Clearer rules and better enforcement needed to make Boston safer for cyclists

Without fail, whenever somebody I know has a bad experience with a cyclist, they come to me about it.

Whether it be co-worker, friend, or family member, if they're not cyclists themselves, they feel the need to report to me that this cyclist was going up the street the wrong way or that cyclist almost ran over an old lady in the crosswalk. You know, because we all know each other. I should bring up these injustices at the next meeting we all have. It was a college kid in skinny jeans. It was a middle-aged Latino guy with window washing equipment. Do I know them?

It usually comes as something of a surprise to people that I do not know the people who are running lights or riding on the sidewalk any better than they know the driver who parked at a bus stop or refusing to pick a lane. All cyclists are not created equally.

In years past, I always wished people would ride more and that the city would be more bike friendly. In more recent times, I got my wish, and now I regret I made it. The rise of programs like Hubway, which rented its 1 millionth bike last month, and the cultural shift in acceptance of bicycles as an alternative form of transportation have led to an explosion of riders on Boston's roads. The problem is that most of them don't know how to ride in the city, and it's making us all look bad.

Boston Bulletin’s Editorials and Op-Eds lock up the grumpy old man market

I don’t know why I do it exactly, but I try to read the free Boston weeklies when I can. Some of the reporting is solid, and they cover things that are sometimes overlooked by the dailies. Wow, though. The editorials and op-eds usually sound like they gave a page to my grandfather and asked him to write about things he was no longer comfortable saying out loud.

The Bulletin. Keeping a finger
on the pulse of the nearly pulseless.

See, for example, the July 25, 2013 edition of the Boston Bulletin[i] (I’d love to link to the actual stories, but the Bulletin, a free paper, doesn’t post their stories online unless you buy a subscription, and then it’s just a PDF. All this despite the fact that there’s an ad in the paper that reads “What drives the internet? CONTENT. Read the Bulletin online at www.buletinnewspapers.com). In it, among a lot of advertising for things you won’t use, ten actual stories, some event listings, one editorial and two op-eds. We’ll start with the op-eds.

In “If I Had A Son,” Frank Sullivan (regular writer of the “Frank Reflections” column) nails the tone-deaf white Irish-American attitude, implying that President Obama is a racist because the latter had the temerity to suggest that if he had a son, that son would resemble Trayvon Martin. Frank, who totally recognizes that America’s racial history is “disgusting,” argues “I thought we are not supposed to use phrases that suggest ‘They all look the same,’ [sic] when describing a black teenager.” His whole follow-up, where he pretends that if he had a son he’d explain to them that they should respect Rosa Parks and MLK, but that any present-day racial struggles are fabricated race baiting, is based on this idea, which is to say “Obama thinks all black kids look alike.” Except that’s not what Obama is saying. He’s saying if he had a son, that son would look black and black teenagers, in his experience, are profiled and in the instance of Trayvon Martin, stalked and ultimately killed for being black. His point is not that all black kids look the same. It’s that all black kids look the same to white people. 

The Private Spy Network: You’re Afraid of the Wrong People

Ever since the whistleblower/traitor (take your pick) Edward Snowden brought to it to everyone’s attention that the United States Government was collecting data on American citizens exactly like they told us they were going to, folks have been a little touchy about government surveillance. Among the spying revelations, it has been brought to light that there’s even a secret big-but-not-as-big-as-originally-reported data facility in Utah that can pretty much store all data that man has ever created. Presumably the same storage space will be available in thumb drive size by next Christmas.

This is Larry Page, CEO of Google.
He knows everything about you.
Mostly because you told him.

In the midst of all this big brother panic, most people seem to be overlooking that the organization that has the most data on you isn’t the NSA, but likely a private company like Google or Facebook. Why is this? Because you keep giving them all your information! On a regular basis, we enter very real and personal information – our addresses and phone numbers, our interests and political views, compromising photographs and vacation plans – to the social networks. Many of us then use those same social network signins to gain access to other websites. Those websites then also get access to some of your information, not to mention the social networks gaining information about your activity on those websites you’re using them to sign in with.

Think about what has been the most destructive force to the American people in recent years. If you work really hard, you can try to blame Chris Dodd and Barney Frank for some of it, I guess. Really though, the most destructive force in peoples’ lives since 9/11 has been private corporations (mostly banks) taking advantage of folks’ desires to own houses and other property. The information that individuals keep willingly allowing private companies to collect (which we usually do not out of necessity but convenience) is a much clearer invitation to be taken advantage of or otherwise injured.

Unpaid internships are exploitative, classist bull$#!+

Over the past few years, unpaid internships have popped up everywhere, often seemingly replacing what had previously been jobs that adult people with paid vacations did. Plenty of people have gone into great detail about how unpaid internships are exploitative and usually don’t lead to jobs, but let’s say they do. If working for free is a requirement to get a job that pays, I’ll make the case that that arrangement is even worse.

My compensation is a thing I also have to pay for? Super cool, bro!

To start, there’s the obviously exploitative nature of the internship. At its very best, you are learning a skill in much the same way that an indentured servant in a colonial print shop would. Sure, at the end you will have the skillset to open your own shop (if you can somehow acquire the capital after not working for so long. Maybe you can borrow $20,000 from your parents?), but in the meantime, your boss made a bunch of profit having you do a bunch of stuff he either a. should have been able to pay you at least minimum wage for, or b. couldn’t afford to pay you minimum wage for because his business model doesn’t bring in enough profit for the required labor. At worst (and I’ve seen this done many times) someone doesn’t want to do something in an office or a “start-up,” and so they say “we can just get an intern for that.” The company fills out some paper work, the intern packs and sends mailers or orders, and at the end, they both lie to a university and pretend the kid learned something about marketing.

Anthony Weiner. Come on, dude.

I was really happy to see Anthony Weiner mounting a comeback in American politics. While short on actual accomplishments, Weiner was a good liberal advocate in Congress. More to the point, though, I’m not really comfortable with people losing their jobs because of their marital infidelities.

Anthony Weiner (NSFW)

America has proven time and again in recent years that, in regard to sex scandals, there can be second acts in politics. Bill Clinton is the most obvious figure here, but more recently, Mark Sanford was elected to congress after stealing taxpayer money to go on a sexy excursion with then-mistress/now-wife. Even Weiner’s NYC pal, Eliot Spitzer, who had some fun with prostitutes on the public dime, is up 15 points in his primary for New York Comptroller. All three of these examples were pretty indisputably worse infidelities than Weiner sending selfies to women not named Huma. And worse still, all of the above cost taxpayer dollars which, unless you’re counting a data plan, Weiner did not do.

So I was happy to see the Weiner surge in the polls. He was up 3 points on City Councilor president  Christine Quinn as recently as last week. Then he had to go and muck it up again.