Transportation and Generational Analysis, Part 1

A benefit of working for the Boomer Project is the opportunity I've had to look at some issues of long-standing personal interest, such as transportation, land use and the environment, through a new lens: the generational perspective. Each generation -- the Silent/G.I. generation, the Baby Boomers, GenX and GenY -- has a unique zeitgeist shaped by the times in which they were raised. As a result, individuals as far apart politically as, say, Gooze and myself, have strong generational similarities. Like other Boomers, we largely define ourselves by our work. We value being in control. We challenge authority.

John Martin, the CEO of the Boomer Project, brings generational analysis to many of the same fields of interest that I have examined on the Bacon's Rebellion blog. John also happens to run the BP's sister company, the Southeastern Institute of Research (SIR), where he has conducted extensive marketing surveys for a variety of transportation agencies. One of his many insights is that GenY, weaned on electronic media and the green movement, approaches transportation very differently than do the Boomers who are now in charge of government agencies and public policy making.

Recently, John addressed the George Washington Regional Commission in Fredericksburg in a session that was covered by the Free Lance-Star. I quote liberally from the coverage published in last week's newspaper:

Generation Y--people born after 1982--are constantly updating their whereabouts in real-time through text messaging, cell phones and the Web.

This need for constant social interaction and feedback means ridesharing will come naturally to them, said Martin...

"They're so hyperconnected," Martin said. Generation Y's interest in the environment, volunteerism and civic duty will combine with this trend.

During the summer spike in gas prices, all age groups said they reduced their driving -- but the greatest reduction was among Generation Y drivers, Martin said.

Though many Generation Y members are still in school, they have already organized online. According to Martin's presentation, if MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th largest nation in the world.

This technology-savvy population will be comfortable working on the go, and telecommuting will undergo a shift, Martin predicted.

Generation Y workers will demand greater schedule flexibility to balance family and social time. Baby boomers see work as part of their identity, and will be reluctant to stop working. ...

Around 4 million workers telecommuted in 1990. Today, that number has grown to 24 million people. By 2010, 40 million people will work from off-site locations, Martin predicted. ... Soon enough, even the language to describe the practice will change.

"Telework is really remote work," Martin said. "It's work. Eventually, work is going to be work no matter where it's done."

Because GenYs respond differently than previous generations did, public policy ideas that did not work with older generations may succeed with them. Carpooling is one. As John has marveled in conversations around the Boomer Project, GenYs are hyper-connected, and they use tools like MySpace and Craig's list to arrange car pools with one another. This spontaneous, bottom-up response to high fuel prices is something no government agency ever could have organized.

Telework is another idea that could be revivified. The idea of "telecommuting" sounded great in theory back in the 1990s but collided with the social realities of the Baby Boomer mindset. As John noted in Fredericksburg, however, GenY will take to telework like ducks to water. Even more encouraging, there are hints that GenYs may prefer to live in more compact, more balanced communities than the dysfunctional human settlement patterns bequeathed by the elders. (If we could just get them to stop text messaging while driving, they could prove a real boon to transportation efficiency!)

As more ground-breaking research emerges from the Boomer Project and SIR, rest assured that I will report it here.

THANK YOU, GROVETON

EMR is posting this thank you here because so many have reported that they do not bother with the comments due to the volume of New Flat Earth Society, the Business-As-Usual Crowd and 12.5 Percenter comments that our posts on this site engender. Especially now that Jim Bacon is gone.

No one should miss Groveton’s great 9 Dec 08 post at 8:43 (Pages 13, 14 and 15 for those who print out important posts) on STIMULATING DISASTER – II posted 8 December.

EMR hopes you do not object Groveton, Point 4 will appear in an End Note in Chapter 19 of TRILO-G – with attribution of course.

Re Point 5, my guess is that you have not looked up the Six Overarching Strategies we cited in our earlier response to you on this issue.

Problem is NOT figuring out what to do, the Problem it is convincing majority of citizens that the these six strategies (and others too, of course) are things that must be done.

That is the lynch pin if a democracy with a market economy is to be preserved – or should it be “restored” now that ‘the market’ is being bought up by Agencies?

One of the reasons it is hard to gain a majority of support for intelligent action is not just the New Flat Earth Society et. al. but a larger issue:

The subject of the post by Rabbit at 11:03 on the same string concerning centralization / decentralization by “jeffvail” of 10 Dec (The link did work for EMR) is a perfect example.

The whole post (and the graphic) that Rabbit referred to is great stuff but lacking an overarching Conceptual Framework of human settlement patterns and Vocabulary to articulate the Framework, it is not possible to communicate (“note use of “Suburbia” in title).

If you do not like The New Urban Regions Conceptual Framework and Vocabulary, come up with your own but do not pretend that it is possible to have meaningful dialogue without a comprehensive Conceptual Framework and a supporting Vocabulary.

One other thing, now EVERYONE has someone to blame for their 401K tanking. It was Fannie and Freddie. Now there is a fresh set of villains. You can either hate the Donkey Clan and the White House / Big Government Elephants or the Senate No-Bailouts Elephants concerning the Autonomobile bailout.

Just for fun reread “Riding the Tiger” of 2 June 2008.


EMR

Two More Environmental Threats Facing Virginia

The Old Dominion is facing two new environmental threats. Battle lines are being drawn regarding a proposed coal-fired electricity plant in Surry County. And pharma giant Merck wants permission to dump several times the levels of allowable pollutants into the Shenandoah River.

The new issues come just after Dominion Power has begun contruction of a highly-controversial $1.8 billion, 585-megawatt coal-fired plant in St. Paul in Wise County. The project was supported by Gov. Tim Kaine although his own Commission on Global Change has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, by 80 percent by 2050. Kaine has never squared that contradiction.

Now, an entirely new project is being proposed By Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, a $6 billion coal-fired plant capable of producing up to 1,500 megawatts of electricity. The project would be located in Surry County in the town of Dendron about 40 miles west of Norfolk.

If it proceeds, a plant up to triple the size of Dominion's Wise County operation would be built close to tributaries of the James River and Chesapeake Bay and their sensitive crab and oyster spanning grounds. Its air pollution would be a matter of a few miles from Colonial Williamsburg and near one of the state's most densely populated areas in Greater Tidewater. It would be close to Dominion's two nuclear reactors at Surry.

According to The Virginian-Pilot, the plant has drawn pledges of "all out war" from environmental groups including the Sierra Club, the Southern Envionrmental Law Center and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Since it is located not far from Norfolk Southern's railroad mainline from the Appalachian coalfields to loading docks at Lambert's Point in Norfolk, the plant, called the Cypress Creek Power Station, would have no trouble finding coal supplies. About three percent of its fuel would come from biomass.

Yet details of the plant are few. It does not appear that it would involve any advanced, clean-coal technologies designed to trap carbon dioxide and keep more nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur pollution out of the air. Dominion's Wise County plant does not offer advanced "clean coal" technology, either.

Meanwhile, Merck, a $24 billion pharmaceutical maker based in New Jersey, wants to be allowed to emit twice the amount of phosphorous and three times as much nitrogen as allowed by the Department of Environmental Quality at a plant in Elkton near the Shenandoah River. (Click here for details.) Those pollutants will flow into the Potomac River and eventually the Chesapeake Bay.

The takeaway: Virginia prides itself on being "business friendly," with its anti-labor, anti-environmentalist stances. Yet, the Surry coal plant could be three times the size of the hotly-contested Wise County plant and it is much closer to large, populated areas, not to mention sensitive marine life. It amazes that the plant has gotten little attention outside ot The VirginianPilot and especially not in the Richmond area where Old Dominion Electric is based.

Even Tim Kaine talks out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to global warming. But how much longer is Big Business going to be allowed to have its way with the state's air and water?


Peter Galuszka

Could Bloggers Have Stopped Hitler?

Could bloggers have stopped Hitler?

Yes, says Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature on Sunday.

"Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded -- ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day," the author of such works as "The Book of Flights" and "Terra Amata" said.

Blogging may have it limits in that it is only as good, as accurate and as honest as the writer. But blogging is diffuse and completely bypasses the traditional gatekeepers at newspapers, magazines, television programs and even e-zines.

As one level of the media becomes corporatized, sanitized and emasculated another has arisen that can be free of all of those concerns. One doesn't have to submit to someone else's idea of what the right "tone" is or if a thought is "civil" or "high-minded" enough.

So, be glad that this blog is free, at least for now.

Gee, I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would say?


Peter Galuszka

STIMULATING DISASTER -- PART TWO

In STIMULATING DISASTER posted 7 December 2008 – the date of posting is NOT a happenstance – EMR commented on a short list of specific proposals put forth by the president-elect, Barack Obama to “stimulate the economy.”

On that same day on a television talk show, the president-elect suggested that the economic problem “would get worse before it got better.” Few disagree with that assessment.

The gross mismanagement of US of A financial Enterprises and Agencies – selling speculative paper based on bad mortgages – destabilized an over-leverage global financial system that was already grossly over-dependent on unsustainable ‘growth.’ It will take more than creating public service jobs, cutting energy consumption in Agency buildings, tinkering with health records and other sideshows addressed in STIMULATING DISASTER to make any significant change, much less achieve Fundamental Transformation to a sustainable trajectory for society.

Fundamental Transformation will require addressing the BIG ENCHILADAS:

The Mobility and Access Crisis, and
The Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis

That means getting serious about the Helter Skelter Crisis, aka dysfunctional human settlement patterns and the unsustainable trajectory of contemporary civilization.


MOBILITY AND ACCESS

The only things that are on the table with respect to The Mobility and Access Crisis are:

• “Fixing” the Interstate System and “rebuilding highways” addressed in STIMULATING DISASTER and the comments following the post, and

• Bailing out the three largest Autonomobile Enterprises.

With respect to the later, Congress and the White House are on the case. They turned down a request for a $35 billion blank check and are tinkering with a smaller, short term blank check.

However, before they turn over the money, they want some assurance that there will be changes made. They want the head of General Motors to be fired.

They are absolutely right in getting to the core problem. What is GM doing with Mr. Wagoner in the lead? They need Mr. Hybrid.

It is not a joke that Congress is demanding Wagoner’s head. It is a joke if they think that will make any difference.

Wagoner has been on the job since 2000. The problem citizen now face has been growing since 1920. The unsustainable trajectory should have been clear to all since 1973.

In 1973 EMR lost a good client and a great project. Ford Motor Company, to handshake partner of the client, Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, walked away from a proposal to build a prototype Planned New Community applying new Mobility and Access technology being developed by Ford’s Fairlane research program.

When the OPEC Oil Embargo hit, Ford abandoned the idea of innovation (and fired the whole Fairlane Research Center that was looking at vehicle / settlement pattern relationships) to focus on their “core business." Ford and the other Autonomobile Enterprises continued to focus on their “core business" over the next 35 years. They now face bankruptcy because their "core business" is not sustainable for the reasons spelled out in THE PROBLEM WITH CARS.

The problem is not some short-term, short-sightedness of a few CEOs, it is a problem of relying of Large, Private Vehicles to provide Mobility and Access to an Urban society. Autonomobiles have grown more complex and more costly to build, operate and maintain and more dependent on cheap energy every year since 1973. With the end of cheap energy, the 35 year joy ride is over.

The choice is either an alternative Mobility and Access System to support a sustainable human settlement pattern or Depression. Take your pick.

Chrysler president Jim Press says: “The solution is product.” No, the solution is a Fundamental Transformation in the settlement pattern and in the infrastructure and vehicles to provide Mobility and Access.

(This just in: The ASHTO lanudry list released in Philidelphia today is made up mainly of projects that that will make human settlement patterns MORE dysfunctional. And to this a list of shared-vehicle system projects like the Silver Line and you have a real disaster.)


AFFORDABLE AND ACCESSIBLE HOUSING

The other half of the BIG ENCHILADA solution to address the Helter Skelter Crisis is a way to provide citizens with Affordable and Accessible Housing.

Here again the issue is quite clear and has been addressed by columns in Bacon’s Rebellion for five years.

What triggered the Global Financial Meltdown was speculative paper base on bad mortgages. The underlying problem was not just loans to bad people or even bad people making bad loans, it was making loans on the Wrong Sized House in the Wrong Location.

For half a decade EMR has been saying that the problem with Fanning and Freddie was not just bloated executive compensation, unsound lending practices and no oversight. The problem was that Freddie and Fannie was pumping Billions into an overheated housing market and exacerbating an unsustainable settlement pattern.

We explored this issue in a series of posts: “IT IS ELEMENTARY,” (10 October 2008), “THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA,” (11 October 2008), “SWIFT BOATING THE MORTGAGE CRISIS,” (12 October 2008) and “THE BOTTOM LINE,” 13 October 2008). These posts will appear, in an edited format as “IT IS THE SETTLEMENT PATTERN STUPID” in TRILO-G.

Bailing out mortgagees or mortgagors will not solve the Mortgage Meltdown problem, that will require Fundamental Transformation of human settlement patterns.

Who will lead that effort? When one looks for an answer to this question, the future looks very scary. In today’s WaPo Robert J. Samuelson’s column is titled “Bernanke’s Burden.” The column outlines why Bernanke is the central figure in solving the financial crisis and points out that Bernake will be around in the new administration unless forced to resign.

Let us review Bernanke’s understanding of shelter finance as noted in THANKSGIVING PERSPECTIVE:

“Bernanke: There’s No Housing Bubble to Go Bust” in WaPo Business Section 27 October 2005 (A few days before President Bush nominated Bernanke to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve.)

“Housing Cool-Down Is ‘Orderly,’ Fed Chief (Bernanke) Says” in WaPo Business Section, 19 May 2006

“Fed Chief (Bernanke) Says Housing Problems Won’t Spread to Rest of Economy” on Page C4 of the 29 March 2007 New York Times.

A 5 December WaPo headline reads: “Bernanke Stirs Pot On Home Loan Help: U.S. Must Take Action, Fed Chairman Says.

The bottom line is still that the “leaders” at the federal level did not have a clue what was happening and they still do not know what happened or what will result from pumping more cheap money into shelter related Enterprises before everyone understand the importance of evolving functional human settlement patterns.

At the least mortgage assistance must be focused on loans that qualify for Location Efficient Mortgages.

If mortgages are secured by interests in sound, well located dwellings, even if the mortgagee cannot pay, someone can buy the dwelling and make it a home.

In the National Capital Subregion, the typical cost of a foreclosure mortgage wash for a dwelling in a scattered (orphan) Cluster-scale subdivision in the R = 25 to R = 40 Radius Band are running around $100,000 for a $190,000 resale. A 35 percent mark down on just 5 million underwater mortgages is $500 billion.

Here is the first paragraph of our 9 November 2008 post “Wrong House, Wrong Location”:

“On 31 October CNNMoney.com reported that First American CoreLogic had found 7.5-million home mortgages already “underwater” and another 2.1-million that were on the brink. The International Herald Tribune story cited in EMR’s post “WAPO AND IHT HOUSING AND MORTGAGE COVERAGE,” 29 October on this Blog pegged the potential for underwater mortgages by 2010 at 19-million.”

You heard about the cause for Thanksgiving on turkey day. Any idea about New Years resolutions?

Note: This post (and other recent posts) have not been edited by Jim Bacon so it may not be as clear as it might otherwise be.

EMR

STIMULATING DISASTER

The following is the headline, byline and the first four paragraphs of the story that was at the top, right of page A 1 in today’s WaPo.

EMR has inserted in brackets [ ] comments in the text and following the quoted material added comments on the “massive” plan to create jobs. We hope these notes make it clear why these ideas, though well intended, are ‘stimulating disaster’ (or perhaps compounding disaster) on the way to Collapse. Since the political leadership of the Commonwealth was an early supporter of the president-elect, one can expect Virginia to be a recipient of some of this job creation stimulus.

...............

Obama Offers First Look at Massive Plan To Create Jobs
Project Would Be the Largest Since the Interstate System

[In retrospect the negative impact the Interstate System on human settlement patterns inside the Clear Edges and outside the Clear Edges is crystal clear. It is also just as clear that a different design for an InterRegional Roadway System – for example one with key elements of the system laid out in 1924 would have had far more beneficial impacts and far fewer negative impacts and it would have created far more jobs.]

By Michael D. Shear

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 7, 2008; A01

On the heels of more grim unemployment news, President-elect Barack Obama yesterday offered the first glimpse of what would be the largest public works program since President Dwight D.
Eisenhower created the federal interstate system in the 1950s.

[Dwight did not “create” the Interstate System.]

Obama said the massive government spending program he proposes to lift the country out of economic recession will include a renewed effort to make public buildings energy-efficient, rebuild the nation's highways, renovate aging schools and install computers in classrooms, extend high-speed Internet to underserved areas and modernize hospitals by giving them access to electronic medical records.

[See notes below on each element that is listed.]

"We need to act with the urgency this moment demands to save or create at least 2 ½ million jobs so that the nearly 2 million Americans who've lost them know that they have a future," Obama said in his weekly address, broadcast on the radio and the Internet.

[See note revised from “Thanksgiving Perspective” below concerning the jobs that are really needed.]

Obama offered few details and no cost estimate for the investment in public infrastructure. But it is intended to be part of a broader effort to stimulate economic activity that will also include tax cuts for middle-class Americans and direct aid to state governments to forestall layoffs as programs shrink.

[The devil – and the path to disaster and Collapse – is in the details.]

.................

Consider each of the listed elements:

“Make public buildings energy-efficient”

There is nothing ‘wrong’ with trying to make public buildings more energy-efficient. However, what really needs to be made more energy-efficient and less energy-consumptive is the settlement pattern. It is the arrangement of buildings and spaces that is the primary driver of dysfunction and waste, not just of energy but of time and all other resources.

The downside of a focus on public building efficiency is that Agencies have a disastrous record trying to make anything related to buildings and settlement patterns “efficient” due to the pervasive dysfunction in governance structure – Public Housing, Urban Renewal, Zoning and Subdivision Controls, Ag subsidies, roadway, waterway and airport subsides come to mind.

Collectively, Agencies at the federal state and municipal level have created The Mobility and Access Crisis, The Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis and The Helter Skelter Crisis.

“Rebuild the nation's highways”

Putting more resources into a system to support near exclusive reliance on Large, Private Vehicles (Autonomobiles) for Mobility and Access is an invitation to less Mobility and less Access. See THE PROBLEM WITH CARS

“Renovate aging schools”

Fine idea, most of the investment in schools over the past 30 years has been to support children of those who have been induced to (or had not choice but to) buy the Wrong Size House in the Wrong Location.

The problem with investing in the schools that really need renovation is that the Clusters and Neighborhoods where the children live need ‘renovation’ even more than the schools. Can you say “rebuild the Urban fabric inside the Clear Edges to create Balanced Communities?”

“Install computers in classrooms”

Great idea. But from the advertisements on MainStream Media is appears that the NBA is already doing this.

Perhaps before computers are installed there needs to be a comprehensive strategy to address the results of over technological saturation that is driving Mass OverConsumption. See “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future” by Mark Bauerlein.

Dumping more technology on students may be no better than dumping more asphalt on the landscape or putting every efficient lighting in dysfunctionally scattered buildings.

“Extend high-speed Internet to underserved areas”

Whoa! Here we go again. Unless there is an intelligent nation-state-wide Wright Plan, this program will be subsidizing those who have made bad location decisions with little benefit to any but those who are at the broadband subsidy trough.

“Modernize hospitals by giving them access to electronic medical records.”

This is a real whiz-bang idea. It is the system of delivering medical services that needs Transformation. Electronic medical records are not even a sty on the gnat eye.

The bigger Picture

There is nothing here about bailing out Autonomobile Enterprises or the Shelter Enterprises. That seems strange given the magnitude of the “problem.” EMR will deal with the pitfalls with the current ideas in these areas in due course.

As we noted in Thanksgiving Perspectives what is really needed are sustainable ways to use the US of A’s greatest surplus resource.

That resource is citizens who are not very bright and not very motivated. They:

• Slept through the important parts of high school

• Want to be entertained rather that create their own active, healthful recreation

• Almost all have made location and consumption decisions that they thought were in their best interest, but cumulatively these actions contribute to the growing economic, social and physical dysfunction

Because they happen to be born in US of A they believe “someone” owes them a comfortable life of consumption and entertainment.

They are not willing to work at the jobs that are attractive to those who are bright, resourceful but were unfortunate enough to have been born in some other nation-state.

There is plenty of challenge and opportunity for the bright and the motivated, it is the vast majority of the Running As Hard As They Cans and most of the Losing Grounds in the bottom 90 percent of the Ziggurat that need reorientation and something productive to do.

Telling a large percentage of the population they are fat, under-educated and slothful is not a way to get elected or reelected. “Leading” the citizens out of their self-created wilderness of sloth, indulgence and dysfunctional ways may not be possible with dwindling resources. But this short laundry list of ideas to generate is a not starter.

Note: This post (and “Thanksgiving Perspectives:) was not edited by Jim Bacon so it may not be as clear as it might otherwise be.

EMR

The Bacon's Rebellion E-zine and the King James Bible

Fellow bloggers, I apologize for my absence. If I'd been more attentive, I might have been able to smooth things over before the rupture between Peter Galuszka and the new publishers of the Bacon's Rebellion e-zine took place (see previous post). Here's what's going on.

Mike Thompson, president of the Jefferson Institute for Public Policy and a long-time contributor to the e-zine, approached me after I ceased publication and offered to take over. (Read his profile and the list of columns he and his associates have written here.) We thought it would be worthwhile to provide a platform for the contributors to the "old" e-zine should they still desire one. Because of my new obligations, I would not have time to edit it, as I used to do, although I might contribute a column from time to time.

The Jefferson Institute is a Northern Virginia think tank that, like Bacon's Rebellion, focuses on public policy issues in Virginia. The organization espouses a pragmatic free market/fiscal conservatism approach that I was comfortable with. However, Mike agreed to maintain the open spirit of the e-zine, keeping it open to a wide variety of viewpoints -- a key point that I insisted upon and Mike readily agreed to. Although Mike and his team would take over editing and distribution of the e-zine (and posting the e-zine on the website), they have agreed to run any columns past me before publication. I have the right under our agreement to exercise veto rights over any content I deem incompatible with Bacon's Rebellion brand. I continue to "own" the e-zine. However, the e-zine will bear a tag-line saying, "published by the Jefferson Institute," or something very similar, to reflect its new role.

It was my intention to announce the new arrangement in concert with publication of the first edition, which is coming out shortly. I will post the columns to this blog for public comment, as I did for the "old" e-zine.

Otherwise, there will be no connection between the e-zine and the Bacon's Rebellion blog, which I continue personally to moderate and contribute to (although my presence has been diminished of late). Neither Mike nor any of his associates have posting rights to the blog, nor have they asked for them. As far as I know, they do not even participant in the comments section of the blog. Peter is free to continue posting to this blog as long as he wants to.

Some time ago, I issued invitations to participants of the "old" e-zine to contribute to the new publication. Not everyone chose to do so. Norm Leahy, a valued, long-time e-zine columnist and poster to this blog, will not contribute. He is affiliated with Tertium Quids, a conservative, non-partisan advocacy group that has issues with the Jefferson Institute. Several other columnists, including Peter, did agree to participate.

Peter submitted a column, "RIP to Immigrant Bashers" (which he subsequently posted on this blog). Kiel Stone, the first-line editor, made mainly minor, stylistic edits. As I understand it, he passed on the edited column to Mike, who made the call to delete one particular line referring to the King James Bible as being the preferred version of immigrant bashers. When Peter reviewed the edited version, he took exception to the cut on the grounds of both substance and editorial integrity.

I was aware of this issue early Friday morning but did not have time at the time to respond thoughtfully. For the record, had I had a chance, I would have urged Mike not to delete the phrase. While I personally regard the King James Bible as one of the greatest works of English literature, and while I can understand how those who would revere it would find the reference offensive, Peter is free to offend whom he pleases. He has legitimate reasons (based on the mis-use of the KJV by nativist groups) for making his statement, so his statement falls within the bounds of reasoned discourse. The whole point of Bacon's Rebellion is to include a diversity of viewpoints -- including sharply expressed views that may make me uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, while I was at work Friday, a series of emails between Mike and Peter resulted in a breech that would seem impossible to repair. Then Peter went public with his post on this blog, prompting this explanation. So, that's the story, folks. I apologize for failing to intervene in a timely manner and quietly settle the issue behind the scenes.