Old news

This page is where stuff on the main page's news section goes when it changes from news to olds. Observe forgotten current events, humorous behavior and other hijinks of primitive human societies from the dawn of time!

Monday | February 14, 2011

Where's the (geek) love? Right here!

Yaay! It's Valentine's Day! And So Much More...
Love, pollen and CO² is in the air. And history is in the books. Here are some highlights from this date in the annals of years gone by:

• In 1859, Oregon was admitted to the Union as the 33rd state.
• In 1912, Arizona became the 48th state of the Union.
• In 1929, a hail of bullets slaughtered seven rivals of Al Capone's gang in a Chicago garage, an event instantly dubbed "St. Valentine's Day Massacre."

(One wonders how such ferocious gunplay happened outside Arizona.)

• Today, February 14, 2011, you can show your wikigeek love by hanging out with other PortlandWiki geeks at Monday Meets!

Go to story: Happy 152nd Birthday, Oregon!

Go to factoids: Today in History

Go to Monday Meets: Monday Meets

Sunday | February 13, 2011

For decades, Amtrak has mastered the art of low-speed rail.

America Is Number One In Low-Speed & No-Speed Rail
Whether political inertia, public inattention, corporate malfeasance, natural "events," or just plain stupidity, nothing stops American Rail from delivering decent, reliable and effective passenger service, with one exception: everything. This time a mudslide north of Vancouver shut down Amtrak train service between Portland and Seattle. The tracks -- which are owned by BNSF railroad -- were passable, but BNSF protocol was "not to have any live passengers shipped through the area" at the time.

Go to story: Mudslide Halts Amtrak Service Yet Again

Go to story: Mudslide halts Portland-Seattle Amtrak service

Saturday | February 12, 2011

"Care you can have faith in."

Faith-Based Health Care: Minus The "Health" Or The "Care"
Birgilio Marin-Fuentes, 61, died early Friday in Portland Adventist Medical Center's parking garage, just 100 feet from the hospital's emergency room's entrance. Police who arrived at the scene said no one from the staff of Portland Adventist Medical Center helped as officers tried to revive him. In fact, the only medical help the officers received was from an ambulance crew after hospital staff members told an officer to call 911. CEO Tom Russell released a statement filled with the usual bland we're-doing-our-best-but-we'll-do-better-next-time boilerplate dished out whenever a large organization gets caught "fornicating with the donkey." The key takeaway: "We have followed this practice (of calling 911 rather than taking care of the medical emergency) many times in the past year, as we did this past Thursday and will continue to do in the future." Now that's care you can have faith in!

Go to story: Man Dies Yards From Emergency Room Door

Go to story: Portland Adventist tells police to call an ambulance for man stricken in hospital's parking lot

Go to statement: "Care you can have faith in."

Friday | February 11, 2011

Liberty is beautiful to behold.

Can You Walk Like An Egyptian?
A decaying, rabidly immoral kleptocracy of rapacious plutocrats, tyrannical corporate charlatans, and criminally insane financial swindlers. An expanding archipelago of prisons, detention camps and torture centers. Whorish and corrupt legislators who bend servile knee to suckle at the rancid tip of their paymasters. The giant sucking sound of a nation's wealth gushing into the black hole of a privatized aristocracy. Violent religious extremists who run amok to terrorize ordinary people and kill at will. A mass media whose exquisite mastery of propaganda, disinformation and psychological warfare would have George Orwell stammering with horror and amazement. A largely apathetic, distracted, ignorant and psychically numb population. Sadly, this is the poisonous social milieu that Portlandians and other Americans still swim in. Thank God our Egyptian friends are, after suffering years of tyranny and with much struggle, beginning to shake off the terrible thugs who've brutalized them for so long. So what's stopping us?

Go to story: When Democracy Weakens

Go to story: Egypt's Revolution: Triumph as Mubarak quits

Thursday | February 10, 2011

Hawthorne Bridge has frequent bus service, as well as bike, pedestrian, and car access.

Portland ranked #1 in public transportation
According to U.S. News, Portland offers the best public transportation in the US. The rankings were based on public investment, ridership, and safety. Citing Portland's buses, light rail, commuter rail, streetcars, and aerial tram, as well as Fareless Square (recently demoted from offering free service to bus and rail lines to just rail lines), U.S. News ranked Portland above Salt Lake City (#2), New York City (#3), and Boston (#4). Our big sister to the north, Seattle, ranked at #11 due to its poor safety record.

Go to story: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/02/08/10-best-cities-for-public-transportation

Wednesday | February 9, 2011

Greendrinks Are For Sustainers

Drink, Flirt, & Build "Sustainable Communities: Together"
Do you mix well with others? Can you at least mix a stiff drink? Do you enjoy greenwashing whatever activity you're involved in as much as the next urban ecosexual? Well your golden, uh, emerald moment draws near! Tomorrow evening (Thursday, February 10, 2011 - 6:00pm - 8:00pm) you're invited to participate in "Net Impact Mixer - Help Us Build Sustainable Communities: Together." Think of it as a "green mixer." Everyone else does. Join the festivities at Upright Brewing, 240 North Broadway (yup! that's North, NOT Northeast), Suite 2 Leftbank Project Portland , OR 97227.

Go to event: Net Impact Mixer - Help Us Build Sustainable Communities: Together

Tuesday | February 8, 2011

Rumor consumer or tumor bloomer?

Proposed bill would require warning labels for cell phones
Amid growing controversy over the long-term health effects of cell phone radiation, Oregon state senator Chip Shields and 5 other Oregon lawmakers have introduced a bill (SB 679) that would require cell phones in Oregon to have labels warning of their radio-frequency radiation. Long-term studies have thus far been inconclusive about possible harmful effects of cell phones, such as brain cancer. If passed, Oregon would be the first to require labels on cell phones for radio-frequency radiation. Apple, AT&T, Verizon, and the CTIA wireless trade group have already hired lobbyists to fight the bill.

Go to story: Oregon considers cellphone radiation label

Monday | February 7, 2011

The Free & Open Internet: Never had it; never will.

The "Internet Kill Switch" And You
Last month, PortlandWikiNews brought you a preview of Portland's (then) upcoming Strategic BroadBand Plan kick-off event. That report also highlighted concerns many in our community have about the "gatekeeper" roles large corporations increasingly exert over public access to the Internet, once widely considered a public utility. (See "The Internet: Just Another Cable TV Box?"; Wednesday | January 26, 2011.) These same corporations (in Portland, they're primarily Qwest and Comcast) continue to impose fierce political and economic pressure to assure their increased control over the Internet, and to defeat any genuine guarantee of "net neutrality" (allowing unimpeded access and delivery of all Internet traffic). But the Egyptian government's decision to hit the "kill switch"--shutting off that country's Internet traffic during most of that country's ongoing pro-democracy revolt--has alarmed pro-democracy advocates all over the globe. It has also exposed some of the more sinister motives underlying efforts by governments and large businesses to put control of the global network into the hands of a handful of corporate and state actors. Were you aware that "almost all of the industrialized 'first world' Internet" traffic, including in the United States, "is moderately to pervasively censored by government authorities"?

Go to story: Infographics: Internet Censorship Is Rampant Around the World

Go to info graphic: So you still think the Internet is free.

Go to kill switch: How Egypt did (and your government could) shut down the Internet

Sunday | February 6, 2011

Egyptians In Action

Measurable Percentage Of Portlandians Express Interest In Egyptian Uprising
In a recent article published at Centre for Research on Globalization Larry Chin leads off with a strongly worded assertion: "As people across the Arab world take to the streets to fight for democracy, and an end to oppression and tyranny, the oblivious, uninterested and acquiescent American public has done virtually nothing." But have Portlandians shown total abject apathy and callous indifference to the Egyptian People's Uprising? We think not! As reported by good ol' PortlandWikiNewsLeakers last week (Saturday | January 29, 2011), "about 300" people rallied at Pioneer Courthouse Square in solidarity with the Egyptian pro-democracy revolutionaries. Toss in the assumed solidarity of PortlandWiki's estimated three active readers and the total number of Portlandians expressing and/or fantasizing "solidarity" with pro-democracy Egyptians rises to 303. That's a whopping 0.05% of Portland's population of 583,835! Hey, five one hundredths of one percent of a town's population is nothin' to sneer at.

Go to story: As the Arab world fights, America sleeps

Go to story: Showing Solidarity with Egyptians, Protesters at Pioneer Square Rally Against Mubarak

Saturday | February 5, 2011

Yarn bombers improve Portland "one stitch at a time."

Yarn Bombers Keep Bridge City In Stitches
Slip Yum Yum keeps to the shadows. "We work hard to keep a low profile and only communicate digitally," explained a go-between. Slip is one of a growing number of a growing underground of stitch artists known as "yarn bombers" who stitch their graffiti onto various public artifacts like statues, bicycle racks, trees, street lamps and telephone poles. Yarn bombers can pick up supplies from any of a surprisingly large number of local yarn shops. Yarn enthusiasts even have their own Yarn Crawl! But the yarn bomb blog ("improving the urban landscape one stitch at a time") is maintained from Vancouver British Columbia.

Go to story: Oregon "yarn bombers" knit graffiti for lamp posts, trees

Go to crawl: Portland Oregon Yarn Crawl

Go to blog: Yarn Bombing: Improving the urban landscape one stitch at a time.

Friday | February 4, 2011

Collapsing housing bubble finds its "floor"?

Portland Home Sales Drop 7%
The "five-county Portland region" saw a 7% plunge in house sales from December 2009 to December 2010. Absentee buyers accounted for 19.4% of the housing sold. Most of those sales were reported as "investments." Although the median house price hovered at $222,000, absentee investors paid an average of just $190,000.

Go to story: Portland area home sales drop 7% from a year ago

Thursday | February 3, 2011

The rabbit is one of the 12 signs in the Chinese Zodiac.

Welcome to the Year of the Metal Rabbit
Today is the beginning of the Chinese and Vietnamese (Tết) New Year, marking the beginning of the year of the Metal Rabbit, according to the Chinese Zodiac (year of the Cat in Vietnamese Zodiac). Astrological predictions of rabbit years include associations with "home and family, artistic pursuits, diplomacy, and keeping the peace", and conversely that "nations will also become more insular and increasingly lock down their borders to protect against the 'other'". In Portland, there will be many free activities and celebrations this Saturday.

Go to events listing (celebrations this Saturday): Chinese and Vietnamese New Year events

Go to astrology explanation: The Year of the Rabbit: Chinese Horoscope Predictions for 4709 - 2011

Go to astrology explanation: Chinese New Year 2011 - The Year of Golden White Rabbit

Wednesday | February 2, 2011

Dinosaur, Colorado: "A Very Real Town."

PDX Out-Migration Fuels Fossil
Local slacker/hipster has "grown tired of Portland" and plans to relocate to Dinosaur, Colorado, a "very real town."

Go to story: I've grown tired of Portland, so I'm moving to Dinosaur, Co. A very real town.

Go to very real town: Dinosaur, Colorado

Tuesday | February 1, 2011

Gov. Kitzhaber releases state budget proposal, responding to funding crisis with further cuts to education, health
The budget Kitzhaber offers would include cuts to Oregon's already ailing K-12 education, reducing teachers and increasing class sizes. Also Oregon Health Plan, the same program Kitzhaber started in the mid-90s, would have cuts. According to OPB, "doctors would be paid less to treat Oregon Health Plan patients and fewer treatments would be covered." Since it was conceived, people who have relied on Oregon Health Plan have experienced several critical cuts in their health care, including a massive cut in 2003 that attracted national attention, when 100,000 people in mental health and/or substance abuse treatment lost their prescription coverage.

Go to story: Kitzhaber Says Budget Will Require 'Shared Sacrifices'

Earlier Months

• January 2011

• December 2010

• November 2010

• October 2010

• September 2010

• August 2010

• Early 2010

• Late 2009