Police horses do not belong in 21st Century cities

Reality Bits, from the WPF comments:

This city never ceases to amaze me. You complain when the cops conduct traffic enforcement and demand they do something about "real crime"; you come to the defense of a Horse Patrol. $20,000 is the beginning of the costs....Hoju details them well. Not to mention assigning 2 cops YEAR ROUND to the unit. 2 cops back in General Patrol means 2 less that need to be hired. At $80,000 + per officer per year plus all the actual costs...the true savings is more like $250,000. For a year round unit, the horses are at best deployed a dozen times in the winter. It is pure public relations geared to people WHO ALREADY LIKE THE POLICE. They do not arrest anyone. They do not deter crime. They do not investigate. They do not make our streets safer. The police are trained to drive, shoot, interrogate, investigate, and all sorts of other specialized skills. THEY ARE NOT MASCOTS. Of course, if the Horse Patrol started giving cell phone tickets, then the public response might be different.

Agreed.

Despite being cute, and supposedly good PR, the horses distract from real police work and are a real financial burden on a city whose resources could be better spent.

The politics of linking

Marco Arment, I'm not a "curator"

Good link blogs are designed to send as many readers as possible to the source post by not only making it very easy to see the source link, but by not replacing the need to read it for most interested readers. Link blogs don’t need a special symbol to denote their source or “via” link because it’s obvious. The link is the primary content.

This is what I've tried to do here.

When I quote or reference a particular article or site what I'm saying is "go read this". If you have been reading my comments and not the source you're missing the point and I doubt you truly understand the context of what I've written.

I have a lot of respect for link blogs like Marco.org, Kottke, and Daring Fireball. They "get it", and respect the original content of the web. As such I've tried to model my writing after these sites.

If you consider yourself a "curator" or a even worse a "blogger" and you aren't giving credit to the author you're actually a plagiarist.

New haircut

Everyone knows that one person who needs to 1up every purchase and life decision you make. Whether it's buying a better more expensive car, or getting a hipper more expensive haircut.

Today I feel a bit like "that guy".

As you may have noticed¹ I've put up some new curtains and rearranged the furniture. I got the itch, an obsessive compulsive diversion, a productive fallacy that I told myself I'd try to avoid.

However after seeing the new design of Kottke.org I realized my site looked like crap on an mobile device. Instead of just flicking on the "mobile version" I've tweaked the design to suit screens big and small. I also used the opportunity to fix some of the details that have been driving me nuts ever since I launched the new blog.

Anyways, I'm sorry I'm wasting pixels being meta instead of bitching about how Winnipeg is its own worst enemy. I hope you appreciate the design if you're reading this while attempting to ignore the pungent pee smell of the city transit bus you're riding.

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¹Assuming you are reading this on the site, and not via Instapaper, RSS, or some other newfangled algorithm for wasting time on the Web.

You Can Play, creating safe spaces in sports.

You Can Play, Our Cause:

You Can Play is dedicated to ensuring equality, respect and safety for all athletes, without regard to sexual orientation.

You Can Play works to guarantee that athletes are given a fair opportunity to compete, judged by other athletes and fans alike, only by what they contribute to the sport or their team’s success.

You Can Play seeks to challenge the culture of locker rooms and spectator areas by focusing only on an athlete’s skills, work ethic and competitive spirit.

With the increasingly intolorant vitriol being spouted by politicians and religious zealots it's nice to see there are still good people working towards making the world a better place. The You Can Play project is a prime example.

Reconciliation through hockey

David Jacks, Hockey Lives Here: In the Straight of the Great Spirit:

I think we should do what many other organizations in Canada are beginning to do. Prior to, or immediately following the singing of the National Anthem, we should officially acknowledge at the beginning of each Winnipeg Jets home game that this wonderful sport and coming-together of people is being played on traditional Assiniboine, Dene, Cree, Dakota Sioux, Ojibway, Metis, and Inuit territory.

I couldn't agree more. As was shown by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report, Canadians need to be better educated about our history and residential schools. A gathering of 15,000 hockey fans is a good venue for reminding Canadians where our country came from and who we share it with.

The NHL already has several ceremonies honouring the Canadian Forces, the Royal Canadian Air Force, Police and Rescue Workers, and other groups, it only makes sense that Winnipeg have a ceremony to honour the local First Nations.

Do you need a bandaid for that booboo?

CBC News:

Walking around Winnipeg in the winter is now a little safer, thanks to a new online bulletin that grades sidewalk and street conditions. Surefoot.org, a website launched by the City of Winnipeg, provides daily updates based on observations from city street maintenance staff.

I don’t want to dismiss the project, nor Coun. Harvey Smith’s unfortunate accident. I’m not going to argue that such a resource as Surefoot.org isn’t necessary, after all traffic reports have been around for a long time and are a helpful resource for motorists. I will however argue the likelihood that Surefoot.org will have much impact on the safety of city streets.

Slippery sidewalks are a reality in any winter climate city and how to deal with them is difficult. As a carless Winnipegger living in the Downtown core I have to deal with slippery sidewalks pretty much every day during the fall and winter months, yet I honestly can’t see myself using Surefoot. How many Winnipeggers are actually expected to use the site, especially those in the target demographic of Winnipeggers over the age of fifty? It’s easier to look out the window, if you see snow on the trees, buildings, and cars it’s quite likely the streets are slippery.

Commenters on the CBC story mocked the project as a waste of taxpayers’ money, however it seems, at least to this writer, like Surefoot was created as a concession with the knowledge that a real¹ solution would be much more costly. Web resources like this are really just a bandaid. It’s an easy answer to a hard problem. When someone comes crying to City Hall about how they think something needs to be done about the slippery streets just send them a carefully worded acknowledgement and pop in the link to Surefoot. Now nobody can complain the City doesn’t care.

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¹The real solution being regularly removing snow and sanding the heaviest traffic and most problematic sidewalks. This is already done to some extent but not to the same degree that streets are cleared for motorists. Obviously this would put more strain on the City’s swelling snow removal budget.