Monthly Archives: December 2004

Letter to America: Jurik Martin on The Airport Security Mess

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Dave Farber forwarded Jurik Martin’s email regarding the impression the current airport security mess makes on visitors:

The collective agony is compounded because to complain publicly is not allowed any more when the issue is national security, even if its implementation is far from perfect. It is, for example, patently obvious that Dulles does not have enough security gates, but to point this out could mean a one way ticket to Guant?namo.
It would also be unwise to ask if it is always entirely necessary to half undress before passing through screening, frozen-footed, clutching belt-less trousers, boarding passes and government-issued identification clenched between teeth.
Last month I witnessed a security agent ordering a mother to pass a three-month-old separately through screening (by rolling the child through, perhaps).

Tim Kelley: Kenton Peters on local politics & development

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Tim Kelley summarized a recent letter on Madison’s downtown development trends from local developer Kenton Peters. [I’d like to link to it, but their articles go offline rather quickly]. Peters likely makes some useful points on the City’s “development process”, however, I for one, do not want to see another Peters building inflicted on the city. Peters’ federal courthouse (the blue silo version) and the WARF monster on University Avenue are surely more than sufficient eyesores. Background links: Alltheweb Clusty Google MSN TeomaYahoo Search

Wisconsin Agri-Business: South American Competition

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Larry Rohter takes us to Brazil where he explores the world’s new breadbasket.

Sometime over the next decade or so, Brazil, which Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described as “an agricultural superpower” during a visit in October, hopes to pass the United States as the world’s largest agricultural producer. But the trend is far broader and can be felt also in parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay, with a deep impact on the region’s economy and environment. And it has spurred a debate that has mainly focused on expansion into areas where the Amazon rainforest is thought to be jeopardized.
“There has been a silent revolution in the countryside” since the 1990’s, Brazil’s minister of agriculture, Roberto Rodrigues, said in an interview in the capital, Bras?lia. The past four or five years in particular, he said, have been “characterized by spectacular growth and a huge increase in demand” abroad for foodstuffs, which has given Brazil “the capacity to compete with anyone.”

Related Links: Alltheweb Clusty Google Teoma Yahoo

Madison WiFi RFP

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The State of Wisconsin Department of Administration Friday issued this RFP:
REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) For CITYWIDE WIFI ACCESS And DESIGN, INSTALL, OPERATE, MANAGE, MAINTAIN AND MARKET A COMMON WIRELESS ACCESS SYSTEM (CWAS) for DANE COUNTY REGIONAL AIRPORT [654K PDF]
I’ll post some comments after I’ve had a chance to review the document. Let’s hope this flies in a citizen friendly way (rather than the recent anti-citizen legislation that was passed in Pennsylvania).
It’s due January 10th, 2005. I wonder what the odds are on a SBC win (SBC is the incumbent, all powerful local telco. Local player TDS perhaps has a shot, along with others).
Esme Vos has already posted comments on the RFP. Via Glenn Fleishman

David Bernhardt: Clear Thinking on the Role of Sports in Society

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David Bernhardt offers some rather clear thinking on sports & society, in light of the recent Detroit NBA fight, steroids and the NHL strike:

What are our expectations of these athletes and our own son and daughters? Hopefully, it is to watch them compete, have fun and perform to the best of their natural ability. When society begins to focus on winning at all costs, we see where the fun leaves the sport, performance enhancement cheating begins and frustration of continual expectation boil over in an unexpected violence. In addition, the rapid firing of college coaches from an upstanding university where the student-athletes were students first and athletes second, makes one again question the values of the institutions of higher learning.