Posted Fri, Apr 20, 10:42 a.m.

Traditional publishers and traditional bookstores are shooting themselves in the collective foot, if not head, and they don't seem to know it. The digital innovations that Amazon (and others) have brought to the world of publishing are not going away, and failure to adapt merely forestalls inevitable doom. There is ...

Posted Wed, Jan 18, 10:19 a.m.

In the very near future the only books that will still be physically printed will be on-demand paperback printings of e-books, or special hand-bound art-book editions of important works. Dominating the print publishing world is clearly not Amazon's or Apple's or anyone's focus these days, and that is probably wise. ...

Posted Tue, Jan 17, 2:44 p.m.

I don't think that Germany's education model is a particularly compelling example of a successful system that the United States ought to be following, certainly not by PISA standards. German kids are actually tracked already at junior high school age into one of three separate kinds of school (a college-prep ...

Posted Thu, Jan 5, 11:24 p.m.

No, seriously. I don't get what pet waste and plastic bag fees and plastic bag recycling have to do with each other. They seem about as related as pet waste and school board elections.

Posted Thu, Jan 5, 11:20 p.m.

I suppose it's a "stupid nonissue" only if you're not in a same-sex marriage or seeking one and are prone to universalizing your own experience. In fact, I think it says much more about a legislature where Republicans and Democrats can sooner agree on same-sex marriage over budget issues than ...

Posted Thu, Jan 5, 11:15 p.m.

It is heartbreaking to see flippant comparisons drawn between a Nazi collaborationist regime during the 1940s that is responsible directly or indirectly for among other things the murder of one quarter of the entire Jewish population of prewar France (to say nothing of persecution of Protestants, Roma, and homosexuals) and ...

Posted Thu, Jan 5, 3:57 p.m.

I'm sorry but I don't get what pet waste even remotely has to do with plastic bag fees or plastic recycling.

Posted Thu, Jan 5, 9:53 a.m.

I would also like to add that it makes no sense to hire a superintendent who is not from the Pacific Northwest. The PNW and Seattle have a peculiar culture that non-Northwesterners are consistently slow to grasp, let alone master.

Posted Thu, Jan 5, 9:52 a.m.

We so rarely think out of the box. I am wondering what effect it would have to simply eliminate the superintendent and the school board entirely and transfer most of the superintendent's functions to individual school principals and the oversight functions to a parent/teacher committee at each school, maybe with ...

Posted Wed, Dec 28, 6:51 a.m.

This piece starts out with the most facile sexist stereotypes and gets worse from there. Rather than spend paragraphs responding to the numerous ridiculous sexist associations in this piece, I'll focus instead on just one: "she-women" played a huge role in the Gold Rush, and the Anglo women who moved ...

Posted Wed, Dec 28, 4:54 a.m.

I agree that Brooklyn = Capitol Hill, not Seattle's downtown areas. The first and last time I had my kid downtown, in a stroller, some homeless panhandler in direst need of bathing came right up to us and started to fawn over the baby while talking to me, trying to ...

Posted Thu, Dec 8, 2:06 p.m.

A recession or depression in the Eurozone would hit several of the Seattle area's key large and mid-size internationals fairly hard: Amazon (Amazon.fr/Amazon.de/Amazon.co.uk), Boeing, Microsoft, Expeditors International, Starbucks, Cray, Holland America, etc., as well as the subcontractors and suppliers to these companies. Internationals with Seattle offices would also be hit, ...

Posted Wed, Dec 7, 8:11 p.m.

With the advent of e-books, it's important to understand that very few independent booksellers will still exist in 15 years. Independent booksellers have already become obsolete; they don't offer the information or convenience or prices that online retailers do (not just Amazon but O.com and BN.com among others). The personal ...

Posted Wed, Nov 30, 11:45 p.m.

Seattle already has a vibrant tourism industry. Its striking setting between two gorgeous mountain ranges with water on all sides and two occasionally visible volcanoes are a big draw to outdoorsy visitors who like to alternate urbanity with National Parks and kayking, etc. The whole country has stereotypes about Seattle ...

Posted Sun, Nov 27, 10:02 p.m.

This is such an important issue, one that gets precious little attention in the regular media, and it's a great piece to get the conversation started. The Puget Sound region is a great example of exactly the problems of indifference and hostility from state government. Most of the Puget Sound ...

Posted Sat, Nov 26, 3:36 p.m.

A single-payer system is the best way to reduce health care spending as a percentage of GDP. This is not theoretical; we know this from over 100 years of observing other national health care systems in every other industrialized country, from Canada and Japan to Germany and Finland, from politically ...

Posted Thu, Nov 24, 10:54 p.m.

The $60 car tab fee did not fail because Seattleites oppose light rail or transit funding per se; it failed because $18 million to study light rail is silly, car tabs are regressive, and the funding was vague. Seattleites in fact like the idea of having world class public transportation ...

Posted Tue, Nov 22, 1:20 p.m.

@Crossrip: Well-written legislation means, first, avoiding regressive tax regimes to achieve the stated transportation goals, and, second, laying out reasonable and concrete projects for funding not subject to later reallocation by the council. The tax levy that just failed had stupid things in it, like the $18 million on studying ...

Posted Tue, Nov 22, 1:12 p.m.

Yes, data is good: http://www.friendsofseattle.org/2010-poll-resources-walking-biking-riding-transit "Contrary to recent polling data that found that Seattlites don't favor the sacrifice of traffic lanes and dollars for alternative transportation infrastructure, the poll found that voters actually favor these investments over resources allocated to n car traffic. We think the difference is that this ...

Posted Tue, Nov 22, 10:55 a.m.

I think that the Seattle public is actually totally on board with the pro-environment/pro-transit/pro-biking agenda ("anti-car agenda"). Seattleites by and large love the bike lanes, love the ideal of a fast and reliable public transit network (and are disappointed ours falls short that ideal). Opposition to these projects comes from ...

Posted Mon, Nov 21, 7:42 a.m.

Who are Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland? Just KIDDING! (?) Anyway. I voted against the car tab measure, too, and $18 to study street cars is not money well spent in this economy when sidewalks are seldom and pot holes proliferating. However, it's not like street cars are all bunk. ...

Posted Sat, Nov 19, 2:57 p.m.

Dear Xfinity: People who still use your landline service along with cable TV and cable Internet need to be able to block more than 12 callers. Please increase this to 100, and allow wildcards. Google Voice can do it (and automatically blocks spam calls). You can too. Please do this ...

Posted Fri, Nov 18, 11:35 p.m.

In addition to addressing poverty, nutrition, and health care for kids, which I agree are an essential of improving education, not much can really happen when we have public school class sizes of 25 or more kids per room. This is patently crazy. We really need to build the infrastructure ...

Posted Fri, Nov 18, 10:35 a.m.

This is a thoughtful and insightful piece. More please! "Other districts don't have the continuous missteps that our district does": amen! It's time for the district to act like a body of professionals, to right the ship, and to put and end to all the shenanigans and distractions.

Posted Fri, Nov 18, 10:25 a.m.

I own a ton of canvas bags, but I still have trouble remembering to bring them with me when I go to a store. If parking lots had un-ignorable reminders about bringing your bags with you inside, that would help a lot of people like me who are struggling to ...

Posted Wed, Nov 16, 2:01 p.m.

Seattle is in dire need of faster Internet infrastructure. Currently the fastest you can get in the city limits is Comcast/Xfinity, which is fine for most everyday tasks. But if you've ever traveled, then you know that in other countries +average+ download speeds are 25 to 30 Mbps, whereas in ...

Posted Wed, Nov 16, 8:32 a.m.

The sales tax on any big-ticket item hurts a lot in this state because we persist in relying on a regressive tax regime (i.e., mainly sales tax) to fund the state. Although car buyers can't avoid sales tax or use tax, many people avoid sales tax by buying out of ...

Posted Tue, Nov 15, 9:48 a.m.

Woofer is right on. In reality, NPR seems to tolerate conservative conflicts of interest and to quash progressive viewpoints to avoid conservatives' charge that it has a liberal bias, since NPR knows that progressives won't really complain. If conservatives can do one thing well, it is complain.

Posted Mon, Nov 14, 8:29 a.m.

I'm thinking of some new locations for the Occupy movement to hang out.

Posted Thu, Nov 10, 5:32 a.m.

I think there is a permanent rupture in this state that hinges on social issues, a point missing in this piece. A "reform" party could never be viable in this state unless it could earn the trust of Washingtonians that its agenda did not include an undercurrent of hostility against ...

Posted Wed, Nov 9, 3:59 p.m.

It is a little silly that King County is a net exporter of tax dollars to the rest of the state which, in turn, routinely votes against King County's interests (1125, to wit). There is something not right about that. Just sayin'.

Posted Wed, Nov 9, 3:54 p.m.

Here is where you can really see a generational difference between old mossbacks, like Mossback, and young mossbacks: "sin at bargain prices." Americans have struggled with the notion of liquor as sin since before the Civil War. Yet in pretty much every other industrialized society, liquor is seen as just ...

Posted Wed, Nov 2, 9:47 a.m.

Here are a couple things that would help Washington get out of this mess: - The reason why so many start-ups opt for Seattle (including in their day Amazon.com and Microsoft) is that the metropolitan Seattle area as a highly educated work force; something like 60% of people in Seattle ...

Posted Wed, Nov 2, 8:19 a.m.

I have looked into solar panels for our house, and even with tax cuts it doesn't make financial sense just yet. Other countries are moving faster on solar because the government actually subsidizes the cost to get demand flowing and lower the nonsubsidized market price faster. Tax breaks are well ...

Posted Mon, Oct 31, 1:56 p.m.

Motorcycles or scooters + potholes + rain, rain, rain + clueless car drivers not a good combination.

Posted Sat, Oct 29, 10:48 p.m.

I guess since 230 pedestrian casualties is the 46th lowest pedestrian death rate, it doesn't matter that those 230 HUMAN BEINGS died and we shouldn't strive to be 50th on that last and have, in fact, no deaths.

Posted Fri, Oct 28, 7:07 p.m.

This levy is worth supporting, whatever flaws there are in the Seattle Public Schools (and there are many, many, many). Even so, I wish we would address class size before addressing a lot of these things (vegetables before pudding): If we could get class size down to no more than ...

Posted Wed, Oct 26, 12:59 p.m.

Great article, great comments!

Posted Tue, Oct 25, 10:03 a.m.

On school boards: Mediocrity seems a perennial problem not just with our school board but with most school boards. Some out-of-the box thinking might help us find a new way to govern our schools. It might also help to look to other successful countries' educational models for ideas. In Finland, ...

Posted Tue, Oct 25, 9:57 a.m.

This is an awesome piece. It highlights one of the often-overlooked ways of diversifying an economy. Any city should support the arts as much as it can, because a vibrant arts scene is good for the economic (and cultural, and social) health of a community - even of people who ...

Posted Tue, Oct 25, 9:55 a.m.

@Joolian: A progressive tax would take the value of a car into account, or the taxpayer's income, so that low-income people pay the same percentage of their income as do high-income people. This is how the best transit systems in the world are funded, not with flat taxes. A flat ...

Posted Tue, Oct 25, 3:54 a.m.

No one with a progressive mindset can reconcile that mindset with supporting a regressive tax like this. $60 is a huge chunk of change to people who are barely making ends meet (seriously: talk to your housekeeper, your gardener, whoever, and see what they think of the $60 tab fee), ...

Posted Mon, Oct 24, 11:49 a.m.

You do wonder what the city is thinking when getting a properly marked pedestrian crosswalk put in is like pulling teeth, and anecdotally it seems more and more difficult to get properly marked crosswalks put in the farther from downtown it is. In Lake City, for instance, how many people ...

Posted Sat, Oct 8, 10:35 a.m.

I hate to sound hyperbolic, but I truly question the sanity of anyone who thinks a profit motive is properly situated in the relationship between a human being and an insurance provider. Indeed, among all the industrialized countries of the world, the United States is the only society where the ...

Posted Fri, Sep 30, 3:16 p.m.

Mr. Reed has been an exemplary secretary of state, known above all for his impeccable reputation and staunch insistance on what is right over what is partisan. A rare example of a politician as widely respected by even the leftiest Democrat and rightiest Republican. He is one of the last ...

Posted Wed, Sep 28, 6:59 a.m.

Nurturing the creative class is one of those things that many people feel is fluffy and pointless yet study after study and experiment after experiment have shown that it is a tried-and-true way to create jobs. Not jobs in the creation of the art per se, but as Ms. Brandes ...

Posted Mon, Sep 26, 4:44 p.m.

There are so many sustainable options for yummy seafood, there are few good justifications to persist in deep-sea trawling. With new technologies like enormous carbon fiber undersea pens, even deep-sea whitefish can now be farmed in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way. Seafood lovers need make only a small effort ...

Posted Tue, Sep 20, 10:25 a.m.

It seems like a sensible solution would be to encourage designs that are easily repurposable from commercial to residential and back again. Architects could easily design facades that could be cheaply and easily swapped out or changed to add store windows (without the reflection problem, which I agree is a ...

Posted Tue, Sep 20, 10:16 a.m.

In certain neighborhoods in the summer this idea would be absolutely terrific (e.g., Capitol Hill, First Hill, downtown, Belltown). But one difference between us and San Francisco is that Seattle is already very green and for our size practically lousy with parks. And then there's the rain... What Seattle might ...

Posted Tue, Sep 20, 10:09 a.m.

We can tell that this car tab proposal goes too far when even pro-transit people are saying uh-uh. I'm among them. The main problem with this car tab tax, as with any car tab tax, it that it's inherently regressive. No one with a progressive mindset, including pro-transit people, can ...

Posted Tue, Sep 13, 4:08 p.m.

Thanks for that thoughtful analysis, Joeleetalbert. We do have it good here, relatively speaking. I've posted this elsewhere on Crosscut, but the British news and business magazine The Economist took note of Seattle's high bicyclist death rate last week (https://www.economist.com/node/21528302), and their analysis focuses on the lack of traffic-calming infrastructure ...

Posted Tue, Sep 13, 4:01 p.m.

If you look at countries that require paid sick days (Norway, Germany, etc.), their recessions tended to be mild to nonexistent, whereas our recession was severe. Paid sick days aren't directly responsible for that, but when businesses have to take care of their employees as much as leverage employees' productivity ...

Posted Mon, Sep 5, 3:27 p.m.

I literally have never heard of Volunteer Park Cafe before, and I've lived in Seattle (yes, in the city limits) for over 20 years. I suppose that's not what the neighborhood activitists intended.

Posted Mon, Sep 5, 3:22 p.m.

Yes, some bike riders ignore the rules. News flash: some car drivers do, too. Seattle drivers as a group in fact are arguably some of the worst drivers in North America. They drive slow in the passing lane, over-yield at four-way intersections, don't understand how to accelerate and merge onto ...

Posted Sat, Sep 3, 11:10 p.m.

I wholeheartedly agree that Seattle's city council needs at least some geographic districts; other cities should pursue this as well. With an all at-large council as we have now, geography-based initiatives are utterly impossible. This not only impacts development issues like Mr. Steinbrueck's topic here but it also limits how ...

Posted Fri, Sep 2, 11:32 a.m.

Well if we're going to put in that durned tunnel, then yeah for the awesome park plans!

Posted Tue, Aug 30, 9:47 a.m.

FEMA serves an important service. Its failure during Katrina only underscores how important a well-functioning FEMA-like agency is to massive disasters like Katrina. It is part of the social contract itself that Americans can expect a reasonable amount of help from their government in times of crisis. The Republican viewpoint ...

Posted Sat, Aug 27, 3:43 p.m.

@common1sense: These things are not acceptable, no argument from me. However, we have to decide as a society that those four issues I raised are what we want to change. Until we decide as a society to address those four things, education reform is essentially impossible - no matter how ...

Posted Fri, Aug 26, 3:09 p.m.

Monsanto has been very naughty in the way it treats farmers, to say nothing of consumers, and I applaud OSGATA and any endeavor to put Monsanto into their place and teach them some manners, and ethics, is something I welcome whole-heartedly.

Posted Fri, Aug 26, 3 p.m.

When we look at the best school systems in the world, the best of which by most measures is Finland's, we find that strong unions are not the problem, since Finland has strong teacher unions and tenure. Finnish teachers also earn very large, professional salaries commensurate with the responsibility and ...

Posted Tue, Aug 23, 12:08 p.m.

The code does need to be revised, shortened, and simplified, absolutely and amen, but that endeavor should not necessarily make things easier for developers. That is about the craziest thing I've ever read. Even though most developers are decent and fair, the code exists in part to protect the city ...

Posted Mon, Aug 22, 4:41 p.m.

Business taxes are an interesting example of disconnect with reality in the United States. Many Americans have strong ideas about business taxes without every actually having run or owned a business, so misconceptions are rampant. For example, many Amerians mistakenly believe that business taxes are too high in this country, ...

Posted Fri, Aug 12, 10:34 a.m.

@dbreneman: I'm not sure where in Europe you've been but bike lanes are super common in the Netherlands and Denmark (usually painted red and set apart by a boulevard from car traffic, where possible), and they are more and more common in German towns with the rise of "bicycle path ...

Posted Fri, Aug 12, 10:27 a.m.

On the topic of German roads: the Germans also spend more money up front on high-quality road construction and have a higher-quality roadway that lasts much, much longer than the shoddier (cheaper) construction methods typically used in the U.S. (and certainly in Seattle). Over 50 years, German roadways are cheaper ...

Posted Thu, Aug 11, 11:05 p.m.

If we look at the economies that have done the best through the recession, and in some cases did not even have a recession, they all have WAY higher effective personal and corporate tax rates and sales tax/VAT rates than does the U.S. Norway and Germany come to mind, as ...

Posted Thu, Aug 11, 10:38 a.m.

In addition to verbal assaults by canvassers on the street, canvassers routinely ignore the "no canvassing" sign in front of our house, too. And after I say "You ignored the no canvassing sign. Please go away," I have had a couple of canvassers continue to stand there and keep talking ...

Posted Mon, Aug 8, 2:58 p.m.

In many European countries, such as Germany, people get married twice: once legally, usually before a notary, and if desired once religiously in a church. People who want religious weddings still have to get legally married, often the day before the big religious wedding. This is all McKenna is proposing, ...

Posted Sun, Aug 7, 7:59 a.m.

Let's not forget Obama's great strength: the long game. Of the few in Washington, DC, who even play the long game at all (e.g., the late Ted Kennedy), Obama is probably a master. Looking at the long game makes his maddening near-term approach to many things (e.g., LGBT issues) make ...

Posted Sun, Aug 7, 7:50 a.m.

The idea is not unprecedented in the U.S. (and a model long-advocated by conservatives here): the rail companies in the 19th century also made a killing on the land rights astride the actual rail they laid.

Posted Fri, Aug 5, 12:02 p.m.

If traffic flow through Seattle were so important to the local economy, then what would make sense is *not* a tunnel that bypasses only about 20 blocks of downtown Seattle (with no downtown exits) for $4 billion. (Actually, the state is intentionally sitting on data that it refuses to release ...

Posted Thu, Aug 4, 7:55 p.m.

Good architecture of the past 20-30 years: * Safeco Field. There is an elegance and simplicity to this stadium that feels at once modern and old-fashioned. (Well, modernism is pretty old-fashioned anyway by now, isn't it?) This is probably one of the best modern stadiums in professional sports. * Columbia ...

Posted Thu, Aug 4, 8:14 a.m.

I have to say this analysis is right on. Your psychology going through the neighborhood now makes you feel like you're in Logan's Run, if only everyone had matching white jumpsuits on. The "fun" part of the corporate slogan could have been embracing some postmodern architecture, and maybe not losing ...

Posted Wed, Aug 3, 11:41 a.m.

The state's own EIS has said that traffic downtown will be the same if we build the tunnel or if we don't (i.e. surface option). It's not like there's not going to be a street along the waterfront still, after all. No one's talking about turning the waterfront into a ...

Posted Tue, Aug 2, 12:42 p.m.

"They believe his famous law may not be as absolute as our high school science teachers led us to believe." I'm guessing most of your readers took science 25 to 50 years ago. I remember in the late 1970s our class did reports on planets and moons of solar system. ...

Posted Tue, Aug 2, 3:54 a.m.

This analysis is comprehensive and right on. This is a fresh look at the political foibles that have needlessly complicated the whole Viaduct replacement debate. Despite Ms. Crunican's arguments to the contrary, the fact is that the city's own EIS has also since shown that the traffic congestion downtown will ...

Posted Sat, Jul 30, 5:08 p.m.

I'm not normally an Amazon apologist, but I have to admit after we tried Amazon Fresh a year and a half ago, we were instantly hooked and have spent very little time in conventional grocery stores since. What motivated us to try Amazon Fresh the first time was that we ...

Posted Wed, Jul 27, 2:50 p.m.

It's situations like this where I wish Seattle had at least some geographical district-based seats on the City Council instead of all at-large seats. In our current system, every member of the Council has to be firmly neutral on things like this. But if we had at least some geographic ...

Posted Sun, Jul 24, 10:38 p.m.

@Mr. Lukoff: You are right. I had no idea how much my medical services in Germany cost, but by all objective measures German health care costs less on a national basis to deliver, with better results than American health care. Various factors play into this: * Everyone has to have ...

Posted Fri, Jul 22, 10:41 p.m.

Washington could be running ads this summer like "Visit cool, rainy Washington for some relief today!"

Posted Thu, Jul 21, 3:46 p.m.

When I was in Germany and had German health insurance, the insurance company gave me a card with my name on it and a magnetic strip on the back. When I went to the doctor's office, I swiped it at the receptionist's desk. That's all I ever had to do. ...

Posted Wed, Jul 20, 4:03 p.m.

I have no sympathy for restaurants in the street food fight. Restaurants and street vendors are apples and oranges, and restaurants should be focusing on things like expertly prepared food, cleanliness, competent waitstaff, and appropriate portion sizes instead of whining about street vendors. I mean, my God. Look at every ...

Posted Mon, Jul 18, 1:04 p.m.

Yet another example of how outsiders do *not* understand the Pacific Northwest very well, and do not know that they don't understand us. The one thing that unites Eastern and Western Washington, Democrat and Republican is a love of proper Northwest beer.

Posted Sun, Jul 17, 10:20 p.m.

This article raises very important points that I hope other news outlets and commentators will pick up, as well. Cities in Washington actually provide a net export on every dollar in taxes they pay to the state to subsidize nonurban areas, particular the schools. It is intensely in the best ...

Posted Tue, Jul 12, 2:25 p.m.

Mr. Oki's idea about decentralization is the first step toward correcting our school problem. As I've seen in other comments, we in the United States typically do the opposite of what other countries do where the schools are highly successful. In Finland, for instance, the school system (usually ranked as ...

Posted Tue, Jul 12, 10:46 a.m.

Remember that the 49% of taxpayers (as of 2009) who do not pay federal taxes includes many phenomenally wealthy people who use various tax-avoidance techniques to do so. If even a percentage of these wealthy non-tax-payers paid the 24% that most upper middle class people (income > $200,000) pay, that ...

Posted Mon, Jul 11, 11:36 a.m.

The Space Age is not merely about space flight and space exploration: it also includes things like GPS and applying here on earth the knowledge gained from science done in space (everything from robotics and materials science to life science). Seattle has local companies (just not Boeing!) doing incredible and ...

Posted Sun, Jul 10, 3:11 p.m.

I have sat on juries, and the fact that twelve people agreed unanimously on "not guilty" is quite impressive - getting twelve random people to agree on _anything_ is nigh impossible. The jury could easily have hung if even one single person wasn't sold on the "not guilty" verdict, and ...

Posted Thu, Jul 7, 7:04 p.m.

In the highly successful Finnish model of education and schools, which Coolpapa mentions (and with which Americans are not even remotely familiar enough), the teacher union is very strong. Note that Finnish schools are the best in the world by most measures. What makes you angry after reading up on ...

Posted Thu, Jul 7, 6:44 p.m.

On that report from the National Center for Time and Learning: if you look at international rankings for the best schools in the world, Finland is typically near the top if not at the top of the list by most measures. Yet, Finnish kids don't start school until age 6 ...

Posted Tue, Jul 5, 2:01 p.m.

A thought-provoking article, and I especially like Mr. Miller's and Coolpapa's comments. I tend to agree with Coolpapa that the schools per se are more or less "fine" in Seattle. My biggest complaint is actually CLASS SIZE. An otherwise fine classroom could be GREAT if class size could simply be ...

Posted Mon, Jul 4, 7:18 p.m.

This is a very interesting piece. In many ways, however, I don't think we need broad Constitutional reform as much as we need Senate reform. Some ideas: - It's absurd that Wyoming and Texas have the same number of senators on a variety of levels; the Founding Fathers themselves would ...

Posted Sun, Jul 3, 7:41 a.m.

Complaining about the weather is a Northwest birthright. It borders on high art here, at times. But in any case, the only thing more annoying is people who claim to rise above it - by complaining about the complaining.

Posted Wed, Jun 29, 2:13 p.m.

Everyone who argues that paid sick days will put small businesses out of business are just blowing hot air, to be blunt. The fact is that small businesses througout the world have to pay for sick days, everywhere from Japan to Norway, and small businesses thrive throughout the world as ...

Posted Tue, Mar 1, 4:20 p.m.

Personally I do worry that police officers who live outside the city may fall out of touch with Seattle's values - maybe even without knowing it. If you live in Issaquah and don't vote on Seattle ballots and don't send your kids to Seattle schools and don't read the Seattle ...

Posted Wed, Feb 23, 10:11 p.m.

I have to second DC's point. First of all, Threepenny Opera is still under copyright; I assume also that the holder of its world English or U.S. English translation rights would not likely allow a new translation to be done at an affordable price. It would be costly to acquire ...

Posted Sat, Oct 30, 11:13 p.m.

Havel has used the term "atheism" or "atheist" in a complex, nuanced way that the average American reader won't stop to give much thought to. He's a writer, a dramatist, a poet--and American politicians don't speak in a literary or poetic way. American political culture is linguistically fairly blunt, unidimensional, ...

Posted Sun, Oct 24, 9:45 a.m.

I agree that antibike hate is pretty, and truly incomprehensibly, intense in Seattle, though less so from Seattleites proper and more so from commuters who live outside the city limits. I also see the shift to being more bike-friendly as a generational one, since the hate seems also to radiate ...

Posted Tue, Oct 5, 7:42 p.m.

If we look at the world's best education systems (e.g. Singapore, Finland, etc.), few to none of the characteristics that make those systems so great are being suggested in the United States. No one should persist under the delusion that American education can improve unless some of those characteristics are ...

Posted Thu, May 20, 8:22 a.m.

There are also electric-assist bikes, such as that used by the mayor, where you still have to pedal, but the bike helps you. These bikes are heresy to some, but for someone who's not in full cycling shape but who wants to start getting around by bike, and reducing carbon ...

Posted Wed, May 19, 7:12 a.m.

We spend a lot of time thinking of new bureaucratic requirements to impose on teachers in an effort to improve education. I suppose none of it is a bad idea, including the idea here. But isn't the real problem that we don't pay teachers enough to draw the best possible ...

Posted Thu, May 6, 2:35 p.m.

These efforts are much-needed and praiseworthy. Still, I find it unfortunate that we speak of "language preservation" instead of "language continuation"! The Dx?l?šúcid-speaking community is fortunate to have had so much effort already put into preservation, both in terms of linguistic analysis and description (everything from dictionaries to grammars and ...

Posted Thu, Apr 29, 11:30 a.m.

Scandinavians call a Dutch baby an "oven pancake"; seems like a Ballard institution would leverage that. :-)

Posted Mon, Apr 26, 5:51 p.m.

There is this bizarre idea “out there” that there are tons of “small” businesses with owners making dividends or salaries of $200,000 or more per year and that people at that pay level, if taxed as under I-1077, would tend not to expand their businesses and create jobs as much. ...

Posted Sun, Apr 25, 5:58 p.m.

"Numerous commentators have condemned 'different than' in spite of its use since the 17th century by many of the best-known names in English literature. It is nevertheless standard and is even recommended in many handbooks when followed by a clause, because insisting on 'from' in such instances often produces clumsy ...

Posted Thu, Apr 22, 1:11 a.m.

An important thing that Wells also implies is that rail changes where people live and where businesses are built over time. Rail shapes how a city and a region develops by defining long-term where people opt to build houses, to live, to work, to open businesses, etc. Buses by contrast ...

Posted Wed, Apr 21, 10 a.m.

Republicans in Washington State would do so much better at the ballot box if they would stop wearing their religion on their sleeves, started supporting concrete things that actually make it easier to have and raise kids, and stop with the antigay stuff. Until those things change, not foreseeing any ...

Posted Tue, Apr 20, 9:25 a.m.

Light and heavy rail are doing different things than are van pools, and difference is scale: Heavy rail is interurban transit that keeps people off highways. Light rail is meant to convey large numbers of people out from outlying areas to transportation hubs or business districts, also keeping people off ...

Posted Wed, Mar 10, 6:59 p.m.

Academic writing is very discipline-specific; I'm not sure what "academic writing" even means--and I don't think most people do. The way you construct a paper of literary criticism for an English class is quite different than the way you construct an article explaining your ornithological research, which is different again ...

Posted Wed, Mar 3, 11:04 a.m.

I don't think the photos of this church really reflect how it is in use, which is truly the most important factor in church design. When the room is full of music, when it's full of choir voices, when it's full of sermon words, etc. What is the space like ...

Posted Sun, Feb 7, 11:33 p.m.

I must confess that, when I served on jury duty three years ago, my faith in other jurors was raised, but my faith in prosecutors was lowered. I'm not sure the system works when prosecutors knowingly bring weak cases for minor offenses--I know that the other jurors and I in ...

Posted Fri, Dec 11, 2:30 p.m.

I think those same maps would be very interesting if redone as cartograms (so that the census tracks or counties were resized based on population). Viewed that way, in terms of demographics, Washington really consists only of Puget Sound, Spokane, the Tri Cities, and suburban Portland. Very few people live ...

Posted Sat, Nov 28, 4:28 p.m.

It would be nice to see something like in conjunction with more widespread use of woonerfs in residential areas.

Posted Wed, Nov 25, 10:19 a.m.

First of all, I make a *lot* of money every year making direct use of the Latin I took in high school, so please don't universalize your experience about the relevance of a given subject to the modern world, because you will be wrong most of the time. (And that ...

Posted Sat, Sep 19, 10:08 a.m.

It's a good article. A good bit of anti-Seattle whining is entirely normal and to be expected from those caught in the city's orbit; I think that's true of any city/suburb relationship, and the tension in that relationship is probably healthy. And there is much common ground: I think the ...

Posted Fri, Sep 18, 1:26 p.m.

The whole subtext of the "Obama is a Nazi" meme is indeed racist. When you hold up a sign with a nonsensical claim like "Obama is a Nazi," you get to say, "Well I can't be a racist because *Nazis* are racists, and Obama is the Nazi, not me." It's ...

Posted Sun, Sep 13, 11:29 p.m.

Let's consider German and Japanese cars. Both get better mileage than most American cars and are more cost-effect per mile driven over their entire lifespans. Both get much better care during their lifespans due to strict rules about maintenance and vehicular health, and the utmost attention is paid to longevity ...

Posted Thu, Sep 10, 11:02 p.m.

It does seem that Mallahan didn't perform that well given he had a "home court advantage" at a GSCC-hosted event, which is a little disappointing and makes me wonder if he has it in him to be mayor. McGinn I agree did demonstrate broader knowledge generally than Mallahan--and I also ...

Posted Thu, Sep 10, 9:35 a.m.

There are large tracts of if not whole countries--Bangladesh, the Netherlands, the Maldives, etc.--that could be largely obliterated with a rise of only 1 foot. One foot is nothing to sneeze at.

Posted Fri, Sep 4, 8:09 a.m.

I totally agree with your points on Afghanistan, and although I'm rosier on the economy than some you're right that the weak recovery is a huge problem for the Democrats in the midterms. That said, the health insurance reform thing is starting to make me positively livid with Democrats--and I ...

Posted Thu, Sep 3, 9:18 a.m.

Small stores are well and good, but a lot of Seattle has no sidewalks, so in those areas sidewalks should be every small retailer's top priority.

Posted Thu, Sep 3, 8:42 a.m.

I agree entirely. I think the problem is that a lot of streets with sharrows actually don't have room for car-lane reduction. The markers on the pavement are more of a psychological thing that tell drivers "Yes, bike's are really and truly allowed on this street." It's an incremental solution: ...

Posted Wed, Sep 2, 9:51 p.m.

I wonder if the central assumption of this piece isn't a fallacy: just because Seattle has a number of seminaries really doesn't mean that Seattleites (or Washingtonians) are becoming more religious. For one thing, you'd need to look at where the seminarians are coming from: I suspect that quite a ...

Posted Fri, Aug 21, 10:38 a.m.

I personally think the surface option makes the most sense to replace the Viaduct. First, in terms of cost, the surface option is a no-brainer: way cheaper. Plus, you only need four through lanes plus a turn lane to have the same lane capacity, and rerouting rail or arterials minimally ...

Posted Thu, Aug 20, 6:21 p.m.

The welfare states in Europe predate U.S. defense spending there!!! Sweden took its first step toward what we now call the "Nordic Model" for health and social insurance as early as 1853, and their modern welfare state was essentially in place by 1913. Germany passed the National Insurance Act in ...

Posted Thu, Aug 20, 2:43 p.m.

Authoritarian-style socialism and Nazism are superficially similar, as I noted, but ideologically they are indeed polar opposites. They are quite akin in the kinds of political structures their adherents have embraced historically, but their social and economic *ideologies* are diametrically opposite. Also, I don't see how moving from one to ...

Posted Wed, Aug 19, 7:14 a.m.

One thing you overlooked--and I agree with everything you wrote--is that Nickels demonstrated he may not be up to running the city in a time of crisis in his (non-)response to the snow last winter. In northeast Seattle, particularly Maple Leaf which is around 500 feet in elevation and where ...

Posted Tue, Aug 18, 5:11 p.m.

When these people hurl the charge of "socialism," I can only assume that they mean "Stalinist- or Maoist-style socialism" and not Norwegian-style socialism. Because by any measure and despite high taxes Norway is a paradise of people who enjoy wealth, a high standard of living, health care, nice roads, clean ...

Posted Mon, Aug 17, 10:33 a.m.

I'm not sure why we even have for-profit insurance companies; health care should not be a for-profit enterprise. Tort reform would not really be necessary if health insurance companies rose to the task of doing their jobs to help human beings rather than solely to make profits. When we add ...

Posted Mon, Aug 10, 2:03 p.m.

Although I share your criticisms, many of them, at the same time it's kind of like criticizing a diner burger for not being filet mignon... it is what it is.

Posted Mon, Aug 10, 2:01 p.m.

There was also this article someone sent me a link to today: http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics/story/1373035.html?storylink=pd The piece is about a 38-year-old "Teabagger" who showed up at a town hall protest to shout down any talk of reform, got hurt in a scuffle with some union guys, and now is looking for donations ...

Posted Mon, Aug 10, 1:59 p.m.

All these people who are afraid of socialism and think U.S. Democrats and President Obama are socialists in disguise: it's profoundly offensive. As someone who lived under an *actual* socialist government in Europe in the 1980s, I am offended that such Americans so flippantly and ignorantly make childish comparisons between ...

Posted Mon, Jul 27, 5:39 a.m.

I'm disheartened that Nickels doesn't have stronger competition than Jan Drago; I like a lot of the ideas from McGinn and even some of the others, but without any TV media presence to speak of, these other candidates are dooming themselves to failure in the top-two primary. McGinn's campaign in ...

Posted Thu, Jul 23, 10:01 a.m.

Sidewalks are a core infrastructural responsibility of any city--and especially of a walkable, environemntally friendly city as Nickels claims Seattle is or aspires to be. Although Seattle does, unwisely, defer sidewalk maintenance costs to residents under certain circumstances (unlike most other cities, actually), the vast majority of sidewalk installation and ...

Posted Sun, Jul 19, 1:46 p.m.

It's funny because it's true. :-)

Posted Sat, Jul 18, 3:32 p.m.

I vote "no" on any initiative that Mr. Eyman advances, by default, without regard to what the initiative may or may not do. I'm not alone: many many thousands of Washingtonians do the same. (I used to sit more on the fence about him until his failed homophobic R-65 initiative ...

Posted Mon, Jun 22, 6:38 a.m.

Personally I think that Vancouver has a hideous skyline, if the esthetics of skylines count for anything. Seattle's is much more interesting architecturally. Vancouver has a more dramatic physical setting, yes, but its skyline is composed of the same white and glass boxes again and again and again. Vancouver also ...

Posted Fri, Jun 19, 1:04 p.m.

This piece really hits the nail: an excellent analysis of what's wrong with Nickels as a mayor. On paper he looks like he should be widely popular and considered successful, but the social ineptitude of his leadership style undermines everything. Talking about the mayor's race with friends, one friend succinctly ...

Posted Wed, Jun 17, 5:34 p.m.

Actually, woonerfs are installed in ORDER to slow down cars and reduce volume; it is a traffic mitigation technique that has been far more effective in cities where it's been used (including London) than other techniques. Woonerfs also INCREASE pedestrianism dramatically because people perceive the area as walkable (and safe). ...

Posted Wed, Jun 17, 2:21 p.m.

One thing that they've been doing in the Netherlands (and elsewhere in Europe, Japan, and recently in New England) is add woonerfs to city scapes, a kind of social integration of pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars that is esthetically pleasing (and typically raises property values) and safer: http://www.livablestreets.com/streetswiki/woonerf http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20060417/streetless-in-seattle Requiring developers ...

Posted Thu, Jun 11, 2:40 p.m.

Recycling didn't used to be a hassle until this year--now you have to manage food scraps in your kitchen in some kind of sanitary way that most kitchens really aren't designed to do. Bellevue isn't cool. Think about what "cool" means. Bellevue is nice, pleasant, clean, it has great schools...I ...

Posted Wed, Jun 10, 10:33 p.m.

You know what would save teachers' jobs AND help the environment? If Seattle would stop busing kids all over town. The gas savings would be astronomical. Imagine if kids went to their closest designated schools? Most of them could walk, if not ride their bikes. Obesity goes down, exercised kids ...

Posted Tue, Jun 9, 1:48 p.m.

We have cable (Comcast), and we are waiting to see what happens. Comcast is handling its own digital conversion REALLY BADLY. My folks, who live by Burien, have had TONS of problems with the conversion: their flat screen HDTV doesn't get the same channels as it did before, and despite ...

Posted Tue, Jun 9, 1:33 p.m.

It's sad that there are people out there who would urge another human being to jump rather than think of ways to prevent suicide. It's just plain sad.

Posted Tue, Jun 2, 7:25 a.m.

Actually, Toronto comes from a Mohawk word meaning "trees standing in the water" (tkaronto). By coincidence, the Huron word toronton meaning "meeting place" looks similar, but the Huron people lived no where near what is now Toronto when Europeans encountered the place and learned its name from the Mohawk.

Posted Thu, May 28, 9:39 a.m.

Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security . . . it always seems to come down to these things for Republicans. These are popular programs that will never be done away with. These things are not the problem. Finding reliable funding for them is the problem. Reducing spending elsewhere in the budget ...

Posted Fri, Apr 24, 3:15 p.m.

Ms. Godden, North Seattle wants sidewalks. We have none. Find some way to fund them so pedestrians can get to bus stops, schools, and just walk to the store. We keep clamoring, but you're not listening.

Posted Wed, Apr 22, 1:14 p.m.

The "tea parties" of April 15 were nothing more than a Fox- and CNBC-sponsored media stunt, with support from rabidly antitax media (such as the Seattle Times). While the "tea parties" merited front page coverage by the Seattle Times, they did not on most other major newspapers--because people understood that ...

Posted Wed, Apr 22, 12:09 p.m.

I do like the off-leash parks she got done, the ones that aren't mud pits and that aren't covered in gravel that hurts dogs' feet, at least--but I like the unfenced, grassy, park-integrated dog areas in Portland's parks better. She also has strong credentials in women's rights, racial and ethnic ...

Posted Tue, Apr 21, 1:23 p.m.

Absolutely right on. The pastiche of socialist this, fascist that should be truly mind-boggling to anyone who learned anything in 10th grade history.

Posted Mon, Apr 20, 3:29 p.m.

@kieth Obesity is a very complex medical issue, usually a combination of predispositional metabolic factors, lifestyle factors, and (most importantly) psychological factors. It is akin to any addiction, actually, such as those who are addicted to pain killers, "smack" (if people still call it that), meth, or tobacco, and it ...

Posted Sun, Apr 19, 11:05 p.m.

I do think the Gregoire item is interesting: I myself am a lifelong, committed Democrat who will not be voting for her next time around as a protest vote; I find her rhetoric and political posture to be too often too anti-Seattle to merit the support she gets from the ...

Posted Thu, Apr 16, 9:27 p.m.

Wow, Steptoe.Fan. That's not exactly a realistic or compassionate way to look at things. The "every person has a mother and father" comment is completely off base. Although biologically true, many people in dire situations do not have any family resources at all, or only one parent, and obviously parents ...

Posted Thu, Apr 2, 11:14 a.m.

Actually it is illegal under Seattle city and other codes for your pet, be it a dog OR cat, to be out of your yard when not on a leash. Thus, people who let their cats out to roam are violating the law (and allowing their cats to poop in ...

Posted Sun, Mar 29, 10:04 a.m.

There really shouldn't be any confusion about the irritation with the Mayor, vitriolic or otherwise. Cities are meant to provide a certain basic level of services: police/public safety and infrastructure (roads, utilities) are the two main ones. Mayors also do well when they have vision and charisma. Nickels's results in ...

Posted Mon, Mar 23, 8:39 a.m.

First of all, in Maple Leaf, the snow response was botched completely. The majority of Maple Leaf is at between 400 and 510 feet in elevation, so snowfall happens here when it's not in other parts of town (and we are way closer than also-high-elevation West Seattle to the Convergence ...

Posted Thu, Mar 5, 11:41 a.m.

A mileage tax does make sense both in terms of government funding and in terms of reducing consumption of gasoline. However, it is not that practical, really, in terms of collecting it since you have to check each car's mileage each year and set up a bureaucracy to deal with ...

Posted Tue, Mar 3, 10:28 a.m.

An inability to make connections with people here means that Seattleites are too nice to tell the person what an annoying jerk he or she is. That's also a Nihon-Scandinavian thing, incidentally.

Posted Thu, Feb 26, 12:16 p.m.

The fact is that parents who want their children to speak a second language with native fluently simply need to put their children into immersion programs at the elementary level, and/or have their children spend several hours a day with a parent, grandparent, au-pair, or nanny who is a *native* ...

Posted Mon, Feb 23, 11:55 a.m.

I'm not sure that anything short of the collapse of civilization itself, forcing everyone back into an agrarian economy, can stop cities from growing more and more urban and rural areas from growing emptier and emptier. We can lament the "loss" of some kind of Old Seattle, or we can ...

Posted Wed, Feb 11, 10:21 a.m.

This would be funnier if you were actually right (“It’s funny because it’s true”). But captious observations are not humorous per se. The only item I think you’re right on is “proverbial,” although everyone understands that word in certain contexts to mean “legendary,” etc., so it's still not funny. Otherwise, ...

Posted Sat, Feb 7, 2:33 p.m.

Here's what's been good about Nickels: 1. Separating the executive powers of city departments from legislative influence. The council tends to hamper things and slow things down, so Nickels has done a good job at cutting out the council as a "middle man" when possible. 2. A clear *start* at ...

Posted Fri, Feb 6, 10:45 a.m.

I don't see any problem with the underlying policies and approach to government and the economy. So I'm willing to give a presidency that isn't even a month old a fair bit of slack on its superficial "communication problems." I think most people willing to give a fair bit of ...

Posted Wed, Feb 4, 10:14 a.m.

Oh my God so much drama. Look, you have something called culture shock. Seattle is a foreign place to you; you don't get it yet. If you were living in Quito or Lagos or Kathmandu, you'd accept that you don't get the foreignness. Somehow living in Seattle you think you're ...

Posted Tue, Feb 3, 1:43 p.m.

The modern Boy Scouts is an organization essentially run by evangelical Christians and Mormons, and as such it has become a right-wing indoctrination machine that has little to do with its original mission. It has nothing to do with the Scouting that you and I remember from the 60s, 70s, ...

Posted Thu, Jan 29, 8:34 a.m.

Tax cuts. You know what I did with my last rebate check? I cashed it and wrote a check to the government on that account to pay my next quarter's estimated taxes with. No "stimulus" there except to the post office, which was paid to deliver the check from the ...

Posted Wed, Jan 28, 11:27 p.m.

Chinook (technically called Chinook Jargon) was actually just a trade language/lingua franca that tribes used all up the Northwest coast to communicate--and Chinook Jargon has lots of French borrowings, too, from early European traders. As a trade language, no one spoke it as their "first" or "native" language. The main ...

Posted Mon, Jan 26, 7:40 a.m.

In Lushootseed, the Coast Salish dialect/language that Chief Si?a? spoke, the "correct" spelling/pronunciation of the word "whulj" is x???l?. (The first caret goes over the x, and the schwa should bear an acute accent, but HTML has its limitations. :-) )

Posted Mon, Dec 8, 12:59 p.m.

There isn't really room in metro Seattle for two papers "of record." The Seattle Times is too bland and too right of center editorially to appeal to Seattle readers much, and it doesn't cover the East Side that well to appeal to Eastsiders much, so I'm not sure who its ...

Posted Wed, Dec 3, 7:49 p.m.

I'm amazed that grown adults in 2008 have a hard time understanding that you cannot have place names like "Negro Creek" (which is itself an amendment of "N*gger Creek," as you point out) or "Squaw Tit." These names were actually derogatory when they were originally so named, and they are ...

Posted Wed, Dec 3, 10:05 a.m.

The reason Rossi lost is because he didn't campaign in King County or even try to appeal to left-center and left voters Western Washington. It is very hard for a Republican to come from a socially rightwing ideology and win statewide offices; a socially moderate/populist Republican who can appeal to ...

Posted Wed, Nov 19, 3:43 p.m.

Republicans will never be viable in Washington until a few things happen: 1. They give their sanctimonious Southern-style religiosity in favor of good old Western populism. Washingtonians are not religious, and those that are religious do not wear in on their sleeves, and the minute you inject religion into politics ...

Posted Fri, Sep 19, 6:46 a.m.

Ah, yes, the good old days: I'm guessing Knute isn't gay or a woman (I say that rhetorically), because the 1970s in Seattle and the 2000s in Spokane are not necessarily great places for people who are different from straight, white, men. It's too easy to forget the very real ...

Posted Tue, Jul 29, 7:20 a.m.

Cultivating Social Behavior Instead of Compliant Behavior: In the most recent issue of the Wilson Quarterly, there is a piece about a Dutch traffic "guru" named Hans Monderman (http:// www.wilsoncenter.org/ index.cfm? fuseaction=wq.current). He tells the story of a small town in the Netherlands where a fatality had occurred at a ...

Posted Thu, Jul 10, 9:49 p.m.

RE: Single-Payer: Germans are not on waiting lists; they do not come to the U.S. for medical care. French are not on waiting lists; they do not come to the U.S. for medical care. Swedes are not on waiting lists; they do not come to the U.S. for medical care. ...

Posted Tue, Jul 8, 11:21 a.m.

Single-Payer: Incidentally, McDermott is correct on the issue of a single-payer health care system. Look at every other industrialized country, and you'll see one form or another of a single-payer system (with or without private insurance options on top of it). People who oppose single-payer systems lack any rational argument ...

Posted Tue, Jul 8, 11:18 a.m.

Progressive Against McDermott: I am a die-hard liberal, progressive voter. And I oppose Jim McDermott. His principled stands are laudable, but I agree that he is not a get-it-done kind of politician, and a true progressive must first and foremost be someone who can get things done, otherwise there is ...

Posted Fri, Apr 18, 9:19 a.m.

The real lesson of Mrs. Craswell's legacy: Even as my thoughts were with Mrs. Craswell's family on news of her death, it bears noting that Craswell will be remembered longest by most as the 1990s right-wing gubernatorial candidate so out of touch with Washington voters that she advocated the blanket ...

Posted Mon, Apr 7, 10:01 p.m.

Even some lefties want McDermott to retire: I am the leftiest lefty in Seattle, where we are a dime a dozen. I have lived in McDermott's district since 1991, and since that time I can't recall him having really "done" that much in terms of representing Seattle. Since that time, ...

Posted Tue, Feb 5, 5:24 a.m.

RE: Notice How CNN got your attention, not Fox: And another, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/ content_display/television/news/ e3i3a6ca747d7f74ddaf309eb7a26ac7737

Posted Tue, Feb 5, 5:20 a.m.

RE: Notice How CNN got your attention, not Fox: For starters, http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/01/31/fox_news/

Posted Mon, Feb 4, 7:34 a.m.

Notice How CNN got your attention, not Fox: The real story that this silly little spoof belies is that you're making fun of CNN and not Fox. Interestingly, Fox's ratings have plummeted during this dour time for Republicans, and CNN's have soared (since people want a modicum of credibility this ...