This Kenya thing reminds me. I'd actually like to see "Charles Mudede" write on one topic: Why is Africa so f**ked up? That, I'd like to hear his opinion on. And I don't expect him to say that it's because of the evil capitalist colonial europeans, because that excuse doesn't work anymore: you can just ask the opposite: Why was it evil capitalist colonial europeans in africa instead of evil capitalist colonial africans in europe?

Re: open letter to Metro, take the 40 some time, people just keep on cramming into there.

As an aside about bus crowding during rush hour, I've noticed that when people stand, they stand at the front end of the bus and -headphones engaged- stare dead-eyed out of the window so everyone piles up at the front. If you want to be somewhere you don't have to be attentive to your surroundings, work harder and be able to afford to private-helicopter to work every day.

Obviously you fuckheads DON'T know when the bus is too full. Let the nice vested people do their jobs, thanks.

@1: Read "Guns, Germs, and Steel", noob.

Perhaps you should read through your open letter one more time...

Riding the #8 makes me feel like I'm in India.

Building buildings and "expecting" people to show up, isn't the same as it actually happening.

8 Indisputable Reasons Why We Don't Need Offices

Looking back a decade or so ago it was absolutely essential to have an office, or more likely, a cubicle. That’s where we had meetings, saw our coworkers, and just got work done. But today do we really need corporate offices? New technologies allow us to “connect to work,” meaning that all we need to get work done is an internet connection. Employees are working from co-working spots, cafes, and home offices all over the world without ever having to step foot into a corporate office. In fact the 2013 Regus Global Economic Indicator of 26,000 business managers across 90 countries, revealed that 48% of them are now working remotely for at least half of their work-week.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/…

@1,

I probably don't want to know the answer to this, but why does "Charles Mudede" need the quotation marks?

#10

!Charles Mudede!

It seems the woman in the high speed chase who was killed in D.C. yesterday was more likely suffering from post-partum psychosis rather than post-partum depression.

I worked in a psychiatric ward for some years and a few post-partum psychosis cases came through. Terribly devastating. Usually these women have zero history of mental illness issues. Their families were typically shocked and dumbfounded. At least the cases I'd encountered in the psych wards got better after a couple weeks. So sad about this woman.

sheriff dave, you stupid fuck. you're supposed to know what the end game is before join in a stunt like this. hoist by your own petard.

@1: Yes, because Africa is just one big monolithic entity where problems apply universally to 60 countries with thousands of tribes and languages and vastly different histories, geography, climate, natural resources, etc.

I'm sure in your simple mind there's a simple answer.

Alas, you are wrong about Metro, Jen. People get on full buses and then can't move in, so they clog the door, delaying everyone and creating a safety hazard. That's what the the vest fellow is there fore. Your theory about "learned helplessness" and "nanny-stating" is not in accord with observed reality; humans cannot, in fact, tell when there's room. Metro knows a great deal more about this than you or anyone else.

Hey at least people don't line up in a SINGLE FILE line like the college students in Bellingham do. It's frustratingly slow, and the passiveness makes change impossible.

We really should have bus loading docks where you pay before the bus arrives... A lot of other countries has instated this.

@6: Good lord, thank you.

@15: Totally disagree. If an authority is necessary, the bus driver already exists. But a crowd not given the chance to self-direct will not. I believe. Mainly because people on subways, buses, and trains in every other city I've ever been to everywhere is not being directed by a vesty but learning how to work together. If it isn't happening here, it's because of people staring off into the middle distance and taking no responsibility because they can.

"People...is not." It's a rough morning for me, apparently, folks. Going to get more coffee.

About dunderhead Dave, Slade did what he could to insulate Dave Reichert from external forces (voters), but there is nothing Slade or any other Republican can do to insulate Dave from internal forces (Congressional Teabaggers).

They will keep handing Dave anvils and tell him they are all going down with giddy anticipation of everything except the inevitable crash.

Jen, thanks for fixing the word-sandwich. You no longer sound like Ms. Crazy who is about to start yelling about the microwaves affecting her brain.

@21,

One problem with that analogy is that Metro isn't necessarily going to be engaging in the same cost-benefit analysis as a private business is. Metro gets X amount of money from taxes, and they spend all of it however the agency sees fit, but there's no profit incentive or any particular oversight to make sure they're not wasting that money on bullshit.

Case in point: Back before ORCA, when Metro issued its own monthly passes, my workplace ordered maybe five monthly bus passes every month for the few people in the office who didn't drive in. Those five passes were *hand-delivered* by a Metro employee. Metro apparently had so much cash to burn they could afford to have someone going around the county, hand-delivering as few as *five* monthly passes, regardless of how many fiscal crises the agency encountered in the meantime.

Jen's open letters read suspiciously like Jean Godden's old column in the Times. Is "Jen Graves" really "Jean Godden" or vice versa?

The answer isn't less Metro employees keeping rush hour buses from becoming unsafely over-crowded.

The answer is more buses when (and where) people need more buses.

If people howled in the misery they'd feel on Metro buses that were like trains in India, maybe that would be the impetus to make people demand that their elected leaders give more money to fund more and better public transit.

(And I'm trying to imagine the combined Stranger Utopia, where you get Charles' bus wi-fi but without any spare room to actually use it.)

Hey Jen,

Too many people crowding the back door causes the rear door brake interlock to activate, preventing the bus from moving.

Too many people at the front creates an unsafe and illegal condition where people push in front of the yellow line and crowd the stairwell, risking accident and injury.

No, people will NOT self-direct. People will crowd into a bus like feral sardines EVEN IF THERE IS A HALF EMPTY SAME ROUTE BUS RIGHT BEHIND THE ONE THEY ARE JAMMING INTO.

The bus driver can't see what is going on in the rear of the bus when the bus is crowded and has their hands full operating a 30-ton death machine full of rabid, tired, cranky people who want to go home and can't play regulator either.

So on this one Jen - quit your bitching, because clearly you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Try THANKING those vested helpers once in awhile instead of kvetching about them for trying to make the commute safer under the same shitty circumstances that have been handed to everyone else.

@12, yes, I wish media people would somehow learn that women who do crazy things in their postpartum months have psychosis rather than depression. Depression doesn't make you do crazy things; psychosis does. And now she's dead, because the cops felt that was necessary.

@9: My father would beg to differ. In professions such as engineering, where it is vital for coworkers to share information and ideas efficiently, there's no substitute for in-person interaction. Instead of having to set up a text or video connection, they can lean over or prairie-dog to get second opinions.

@12: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1952/1952…

What @25 said. During evening rush in the tunnel, people pile onto the first 41 to pull up like it was the last chopper out of Saigon. Even if there are two empty 41s behind it.