Uncategorized

The Human Adventure Is Just Beginning If….

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Have you ever considered what tremendous potential we have as humans if we were to think about the world in larger terms and with more open minds? This is not a pipe dream. We have made more advances in the last 100 years than the last thousand, and in the last 10 than the 100 before that. Still, not all these advancements have been beneficial. We have often used our knowledge to create better weapons instead of better conditions for people.

Local

A Tale of Two Cities: Chattanooga Tennessee’s Community Owned and Operated Fiber Network: A Successful Blueprint for Bellingham

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The internet was created to be—and has become—our public  commons. It is the central medium for communication and business, for public discussion and engagement, and democratic discourse and debate. Given its importance to the public, community networks should have been financed, constructed and managed as public infrastructure like municipal water systems, sewers, streets or libraries. High-speed optical fiber-based internet access networks should have been installed in every community with direct hard-wired connections to every household and workplace. Just as with electricity in the early days, internet access should now be for all, and in a form that is fast, affordable, neutral, sustainable and safe.

Environment

The Green New Deal and Publicly Owned Fiber-Optic Networks

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Authors: Atul Deshmane and Jon Humphrey
There is no doubt that America needs real infrastructure improvements, and that they should come in the form of large scale updates that help improve the environment as well. This is a large part of what the Green New Deal proposes, but as with most ideas in our culture the lack of understanding, and proper education, regarding technology is polluting this idea as well and keeping it from reaching its true potential. The Green New Deal (GND) aims to address climate change and economic inequality, just like publicly-owned fiber-optic networks will as outlined in this Bellingham Public Fiber petition, but the need for broadband to be part of the Green New Deal doesn’t just end there. Recently the Green New Deal was discussed at an event held by Indivisible Bellingham, a fantastic organization that I am proud to have been allowed to address on the topic of public-fiber, but sadly the issue of broadband and the way it related to the GND did not come up. 
Most are aware that Renewable Energy begs the most important question in the Green New Deal. If we are going to be more mindful of how we get our SUPPLY of energy we must start with how we DEMAND our energy.

Featured
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New York Times Sells Out To Protect 5G

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So, how is this local? Recently, Bellingham became one of many cities to form a “Stop 5G Bellingham” group and setup a petition asking for the same thing. As expected, our local main stream news source, The Bellingham Herald, posted an article in support of 5G that was full of inaccuracies and as of yesterday had been removed. We’ll see if it stays that way. Why did they do this?

Technology

Deforestation and 5G

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There are many legitimate health concerns surrounding 5G technology, but our local governments remain anywhere from uninformed to actively defensive of the anti-net neutral, anti-first amendment big telecoms, but those are topics for another article. Today, I want to write specifically about deforestation and 5G. I was shocked by the permitted deforestation on Samish Hill to make way for new housing developments.  These developments–along with the clear-cutting of trees–are unnecessary until the many abandoned (some publicly owned) buildings in Bellingham’s downtown and surrounding areas are renovated to provide new housing stock. Yes, new builds should be built to the LEED Platinum standard, but nothing is as green as refurbishing old buildings in the first place. Still, this topic got me thinking about all kinds of unnecessary deforestation, including that taking place around the installation of 5G technology.

Game Reviews

The Zelda II Conspiracy?

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Nintendo
has come to be known for many great achievements over the years, but
to me their greatest achievement was that of consistently making
reliable games that were fun to play and always displayed the best
play control. Well, almost always. This review is about one of those times when I believe that Nintendo threw caution to the wind and created a title based entirely on name recognition just for the sole purpose of making money. Craftsmanship be damned Zelda was hot and they were going to make another Zelda title, as quickly as possible, no matter the result. This is what I believe happened with Zelda II, or more accurately this is what Zelda II felt like to me when I played it as I will expand on below. During
the NES era this would hardly be the first time that Nintendo would
do something this foolish with one of their premier titles.

City Of Bellingham

COB Produces Elementary School Level Dig Once Draft

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I don’t want to always paint the picture that nothing good is going
on with public broadband. I am happy to report that both the Port and PUD have teamed up and are pursuing the issue. In the meantime, the City of Bellingham is hell bent on being as
backward about the issue as possible. They have even created a fable
about pretend meetings that never took place with Mount Vernon as I’ll
explain below. So we have yet another installment in the saga of
protecting the big telecoms, embarked upon by the upper echelon of our
city government.