Left In Lowell

Priceless. (Not completely safe for work, if only because your officemates will think you’re insane as you begin laughing hysterically at this.)

The 1913 law is all but appealed (just needs the Gov’s signature). Congrats to the people who worked so hard to see this happen. Let’s relegate bigotry and discrimination into the past. I am proud to live in Massachusetts today.

Secondarily, I just got an email from MassVote that the state Senate has also passed Same Day Voter Registration. So we need to call our state Reps, folks, and make sure it passes in the House as well before the session ends on Thursday.

Now, if they could both pass the Global Warming Solutions Act, to complement the great work done in MA for the environment, this will have been a legislative session well worth lauding.

Thanks to the House and Senate members who have helped us make so much progress this session, and to the Governor and all his hard work on so many fronts. I believe I can safely say I am cautiously optimistic about Massachusetts’ future.

The Sun reports that a boy was hit while on his bike in Gorham St, after dodging into traffic. He had no helmet and was seriously injured.

I grew up in a rural neighborhood, but I remember my mom was really strict with us in teaching us how to ride on the public roadways. I even recall having to read a booklet on the rules of the road, that a bicycle is considered, for purposes of these rules, as having the same rights and responsibilities as any automobile. Including riding with traffic and not against, and stopping at red lights and stop signs like any car does. (Funny, I don’t remember her making me wear a helmet.)

Every day, I see bicyclists ignoring these rules…riding on the sidewalk, not stopping at lights or stop signs, or riding against traffic…and not wearing any helmets. Maybe 5% of Lowell’s bikers follow the rules so far as I can tell. In a city like Lowell, it’s even more imperative that we cyclists follow the rules and wear our helmets. (I wear mine despite its habit of flattening my nice new haircut, which looks goofy once I get to work - but I don’t care, because I won’t petal one turn out of my driveway without it.)

I almost decided these last couple of days to ride to work, and via Gorham too - and I wish I had, and wish I would have the courage to tell teenagers I meet on the road, like this young man, that they need to ride defensively and carefully. My best wishes that this boy pulls through and recovers and my thoughts are with his family.

If you have kids, whether they ride in the city or the country or the suburbs, make sure they understand the rules they need to follow and that they wear a helmet. You can read up on some important tips here. And drivers, remember that bikes are out there and have a right to be on the road:

Stay Out of the Door Zone. Bicyclists may use an entire travel lane even where there are bike lanes, so stay away from parked cars.

Bicycles Are Vehicles. Respect bicyclists’ right to full use of the road; the law allows bicyclists to use an entire travel lane even where there are bike lanes.

Next time a bicycle takes up your lane in front of you to get around a parked car, or to make a left turn in a multi-lane intersection, don’t get pissy. They have every right. And parents need to understand that their kids have to ride smart. Let’s keep it safe for everyone out there.

I’m not the biggest watcher in the country of either the summer or winter Olympics, but this year, I will not watch one damned second of the Games. Why? Because though the Olympics are supposed to be a symbol of cooperation and open spirit, China has actually become more repressive in the lead up to the opening ceremony.

Whatever possessed the idiots on the selection committee anyway? I could have told them this was the worst idea back when they chose China. Hey, where are the next Olympics going to be? North Korea?

China hasn’t changed, I don’t care how many upstart millionaires there are there now. The government is still repressive (Tibet, anyone?) and is paranoid-delusional, they think a few thousand monks are dangerous to their rule. The Chinese are not a free people. They do not have free access to information, they are not free to vote as they will, or move as they will, or determine a lot about their lives. So what is so Olympic in spirit about China? Nothing, absolutely nothing, and anyone who watches the Olympics this year needs to be a little ashamed, for in some small fashion enabling this regime to do this to their own people. Let’s see this Olympics have the worst viewership in history - boycott watching any part of this once-august tradition, now sullied by the host country which may have moved mountains, but not its politics, to obtain the honor.

I refuse to take part. Will you?

Help Obama and listen to some awesome operatic singers. (And you might catch certain persons you might know playing in the orchestra too!)

BMG writers David and Charley, who are both professional singers (you can hear some of David’s work here at his site), are part “National Anthem,” an effort by professional musicians to raise money for Barak Obama. They are trying to reach 100 tickets sold by the end of this month (ie, this Thursday!) for the Friday, September 12, 8:00 p.m. show. It will be held at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Avenue in Boston, and will feature Beethoven, Bizet, Debussy, Handel, Mozart and Rossini, both operatic and orchestral pieces. (I see they are planning to play Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture - I love that piece!)

I’ve heard David sing in person before but it’ll be my first time listening to Charley. I quite look forward to it. (Even if once again I’ll probably end up lugging percussion equipment around.)

Ticket information, according to the website: “Tickets are available for contributions of $100, $50, or $20 to the Obama campaign. Patron seating is available for $1,000. Remember — the point of this concert is to raise money to help Barack Obama become president. So please donate as generously as you can!”

I think this is wonderfully fair pricing, if you cannot afford a large donation there’s an amount that’s right for you. Buy your ticket now so that the hardworking musicians who are giving their time and talent to this know they will achieve a successful fundraiser! If you’ve already maxed out donating to Obama, you can buy your tickets by donating to the DNC.

The Lowell Sun website is broken. At least from my end. Talk about breaking news. A 404 error if you try to access their site? Ouchie. That’s pretty broken, all right. (Did someone forget to pay the domain name or something?)

Too bad, I really wanted to read the Column as recommended by Dick Howe. It sounds like a hoot. According to Dick, “But do save a paper version of this Column. When the paper’s obituary is being written in a few years, the July 27, 2008 edition will be an important artifact that will explain much about the Sun’s demise.”

Edit: OK, it’s back up! Time to go mock the editorial…

The Patrick administration admits they should not be needed if their energy plan works (hear Secretary Ian Bowles at Lowell’s public meeting last week talking about the Billerica power plant), many local officials are opposed, and specifically, the peak power plant being proposed in Billerica is just that - a peak power plant, less efficient and more polluting than other peak usage solutions, such as grid energy storage. The only people who really want the plant built are those slated to make millions on it selling us power that, it turns out, we really don’t need.

Not if we go California’s route, that is. Sensible regulation has stabilized California’s usage of energy, despite its population and economic growth. According to the article at Salon,

In the past three decades, electricity consumption per capita grew 60 percent in the rest of the nation, while it stayed flat in high-tech, fast-growing California. If all Americans had the same per capita electricity demand as Californians currently do, we would cut electricity consumption 40 percent. If the entire nation had California’s much cleaner electric grid, we would cut total U.S. global-warming pollution by more than a quarter without raising American electric bills. And if all of America adopted the same energy-efficiency policies that California is now putting in place, the country would never have to build another polluting power plant.

Saving energy is also saving money, and given our growing energy costs (like your gas bill, which has increased largely due to demand from new power plants like the one being proposed in Billerica) we could all use the break for our household budgets.

Simple things, like painting the flat roofs of warehouses white, or requiring outdoor lighting to lose less than 6% of the light to an upwards direction (requiring lower wattage to light the same square footage) can go a long way, but businesses don’t do these things out of the goodness of their hearts.

Read the rest of the article, it’s really excellent. Yet again it shows that reducing climate-changing pollution and our dependence on foreign sources of carbon-based fuel does not have to cost us - in fact, it will benefit consumers, businesses, and most of all, our economy.

Second place in today’s news in why-the-Billerica-power-plant-is-a-bad-idea, who wants to wake up to a sound like your kettle on the stove whistling, except as loud as a power plant can make it?

“It sounded like a very loud whistle, for a short duration of time, until proper operations could be restored,” Nydam said. “The valves helped save the plant, but they did create a lot of noise, which some folks in the area reported to the mayor’s office.”

Nydam said National Grid spent 15 hours repairing the power lines that were damaged, and that during that time his plant’s entire phone system was out of order.

Oh and did we mention that the Billerica power plant is slated to be a “remote operations” plant? You know, via phone and internet, and stuff. Run from Lowell. Real secure.

Before I head back downtown to work, I wanted to comment on yesterday’s activities. Another great Festival. In addition to a lot of visitors, residents from the various neighborhoods were enjoying; a lot of volunteers.

Last night the streets were also packed. I am glad many of the merchants did so well.

It looks like the weather will hold up; so come back downtown and participate. The City looks great.

Jackie vents (very respectfully, I thought) against the barrage of negative local press which has accompanied the vote on the assistant superintendents’ raises.

To be honest, I’m not sure which side of the issue I am on when it comes to those raises. (Personally, though there’s a small budget increase required, I think it’s bupkis in the grand scheme of things. Compared to say, the rising cost of running school buses or providing health care.) I think Jackie explained herself nicely in her previous post about the raises, and I think there’s an argument that it might not be a great idea, such as Mimi put forth earlier this week.

However, read through Mimi’s post, and then read through some of the idiotic Sun editorials. You’ll note a huge difference. There is a way to respectfully disagree, and then there’s the Lowell Sun, which never saw a story it couldn’t beat with a dead horse (an apt analogy given the editor’s conflict of interest regarding horse racing). Especially when that story involves the schools, teachers, administrators or the School Committee.

The fact is, that certain Sun bosses do “personal” news rather than objective. We’d all be a lot better off if The Museum closed down at this point, unless they can prove to us they can actually run a story which is dispassionate and impartial, looking carefully at the facts, and forgo the temptation to distribute rumor and innuendo, smattered with snide remarks and smears.

Let’s see…

On this story, the Sun complained about Rep. Kevin Murphy’s wife being one of the assistant supers. You have to love how they undermine their own argument (bold mine):

Murphy might not have been in violation of the conflict statutes, but his participation in the negotiations does raise questions, according to government watchdogs.

“That does raise a lot of red flags for me, but that doesn’t mean it’s a violation,” said Pamela Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts.

Common Cause is one of the first groups that jumps into action with regards to ethics violations, so this “doesn’t mean it’s a violation” actually means something.

And why did the Sun choose to excoriate Jackie Doherty more than the others who voted for the raises (you can see her mentioned more than the others here, for instance)? This goes back to doing “personal” news rather than real journalism. Fact is, the Sun editor is sort of on the same side as Faticanti ideologically (by which I mean, having the same friends) but has a particular dislike for Jackie. Because what, they feel personally insulted by the fact that she doesn’t suck up to them? Oh, the pathos.

Then there’s that jewel from Dan Phelps. I admit, it isn’t a great thing that Rep. Murphy represented his wife in the negotiations, but unless there’s an actual violation, or they can prove some quid pro quo, they really need to stop smearing people based on innuendo. What the hell happened to innocent until proven guilty? At the Sun, it’s the other way around, and sarcastically too. Which is, to my mind, very poor writing - it takes very little brains to make a sarcasm-filled diatribe, but a lot of brains to be fair minded, bring up the fact of a potential problem, (and I believe there is a there there), without outright accusing people of things you don’t know they are guilty of.

Bad form, Phelps, bad form.

Now, here at Left in Lowell, we have been occasionally guilty of sarcastic diatribes. If Phelps is as poor a writer as myself, a mere unpaid political blogger with no journalistic training whatsoever (I did take a lot of poetry writing classes though), this is a truly sad state of affairs for our local paper.

The Sun has gone, as they say, off the rails. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend ditching your subscription to this rag.

And they say bloggers are unaccountable. (Time for another blogger ethics panel, perhaps?)

Recently, I got a new toy on my new toy, unlimited data access on my PDA phone. Really nifty, I now can surf the web on the phone. But it took my PDA phone browser to catch several hidden sections of spam links on this website, links you can’t see because they are hidden by formatting, but which are there, none the less. Someone managed to hack these links into the WordPress code on this site. I don’t know when it happened, but it did.

So, I am going forward with the LiL upgrade. WP is not secure, there are too many holes. I know the software I want to switch to is, at a minimum, much more secure, and I have a lot more control. It’s easier to upgrade EE, whereas when you want to upgrade WP to the latest, you often run into compatibility issues with plugins and templates.

I will be reaching out to those who pledged and let them know how they can get me the money. I know I will have enough to at least buy the software. Phase one is to at least get a site set up with most of its current functionality. I can’t afford to make the LiL development a priority past that, but more advanced features can be added as time allows - one great thing about ExpressionEngine is that it’s flexible and modular.

And EE developers take the security of their software very, very seriously, so hopefully this never happens again.