I started out thinking there wouldn’t be a lot of linkage today. Turns out I found something to say, it just took longer than usual.
- Hypertouch, an ISP based in Foster City, California, filed the first Can-Spam Lawsuit last Thursday. It’ll be interesting to see how the law holds up in court, and how effective it is in stopping the spammers. I expect the answer will be “not very effective”.[slashdot]
- Twins Geek has some thoughts on the Twins starting lineup and why using a four man rotation in April makes some sense for them. It’s good to see baseball starting, but I’m not listening to Spring Training games on the radio yet. I’m not sure why, but even with the best broadcasters, I don’t enjoy a game as much on the radio as I do when I’m watching it live.
- Steven Den Beste talks about partial cures for both tuberculosis and terrorism, and why they’re bad. A partial cure leaves the disease resistant to the weapon you use to fight it, which makes eliminating it tougher. That happens a lot when people don’t finish the course of treatment for a disease, especially a slowly reproducing one like TB, and he worries that not finishing the war on terror will have the same sort of effect. He also talks about John Kerry’s candidacy and wonders what Kerry stands for, other than election. As is usual with his posts, I don’t agree with everything, but he’s got a good point or two, and it makes a guy think.
- All’s calm on snowy streets, but the lack of real problems caused by the bus strike doesn’t necessarily mean the buses aren’t important, as the Taxpayers League of Minnesota’s David Strom suggests. There are two big things I’ve seen so far. The first is that I haven’t gone downtown since the strike began, and I probably won’t unless the weather gets nice enough that I’ll take a long walk. I may not be in the majority there, but if other people also cut down on discretionary trips into the downtowns, businesses might start to see some effect. The second is that I’ve seen the traffic not being “free flowing”, especially as I mentioned on Friday Last Thursday’s even rush hour was worse than normal. And no, it’s not possible to get a refund on partially-used bus-passes at this point, which is a shame. If it were, that might (at least if lots of people asked for refunds) turn up the heat on the Met Council to negotiate. They will refund 31-day passes once the strike is done.
- Joe Soucheray says the strike is a chance for transit talk, pointing out that many of the people inconvenienced by the strike make more than the drivers do. That may be, but as more people drive to work, rather than taking the bus, I think we’ll start to see more costs to driving over time. One example is something I saw in California. Because so many people spent over an hour commuting to work, they’d try to multi-task while they were driving, and that led to people not paying attention to the road. Being able to ride the bus to work lets you multi-task safely. Trying to multi-task while driving leads to more dangerous driving, which leads to accidents, which brings you right back to that 5mph commute. It may be that for many of us having transit is a benefit, rather than a necessity. That doesn’t make it any less valuable. [press-patch]