January 28, 2004
Vieux Québec
View of Vieux Québec from hotel window of high street and city hall.
Elegant, walkable, and scenic, Québec City functions as a provincial capital.
Click to enlarge image.
Québec has a much better preserved past than Saint Louis,
and a vastly better preserved French langueage and culture.
January 21, 2004
Kerry 2004, paid for by Howard Dean
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Purposeful web sites are making a mistake by inserting googleads. |
| While acceptable for your web site to agree to have a sponsor, and for you to use links, text, images, and all the other modern conveniences to promote your sponsor, the googleads are bound to diminish your site. | |
| If you must add dross links to 'related' sites, just choose and add your own links or join a webring. Or if it's the coin you seek, get a sponsor that matches your taste. | |
| Allowing Google (or Overture/Yahoo or whoever) to randomly stuff your pages based on word association is doomed to lead to rivals' text and links splattered about your page. | |
And some readers just plain dislike being force-fed adverts, arguing that 'contextual advertising' is spam. | |
Click to see screenshot of context.
Keep score of the delegate count, and Slate's campaign field guide.
Slate on the pragmatism of electing electable candidates.
January 18, 2004
Measure how busy auto traffic on a street is
How do you measure how busy auto traffic on a street is ?
Pleasanton city traffic engineer Jeff Knowles explains this new method
the city is considering adopting to measures the impacts of traffic on
residential streets that would rely less on numbers and more on
"quality of life" issues.
Instead of looking only at how much traffic streets can bear, the new
standards would try to gauge how traffic volume effects residents'
ability to walk across the street, ride bicycles, or get in and out
of driveways.
Under the current system, the flow of traffic on streets and
intersections is graded on a A-through-F letter scale, with "A"
describing traffic that's flowing smoothly, and an F describing
gridlock.
If the city's computer models show a new development would push
traffic in the area past the "D" level, its backers must scale their
projects back or pay for road improvements that address the problem.
That system has worked for major arterials, where the goal is to
prevent traffic congestion. But on residential streets in
neighborhoods, residents may notice increases in traffic long before
streets reach their carrying capacity.
January 17, 2004
Spun answer
Q: Where would Howard Dean be today without the Internet?
A1: He would be pumping gas in Arkansas.
A2: I think there is no question that the new people who have been brought in
through the Internet are the real powers behind the Dean campaign. So it is
essential.
Analysis
Correct: Answer2.
The awake spinner pumps up the value of their own contribution,
without detracting from their employer or client.
Interview with Zephyr Teachout, Howard Dean's director of Internet organizing.
January 16, 2004
NYC Co-op: qualifying a buyer
The NYT draws examples from various demographic strata, commonly
upmarket. The NYT wants its advertizers to believe such content is relevant
to its readers. Also, FSP is pleased to see MOTOKO RICH on firmer ground
after her ill-fated detour into cultural criticism.
Let's say there's some 38-year-old guy on Wall Street who makes $1.2 million a
year in salary, has three kids and wants to buy a $5 million condo," Ms. Brainerd
said. To qualify for a co-op, she said, the buyer would probably have to show that
he had $10 million to $15 million in liquid assets. "He hasn't had enough time to
sock away $10 million or $15 million in cash," she said. "But if you're buying a
condo, you just need enough money for a down payment and to be able to pay
your monthly mortgage. The higher the prices get, the higher the stakes are with
the co-op boards.
See also New York Wiki and NYT.
January 01, 2004
LIRR system, fare maps
LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) publishes various maps, some showing routes
and branches, some showing fare zones. I haven't yet found a map combining
fare zones and routes.
Also, I haven't yet found a map showing transfer points for each route.
Sure you might have to transfer at Hicksville, and Hickville is indeed shown
on the map, but Hicksville is not shown as a transfer point, so you cannot
learn from the map that your transfer will be at Hicksville.
Compare to this example map showing explicit transfer point:
Other LIRR maps: Fare zone map.
Combined map: fare zones 1 though 14 (NYC to Montauk)
