Government

The City of Boston has an organization called One in 3, dedicated to reaching out to the third of the city’s population between the ages of twenty and thirty-four. (Trivia: Ten percent of the city’s population, and 30% of the 20-34 age group, lives in Allston/Brighton). I get their newsletter.

As you might guess, the primary issue for people this age is the primary issue for most of the city: housing. After getting an email newsletter from One in 3, I wrote to the Boston Redevelopment Authority asking how I could get involved in the housing development process. They said I could join an Impact Assessment Group– provided that I lived in Boston in the neighborhood impacted by a particular development.

Fair enough, except that everything they do is geared strictly to people living strictly within the city limits of Boston, rather than people living within spitting distance of Boston. This too is obvious, but it’s also obvioiusly stupid.

Why should Boston have different laws from Cambridge, West Roxbury, and Arlington? It makes little or no sense. We need consistency within the greater Boston metro area. It would help a hell of a lot.

You want to solve the housing problem in this area? Not badly enough, obviously. Here’s my simple plan:

  • The City of Boston should annex all land inside Route 128, or state should impose mandatory zoning reconciliation for the entire area. No matter how it is achieved, the permitting and building process should be identical for the entire area.
  • All universities should be required to provide a bed for all students who don’t already live in the area.
  • All new residential construction greater than, say, 3000 square feet should be required to have a rentable apartment as part of it.
  • Currently, simpler regulations apply to 3-family and fewer buildings than to larger apartment or condo complexes. This should be expanded to four or five.
  • Most new residential development should be encouraged to be at least one story higher. Most height restrictions on residential construction should be eased.
  • Subsidies for reuse of historic or industrial buildings should be increased, especially for environmental remediation. They can pay for this by increasing the cost of parking permits.
  • The subway should be extended: Red line should run out through Arlington, Blue line to Billerica, Green line E train out to the blue line somewhere, Green line Lechmere should be extended to Davis square, with a free transfer at Davis. The “Indigo” or “Circle” line should be constructed, even if it’s just with buses and a dedicated lane. They can pay for this by doubling fares. Double fare will also pay for extra subsidies on discounted T passes for the poor.
  • All independent for-pay surface-level parking lots in the city should be fined or taxed out of existence. Turn that land into a (min. 4 story) parking garage or develop it in some sane way. Don’t waste it like that. Municipal parking lots should be converted to municipal parking garages where possible. Ideally, two lots could be replaced by a garage over the location of one, and then the other could be sold to housing developers. Money for the city, housing for the people.

Any of these would help. All of them would be political suicide. What we need is a supervillan or someone with mind control rays. That’ll solve the problem!

In contrast

In contrast to my lunch-break annoyance, here is a piece of mail from an Evolution/Connector user I got late last week that made me smile:

… Just wanted to say “Thanks.” I struggled for a couple of sessions, but your thorough docs made it possible for me to get Connector working with only a little reading. The software is very intuitive, but not “[sender]-proof” apparently…

They like the software, and the read the manual. Amazing.

Ruckus

When I bought my scooter, I was told that it was technically a motorcycle, since it went faster than about 25 miles an hour, so I should, technically, register it as such. If I were to claim it as a moped, I could probably get away with it. Probably. I figured, I have the license, I might as well get the plate and register it properly. The salesman was confused, somewhat, but let me go ahead and regsiter and pay taxes and get insurance. All on the up-and-up. Which was good, because not two months later my plates got stolen, and I got pulled over for riding a moped too fast, and was able to avoid the ticket by showing them my registration papers.

And now I have to pay excise tax on the bike to the city of Somerville. The RMV seems to think I have a $7000 motorcycle, and so the city billed me for taxes on a much nicer bike. When I called the assessor’s department to complain they told me I had to go by the sticker price even if I got a good deal on it. I said, that is the sticker price. They said, we have to go through the RMV to change the valuation, once we do that we can bill you the correct amount.

I called the RMV. They said, you have to go by the sticker price, and I said, that is the sticker price. They said, no, like what the dealer charges anybody. I said, that is the full list price for a new Honda NPS50: $1899. They were confused that I had bothered to register a moped the proper, legal way. Nobody does that.

We’ll see if I can eventually get this sorted out before I end up selling the scooter and buying a bike that’s actually worth what I’ll be taxed for.

It’s nice to be liked

Louis is probably thirty years old but he looks like a solid 45
Louis says he’s got a headache
I look in his eyes, and I believe him

The big L.K.’s and the gangster disciples
Louis can’t think of who else could take over
But he just can’t get up in the morning
A genuine face, braced for survival

It’s nice to be liked
But it’s better by far to get paid
I know that most of the friends that I have
Don’t really see it that way
But if you can give ’em each one wish
How much do you wanna bet?
They’d which success for themselves and their friends
And that would include lots of money

Funny Funny

OK, here’s a bunch of random stuff for the weekend:
The papernapkin.net rejection service: make up an email address ending in papernapkin.net and give it to someone you don’t want to hear from. Paper Napkin will tell them to go away, so you don’t have to.
The Week in Craig sorts through Craig’s List and looks for the weird, funny stuff, so you don’t have to.
The Nerve Pickup Line Contest chooses the best pickup lines, so you don’t have to figure them out for yourself the hard way.
Blast Off is a great political blog with a great transcript of an obviously deranged person calling a political talk show. Some items are serious, and some are not. Like the one about how you just have to giggle a little bit when a frozen-foods executive is found dead in a freezer.

More Great Headlines

WSJ headline today on the front page: “When the big hand points to the IV, some get ticked off. Subhead: “Traditionalists say IIII is how the Romans did it; Striking a proper balance.” Apparently IIII balances against VIII better than IV does, and fine watchmakers prefer the IIII for that reason. But IV lets you cram in a couple extra features, and it’s becoming more popular.

I love the way they do this sort of weird detailed reporting– tiny aspect of one business that reflects a gradual change that has some impact on business. It’s just neat. Fridays are best, because that’s when they go for the more personal angle, and publish stuff that they allow to border on silliness.

Headline that sounds almost obscene, from page A3: “Regulator Pressures Fannie Officers.”

Correction

Hey! Someone reads this page! And noticed when I wildly and inaccurately stated that the New York Times was totally out of it. The director of the Intersex Initiative actually read my page, and pointed out to me that the Times was one of the first media outlets to cover the issue. There were at least two articles on NYT that predate Salon.com one: Natalie Angier’s report on March 14, 1997 and ISNA board member Alice Dreger’s contributed opinion piece on July 28, 1998.

I still think the article belongs in the medical section and not in style, but I regret that I insulted the Times, which is still, after all, the Paper of Record. Well, actually, the insulting was fun. I don’t regret it at all, paper of record or not.

Slogans

I’ve been trying to figure out a good thing to put as my tag line. For awhile I had some random words from spam, but then I noticed that bloglines (which, by the way, does for blogs what tivo does for TV, and which you should use) uses the tagline as an actual description when it’s showing you a list of feeds you might like. Mine appeared, therefore, to be a blog completely composed of spam. Not so good.

So I switched to an actual description of the content, which was pretty boring. I want something clever. Cleverer (more clever?) than “yes, that is a stupid question.”

Candidates:

  • Or else it gets the hose again.
  • The internet does not love you back.

Hm. I had a really good one earlier today that I have forgotten.