MISCmedia by Clark Humphrey » Blog Archive RANDOM LINKS FOR 8/31/11

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RANDOM LINKS FOR 8/31/11

August 30th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

Judy Lightfoot offers a thorough history of Metro Transit’s downtown Ride Free Area (originally marketed as the “Magic Carpet Zone”),Â which several powerful people believe is an idea whose time has gone. (I don’t.)
Sierra magazine calls the UW America’s “greenest” college.
Portland school officials campaigned directly for a school construction bond measure. That kind of campaigning is illegal there. The proverbial poo is a-flyin’.
The right-wing Heritage Foundation calls Jim McDermott Washington’s least liberal Democratic congressperson. Their calculating is a little flawed.
As an argument against that ranking, consider McDermott’s latest crusade, to make electronics companies prove they’re not buying “conflict metals” from brutal African warlords.
Correction to yesterday’s Random Links: Turns out the Wash. state legislature’sÂ ethnic-minority percentage isn’t 6.6 percent but 6.8 percent.
Next year’s state budget battles are already underway. A public-employee union chief insists the state shouldn’t embark on a big transportation master plan without restoring some of the recent deep cuts to other vital services.
King County’s searching for “true solutions” to endemic Latino gang violence, particularly in the southern ‘burbs.
Could Shoreline extend its city limits into the next county?
The conservative but “hip” Mars Hill Church is on the road to becoming its own national denomination. (Though it’s not using that specific word.)
Bill O’Reilly’s Neanderthal attitude towards women isn’t just reflected in his on-airÂ rants against contraception, but in his personalÂ campaign of vengeance against his estranged wife and her new man.
Not only do politicians and the Supreme Court mistakenly treat corporations as people, but marketing analysts see brands “becoming human.”
The dumb “rapist as rebel hero” meme has spread from L.A. hiphop to open mic comedy nights.