November 28, 2017

There were 3 posts published on November 28, 2017 (this is page 1 of 1).

In Vancouver, 50% of trips are by foot, bike, or transit. This video shows how they did it. – Vox

Vancouver, British Columbia, has aggressive aspirations for sustainability. Its goal is to be entirely powered by clean energy by 2050 — not just electricity, but transportation and heating as well. (I talked to city manager Sadhu Johnston about it in July 2016.)

As part of that effort, the city adopted the goal of 50 percent “sustainable mode share” by 2020 — half of all trips in the city taken by walking, biking, or transit rather than automobile.Fun fact: The city hit that target in 2015, five years early.

The video above, by Clarence Eckerson Jr. of Streetfilms, tells the story of how it happened. As Brent Toderian, a former Vancouver chief planner (who I interviewed at length in June), explains in the film, the city’s success traces all the way back to the 1960s and ’70s, when the extraordinarily prescient citizens of Vancouver rejected a plan to build a network of urban freeways through the city.

Source: In Vancouver, 50% of trips are by foot, bike, or transit. This video shows how they did it. – Vox

How journalists can avoid a James O’Keefe-style sting – Columbia Journalism Review

Undercover videographer and conservative political activist James O’Keefe made a vow on the eve of President Trump’s inauguration: “I’m going after the media next,” he said. “We have your name. We have your number. We are embedded in your institutions. We are inside the newsrooms, and that is our next target.” O’Keefe later claimed he already has “hundred of hours” of media-related video.

This threat comes as O’Keefe’s prominence in politics has spiked. He’s known for stings that feature secretly obtained footage edited for maximum impact (he’s most famous for an undercover operation that led to the downfall of the now-defunct community organizing group ACORN). O’Keefe, whose work on voter fraud President Trump endorsed just weeks before Election Day, recently told The Washington Post that his latest sting video led the FBI to arrest a man suspected of planning a violent inauguration protest. “It legitimizes what we’re doing,” O’Keefe told the Post. “It’s a new era for us.”

Source: How journalists can avoid a James O’Keefe-style sting – Columbia Journalism Review

Fence work progressing

It’s looking more like a fence

One of the things we’ve been meaning to get done is to move our backyard fence to the outer limits of our property lines. For some reason when the fence was first built, the fence was put 8-20 feet inside of our property, leaving the rest our of property essentially abandoned. Miss Ruth had adopted our property on her side of our fence and we never had the heart to “take it back” while she lived here, so when we got new neighbors it seemed time to make the change.

Only I’d never built a fence before.

Enter YouTube. You can learn anything on YouTube.
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