Am a little busy this morning handling my little corner of the I.T. issues of the Division, but I managed to make stops at several sites this morning to catch up. Ken offers his POV on Al Gore's endorsement of Dean--and Gore in general. Shorter Ken: Gore is a 20 year old hanging with the high schoolers. Winning the popular vote in 2000 just shows that Gore will do anything to be popular. Hmmn. Uh--I thought elections were about winning the vote. Yeah, I know about the vagaries of the Electoral College--but I also know about the vagaries of the great snuff-out-the-vote in Florida, brought to you by Diebold and Katherine Harris. But check it out if you want a conservative perspective on this issue. Ken also has a good post about racism in Europe, which is a BIG problem, as anyone familar with Continental politics knows. Ever heard of Jean-Marie LaPen ?

CrawlingWestward has a number of good posts, as always. Three that caught my eye were a review of a World War I book review, a good post and link to an article about whether or not fault line slippage is contributing to coastal erosion, and a third regarding the state of roads here in Louisiana--with links to the Pic and the Advocate.

I'll digress just a bit to talk about the roads down here--the articles are accurate in stating that the major road conditions here are horrible. Speaking for myself, I can confidently aver that the non-major roads are in pretty awful shape as well. One reason, sure, is because there is such a soft foundation upon which to build slabs of reinforced concrete and asphalt--and you won't be able to change this. However, there is also the never stated situation that Louisiana, like most of the other areas of the country, has more or less abandoned the idea of public, mass transit. Which is a shame. Baton Rouge--otherwise a middling sized college town, has air quality problems of the type normally experienced only in cities the size of Houston. Interestingly, Baton Rouge is trying to BLAME Houston for our shitty air. Truthfully, there is a SMALL bit of truth to that--weather tends to travel west to east in this country, and air from Houston follows this path. That doesn't account for the entire problem--but I digress.

I meant to point out that in most areas of the country, we've got a Soviet Style system of transportation choice, which is to say NO CHOICE. You either have a private car--or you don't get around much. I'm actually pretty lucky--I have a car AND a bicycle, although taking a bicycle ANYWHERE in Baton Rouge is like playing with matches in front of an open propane flame. Sure, there's a city bus line, but the system is not adequately funded, there are not nearly enough offset bus stops, and there's the fact that without a right-of-way, buses cannot be competitive--all this and more factors into the system being one stop away from dissolution.

And I haven't even mentioned the lack of interurban transit. Hell, if there was a train service running between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, for instance, I'd travel to the Crescent City AT LEAST twice a month, and probably more often than that. Funny--every time I mention to someone how nice it would be to have something like this, they ALWAYS agree. And yet, nothing--even though there is track between the two cities that is suitable for passenger trains.

Lastly, if real choice was offered, and at least some additional people got out of their cars, the true automobile worshippers would have fewer cars on the road competing with them for space. Imagine--fewer instances of having to deal with the car equivalent of flotsam and jetsam slowly plying their way around town and between cities--at least some of which are driven only because there is no alternative to the private vehicle. You'd think true, hard-core drivers would WANT alternative transportation systems, if only for this reason. Also, you could put some real teeth into enforcement of impaired driving laws. Right now, even convicted drunk drivers often get "special" licenses to allow them to drive "back and forth to work only,"--and if you believe these folks "only" drive to work and back, well, there's some swampland I'd like you to take a look at.

Would this cost money? Yes, it would. And not just a little bit of money. But, it would be money well spent--because it would be going to pay salaries (which are spent on goods and services, which provide an incentive for such needs to be met, i.e., MORE jobs, etc. etc.), it would be money going to provide a genuine service that people have real needs for, there would be safety benefits (I hope no one wants even MORE automotive related fatalities, which are the equivalent of a 9/11 every MONTH--how do you factor the cost of death into a benefits analysis?), and there would be a benefit for car drivers, who could use a road under the conditions it was designed for--instead of dealing with the morning headache of rush hour, a misnomer if there ever was one.

Didn't mean to make this post mostly about cars and mass transit, but my editor couldn't control me. Of course, my editor IS me--one of the nice things about self-publishing the blogger way. The downside is the pay is lousy, but probably commiserate with my writing skills at present. Free means you never get cheated, but always get your money's worth.