David Rodeback's BlogLocal Politics and Culture, National Politics,
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Wednesday, September 27, 2006Locally: Five Short NotesBroadband, 900 West, HDTV, Paris, and a meaningless statistic. Did you know lumpenproletariat is one word? American Fork Broadband Update Some folks at the City are still working on purchase proposals and such, but no news is . . . no news. (If you're just picking up this theme here at the blog, here's a link to more discussion of American Fork's municipal broadband system.) Meanwhile, I'm still getting good reliability and T1 speeds at my house. O thus be it ever . . . 900 West Rumor has it that the Carsons would like to secede from American Fork and be annexed into Lehi. They mentioned that possibility at least once in a public forum, so it is no surprise. I take this to mean that they are hoping Lehi's city government is less enlightened than American Fork's, or at least less vertebrate. I wouldn't bet on their success. I'm told that reason tends to prevail in border issues between American Fork and Lehi -- which is not necessarily true on the other side of American Fork, where Pleasant Grove is involved. (Here's some previous discussion of the 900 West flap.) High Definition TV (Warts and All) A friend recently got HDTV at home and loves it for watching football. He says the image quality is so high that you can see the expressions on the fans' faces in the background. I happened to be in Circuit City the other Saturday morning, so I stood for a few minutes in front of one of their larger screens to watch some of that BYU football I can't get at home. My friend was not exaggerating. You can see the fans smile and frown. You can see their warts and drippy noses. You can almost count the hairs protruding from their ears. I suppose there's a sense in which the enhanced reality or humanity of it all is a good thing. But I don't think I'm quite ready to watch live events on HDTV. Movies are fine, where everything is just so. But, as HDTV takes over, sports broadcasts may need to start focusing more on the cheerleaders and less on the lumpenproletariat in the stands. For some reason, I would welcome that regrettable evolution. (Or is it that I would regret that welcome evolution? Maybe both. Maybe I think too much.) This bit of blog was inspired by my favorite local blogger, DaltonGirl, who observed crooked collars and haphazard wearing of jewelry at a recent large meeting, with the help of HDTV. Why Not London? Amsterdam? Frankfurt? The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the Utah Board of Tourism Development, the Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Salt Lake City Airport Authority are combining to wave $650,000 in front of Delta Airlines, to help the troubled carrier decide to create direct flights between Salt Lake City and Paris. Paris is in Europe, which seems to be its chief attraction in this case. Fine, whatever. My son the aviation photographer and his "spotter" buddies will welcome the larger aircraft. But why Paris? As you have likely noticed, Paris is also in France, which isn't really in good graces with red-state Americans this decade. Does Mayor Rocky have something to do with this? Numbers for Numbers' Sake In the stories today about New York City's possible ban on transfats in restaurants, I'm hearing that there are more than 26,000 restaurants in the Big Apple. I've eaten at 15 or 20 of them and would happily try a few dozen more, but that's not my point. My point is: That's roughly one New York City restaurant per resident of American Fork, Utah. We could all go to New York and dine alone.
Copyright 2006 by David Rodeback. |
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