Comcast has been caught blocking some broadband subscribers’ file uploads and downloads. Is it an attempt to ration out bandwidth, or to cripple file sharing services? If it’s the latter, now we know why Comcast’s logo looks so much like the copyright symbol.

…of the non-denominational “winter” decorations being designed for display at Sea-Tac Airport this December, they seem to be preparing to celebrate Festivus.

Third party magazine-subscription sales plans can be fraudulant.

Did Raymond Carver really write Raymond Carver’s short stories? Or should they more properly be considered editor Gordon Lish’s prose based on Carver’s storylines? Carver’s widow would like us all to see his real stuff, un-Lish-ized.

What, you aren’t afraid, very afaid, of the staph ‘superbug’? Why the hell not? Aren’t you a good obedient American?

The rich just keep getting richer. As of the most recent available statistics, the top 1 percent of taxpayers control one fifth of the nation’s wealth.

CBS’s Dick Meyer calls this the deliberate result of “Trickle Up” economics. And, he asserts, Republicans, Democrats, and baby boomers all support the policies that keep so few getting so much.

Greg Nickels’s big plans for south Lake Union originally didn’t include the Wawona, the 110-year-old Pacific Schooner that’s been docked since the ’70s at what’s now South Lake Union Park.

This week, the Wawona’s fate was apparently decided at a meeting of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Board. Northwest Seaport, the nonprofit that now owns the ship, would have it drydocked, disassembled, many pieces replaced, and reassembled on land near its current pier. The whole operation would take $2 million. Northwest Seaport has only raised $400,000 thus far toward the ship’s long-term restoration. But they’re hoping the SLU area’s higher visibility will translate into higher visibility for their cause.

At the same meeting, representatives of developer David Sabey discussed their plans for the old Georgetown brewery site. Sabey’s people said they won’t even try to preserve the facade of the site’s southernmost building (the former Rainier Cold Storage), which they said was too far gone to restore into anything. They might, however, consider carefully dismantling the building’s front wall so it can be rebuilt in front of some new structure.

Oh, and did you hear Sabey wants to buy, and save, the Sonics and Storm? He’d put up a new arena for the basketball teams on the old Associated Grocers land he now owns near Boeing Field.

Sabey’s current record at preserving threatened Seattle institutions is now 0-1. (He was the last owner of the Frederick & Nelson department store, which had greatly fiscally deteriorated before he came in.) Saving the Sonics would make him a true Comeback Kid.

Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla digitally recorded his first solo album in Vancouver. A recording-studio employee was bringing the finished tracks to Seattle when U.S. border agents seized the hard drive. The hereby-linked AP story says “some music publications hinted” the dispute might have been due to the “politically charged” content on the album. Walla discounts this conspiracy theorizing, noting the agents let tape copies of the songs go through. Barsuk Records says Walla’s album, Field Manual, will be out in January. The feds still haven’t returned the hard drive.

• Oklahoma City’s mayor, a pal of Sonics owner Clay Bennett, drops hints that Bennett and co. may already be planning the team’s move.
• You remember that ultra low-fare airline offering super-cheap seats from Bellingham to Columbus, OH? It’s not anymore.
• Canadian transportation experts voice concern that B.C. Ferry crews may be enjoying too much “B.C.bud” on the job.
• For an off-off-year election, some races are definitely heating up. Examples: Seattle City Councilmember David Della’s decreasingly rational rants about opponent Tim Burgess; the Seattle School Board battle between incumbent Darlene Flynn and centralized-curriculum advocate Sherry Carr; the skirmish for King County Prosecutor between business-as-usual Dan Satterberg and dynamic challenger Bill Sherman; and something I don’t quite understand in Renton.
• And everybody’s supposed to be afraid, very afraid, of Windstorm 2007, coming Thursday, or not.

The media biz is finding less money to pay for content, says an unpaid “reader blogger” on the P-I site.

Apparently, during the ’90s microwbrewery craze, a lot of hop farms emerged in Eastern Washington. When that nascent industry experienced a shakeout, many of those farms went under, sold out, or switched to other crops. Now, suds-biz experts warn we may have a serious hop shortage. When combined with a tight barley market, the result could be skyrocketing prices for the Northwest’s better brews. Will we have to turn to wine, or gin, or (Heaven forbid!) low-hopped swill from the mega-beer factories?

A legendary storehouse of fabulous cheap wonders, the Boeing Surplus store in glorious Kent, is closing in December.

Boeing will still sell off stuff it no longer wants (hardware, upholstery, office furnishings, computers, power tools, obscure measuring instruments), but it’ll sell it all online. Where’s the adventure in that?

As you might expect for a place with so many engineering nerds among its regular customers, a “Save Boeing Surplus” web site is already up n’ running.

UW scientists say they can alter poplar trees with rabbit DNA to create pollution-sucking trees. According to a P-I piece, these Frankentrees can “naturally render a list of cancer-causing pollutants–benzene, trichloroethylene (TCE), vinyl chloride, chloroform–non-toxic.”

Now, let’s have these PoMo tree surgeons create plants that could do something really useful, like ridding the indoor air of cheap perfume stink, or even patchouli.

…Seattle Times “expose” piece on Sunday? The one blasting certain local Democratic politicians for approving costly budget earmarks benefitting a big campaign contributor?

Well, prog-blog star Matt Stoller has his own take on the topic.

Stoller’s opinion on these favors ties into his opinion about Rep. Brian Baird, one of the three lawmakers cited in the Times story. (The others are Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Norm Dicks.)

Stoller lists Baird as a “Bush Dog Democrat,” one of several Congresspeople who regularly vote with the right wing on key issues at key moments. Stoller would like more progressive Dems to run against these Congresspeople at the next primary season.

Stoller looks at Baird’s work to force the Navy to buy an unneeded $4 million boat from a local builder as part of a larger “nexus between Bush Dogs and corrupt practices.”

A Seattle Times Sunday editorial rejected the Roads and Transit ballot measure, following its Friday “expose” of Sound Transit light-rail construction costs.

Both pieces were built upon faulty reasoning.

About the supposed revelation of cost overruns, those “wasted” $5 million or so were out of a budget approximately a thousand times that high. Of course construction projects that drag on a decade or more are going to rise in price, especially during Seattle’s condo-mania when everything from concrete to cranes has been in overheated demand. The article failed to mention that if the original Sound Transit scheme had been approved in 1995, let alone the Forward Thrust transit scheme in 1968, we’d have gotten many more miles of light rail at a lower total cost.

And about the editorial’s assertion that we don’t need no new-fangled pubic transportation, that all we need to get around better is more and bigger highways?

The next day, the Monday Times’s big headline gave the startling news that people in Puget Sound country are driving less these days and taking public transportation more. The region’s vehicle population is still growing, but at a third its ’80s rate. And Sound Transit’s ridership has trebled since 2000. And that’s without light rail. Might the Times editorial board be persuaded to change its mind and acknowledge the value of adding more transit? Naaah…

AWAKENING FROM THE DREAM(LINER): Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner will now be at least six months late to its maiden flight.

Boeing says it’s due to multiple snags in the plane’s global outsourced production system.

So much for author Thomas Friedman’s claims about the world (of global commerce) being flat, Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat concludes.

Still, don’t expect Boeing to go back to making more pieces of its products itself. Global deals, political tradeoffs to get state-owned foreign airlines to buy the finished planes, you know…

FALLING DOWN: Shortly after the start of Sunday night’s Seattle Seahawks-New Orleans Saints football game at Qwest Field, NBC’s skycam mechanism fell from its high wires onto the field below.

The mishap occurred during a called time out. Nobody was on the playing field when the skycam suddenly became a groundcam.

Once play resumed, about ten minutes later, the Seahawks did all the crashing. The unsung Saints, in their first victory of the season, trammeled the hapless Hawks in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as its 28-17 final score. It was the Hawks’ second nationally-televised collapse in as many weeks.

THINKING GLOBALLY, PICKETING LOCALLY: The P-I Monday headline: “Stripped-down student protesters rush Macy’s aisles.”

The reality: Less flamboyant, more serious, more global.

Six female college students simply walked into the ladies’ room at the downtown Seattle store formerly known as The Bon Marche. They emerged clad in odd, but street-legal, garments assembled from black plastic trash bags. After 15 minutes on the premises, the six left to join 12 other female and male picketers outside.

The protesters’ slogan: “I’d rather wear trash bags than Macy’s sweatshop clothing.”

The protesters’ message: A statement of solidarity with unionized textile workers in Guatemala, who have been locked out by factory management. The factories in question, Cimatextiles and Choishin, make clothes for such U.S. brands as Talbot’s and Liz Claiborne.

DISSED FOR LISTENING TO DISSERS: Gov. Christine Gregoire’s been traveling the state, patiently listening to citizen gripes at town meetings. Republican Party operatives blast the meetings as a big political stunt.

Let’s figure this one out: When the gov, as part of her regular governing duty, hears the voice of the people, that’s “political.” But when, say, undeclared un-candidate Dino Rossi travels the byways to make himself heard, that’s just public service?