unwisely (e.g., RiverPlex), neglecting the older parts of town, and favoring big box developers over neighbors and small businesses (e.g., Glen Hollow, MidTown Plaza).

Storm drainage in the Rolling Acres area has gone unaddressed for years. Raw sewage is being dumped into the river near Detweiller Marina. Lord knows what shape the water infrasturcture will be in if the city’s responsible for maintaining it. And why don’t we have the money to fix those things? Because the city has been busy building ballparks, establishing TIF districts for large retail, and giving away a $565,000 railroad right-of-way to the park district to build a money-losing trail, among other questionable decisions.

To plug a budget shortfall that would have shuttered a fire station, you recently tacked $6 per month onto our water bills under the pretense of a “garbage fee” — a political move that allowed you to boast that you didn’t raise property taxes. Why should we believe you won’t use our water rates the same way in the future?

You say that if future councils unduly raises rates that we can vote them out. But that’s little consolation. We voted out the previous council for the $6 garbage fee and for trying to buy the water company, and yet the garbage fee remains and you’re still considering buying the water company. Clearly, voting you out is no deterrent, and voting in a new council doesn’t repeal past increases or release us from past debt obligations. The damage is already done by the time an election rolls around.

It wouldn’t matter what the price or terms of the sale were, we would still say no to buying the water company. It will inevitably end up being another tax on city residents, and no guarantee of better service or maintenance. Let Illinois American Water Company continue providing us water service; we’re happy with them.

Use all this energy you’ve been exerting to do something that will really help Peoria, like attracting higher-paying manufacturing and industrial jobs, improving the infrastructure in the older parts of Peoria, fixing the storm drainage and sewer problems, and continuing to work with District 150 to improve the schools so people stop moving out to Dunlap and Germantown Hills. There are a lot more beneficial things you could be doing instead of pursuing this buyout to which residents have consistently said no.

The first step in regaining our trust is to listen to us. Think about that when you vote tonight.

Sincerely,
Your constituents

City of Peoria

Internet Every Day

I was checking out the Peoria Public School District 150 website, and I came across a link that said simply “Technology.”  I thought it looked intriguing, so I clicked on it and came across a plethora of internet links for students and teachers.  The most curious one was labeled “Internet Every Day.”  This links to another page on the school district website that includes this introduction:
As a classroom teacher with 5 computers and a new “attachment” to the wide area network and the World Wide Web, I want to see my students engaged in meaningful use of these resources.  I have researched numerous sites that I feel would be useful for my students to access on a daily basis and also resources for teachers to use for their daily tasks.  Try as many of these sites as you like and see what you think.
After this are several links to “sites for kids” and “sites for teachers.”  The sites for kids include “Time.com for Kids,” “Yahooligans! News, Jokes, and Sports,” “Brainteasers,” “EduPuppy,” and several others.
 
This is ridiculous.  First of all, when did using the internet become a basic skill right up there with readin’, ‘ritin’, and ‘rithmetic?  Using the internet is not that difficult, folks.  You don’t have to do it every day of your school year to figure it out.  I never even had the internet until I was past college age and I picked it up without any trouble.  My parents are in their late fifties/early sixties and they use it.  So don’t tell me this is a life skill that kids need to learn early or they’ll just never make it in the real world If I want to learn more about tv and internet packages then I can do so pretty quick. 
 
As far as using the content of the internet for educational purposes, I think it’s a waste of money.  There’s great cost in wiring schools for internet access and purchasing computers and paying network administrators to keep it all humming, and for what?  I’ve clicked on many of the links on the “Internet Every Day” page, and they’re nothing that needs to be done on a computer.  For example:
  • Brainteasers:  I used to do brainteasers in school — they used to call them “story problems,” and the teacher handed them out on a piece of paper.  This gave me the added benefit of being able to work out the math on the paper itself so the teacher could see how I came up with my answer, not just whether or not I got the right answer.
  • Word of the Day:  We used to call these “vocabulary tests.”  We’d have a list of words for which we needed to know each spelling and definition.  Another way we got a “word of the day” was by reading books.  When we came across a word we didn’t know, we’d look it up in the dictionary (that’s a book filled with “words of the day” and their definitions).
  • Yahooligans! News:  We read the newspaper — they still publish these today.
  • Ask Jeeves:  We used a set of books called an “encyclopedia.”  The World Book encyclopedia was especially kid-friendly, with well-written but easy-to-understand entries and lots of pictures and diagrams.  Some entries even had little science projects you could do!  For really complicated questions, you might have to go to the library and look up more information in books.
  • A Game A Day:  We used to play games with each other instead of with a computer.  Board games often required skills like counting, making change, or memorization.  Outdoor games required strategy and physical agility.  Playing outside instead of on the computer would go a long way toward keeping kids from getting fat, too.
Certainly none of these internet sites warrant visiting them every day.  Besides their questionable value, there’s also the issue of advertising on several of the sites and the effect that can have on children. 
 
U.S. students are not lagging behind other countries like Germany and Japan because they don’t know how to use Google.  We’ve got them beat on that front.  If you really want to teach the kids something, have them take the computer apart and put it back together.  Then at least they would be learning something about electricity and the properties of certain metals.  They may even get interested in engineering or chemistry as a result.
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Note to Bill Dennis: Stop the annoying “jump to”

As avid readers of Bill Dennis’s Peoria Pundit site (like myself) have no doubt discovered, he’s just putting up headlines with teasers now, and you have to jump to the rest of the story on another page by clicking on “Read the rest of this entry >>” links. 
 
I can understand the occasional use of this feature if you have an excessively long entry, or if you are posting “eye candy” that might be offensive to some readers.  But every post?  Annoying.
 
However, Bill is turning in some very interesting entries, as usual, so I can’t be too critical.  🙂

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Last trip to Ben Franklin

My wife and I visited the Ben Franklin store in the Heights yesterday for the last time.  It was a lot like going to a wake.  The body was still there, but the soul was gone.  We all shuffled by the empty shelves, remembering what was once there but is missing now.  There were times, for instance in the candy aisle, where you felt like the place almost looked lifelike.  But you were soon reminded that this store was never coming back. 
 
I chatted with Jerry Hoerr on my way out the door Saturday.  I told him how I wished someone could have taken over the store so he could still retire and not have to close the shop.  He said no one was interested in buying the store — too much competition from the big box stores.  He told me that sales had been flat the last 4 or 5 years and were even starting to dip now.  So, since he’s retirement age anyway, it’s better to get out now before he has to start putting money into it again. 
 
People sometimes ask me why I don’t shop at Wal-Mart.  My standard answer has been that Wal-Mart is evil (which it is).  But perhaps a better answer would be that I value people over money.  I value people like the Hoerrs, who were able to make a good living for many years by owning a little variety store.  Thanks to places like Wal-Mart, we don’t have that option today.  Anyone who knows anything about Wal-Mart knows that the way they keep their prices low is by paying poverty wages, maintaining a large part-time employee base to avoid paying benefits, and of course outsourcing its manufacturing and production to places like communist China where workers get paid pennies per hour.  So, people keep shopping there, not realizing (or perhaps not caring) that what they save in hard cash, they pay for through the loss of good-paying American jobs and the loss of competent personal service.
 
Others ask how I can possibly avoid foreign-made goods that exploit third-world labor.  The answer is that I can’t avoid them.  But I can avoid some of the worst perpetrators, and there’s no company worse than Wal-Mart in that department.  So, my boycott against Wal-Mart continues….