Third and San Antonio Mess

 Austin  No Responses »
May 102004
 

I’ve seen news reports in both the Statesman and News8 in the past week about the intersection of Third and San Antonio. (I’d link to the Statesman article by Ben Wear last Monday, but they only make the last 7 days available online. If you have an Austin Public Library card and have gotten an online PIN from them, you can access the last several years through the APL site.)

My legion of loyal readers will recall that I recently ranted about this intersection. I’d like to see the statistics for the number of accidents at that intersection since converting San Antonio to two-way. Someone’s going to be seriously injured at that intersection if the city doesn’t figure something out soon.

 Posted by on May 10, 2004 at 6:22 pm

Liberal media, my ass.

 Politics  No Responses »
May 062004
 

I found this story on BoingBoing earlier today. It refers to a documentary by a BBC filmmaker about alleged U.S. complicity in a Northern Alliance massacre of Taliban prisoners shortly after the Mazar-e-Sharif prison uprising in late 2001. The documentary is a little heavy handed and clearly anti-U.S., but, if it’s true, should be investigated and reported. It has aired in Canada and other european nations, but not here. This article alleges a quote from a state department official to the filmmaker that the they would never allow the U.S. press to run the story. I find this difficult to believe, but I also can’t seem to find any mention of the incident by any of the major U.S. news organizations myself. In light of the prison abuses that have come out over the past few weeks, I’m guessing this might get a little more consideration?

The whole situation underscores a couple of things to me:

  • It’s becoming increasingly more difficult for any government to cover up incidents like this, even with a complicit media. This is one of the great things about the Internet. I doubt very many Americans would have heard the story otherwise.

  • I’m more than a little concerned that we haven’t heard about it. Clearly, it’s news in other parts of the world and, even if it were false, it still shapes the perception of America in other countries.

  • If there were a “liberal media bias”, I’d think that they’d be all over this story, especially now.

  • The comments that the U.N. and others want to conduct an investigation, but can’t because of security issues further underscores to me that we’ve dropped the ball there and moved on to other things (*cough* Iraq *cough*) before finishing the job.

EDIT: Apparently, the August 26th, 2002 edition of Newsweek did a cover story on this, but I can’t seem to find a free version online. The CBC page linked earlier also points to a couple of Salon articles. I’m still surprised that I haven’t seen a connection with the events at Abu Ghraib.

 Posted by on May 6, 2004 at 2:32 am

I can’t help myself

 Politics  No Responses »
May 052004
 

I’ve been doing a lot of political posting lately. I’ll post some new pictures of the kids tonight from this weekend. I’m contemplating separating out my blog to a different URL from the kids’ site. I can’t decide if I want to use trentham.org domain for that or create an entirely new one. Decisions, decisions.

Meanwhile, here’s a pretty good article from Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo on the current administration. Salon (subscription req’d) also had a good piece the other day on the neocons and Ahmed Chalabi. I’ll be interested to see if the prediction that both Wolfowitz and Feith leave their current positions in the DOD before the November election over their involvement in pushing us into Iraq.

 Posted by on May 5, 2004 at 7:03 pm

Hardly worth it, now was it?

 Austin  No Responses »
May 032004
 

Yet another embarassing incident in Austin has made national news. Coming on the heels of the Ozomatli arrests and the Jason Patric arrest (whose charges, I might add, were quietly dropped recently), we have a boat capsized by a group of people who were apparently a little too enthusiastic about viewing naked sunbathers at Austin’s infamous Hippie Hollow.

I heard about the barge capsizing on News8 last night and they mentioned that it occurred near Hippie Hollow, but I didn’t put two and two together until CNN spelled it out for me. When I first moved here in 1989 for college, I was dragged to Hippie Hollow by a misguided friend. He was certain that we were going to be treated to a bevy of naked bathing beauties. Reality set in before we even got halfway down the path to the shore when we passed a middle-aged man who hadn’t yet covered himself.

Let me go ahead and spell it out for any new Austinites or tourists: Hippie Hollow is mainly populated by fortyish or older white men, probably over-the-hill hippies who feel the need to maintain their ideals, but haven’t maintained their bodies. If you’re looking for a cheap thrill, I suggest the Internet (at least until Ashcroft and his cronies take that away from us).

P.S. How slow of a news day must it be for CNN.com to list this as one of their top stories?

 Posted by on May 3, 2004 at 8:43 pm

No Pants Day

 Austin  No Responses »
May 032004
 

No Pants Day is this Friday. Be sure to check out the No Pants Day song penned by my former co-worker, Stinky Del Negro. What are the odds I can get work to participate?

 Posted by on May 3, 2004 at 6:24 pm

Monday Morning Traffic Rant and Bad Car Weekend

 Miscellaneous  No Responses »
May 032004
 

Based on my commute to work this morning (and taking the kids to school/daycare), I have a couple of tips for Austin area drivers:

  1. For those of you driving east on Oltorf, just before Pleasant Valley, it’s generally a good idea to take a glance to your left before changing lanes from the right lane. There might be another car in that lane and you don’t want to force them into the center lane and give them a mild heart attack.

  2. For those of you driving north on San Antonio from Cesar Chavez, the people travelling west on 3rd street don’t have a stop sign. You do. I know it’s a novel thing to be able to travel north on that particular section of San Antonio, but try not to let your excitement cloud your judgement. It’s a lucky thing that some of those people on third are already leery of other drivers after having almost been sideswiped 15 minutes earlier.

I’d also advise that if you happen to notice one of your tires is showing steel on the inside tread, it’s probably a good idea to go ahead and get that replaced right away. Best to do it as soon as you notice it as opposed to waiting through an entire workday, going home and having dinner, and then coming back out to the car to go get your mother from the airport, only to find that the aforementioned tire is now completely flat.

Finally, what is up with equipping cars with tires that cost ridiculous amounts of money? Is there a reason why my 5-year-old, $16,000 Mazda Protege comes with tires that cost $150 each and seem to be pretty difficult to find? Sure, these two lasted 5 years (the others were replaced for the same odd wear pattern 18 months ago), which isn’t too bad for a tire, but it’s not like I’m driving a Porsche or something.

 Posted by on May 3, 2004 at 6:16 pm
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