Wanted: One Apology from the Seattle PI

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Generally speaking, I tend to like the Seattle PI better than the Seattle Times. However, when a crane collapsed in Bellevue last November, I was disgusted by the PI’s response: an immediate front-page article digging up and detailing five-year-old accounts of the past drug use of the poor guy operating the crane that day. As if this guy’s day wasn’t bad enough — he goes to work, climbs to the top of a tower crane, and then rides the thing down as it collapses into nearby apartment buildings — he then has to endure the ingominy and public humiliation of having his past transgressions dug up, splashed across the front page of the newspaper, and implicitly blamed as the cause of the accident. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t had a drug conviction in five years, nor that his employer required drug tests that he had reliably passed, nor that there was no indication of drug use at the time of the accident. What mattered was that he was guilty! Guilty, guilty, guilty!

This morning, the PI reported on the official determination of the cause of the crane’s collapse:

A poorly designed foundation was the primary cause of the tower crane collapse in Bellevue, a deadly construction accident that spurred state lawmakers Friday to introduce crane-safety bills that would rank among the toughest in the nation.

A three-month investigation into the crash by the Department of Labor and Industries has found that the crane’s steel foundation failed, and that the 210-foot-high structure would not have toppled if it had been bolted into concrete like most other tower cranes, sources close to the investigation told the Seattle P-I.

I, along with more than a few other people, feel quite strongly that the PI owes the crane operator an apology. Easy as it may have been to do, their public vilification of the crane operator — based on nothing more than sensationalistic items in his past, not through any verifiable current information — was a slimy, sleazy way to grab eyeballs and sell papers at the expense of his reputation. Trial and conviction should be handled in the courts, not in the headlines.

PostSecret

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If you haven’t run across PostSecret yet, check it out. The concept is incredibly simple: people write their secrets on a postcard and send them in. Every Sunday, a new batch of secrets is posted on the site.

They’re funny, sad, uplifting, heartbreaking — and incredible.

Blarch Badness: Me!

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Put your voting shoes on! Er…that doesn’t even make sense. Moving on…

Metroblogging Seattle is kicking off Blarch Badness today. Um, what? Blarch Badness!

As I was writing my last post, I was thinking if there were a way we could figure out what the important, meaningful, and wonderful blogs in this city were. Maybe a tournament. You know, like March Madness. Only with blogs.

Sadly, the best I could do for a name was Blorch Badness. Or Super Fantastic Mega Blogger Ultimate Supremacy Championship. I need to work on names.

But a tournament! And it will be just like March Madness, with regionals. You will get to vote on matchups between the 32 highest rated, most popular, possibly best blogs the Seattle metro area has to offer. Even the Slog (if they behave themselves). And there might even be a prize at the end. (Hey! Anyone out there want to donate a prize?)

Surprisingly enough, I made it into the opening round!

3 Seattle Daily Photo vs #6 Michael Hanscom

And finally, a battle of photographers — Kim’s daily shots of Seattle vs. the most famous camera store employee to ever be fired by Microsoft.

Admittedly, I’m not quite sure how I ended up in the West Seattle round (will I have to move if I win?) — truth to tell, I think I’ve been to West Seattle once or twice, and have only lived on First Hill and up here in Northgate — but hey, no complaints!

I should also probably make sure that I actually have a photo up here somewhere, seeing as how I’m matched up against Seattle Daily Photo (some pretty stiff competition…I might not even vote for myself!). Sure, I’ve got lots of photos in various places, but with nothing on the main page…hrm.

I know! I’ll shamelessly stoop to using a photo of Jessica Rabbit kissing Betty Boop (from last Halloween at The Vogue) to court a few votes! I’m sure that’ll work!

Betty Boop and Jessica Rabbit

In any case — check out todays round, and vote! Vote early! Vote often!

(Vote for me?)

Initiative 957

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This has my support, my signature if I find someone canvassing for signatures, and my vote if it should actually make it to the ballot: the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance‘s Initiative 957.

If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would:

  • add the phrase, “who are capable of having children with one another” to the legal definition of marriage;
  • require that couples married in Washington file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage automatically annulled;
  • require that couples married out of state file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage classed as “unrecognized;”
  • establish a process for filing proof of procreation; and
  • make it a criminal act for people in an unrecognized marriage to receive marriage benefits.

Absurd? Very. But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions which make up the Andersen ruling. By getting the initiatives passed, we hope the Supreme Court will strike them down as unconstitional and thus weaken Andersen itself. And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.

I’m in. Of course, other people aren’t so excited…

Cheryl Haskins, executive director of Allies for Marriage & Children, agreed with [I-957 filer Gregory] Gadow’s group on at least one point about the initiative: “It’s absurd,” she said.

Haskins said opponents of same-sex marriage “have never said that the sole purpose of marriage is procreation.”

“When we talk about defending the institution of marriage, we’re talking about the union of a man and a woman,” she said. “Some of those unions produce children and some of them don’t.”

With I-957, “you’re dictating people’s choices in a way that is utterly ridiculous,” she said.

Which, of course, is the point.

The [Washington State Supreme Court majority] opinion [upholding Washington’s ban on same-sex marriage] written by Justice Barbara Madsen concluded that “limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers the state’s interests in procreation and encouraging families with a mother and father and children biologically related to both.”

Gadow said the argument is unfair when you’re dealing with same-sex couples who are unable to have children together.

“What we are trying to do is display the discrimination that is at the heart of last year’s ruling,” he said.

I’d add that the language as written is also unfair to heterosexual couples who can’t (or for any reason prefer not to) have children, hetero- or homosexual couples who adopt, or any other combination or situation you can come up with that’s not the husband, wife, and two point five children scenario. I was disgusted with the ruling them, I still am, and I’m quite amused by I-957’s approach to poking at the issue.

Sign me up!

Throwing down the gauntlet…

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Bill Gates, in an interview with Steven Levy for Newsweek:

Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.

There’s a few other doozy quotes in there as well, but that’s the one that really got my attention.

More under the jump…

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Nobody Likes a Quitter

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As we enter this first day of February, I’ve now officially been one month entirely without cigarettes.

I’d been ‘working on quitting’ for a few months now, but as anyone who’s done that can tell you, exactly how hard one is ‘working on’ it can vary wildly day to day, and ‘quitting’ is often a long way from ‘quit.’ Still, I’d done a pretty good job of drastically cutting down how much I was smoking over a few months, to the point where I went the five days of our Christmas trip to Alaska entirely smoke-free without any hitches whatsoever. I had my last few smokes while out at the closing night of The Vogue on New Years Eve, and that was that.

Two major points to make:

  1. This was not a New Years Resolution. Out of long experience (both personal and vicarious), I’d never make ‘quitting smoking’ a New Years Resolution, as I rarely see a New Years Resolution that survives much beyond a week (often, they don’t survive more than a few hours). It’s for this very reason that I tend to make the same New Years Resolution every year — to suddenly devote myself to a regimen of strict celibacy. Hey, if I’m going to break a resolution, I might as well enjoy breaking it! ;)

  2. I’m not sure I’d really say that I’ve quit smoking. It was definitely time to stop, for a number of reasons — but I know myself well enough (and have read enough about the physical and psychological barriers to quitting smoking) that a flat-out statement that I’ve ‘quit’ would be foolish. At the same time, when I decided to stop dropping acid some time ago, I never claimed to have ‘quit,’ only that it was something that I didn’t want to do — and it’s been probably somewhere close to a decade since I’ve done any illicit drugs, and I certainly don’t see myself picking up the habit again. Sometimes — for me, at least — it’s simply easier to decide to stop than to QUIT.

As it turns out, once I was approaching it from a “this is something I don’t really need to do anymore” perspective, rather than an “everyone says I should quit, so I guess maybe I should try” perspective, it wasn’t terribly difficult at all. No major cravings, no major mood swings (Prairie verified this one, too, so it’s not just rose-colored glasses on my part). I am getting very tired of having colds, though — apparently one of the big side effects is a few weeks of increased susceptibility to illness, as your immune system adjusts to the sudden drastic switch in chemicals being pumped into your body. I’ve spent the majority of January sniffling, wheezing and whining my way through at least three rounds of head colds. Ick.

Still — if that’s the worst thing I have to complain about with this, I’m doing okay.

I did find a timeline that I’ve been keeping in mind during this…

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Faux Klingons

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I just heard about this through last Sunday’s ‘Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!‘ show (which I just found out is available as a podcast, since I never manage to remember to turn on the actual radio), and I think this might be the best Iraq War analogy I’ve heard yet:

One Minute Speech by Rep. David Wu, D-Oregon, 1st District, Portland:

Mr. Speaker,

Four years ago, this administration took America to war in Iraq without adequate evidence. Since that time, this administration hasn’t listened to the American people, it hasn’t listened to our professional military, and it certainly hasn’t listened to this congress.

You know, it’s said of a prominent businessman in downtown Portland that he never listened to anybody, and that if he was ever drawn in a cartoon, he would be drawn without ears. Now, this President has listened to some people: the so-called ‘Vulcans’ in the White House, the ideologues. But you know, unlike the Vulcans of Star Trek, who made their decisions based on logic and fact, these guys make it on ideology. These aren’t Vulcans! There are Klingons in the White House!

But unlike the real Klingons of Star Trek, these Klingons have never fought a battle of their own. Don’t let faux Klingons send real Americans to war. It’s wrong.

So. Very. Awesome. I love this.

Apparently, there’s a book out called Rise of the Vulcans focusing on Bush’s core advisors, who have dubbed themselves “Vulcans” after the Roman god of War. Wu just took the Vulcan thing and ran with it. In entirely the wrong direction.