Trucking companies are, understandably, quite angry about this week’s announced crackdown on garbage haulers using back roads in the Finger Lakes to get to upstate landfills. Will the downstate municipal garbage authorities ever figure out that it might be cheaper (if slower) to haul trash to Seneca Falls via the Erie Canal system? […]

This video from CNN about a foreclosure-plagued gated community near Las Vegas (75% of the houses are now empty) is a strange expression of the American dream. (Or maybe a disturbing suppuration of it.) Watching the homeowner featured in this report reminds me that one person’s idea of heaven can certainly be another […]

In an election year where Americans are analyzed in terms of demographics (black or white, young or old, “educated” or “uneducated”), with candidates choosing which ones “matter,” depersonalization seems to be the spirit of the times. In Myanmar, the government is pretending that hundreds of thousands of its cyclone-hit people are not really there, […]

One of my favorite childhood books was Richard Adams’ Watership Down. His follow-up novel, Shardik, was very different (and less popular; I can’t remember if I finished it, to be honest). It was set in a fantasy world where the central figure of worship was a giant bear, whose mysterious appearance and journey […]

Recently I came across the following comment by an observer commenting on how young “netroots activists” he’s met are using — or not using — the Internet:
They are not specifically computer literate. They have a facile ability with games, IM, vanity websites, P2P, etc., but not much skill at digging into information, data mining […]

The ESDC has done a big re-launch of the famous I Love New York tourism brand. The new ads are going to be targeting Northeastern states, trying to get economically strapped vacationers to drive over the border and head Upstate instead of just down to NYC. Good timing for it, I suppose. […]

The Buffalo News is airing speculation that Upstate czar Daniel Gundersen may be on Gov. Paterson’s chopping block — whether as part of a general post-Spitzer housecleaning, or as a sop to Manhattan interests, remains unclear.
Meanwhile, the Rochester D&C is looking at complaints from the League of Women Voters that Gundersen was playing too fast […]

OK, so maybe we’re so down that we’re seeing “miracles” everywhere, but I wasn’t the only one pleasantly surprised by Joanie Mahoney’s abruptly announced decision to flush the Armory Square sewage treatment plant, which hit the news on Saturday. A rare headline that makes you feel like it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood […]

Or, to be more precise, park-ing: New York State Park camping reservations are up 16 percent. This mirrors a trend in other states. So this summer, the fens and spinneys of New York may very well be filled with folks trying to save a buck on vacations, blowing up their propane stoves and […]

There’s been some news about how text-messaging argot has been getting into students’ term papers and other communications. Some of my daily work involves the processing and editing of information submitted by students and the public through e-mail or online forms, but I haven’t seen much text-ese. The puzzling trend that I’ve noticed […]