Lincolnite

The Lincoln police need your help. If you have seen Antonio Banks, call Crimestoppers at 475-3600 or the police department at 441-7204 with information. Banks is considered armed and dangerous.

The more I think about the failures of various levels of government in Katrina's wake, the angrier I get. For a long time I wasn't able to pin down exactly what I thought the failures were. Then I realized: the failures were the most basic failures a government could possibly make. People create governments to protect three things:

• Life
• Liberty
• Property

The protection of those three things is at the core of our government's responsibilities. All we ask of our government is that they keep us alive, let us be free, and prevent others from taking or harming our property. In post-Katrina New Orleans, local, state, and federal governments have failed on all three counts. If we cannot trust our government to do the only three things it really has to do, what can we trust them to do? That New Orleans has descended into anarchy is not surprising. The government violated its contract with the people, so the people severed the contract. I don't blame them. That's not to say I excuse their actions -- just because the government fails you doesn't give you the right to infringe upon the rights of your fellow citizens -- but I can at least, on a very basic level, empathize with their fury. So many levels of government have failed so miserably at such basic tasks, that I can only hope that the reaction nationwide is a strong cynicism toward government in general. Americans have over-trusted their government for too long, in the process forfeiting far too many liberties. Do I actually think Americans will use this unfortunate situation as a catalyst for a general government contraction? No. But a guy can hope.

LES has decided to continue with its recommendation to run a high-voltage power line along the west edge of Nine Mile Prairie. The decision is somewhat surprising considering the intense disapproval of the plan by prairie supporters, whose main complaint is that the power line will ruin the view from the prairie. LES is stuck in a no-win situation. They can keep the line next to the prairie and sacrifice PR points at a time when rates are increasing. Or they can cave in, move the line, and be forced to raise rates even faster due to the extra costs, thus sacrificing PR points. I don't find the prairie supporters' complaint very compelling. I don't think that "it will ruin the view" is a sufficient justification for awarding them de facto veto power over neighboring developments. It would be an unfortunate precedent. Today it's a power line. Tomorrow it's a house, or a gas station, or a Hy-Vee. The prairie's primary purpose is as a biological reserve. A power line will not affect that role. An undisturbed view is a nice bonus, but it is a weak justification for applying this sort of an easement on neighboring property.

I haven't been to a high school football game in years. Until last night, that is. I got to watch the North Star Gators play the Millard South Patriots from the press box at Seacrest Field. I acted as spotter for my cousin, who is North Star's PA announcer. Watching most of a game through a pair of binoculars is a little odd, but I had a lot of fun. As a Southeast grad I probably shouldn't be going to North Star games, but I may just have to go help spot a few more times this season.

Two quick lessons in market clearing price gouging. Excerpts:

...it's possible by law to keep prices below their market-clearing levels. In politics and law, that's called "price control." In economics, the result of that policy is called "shortage." At any price below the market-clearing level, buyers will want to buy more gasoline than sellers have to sell. The result is either waiting in line, which is a very inefficient means of rationing compared to letting the price rise, or some sort of legal rationing system (no doubt with extra rations for SUV owners and others who "need" lots of gasoline).

And from Jane Galt:

But it hurts! I hear you moan. "What about my Labor Day driving?" Let me translate. What you're really saying when you say "I don't want to pay more for gas" is "I don't want to either use less gas, or use less of anything else". But as a society, we have to use less gas. You, or someone else, is going to have to consume less of the stuff, because we have less than we used to. If you don't want to be one of the people using less gas, then you have to be one of the people using less of everything else. Thus will the market pretty efficiently strip out driving by those who value it least. Or to put it another way, "Yes, of course it hurts. If it didn't hurt, no one would stop driving."

NU President J.B. Milliken announced today that the University of Nebraska would make efforts to assist students and faculty affected by Hurricane Katrina. That's to be expected. This, however, seems awfully generous:

"For those students eligible for admission who are unable to return to their home campuses for an indefinite period of time, we will immediately accept as many as we can at our campuses. We will allow them to enroll this fall at in-state tuition rates, and provide assistance in quickly registering them for classes, finding housing and whatever additional help they need." Classes began August 22 in Omaha, Lincoln and Kearney, so incoming students would have a reasonably small number of class days to make up. Milliken noted that a number of Nebraska students who were enrolled at Tulane University in New Orleans have already contacted the university. "This is temporary assistance, and when their institutions are able to re-open, we will also help facilitate an easy transfer back home," Milliken said.

To some degree the offer is in the University's self-interest. But consider how much of a pain in the neck this could be for NU's faculty and staff. Surely there are no built-in mechanisms to deal with a large influx of students during a semester, so those mechanisms will have to be created on the fly. If you know anything about bureaucratic behavior, you know that "we'll just make it up as we go" is rarely heard. More often heard is "Let's create a committee!" Milliken knows all that. That he is willing to try to make something like this work makes this a very kind gesture. I wonder how many students will actually accept the offer? Update: I found an online version of the full text of the announcement

It seems everybody is blaming somebody for Big Bitch and the damage she has caused. It's getting pretty difficult to keep track of all the folks to blame. So I'm making a list.

• Anybody who opposes the Kyoto Protocol (because they support global warming)
• The Oil industry (because Nature hates gasoline's pollution, so she destroyed a bunch of the industry's equipment)
• White people (because Katrina is a "black" name and therefore the "black" hurricane is wreaking havoc on the South for years of racial inequality)
• Gays (because God hates fags)
• Evangelical Christians (because God hates intolerant Southerners)
• George W. Bush (because he used funding that could have paid to improve flood prevention measures to pay for the Iraq War)
• Abortionists (because God hates baby killers)

Did I miss any?

It's true. The new federal website Just Think Twice links to Meth is Death, which tells us that:

• 1 in 7 high school students will try meth
• 99 percent of first-time meth users are hooked after just the first try
• only 5 percent of meth addicts are able to kick it and stay away
• the life expectancy of a habitual meth user is only 5 years.

Therefore, 13.44% of all high schoolers will be dead in 5 years. It's true because our government told us it is true. (Even though they also tell us it's all lies.) (Hat tip: Hit and Run)

A Lincolnite was shot and killed around 12:30a.m. this morning. Robert Herndon was murdered by two men who had come to his house, but it is not clear if Herndon knew the men. Herndon's girlfriend witnessed the murder. Often these situations involve gang activity or a drug deal gone wrong. So far no motive has been suggested.

Opera is giving away its web browser for free in honor of its 10th birthday. That's the full, ad-free version. Go get your copy!

I recently discovered Adobe Designer at work. It's an incredibly powerful form design tool that makes form creation easy for designers, and form completion easy for users. Unfortunately, it has a couple shortcomings in how it interacts with the user. Those shortcomings nearly torpedoed a hefty portion of a project I've been working on. In fact, we had "officially" decided to dump Designer and go a more old-fashioned route. Fortunately I was stubborn, and my stubbornness paid off. Through a bit of luck I ran across a helpful document (PDF) that led me down a path that led to a path that led to a dead end, which encouraged me to dig a tunnel... Long story short, I found a workaround to do what we wanted to do with zero extra effort on our end, and only an extra mouse click or two from the folks who will be using our end product. And best of all, I earned a healthy scoop of brownie points, which always come in handy. I love the rush you get when you accomplish something you had almost given up on. Considering how much energy we had put into this project, I would have been really disappointed if we had had to back down. Instead, I get to go hop on the bus with a skip in my step. To which I say: cool.

The Articles section of the website isn't technically ready to go live just yet, but I have posted my first article in my weekly (give or take) column called The Front Porch. The summary:

My wife and I are parents in need of a child in a world filled with children in need of parents. When the old fashioned approach didn't work as advertised, the decision about what to do next came a lot easier than we expected.

Comments on this blog entry are closed; comments may be posted at the article.

Daisy rolled in a huge, fresh, steaming pile of poop this morning. Her neck and portions of her head were coated with it. She was pleased as punch; I was not amused. I would have strangled her, but there was no way in hell I was going to touch her. Fortunately, when we got home she jumped into the bathtub on her own, and I was able to rinse most of it off without having to touch her. But it's going to take a long time before I let her cuddle up close to me. Why must dogs roll in foul, stinky things? Why?!

I really respect Gary Walker. He's the owner of the freedom flyer, a large bus that sits outside the Hi-Way Diner on Highway 2. The bus serves as the Hi-Way Diner's "unofficial" smoking section, since paternalistic Lincolnites have decided that smoking in restaurants is evil. Unfortunately, the bus runs afoul of another law that restricts using recreational vehicles to supplement a business. (I don't get it either.) Mr. Walker is fighting the issue all the way through -- which probably means he'll end up in jail for a couple days. There is good news in all of this. Apparently the City of Lincoln is now nearly crime free! It must be, or else why would Lincoln's prosecutorial community be spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to press such a tiny issue? Anyway, good for Gary Walker for standing up to an unjust law. Most anti-smoking ban types in Lincoln just sat back and whined (paging Bob Ihrig), while Mr. Walker actually got creative. Good for him! As an aside, has anybody eaten at the Hi-Way Diner recently? Has the joint cleaned up at all? The last time I was there -- probably a half-dozen years ago or more -- it was a tad on the icky side. I'm all for character in my local diners, but the Hi-Way Diner had character literally crawling in the carpets.