My apologies to my fellow bikies for letting this troll hijack this list with a series of off-topic rants.
I'm tempted to respond, but I won't waste any more time, energy or bandwidth. My regrets for letting it get this far. From: "Eric Westhagen" <[email protected]> To: "BikiesSubmissions" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, September 6, 2010 1:13:17 PM Subject: Re: [Bikies] Saving civilization]] To Mitchell, As they found in the gulf to what seems the surprise of the science community, an ecosystem has organisms which thrive on wastes of other organisms. The reverse flow of the Chicago water ways kept the Lake clean in the immediate time and the system cleansed on its flow to the Mississippi. Maybe you would not have wanted to go boating on the "N. Branch" of the Chicago river, but I would expect that you could have done so before the Mississippi. And isn't that basically how treatment plants work? As far as the air pollution between coal and oil and gas, I cannot say. But assuming that plain old soot is not all that hazardous, the other results of combustion must be compared. We fired with coal as nearly everybody did until I was mostly through college and it was little trouble and I had my dark room and my Dad had his woodworking shop in the basement not far from the furnace and coal bin. Those choosing trendy urban living these days might be compared with those who have always chosen urban living--those on Aster Street and Lake Shore Drive? Yet, as you know I am for choice and if attractive development is built in the urban setting for the twenty-first century, that seems desirable to me. But choices should not be subsidized. Yet I do understand that real estate interests have always promoted some forms of subsidies. My Dad's PhD dissertation from Northwestern was AN INDUCTIVE STUDY ON THE OBSOLESCENCE OF BUILDINGS. The largest legal tax case in the history of Chicago had made the files open to examination and the root causes for demolitions were the object of the study. Certainly the layouts and routes of "car lines" were a factor in those days which lead to real estate desirability. Eric ________ Mitchell Nussbaum wrote: Actually Chicago has deep tunnels, just like Milwaukee. Both cities have combined sewers, so that sanitary waste and storm water go through the same system. Before these cities build sewage treatment plants, all the waste went out the same pipe into the lake or the river. When treatment plants were built, their capacity would be overwhelmed by rain or melting snow, and the waste would bypass treatment and go directly into the lake or the river. The purpose of the Deep Tunnel projects is to provide storage capacity; when storm water is flowing into the system, it is stored in the tunnels and treated when it stops raining. Unfortunately, the tunnels don't have enough capacity for really big storm events, like the ones we had this summer, so the excess sewage ends up in the lake -- just as it did before they built the tunnels. The Chicago Deep Tunnel project isn't finished yet, but there's no guarantee that it won't have the same problems when massive storms hit Chicago. As for the project to reverse the flow of the Chicago River -- it was an amazing piece of engineering, but it didn't eliminate the turds. It did keep the sewage out of Chicago's drinking water -- by sending it downstream (a nicely capitalistic solution). Anyway, none of what Eric says is relevant to my original point. American cities used to be filthy and smelly and unhealthful, and it was reasonable to try to escape from them. They're not that way anymore, and a lot of people who could live in the suburbs if they wanted choose to live in cities instead. From: "Eric Westhagen" <[email protected]> To: "Mitchell Nussbaum" <[email protected]> , "BikiesSubmissions" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, September 5, 2010 6:53:43 PM Subject: Re: [Bikies] Saving civilization] To Mitchell, Your story is compelling, but it depends just where your city was THEN AND NOW. Not fifty or sixty, but well over one hundred years, Chicago stopped "turds" floating along into Lake Michigan. But the GOVERNMENT PLANNERS of our own Milwaukee had their own careful plan. Whereas the forward thinking people of Chicago reversed the course of the sewers and all their "turds"; Milwaukee built a works project of a deep tunnel which regularly sends the "t--ds" into residential basements and an amount into Lake Michigan which is beyond comprehension. Watch your kyaking there. Chicago's accomplishment was considered just another of their engineering marvels of the age--after the White City and their architecture. Eric Mitchell Nussbaum wrote: Fifty or sixty years ago, cities were polluted and dangerous. The air was full of coal smoke and industrial pollution, and the the rivers were vile (when I was a kid, I remember visiting New York harbor and seeing turds floating in the water...). In those days, it made sense to move out of the city, especially if you were raising a family. Things have changed since then. Heavy industry has mostly moved out of the cities (and out of the country, in most cases), and the pollution sources that remain have been forced to clean up their act by the (evil, coercive) government. You can kayak in urban rivers (the turds are gone, and the rivers don't burn any more), and a lot of people who grew up in the suburbs see cities as reasonable places to live, and even to raise children. But government subsidies of automobiles, and other policies that favor suburbs over cities, tend to push people into the suburbs, whether they want to be there or not. From: "Eric Westhagen" <[email protected]> To: "BikiesSubmissions" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, September 3, 2010 4:53:16 PM Subject: Re: [Bikies] Saving civilization] To: Hans, But haven't you answered your own questions? So many of us came from city life with a 30ft lot just off the "car line" (light rail streetcars) or an apartment --but then chose to live "out of the city." We also chose to move our factories and sweat shops from those "city neighborhoods" you wax long for--out to industrial parks or industrial suburbs.-------IT WAS CHOICE--not coercion. Only CHOICE will bring about a reverse or maybe at least "islands" of what you envision as your ideal. And even some manufacturers were enlightened to build delightful employee cities--with the likes of Port Sunlight and in our State--Kohler. But what resulted--rejection by choice--and in the case of Kohler, what did the Company get for their employee concern?-----One of the longest labor strikes in history! Eric Westhagen Hans Noeldner wrote: We will never salvage the project of civilization so long as we insist on saving face. If we continue to deny our mistakes (our addiction to Happy Motoring is a prime example), surely all will be lost. Yet consider how wrenching it can be. If the automobile is our primary means of access (i.e. we drive virtually everywhere and then park), how do we admit that OUR lifestyle poisons our community against ways of life based on walking and bicycling, rolling wheelchairs and using canes, pushing baby strollers and pulling children in Radio Fliers? And if we drive everywhere because everything is “too far away” to use any other mode, how do we digest the fact that choosing to live where we did was not only a bad idea, but a lousy investment? It takes courage to say, “Damn, I made a big mistake.” It takes even more to advise, “If I put my house on the market, don’t buy it! Not unless you plan to actually LIVE here rather than driving somewhere else all the time.” This is the kind of thing we must grapple with. Is there a “nice” way to bring it up? Earth to Amerka: avoidance isn’t getting us anywhere! Hans Noeldner www.entropicjournal.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
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