Most Walkable Cities in the USA

America's Most Pedestrianized Cities

It had to be on the list, didn’t it. Manhattan is the only place in the country where more than 50% of the population doesn’t own a car. Over ten percent of New Yorkers walk to work, which is remarkable, but the truly impressive number takes into account the 50% that take public transit. Over 60% of the city doesn’t use their car to get to work; a mark normally only approached in college and military communities.

The other cities: Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston and Newark, NJ.

The Rebirth of Cities

The Next Slum?

Pent-up demand for urban living is evident in housing prices. Twenty years ago, urban housing was a bargain in most central cities. Today, it carries an enormous price premium. Per square foot, urban residential neighborhood space goes for 40 percent to 200 percent more than traditional suburban space in areas as diverse as New York City; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and Washington, D.C.

It's crucial to note that these premiums have arisen not only in central cities, but also in suburban towns that have walkable urban centers offering a mix of residential and commercial development.
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Perhaps most important, the shift to walkable urban environments will give more people what they seem to want. I doubt the swing toward urban living will ever proceed as far as the swing toward the suburbs did in the 20th century; many people will still prefer the bigger houses and car-based lifestyles of conventional suburbs. But there will almost certainly be more of a balance between walkable and drivable communities—allowing people in most areas a wider variety of choices.

Related: Urban Planning - Traffic Congestion and a Non-Solution - The Economic Benefits of Walkable Communities - Designing Cities for People, Rather than Cars - How Walkable is Your Prospective Neighborhood - housing articles - Car-free zones - The Case for Physically Separated Bike Lanes

Music Magic

I recently bought some new speakers for my computer based on recommendations: Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX. I find them excellent but I must admit I am not a very discriminating audiophile. I also found a nice new site to take advantage of the new speakers: Jango. Essentially this site lets you select a list of artist you like. They then play music by those artist and other artists like by those that like your list (I imagine). There are no ads. My guess is they make money when you buy music through the site (and probably have, or will get) special payment to promote some artists.

Related: gadgets and gifts - Hug Shirt

Freedom Increasingly at Risk

It is sad that our government being the risk to our own freedom is rising. I remember 10 years ago understanding that the risks to our freedom due to government action were minor. The real risk to freedom were from criminals forcing people to restrict their activity for fear of becoming a victim. The protections from government, so dear to those escaping the rule of Kings, seemed outdated.

Sadly I have to say we have entered a new era where the freedoms granted by the constitution, for freedom from government abusing our rights, is a serious danger. I am amazed this has come to be, honestly. I did not anticipate serious threat of government restrictions on freedoms.

Freedom granted by The First Amendment is not guaranteed in practice. If people allow government to become less and less accountable for unacceptable behavior those freedoms disappear.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" - Wendell Phillips
which is often quoted as "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" and attributed to Thomas Jefferson

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. - Richard Jackson (maybe)

We have been lucky enough that the threats to government restrictions on freedom have been low. Our lack of vigilance did not do much harm. But those that treasure what our constitution has created for over 200 years should heed the guidance now. The cost of our complacency will not be apparent until the forces against freedom have great momentum. It seems to me that evidence is piling up quite quickly. And the price for continued complacency will be steep.

So About That Tree of Liberty...

Of course, the real irony here is that all of this happened at the Jefferson Memorial, in observance of Jefferson’s birthday. Go out to celebrate the birth of the most hardcore, anti-authoritarian of the Founding Fathers, get hauled off in handcuffs. The photo’s almost poetry, isn’t it? One of history’s most articulate critics of abuse of state authority looks on as a park police cop uses his elbow to push a female arrestee into one of said critic’s memorial pillars.

Related: Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - Quarantining dissent - Arrested Bush dissenters look to the courts - Orwellian "Free Speech Zones" violate the constitution - SWAT Raids, government failures - Dancing fools - The Photographer’s Right - HOWTO resist warrantless searches at Best Buy

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me."
Martin Niemoeller

Maximize Firefox Using about:config

Maximize Firefox Without Extensions Using about:config

If you type about:config in your address bar, Firefox opens the master directory of user-defined preferences and built-in settings. The ultimate arena for performance tampering, the about:config settings are the foundation for programming Firefox extensions.
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To modify about:config, pull it up using your address bar. The settings appear in a searchable list view.

Importance of Search Rankings

Attention Website Owners: If You Aren’t on Google’s First Page, You’re Dead to Us

You can have the most attractive website of all your competitors. You can hire usability experts, professional photographers, and the greatest PHP developers money can buy. If you aren’t on the first page of Google, you might as well be from Mars. Sorry.

While it is true many people do not look past the first page some could be mislead by wasting time on usability... You don't say wasting time but imply it is the wrong focus.

Some reasons why you might want to consider usability important:

1) let even say you are on the first page of Google - just getting them to click on the results and visit your site is probably not the goal. You want them to do something. Not flee your site immediately.

2) Search results are not your only source of visitors. Taking care of those that visit is important (so don't think of search results as the only measure of your success).

3) Inbound links can certainly be impacted positively by having a usable site with valuable content (which will increase those visitors mentioned in item 2) and increase your search ranking.

Incompetence and Ignorance are Bliss

Among the Inept, Researchers Discover, Ignorance Is Bliss:

On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dr. Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.
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One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence. The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it," wrote Dr. Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dr. Dunning.

Davidson Students Get Free Sweet Sixteen Trip

UW men's basketball: Free ride for Davidson students

The school's board of trustees set up a fund Wednesday to pay for any student wishing to travel to Detroit to see Davidson play the University of Wisconsin in the Midwest Regional semifinals. Students will get free bus transportation, two nights lodging and a ticket to Friday's game.

Pretty cool. FYI, I graduated from Davidson; and grew up in Madison. Oh, Davidson also did this a while back:

In the spring of 2007, Davidson became the first national liberal arts college to eliminate student loans from financial aid packages. Beginning with the 2007-2008 academic year, Davidson students now have 100 percent of their demonstrated need met entirely through a combination of grants and student employment.

Related: 2008 Intel Science Talent Search - 2005 intercollegiate Genetically Engineered Machine competition - Educational Institutions Economic Impact

2-Slice Toaster and Egg Poacher

Pretty darn silly. Do you think maybe we have a bit too much money we don't know what do with if we actually buy this? Related: Nice Looking Toaster

Paper Clips

I recommend the paper clips movie. Paper Clips web site:

Whitwell, Tennessee is a small, rural community of less than two thousand people nestled in the mountains of Tennessee. Its citizens are almost exclusively white and Christian. In 1998, the children of Whitwell Middle School took on an inspiring project, launched out of their principal's desire to help her students open their eyes to the diversity of the world beyond their insulated valley. What happened would change the students, their teachers, their families and the entire town forever… and eventually open hearts and minds around the world.
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moving and inspiring documentary film that captures how these students responded to lessons about the Holocaust-with a promise to honor every lost soul by collecting one paper clip for each individual exterminated by the Nazis.

Related: Proof, the Movie - Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me."

Internet TV Listings by PHBs

Long ago TV listings had to be sent to the printer so they could be printed out and hand delivered to people's houses on paper (with their newspaper). Then, like 10 years ago, some realized this internet thing could display what would be shown on TV. Yet in 2008 the TV listings shown on the internet are rarely better than if they had to be printed and hand delivered to any person's house. Talk about pointy haired boss behavior.

For example, even though over 24 hours ago it was know that the SEC championship game was moved to 3:30 PM today what do internet TV listing show? They show the game taking place at 1PM. The listing shows it is on CBS, is, at least, that right? Nope it is on ESPN 2 (and, for local affiliates in Georgia and Arkansas, on CBS, at 3:30). What teams are in the game? Internet TV listings act as though this is some mystery (not just for this game but for most any game that wasn't decided months ago).

Look, mr. phb, internet TV listing people, the internet lets you update that dynamically within minutes of when it is determined who will play in that game (or any other change is made to a schedule). It is bad enough sites like TVguide etc. can't get it right. Not even ESPN shows the right thing on their own website. Jeez this just gets worse and worse. On CBS's site, they don't list either the SEC game at all, or the Big Ten Game at all (which is on CBS at 3:30 PM). By the way the Big Ten game features the wonderful Wisconsin Badgers against Illinois.

Please hire someone that knows how the internet works and let them actually use the internet properly. First they won't treat the internet as if it were the place you send your next weeks TV listing to once a week. But all that is doing is avoiding being an incredibly lame phb. The goal would not be to just avoid being completely lame but to actually take advantage of the internet tubes to provide a better service.

Related: What Kind of Management Does This? - Webcasts by Chemistry and Physics Nobel Laureates ("This site requires javascript. Please enable javascript then click here to go back" - yet more phb idiocy) - The Top Ten Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption - usability resources

The Jury Decides What is Illegal

Keep juries dumb

Now this is the secret that no one wants you to know: If you serve on a jury, and you just flat don't like the law you're asked to enforce, you do NOT have to enforce it. You can vote in direct contradiction of the law and in direct contradiction of the judge's instructions -- without fear of reprisal.

Up until 1895, the jury was routinely informed of this right. Then the big mining companies started losing a lot of cases against unions, and they put pressure on the courts, resulting in a Supreme Court decision stating that judges were not required to inform the jury of its rights. Could anything be more draconian? The defendant is informed of his rights. The plaintiff is informed of his rights. The state prosecutor, being an attorney himself, is well aware of his rights. The jury -- the only people in the room without right to counsel -- must figure out its authority on its own. The judge, who is supposed to act as counsel for the jury, to advise it, is conspiring to deprive it of essential information.

And yet the jury's supreme authority was well known to the very first chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, who explicitly informed a jury that it was free to ignore him and his court. It was well known to John Adams, who said, "It is not only (the juror's) right, but his duty . . . to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court." He even went further and called it "absurdity" for a court to expect a juror to be required to accept the judge's view of the law. The principle was well known to those two political opposites, Jefferson and Hamilton, and yet they both agreed on this point.

Need more legal celebrities? Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1920: "The judge cannot direct a verdict, it is true, and the jury has the power to bring in a verdict in the teeth of both law and facts." In more recent years, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote: "If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence."

Related: The First Amendment - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - Taking Public Good for Private Special Interests

John Dower

Hellfire: a Journey from Hiroshima received was nominated for an academy award as a documentary in 1986. I recently discovered it is now available on the Hiroshima No Pika DVD. John Dower is a family friend and author of the National Book Award (1999): Embracing Defeat.

Related: A Warning from History: Don't expect democracy in Iraq by John Dower, Feb 2003. - Visualizing Cultures (free MIT online course) - "It's not history - it's propaganda." - books, articles... by John Dower

Yahoo's Open Approach to Search

An Open Approach to Search

Because the platform is open it gives all Web site owners -- big or small -- an opportunity to present more useful information on the Yahoo! Search page as compared to what is presented on other search engines. Site owners will be able to provide all types of additional information about their site directly to Yahoo! Search. So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in websites -- ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data -- directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.

via: Yahoo Wants to Redefine SERPs, Adapts “Open” Approach

Related: Viewing Unpersonalized Google Search Results - Yahoo Tops Customer Satisfaction Results? - Improved Web Search (Jan 2006) - Improve Google

Proof People are Crazy

This is proof people are crazy. This is an enjoyable read but I think anyone that actual does this is asking to die. There are plenty of places to get great views without risking your lives. See Curious Cat travels for some examples: North Cascades National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Costa Rica...

You are about to view pictures of what has to be the most dangerous Tourist Hiking Trail in the world. After you see the pictures, I have little doubt you will agree.
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The only reason we were here was because we didn't know any better. I was incredulous that something this deadly was open to the public. Sure there were warning signs down below, but nothing had been said that could possibly let us know how much trouble we were getting into.
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The only reason we continued was those Chinese college kids. Laura and I watched them cross. It looked like they were dancing... step apart, step together, step apart, step together... they walked sideways across the cliff! And they were laughing!

I swear to God if it wasn't for those kids, Laura and I would have turned around a long time ago. Left to ourselves, we would have given into our panic, but to see those crazy kids fearlessly move across the cliff made us think we could do it too.
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I shook my head in disgust. One mistake would kill you instantly. This area was so dangerous it required proper mountain gear: climbing boots, carabineers, belay devices, bolts, and ropes. But all we had was our bare hands

Charity Abuse

Getting repeated calls over and over again every day from 201-535-3618 (follow the link for people bothered by this telemarketer). You can thank the people that the Secretary of State in the state of Washington says employee, and have employed, these people, Outreach Associates, Inc:

Children's Defense Fund
Common Cause
Environmental Defense, Inc.
Habitat For Humanity International, Inc.
Jane Goodall Institute For Wildlife Research, Education & Conservation
League Of Women Voters Of The United States
Phillips Collection, The
Public Citizen, Inc.
Sierra Club
Southern Poverty Law Center, Inc.
and many more

They will claim they are a charity exemption from the do not call list. So perhaps they are to breaking the law, who knows. But tarnishing their clients with the extremely bad practice of calling people over and over and not leaving a message tells you what they value - and it certainly isn't you. I suggest telling any charity you support that you will not support them supporting a company that intentionally bothers you. If they do not make a public statement condemning such practices and publicly state they will not work with any contractor that behaves this way don't give them your money.

Any of the charities listed are welcome to add a comment linking to your response that you will not do business with such companies and specifically what you have done about this company.

Related: Make $500 for Every Illegal Telemarketer Call to You - Charity Telemarketers are Bad - Make the World Better - Microfinancing Entrepreneurs (Kiva doesn't support bothering you like those above do)

Identifying the Flaws of the FISA Legislation

Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) is one of those politicians that seems to actually be honest. You can disagree with his positions but it is refreshing to have someone that puts integrity and what he believes is right for the country first when compared to the much more common political hacks trying to hide what they do. Here he mentions some of the problems with current attempts to grant immunity to companies that illegally aided spying on citizens of the USA - Identifying the Flaws of the FISA Legislation

The bill includes unjustified retroactive immunity for those alleged to have cooperated with the Administration’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. The administration is effectively asking most members of Congress to grant immunity without knowing what they are granting immunity for.

Current law already grants immunity to companies that cooperate with the government pursuant to a court order or Attorney General certification. Granting additional, retroactive immunity sets a bad precedent by sending the message that breaking the law is permissible and that companies that are supposed to safeguard our personal communications do not have to follow the privacy protections in law.

Related: The First Amendment - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - Voting Machine Failures

Regular Expression Cheat Sheet

Regular Expression Cheat Sheet

Related: Closing a Program That Won't Respond in Ubuntu - Using Multiple Firefox Profiles at the Same Time in Ubuntu

Online Chess

Play chess online: Shredder Computer Chess

Ubuntu: Closing a Program That Won't Respond

Ubuntu tip - to close a program that won't respond:

1. open terminal, type:


2. top


3. get the PID (process ID) of the unresponsive program (for this example say it is 6764), type


4. CTRL-C (to exit top, then type)


5. sudo kill 6764

Type in your password when prompted and the program should then close.