The captions on two front page pictures in today’s WaPo tell a lot about the obliviousness of MainStream Media and of governance practitioners.
Under the picture of the New Wilson Bridge Span the caption reads:
“The new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, a project almost 20 years in the making, is opened to the media in advance of an official gala ceremony next Thursday. The 1.1. mile-long span will begin carrying traffic early next month and is expected eventually to ease some of the region’s worst congestion – at least for a while.”
First, credit where credit is due: The caption and the story correctly notes that this 2.44-billion (that is a “B”) dollar “solution” is only temporary. The story focus is on the upcoming “celebration” and self-congratulations by governance practitioners and their contractors. The caption (and the story) provides no clue about the overarching cause of the traffic congestion that makes this bridge only a temporary fix. See “Self Delusion and Fraud,” 7 June 2004 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com
Under the picture of a verdant yard the caption reads:
“Sean Kelley kisses his wife, Shannon (a Charles County Commissioner), goodbye before going off to work (in a car), while James P. Gates prepares to pump out the septic tank at their La Plata home.”
The Page 1 story is about unsuspecting home-owners (including County Commissioners) coming to the realization that at low density one cannot just flush and forget. It is also about citizen education concerning a major source of groundwater contamination. Unfortunately the story is laced with Core Confusing words. See three columns on vocabulary starting with “The Foundation of Babble,” 28 November 2005 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com
There is no indication anywhere in the story about the overarching connection between septic tanks, driving to work and subregional traffic congestion. The nexus is, of course, dysfunctional human settlement pattern.
Based on these front page stories it can be predicted that had WaPo been publishing in Florence during the spring of 1348 it would have run two stories during May. One about workers on a new bridge across the Arno becoming sick and dying in alarming numbers and another story (deemed to be unrelated to the first by the editors) about an infestation of rats on the docks at Pisa where dock workers had died earlier in the year.
In 1348 there was little knowledge about the cause of the disease that later would be known as “The Black Death.”
In “The Shape of the Future” it is noted that about as much is known in 2000 concerning the function of human settlement patterns as was known about maintaining human health 500 years earlier. See opening sections of Chapter 4. In 1348 the level of understaning about human health was not much different than it was in 1500. In 2006 the level of understanding about human settlement patterns is not much different that it was in 2000.
EMR
