Happy New Year!

From James Howard Kunstler.

Al Gore's comic genius

The We Campaign's "clean coal" spots are some of the funniest things on TV.
This new one, called "Smudge," is no exception. Looking back, 2008 was full of memorable green ads. This anti-Palin ad from Defenders of Wildlife was an early and effective shot, so to speak, at the governor. And maybe it was just saturation, but T. Boone Pickens helped turn energy security into an election issue.

Stupid is as stupid does

At a time when Easterners have rediscovered upstate New York ski resorts, and people finally seem to grasp the economic and ecological downsides of fossil fuels, the first place to cut is tourist-friendly, easily improved, already-in-place mass transit from New York City to Montreal. Because taxing the mega-rich is out of the question. Brilliant!

Late Heisman pick

Sam Bradford is nice, I guess. His offensive line deserved the trophy, though.

Jints

Before yesterday's third quarter, I was about ready to tell people to panic. The Giants miss Plaxico Burress, because they're left with nobody on the perimeter who scares a defense (insert bad gun joke here). Against the Eagles, Manning was on target, but no one could catch. Against Dallas the next week, nobody could catch because Manning was off target. And Jacobs was limping. Worst of all, the O-line looked tired. Same thing in the first half yesterday.
Then all of a sudden, Eli makes a couple of throws, the front five start pounding out openings, Jacobs runs hard, and Bradshaw runs wild. The OT drive was a thing of brutal beauty. A nice win that buys them time to heal.
It all comes down to how fresh the defense--especially the D-line--is for the playoffs.

Oops

I don't know what sort of public servant Raymond Susice is, though today's PR headline, which says he "wiggles off hook", sure seems to want to tell me. In big letters. At the top of the front page.
What I do know after reading the entire story is that the PR doesn't make much of a case for wrongdoing here. Not sure what the problem is with driving home to see one's wife after a surgery, then going back to work. Nor with taking the Northway to Albany instead of using Adirondack back roads. Maybe the PR's frequent correspondents are telling them things that aren't making the paper, but as of now, there's no sign of the hook Susice "wiggled off."
There is something wrong with the PR editorializing so blatantly in a front-page news headline. There's also something wrong with jumping the gun on a high-dudgeon editorial. A basic journalism rule says, "When in doubt, leave it out." Adherence to said rule prevents gaffes like this:

TODAY'S EDITORIAL
An editorial on the subject of Raymond Susice's case and the delay in action on it by Special Prosecutor Andrew Wylie appears in today's paper on the Editorial Page, C4.
The editorial was written for the Spectrum section, which was printed on Thursday due to the high volume of advertising inserts for today's paper.
On Friday, Wylie's notification of a resolution to the case arrived at the Press-Republican offices. It was thus too late to update or in any way adjust the editorial's content.
The Press-Republican's Editorial Board continues to believe that the resolution took too long to be crafted and that some restitution from Susice is in order.

A review of the PR's policies might be in order, too.

ZipCar?

Cheap. Environmentally sound. Could the North Country support a service that rents cars by the hour like this one? Or CarShare? Or Montreal's unfortunately named CommunAuto?
With all the downstate ollege students in Plattsburgh, and Amtrak and bus links to NYC and Montreal, and the number of great day trips around here, well ... I don't know. Amherst, Mass., (pop 35,000) supports ZipCar. The city and town of Plattsburgh have about 30,000 people. Anyways, I wrote to ask about ZipCar, and got this reply:

Dear Luke,

Thank you for your interest in Zipcar. If you feel that your area is ready for Zipcar, please have your friends and neighbors enter their information at www.zipcar.com/notify-me. We compile this information and use it to decide where to place out next fleet. If we need further information we will contact you directly.

Regards,
Zipcar Member Services

So feel free to notify them here.

Face in the crowd

The Knicks telecast shows the Garden Jumbotron, featuring attendees Joe Biden and David Axelrod. Knicks announcer Mike Breen IDs Biden, but takes a called third on the man who got Obama elected.
By the way, Knicks-Bulls got me thinking about two guys I interviewed when they were teen idols. Liked them both. Here's hoping Poohdini navigates the life better than Starbury has.

Deep sports analysis

Stephen Curry appears to be a skilled basketball player, particularly in the latter stages of college games.

Roger Goodell for Senate!

Because he's somebody's kid, too!

Jints

A smart friend of mine who actually played in the NFL said that at least once a season, no matter how good the team was, everybody on the roster had a bad day on the same day. You could feel it in the locker room. Had to do with biorhythms, or lunar cycles, or sunspots. Or something. This was one of those days. Luckily for Aaron Pierce, Tony Romo is playing in December, the Jets are playing in December, and the Giants LB was only the second-most embarrassed defensive player of the week.

Zombies

Tina Brown's answer to why journalism as we know it is dying:

What do cars, debt risk, and collapsing television networks have in common? The suits running them all lose sight of what they condescendingly call “product”—i.e., whatever it was that motivated the company’s spirit of excellence in the first place.

Read the whole thing.
h/t TT

Getting On Board

With mass tranit use growing, maybe now would be a good time to improve not just Amtrak, but the Clinton County bus system, as well.

Get On Board

May as well make my first post about something I'll harp on often: trains.

Barack Obama outlines a huge new infrastructure program, but says nary a word about passenger rail. He's not alone in his silence. I've yet to hear a local politician raise the possibility of upgrading Amtrak service in upstate New York. The train takes just 2.5 hours to get from Penn Station to Albany. Yet it takes twice that long to get from Albany to Plattsburgh, which is the same distance (160 miles) as Albany-NYC. And an interminable wait at the border makes a 62-mile trip from Plattsburgh to Montreal last nearly 4 hours.
I could go off on a rant about car trips, peak oil and global warming, but that would be too easy. How about northern New York trying to make some money? Decent rail service will increase tourism, and tempt people from urban areas in NYC, Albany and Montreal to take advantage of lower housing costs and access to the outdoors. Some might even move to upstate to telecommute. It's already happened in the Hudson Valley. No reason it can't happen farther north on a smaller scale.