Free Republic

I presume that Back Bay people understand zoning or have connections to zoning lawyers. I.e., if you live there, there are no public parking within walking distance from past vigilance,

It could have been something like a close vote originally. To get one or two extra votes, maybe some legislator needed this “cover” to get reelected. So it was included and the law got through.

For everyone else, it was: Get the main part passed and we’ll clean it up later.

Might be standard politics. That is, messy politics. Half of a loaf now. Hopefully, the second half later.

The job still got done.

Ditto Colorado Springs.
An yes, the “Don’t Californicate Colorado” go back at least that far.

I recall 5” on Memorial Day about 55 years ago in Colorado Springs. Leaves on trees, so older branches came off. Lots of concern about the trees, but two years later the trees, freshly pruned, were lusher than ever.

Also 5” on Labor Day too. Same result.

Of course, the day after the snow had mostly evaporated.

I saw a number of cases like this in my years in the computer business. I remember the Hewlett-Packard ones.

HP had a very strong corporate culture. If you came from it, it was almost a religion. So if someone came out of HP to a different business situation, they screwed it up. On their second job, after they understood that the HP didn’t solve all problems, they could be pretty good.

Sounds like Apple may export the same kind of people.

I have my default set to duckduckgo.com now, and have had for about a year. Google has pretty useful maps, but often bing is more up to date. Google was trying to outthink what I wanted and had too many “hits”. For now, duckduckgo works.

Also, Google doesn’t like Opera.

Maria Agnesi came later, I guess.

Not a surprise. But there is perhps a bit of “bias” in the analysis.

One of the things that has happened in DC and surrounding territory in Northern VA is displacement. In DC proper, it’s lower middle class for outsiders, few of whom are LMC. Not that all of the outsiders are high income, but they are filling places where the income was a lot less. Since it’s happening relatively quickly, it gives high growth numbers. In much of DC that’s close to saturation, and the eastern part of town is seeing the growth now, but it won’t last forever. If the growth slows down, it may not be pretty around here. DC proper isn’t that big a place (~600K).

The growth is a lot singles and older couples (DINK’s) and gay in some downtown parts. All can move out quickly, not having kids in schools and long term ties to the community.

NOVA is new construction and some teardown (think McLean) in some close in towns. Replacing a farm with a house will show a high growth gradient. That will level off before too long.

There is an air of unreality now, but reality always catches up.

Since I don’t see Oliphant anyhmore, thank you for that. There are different rules for conservatives and liberals.

When I was in college in NY, I took German as my language. (Math people did have to read German in the old days.) I got the occasional German mag, including Simplicissimus, which no longer exists. It was political commentary, with lots of cartoons. It was not respectful of authority, with often nasty humor.

It was not at all respectful of Africans either, and the cartoons were unkind, to put it mildly. The cartoons were so over the top that they were simply unbelievable. Great skill in pen and ink, however.

The Oliphant cartoon would have been right at home there in the 60’s. But his is politically correct. How the world turns!

Just found this:

Spanidis (Zachos), Evangelie Technische Universität Berlin 1940
Spanier, Edwin University of Michigan 1947
Spanier, Jerome The University of Chicago 1955
Spaniol, Otto Universität des Saarlandes 1971

So the Penn State guy wasn’t listed in the mathematical genealogy. (Those are PhD dates.) Maybe he’s the black sheep of the family, if one can still say such thing.

Edwin Spanier’s book is a good read, if a bit functorial (which, despite the FR spell checker, is a real word).

Maybe some of the Penn State people would know:

Is this “Spanier” any relation to Edwin Spanier, the author of Algebraic Topology? If he is, in fact related, then he’s definitely at the shallow end of the Spanier gene pool.

I was in Fed sales (computers, etc.) forever. I know something about federal contracting, but am not a specialist.

I haven’t seen this mentioned, but:

It strikes me that this is a federal contracting dispute. I don’t ever recall DOJ intervening in such a dispute, certainly not at this dollar level.

Something smells, and it sounds as if Gallup’s lawyers know how the courts will handle it.

Or, to quote David Ogilvie from the 60’s:

“Nothing kills a bad product like good advertizing.”

At that time, a number of products were selling at some level by word of mouth and a hotshot manager tried to take them national and advertised them. The bad ones died.

“Gestapo” is only for old folks. “Stasi” is a bit more current.

I take it you are over, say, 50 or 60, as I am?

That walking in the street can also be a statement by a dealer and crew (crue?) that it’s his territory. Advertising as well as territory.

Cops have a hard time getting a drug arrest that will stick. A lot of time, if they can disrupt a territory, the dealer will go somewhere, if he can. It does cut down the overall business.

Sounds like one of the tools of the cops’ trade if you ask me.

RB really isn’t that bad. If you are a family with kids down from Philly you won’t notice it. The main beach is straight and family. A mile or two north there’s another beach, but off season it’s mostly fishermen.

I’m from DC and the wife and I are moving to RB. Have known it for 30+ years. After all this time in DC, the gaydar is fairly well tuned. Anyone without that might not even notice. Even the T-Shirts in RB are on the decent side. Evey few years they get a bit risque, and the next year it’s back to safe.

If you are gay, it might be fun, but you’re still an outsider.m from DC and the wife and I are moving to RB. Have known it for 30+ years. After all this time in DC, the gaydar is fairly well tuned. Anyone without that might not even notice. Even the T-Shirts in RB are on the decent side. Every few years they get a bit risque, and the next year it’s back to safe. They have their few restaurants and hangouts, but not that prominent. Mostly back streets.

I came to the conclusion fairly early that it is the rigor of what is taught, and how well the assigned math is taught that is most important.

I had rigorous Algerbra, Trig, Physics, and so on in high school. No calculus, but tough problems. Hit a college in NYC where half my math year was Regis Prep School grads. Epsilon and Delta day one. Fit right in.

Did grad school until Uncle Sam gave me chance to join the Air Force, and remembered that in my last semester I sat next an 18-year old from Brooklyn College whose goal in life was to solve a word problem. Fell in love with computers in the AF and stayed in it.

Love math, but like many other things, too. Probability knowledge is handy for calculating pot odds, though.

Elementary algebraic topology would be a good substitute.

At least I know that there are other old people reading FR.

I would guess that in many industries, especially the dynamic ones like computers/electronics, many game changers have died in the lab because management didn’t pull the trigger and get it out. And also, there are many interesting ideas which shouldn’t be brought out. (Next?)

When it’s good enough, but not perfect, you’ve got pot odds.

He was probably just trying to keep from dying of boredom as he got near Denver from the Kansas border.

And, no, a small construction company doesn’t know where all of its trucks are each evening.

More a comment to folks in general...

From Colorado, I wound up in college in the Bronx in the early 60’s. The bars (almost all Irish) on Webster Avenue all had the picture of JFK very, very prominently over the bar. Very Democrat.

Many, many of those people have since moved out of New York and have joined non-ethnic (compared to a big city) America. The total devotion to one man or one ethnic is long gone for them. They outgrew it.

Right now, thinking of DC, the ethnic solidarity in DC and elsewhere is still fairly strong. But enough folks are leaving, for jobs or marriage or whatever and are moving into not-so-black areas. It’s not fast, but it’s happening. At a certain point, solidarity dissipates and people become individuals. I guess with many of the big city black communities that aren’t just poverty/crime sinkholes that this process will be very noticeable in the next 10 years.

This solidarity is not forever.

Agree, to a degree. Minnesota had a good category of resident, but Ward 4 (top of DC on the map) had and has the “Gold Coast” and Silver Coast. Very upper class black. Minnesota was a level down. East of the Anacostia River has always been one level down. And $100K-$200K less than the same house in Ward 4. Face it, Prince Georges County is just next door. 30-40 years it was heavily Southern Maryland “cracker”. Now PG is mostly where those Minnesota Avenue folks went. Some very nice places out there, as well as some not so nice garden apartments.

Things are very dynamic at this point, and gentrification is not slowing down. BTW, gentrification also includes black people from outside of DC. The local community doesn’t know how to handle them either.

Wow.

I normally think of Divide as where you turn left to get to Cripple Creekm if you go the paved way from the Springs. Haven’t been back in several years but is it bigger than Hartsel yet?

I recall a remark at a community meeting here in DC from one of the local officers that the “Compstat” numbers which gave crime concentrations tended to correspond to traffic accident concentrations.

This study seems to confirm that correlation is not cause. At the very least, one needs to consider that one lives in a bad neighborhood because one has bad life skills. That might include driving maturely.

I quit SA after 40+ years when it went political with global warming. Haven’t looked back. It simply isn’t that old SA.

Voted myself in DC last Tuesday. No request for ID.

The poll workers are decent people, but not law school grads or rocket scientists. People working a few days a year for not very much money. Many a bit old. A good portion in many precincts are new and the training is perfunctory. The attempt is to have the poll/precinct captain be the corporate knowledge to make up for that.

For an election like last Tuesday, there is plenty of time as there were no long lines. Come next November, it will be tougher.

Someone in DC should get the voters tape (about $50) in a month or so and see if Mr. Holder voted this round. I’d bet against it.

I was about to post: Real Track Bike.

A lot of people in DC use them. Some even have brakes and a free wheel. Lots of good stories about people who steal a real track bike.

But agreed on riding in those conditions.

What goes ker-plop,bang,ker-plop,ker-plop,bang,ker-plop?

An Amish drive-by!

(Sorry for the antique.)

The prices at this station are normally a buck more than elsewhere anyway. It’s at the Watergate! A bit more than comfortable walking distance, too.

It’s not pump your own. It’s for a very high income neighborhood. The real estate there is out of site.

No crime here, and no real comparison to almost any other station in the DC area.

You beat me to the “He’s a Maine Coon Cat” thing. Our big one is only 42” nose to tail, shorter than Stewie. Great cats.

Note to the 16lb bag of cat food comment: Cat food does not last nearly as long with Coons as “common” cats. (See the Royan Canin cat food.)

Seems reasonable, but the first time I’ve seen it.

Think Brian Boru and the battle of Clantorf, 10th century.
Whence O’Brian.

Possibly at that time, Boru was just another first name, or parents’ first name. Think it was a bit early for last names.

I think it’s more complicated. Here in DC, and I imagine both places, a party/candidate will get petitions and get them distributed to his people.

If you are one of the people, you take one to get 25 signatures. You get friends, people you know, and it’s OK.

Then, you might go stand in front of the supermarket and ask if someone is a registered voter/republican/democrat in such and such district. If yes, you ask if they’d like to sign a petition to get so-and-so on the ballot, etc. It usually works well enough. But during an election, people may see several petitions and forget which they’ve signed before. So you will get some honest duplicates.

When you send it in, you sign/certify that they are all good, etc. As long as it’s done in good faith, there shouldn’t be a problem. But half duplicates and fakes should be a felony for the submitter. The laws are already there. They just have to be used.

I just looked up the HIV per capita and CDC has

The Top 5 American Cities With the Highest Rate of AIDS Per Capita
City Rate 2008 Rate 2004 Percent Change
1 Miami, FL 42.8 per 100,000 53.8 per 100,000 - 20.446 %
2 Baton Rouge, LA 40.0 per 100,000 35.0 per 100,000 + 19.714 %
3 New Orleans, LA 32.4 per 100,000 31.9 per 100,000 + 1.567 %
4 Baltimore, MD 32.3 per 100,000 32.8 per 100,000 - 1.524 %
5 Jacksonville, FL 26.9 per 100,000 29.9 per 100,000 - 10.033 %

Who knows. Maybe that’s an indicator.

That’s the Metropolitan Opera. The City Opera used to have younger sopranos, who were slimmer.

No Renee Fleming comments here, either.

Not officer. Just a Saab driver.

When I buy from TireRack, I check “spriited” personality type.

Ditto on the turn signals. You aren’t alone.

On the interstate, I like BMW’s. Preferable red ones, about 200 yards in front and in the left lane.

Agreed. The Tea Party has been quite successful. The last elections are proof of that.

At this point, the Tea Party could not have time to get their type into the presidential running. In two and 4 years, there will be many more TP like candidates.

It takes time to organize a run for office, and the higher, the more time. The serious presidential candidates were making decisions before the tea party was really going. Having such success in the 2010 elections at the House, state and local level is in itself quite fantastic.

Right now, one has to go with Buckley, and support the most conservative guy who can get elected. Personally, I think Gingrich is ahead of Romney there. Cain is interesting, but he is hitting potholes on the campaign trail that a pro, or his people, would mostly avoid.

We are close to past the point where perfect (someone else) is just unthinkable, given the time frames. That’s life.

And thanks to you, from just an AF vet.

While I like Cain, I’m not sure how well he CAN do, no matter how hard he concentrates and tries. Time will tell.

I’m a low-level (neighborhood) DC politician. I’m not so much concerned with conservative/liberal as with killing go-go clubs or other zoning matters. Have that low-numbered license plate.

So I have seen a lot of fairly serious politics above my level up fairly close. It’s very rare that I see a successful campaign by a political neophyte at those levels. It’s simply that politics is, to some degree, a learned skill, as well as brains and personality. Decent people will say things to you and about you that they would never do in normal life, among other things that need a lot of getting used to. It’s not rocket science, but it does normally take some serious practice at lower levels.

I am getting to like Cain, and have liked Perry for a bit. Both right now have (presidential) political rough edges. Neither is stupid and both should adjust some to the various campaign pressures.

Limbaugh’s idea of Rove is that he’s a mechanic and not a true believer sounds close to right. I don’t think Rove’s a liberal, but he is more big government oriented than we want to see now.

That said, he does see how the various factors seem to play against each other, just like a coach. He wants to win.

I think he is wrong about this year. I hope so. The dynamics won’t fit his usual calculations, what with the possiblity of a serious conservative versus a proven McGovern, or worse. It will be an unusual dynamic, and may very well be out of Rove’s experience. We’ll see.

Sounds like Dixie Liquor. Just closed, or closing. We don’t do Georgetown because of the parking and prices and attitude. Live at 9th and M, but usually shop Northern Virginia.

That territory is not the 2nd (of 7) police districts. Now very, very little crime.

You must be over 65 to remember that joke!

“Cain’s comments were — at best – premature — and at worst, highly irresponsible. It was a cheap shot, and, perhaps is a signal that Cain is willing to play the race card against a fellow Republican when it benefits him.”

I’m not sure he was “playing the race card.” What he was trying to do do was get to Perry. What bothers me more, since I was beginning to take Cain a bit seriously, is that it shows that he doesn’t have his political sea legs, to mix a metaphor. One, never take a Washington Post hit piece seriously until it’s been digested for a couple of days by the various comments from serious people. Most WaPo hit pieces seem vastly overblown, if not outright false. Two, serious politicians don’t take cheap shots very often. (OK, that leaves Obama out.) That’s what you have staff for!

I’ve heard Cain on a few shows and I like a lot of what I hear and some leaves me on edge. Politics is a real business, and just because you manage a serious company doesn’t mean you could manage the Packers or handle the press in a presidential campaign. I figured that Cain would learn quickly some sense of proportion about politics. He has a lot more to learn before I believe he would be effective.

Believe me, I do. He doesn’t write clunky sentences, but I really don’t go past the first “klong”, to use an old Sadire term.

Right. I ususlly try Dionne for a paragraph or two and then I hit the paragraph that says he’s setting up false premises or just doesn’t understand. But he’s apparently an interesting conversationalist around Washington.

This got to me today: “Conservative funders realized that pumping up the Tea Party movement was the most efficient way to build opposition to Obama’s initiatives.” He understands top-down organization, not spontaneous. At that point I quit. “Conservative funders” didn’t really have a feel for the Tea Parties until way after they were off and rolling. I have never seen discussion of significant outside funding in blogs or comments here, which are much closer to the ground than Washington is, of any persuasion.

Just think, later in the week I’ll see how clueless Dionne is again. Happens twice a week.

I’m beginning to like Cain and not to find Perry as interesting.

That said, my concern about Cain is that I’m not sure how he will handle being a politician, and a president must be that. By “politician” I mean not just “leader”, which he seems to have. I mean the day to day handling of forces over which you have minimal control and which don’t seem “rational” to a non-politician. Business executives have uncertainties and risks, of course. As to the military types. Politics is the constant piecing together of various interests to where you can get something done. That something is often just half a loaf now, and maybe more later. A frustrating business.

Cain strikes me as well enough grounded and non-prima donna enough that he might handle it well.

As a Yankees fan, I can’t help thinking that Obama next year will be compared to the 2011 Red Sox. Or is it vice versa?

We live in DC, too. For various reasons, such as parking, quality of stores and help, we have almost always shopped in Northern Virginia. We probably haven’t maid more than $0.25 in bag tax since it started. It’s utter nonsense.

DC pictures itself as a microcosm, as do many cities. It isn’t, but it’s not politically correct to say so.

His last name was Crane, so he was always Ichabod, or Craney. And yes, he knew that river intimately for miles up and down. And there were several others like him. Over the years, the Corps of Engineers has straightened the river in the name of flood control. Whether or not it has worked is an open question.

The local paper used to show pictures of river cats caught and those who caught them. The cats were hung and almost as long as the catchers were tall. 55-60 lbs sticks in my head as not uncommon.

In that territory, fish was what you, or a neighbor, caught (bass or bluegill), with occasional flounder or whitefish from the A&P or Krogers. And standard meat, supplemented with rabbit or squirrel or last summer’s trip to minnesota (lm bass and walleye). Not doing catfish was probably a class thing.

I grew up in a small town in south central IL a couple of blocks from a river. My grandfather’s next door neighbor sold bait and whatever.

One time he took my grandfather and me out on the river. He had on overalls, but took them off every now and then and hopped out (he knew the depths) and reach into a hollow log he knew was there, and jam his fist up it. Once or twice he came out with a nice big (30lb+? river cat. That’s a lot of good eating, if you are into catfish. (My grandfather was a largemouth base type. And bluegills.)

Don’t recall it being called “noodling”. And I doubt that the neighbor would really care about such laws.

I live in downtown DC. Didn’t know it when we moved in, but the 50-year old transvestite prostitution gathering point was a block or two away. (It moved a bit, now and then.) But it was a slum, back then. Just a lovely house, needing a bit of fixup.

The TV’s (he-she’s in cop lingo in the 80’s) moved down to where this article talks about. The top condo across the street, where there used to be an empty lot and used to dump an occasional dead body, went for 1.2M a few years ago.

Every couple of years, one of the TV’s would be found dead, usually knifed. I know where they hang out now, and it’s going to be $500K condos in a few years. There will be another place, boundary type, where the TV’s will go. Prince Georges County is only a couple of stops away.

One of the fellow renovators, in very good shape, got into a shouting match with them on the corner in the early 80’s. He was in good shape, but not too tall. Got decked. The local cop said: “Don’t mess with ‘em. They got that way in prison.”

Just felt it in DC. 2nd floor of 1873 brownstone. Scary.
Those old buildings don’t take too much shaking.