August 31st, 2009 08:00am
by PeteGolis
How about reading a book. . . on your phone?
News stories in recent days have reported on people who do. So I’m reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Outliers” on my iPhone. Call it a test of whether it’s practical to read an entire book on a screen that measures 3.5 inches corner to corner. (On the iPhone, you “turn the page” with a flick of your finger across the screen.)
First impressions: …
Read More »
View All Comments (0)
CATEGORY Uncategorized
August 30th, 2009 10:26am
by PeteGolis
Back in the day, if you told your Uncle Charlie that folks wanted to operate a hamburger restaurant in a nearby commercial area, he would have replied, “Well, that’s a nice thing. I like hamburgers.”
And if you told him that he could buy a burger, fries and a coke without leaving his car, he would have said, “You know, that could be a great convenience because sometimes I’m in a …
Read More »
View All Comments (4)
CATEGORY Uncategorized
August 27th, 2009 02:03pm
by PeteGolis
In “Going cold turkey in Wyoming,” I wrote in July about the discomfort of going 24 hours without cell phone service or an Internet connection. Today, a better writer than I am, Timothy Eagan, writes about what he missed during his week-long “media fast.” The Pulitzer Prize winner calls the latest post on his New York Times blog, “My Luddite Summer.”
Check it out if you love (or hate) new …
Read More »
View All Comments (0)
CATEGORY Uncategorized
August 26th, 2009 09:46am
by PeteGolis
It’s encouraging news that the Santa Rosa City Council wants to take a more strategic approach to downtown parking and traffic. Staff Writer Paul Payne reported on Tuesday that the council will consider a new parking rate structure to help pay for downtown improvements and expanded transit services.
Under a performance-based parking scheme, fees would be based on real-time demand.
Some motorists would pay less. Any coffee drinker who has parked on …
Read More »
View All Comments (1)
CATEGORY Uncategorized
August 25th, 2009 10:50am
by PeteGolis
While Sonoma County’s political insiders are busy plotting their next career move, this week’s New Yorker magazine offers a telling perspective for voters who have spent years supporting politicians who promised that education would be their No. 1 priority.
“(California’s) public schools, once the nation’s best, are now among the worst,” the magazine reports.
In one of the most prosperous places on earth, the quality of governance and the quality of public …
Read More »
View All Comments (2)
CATEGORY Uncategorized
August 19th, 2009 06:58pm
by PeteGolis
Democratic Assembly members Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa and Jared Huffman of San Rafael say they approved pay raises for key aides because these folks deserve pay raises and because higher salaries make it easier to retain the most qualified people.
Maybe Evans and Huffman should explain to the 63 Santa Rosa bus drivers who on the same day agreed not to seek pay raises for the next two years.
Maybe they …
Read More »
View All Comments (2)
CATEGORY Uncategorized
August 16th, 2009 09:38am
by PeteGolis
“Don’t follow leaders,
Watch the parkin’ meters.”
- Bob Dylan, in “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
At last, downtown Santa Rosa has a buzz. Unfortunately, it’s the sound of city officials talking about what they might do someday, somehow, somewhere to re-energize the downtown.
In the latest random event, officials apparently determined there was someone left in Sonoma County who hadn’t been left sputtering by parking enforcement in the downtown. So, they invited a UCLA urban …
Read More »
View All Comments (4)
CATEGORY Uncategorized
August 11th, 2009 12:38am
by PeteGolis
Good news: I may be an Internet junkie, but I’m not the only one. In the New York Times today, writer Verlyn Klinkenborg acknowledges: “I consider myself a moderate user of personal electronics. . . yet this constant foretaste of the future, (my) hunger for the next electronic blip, feels to me like a full-blown addiction.” Read his commentary, “I’ve Got Mail,” by clicking here.
Also today, The Press Democrat publishes …
Read More »
View All Comments (1)
CATEGORY Uncategorized
August 10th, 2009 12:51pm
by PeteGolis
In Portland – a city celebrated for the vitality of its downtown neighborhoods – prime parking spaces in commercial areas are given over to bike corrals.
Does encouraging bike travel reduce traffic congestion, energy consumption and air pollution? Does it reduce the effects of climate change? Absolutely.
But Portland has another motive as well. Bike corrals are good for business. When I visited the Oregon city last year, Andy Cotugno, planning director …
Read More »
View All Comments (7)
CATEGORY Uncategorized
August 9th, 2009 10:30am
by PeteGolis
A story in the Sacramento Bee this morning offers up an astonishing fact: State government today employes 4,000 more people than it did a year ago. Recession? Budget deficits? Layoffs in local government? It doesn’t matter.
Political scientists say state government needs to start over. In the words of David McCuan of Sonoma State University, Sacramento suffers from “antiquated institutions designed for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.”
But it’s getting bigger …
Read More »
View All Comments (2)
CATEGORY Uncategorized
Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat and a longtime resident of Sonoma County.
