TODAY’S WAPO, REINFORCED BY A FEW ITEMS FROM THE LAST FEW DAYS PAINTS AN INTERESTING PICTURE OF THE WORLD:
On the Census report dealing with Stay at Home Moms:
Who knew that McDonnell is targeting primarily a lower income, less-well-educated, primarily Hispanic demographic? Not a traditional winner in the Commonwealth.
And speaking of McDonnell Tom Toles did a nice job on the McDonnell AntiPlan. Papering over the chasm.
Finally, a good ad from Allstate.
“Two out of three teens admit to texting while driving. Some of them will never be hear from again.” Now how about an ad from Allstate about the need to transition to more safer and more energy efficient modes of travel to support functional settlement patterns? Perhaps they could insure METRO riders.
And on the topic of ads, who knew that it was worth a multi-day buy of a 4 page color insert in section A to tout Siemens? Does anyone believe those Chevron and BP ads?
Under the category of “There is not a single dysfunctional activity that does not have a lobby group supporting it.” Try this headline:
“Air Safety Initiatives Run Into Opposition.” Yes, sir, keep flying those commuter planes into the ground because if more flying time is required to adequately train pilots, we will not make as much money.
Fairly distribute the full cost of alternative modes and let citizens choose the most efficient and safe mode.
Have you noticed that the news of the economic ‘recovery’ is illustrated with graphics that show “quarterly percentage change from previous year.” A shorter red bar looks less freighting than the full picture.
Today’s Metro section announces a “New Local Home Page” with the URL of washingtonpost.com/local. A perfect example of why “local” is one of the eight Core Confusing Words.
Go there and you see a rehash of the Metro page with links to “D.C., VA and MD” ‘news.’ Just ten days ago Ian Shapira pointed out (in WaPo) that MainStream Media outlets that tried to put out news based on municipal jurisdiction boundaries (much less by state borders) were dying like flies at the first hard frost.
A few days ago there was a headline “Suburb Braces for An End to Tranquillity” about a place that was being converted to? A “SUBURB.”
MEMO to MainStream Media: Stop using Core Confusing Words and understand the organic structure of human settlement patterns or keep dying like flies.
The big news for Bacon’s Rebellion is from the Metro section today under the headline “For Relief, Region Told to Go East.” That is shorthand for “move the Jobs and Services East so there is not so much East to West AM (and West to East PM) commuting. This follows a report on 29 September on the distribution of poverty within R=25. Poor East, rich West.
Stewart Schwartz gets a lot of good press. He is right on all counts. However, no one mentions the issue is really Balance within Clear Edges and Critical Mass.
There is discussion of the need for shared-vehicle system station-area development. There must be METRO system wide Balance as well as Alpha Village and Alpha Community scale Balance.
EMR