I’m Late for a Party at Brookings
Originally Published on NevadaNewsmakers.com, 7/2/2007 2:45:13 PM
Hello 911? Please hurry! I’m late for a party at Brookings!
The line of taxi cabs for hire at Union Station in the nation’s capital stretches the length of a city block. Each car has a plastic bubble on the roof with the name of the company that owns it. Above the company names, all the bubbles bear the same phrase. “Call 911.”
Could the District of Columbia be the only place in the nation where 911 is not the number for emergency services? All over town, cab tops instruct you to “Call 911.” Really? Dial 911 to get a cab?
Having inhabited the squalid inner city of a large-and-gleaming metropolitan market for 13 years, the Reasonable Reporter should have remembered a crime spree there that prompted demands from cab drivers for a universal distress signal. The signal they contemplated was some kind of flashing light in the bubble, triggered from inside the car.
A flashing bubble on a moving cab would mean, loosely, “Holy Mother of God, this guy in the backseat just jabbed a gun into my neck! Please help me!” Various ideas for a distress signal were discussed, but “Call 911” was not among them.
With tourists converging in D. C. from all over the world, it hardly seems plausible that nobody mistakenly calls 911 for a cab. (What Would Borat Do?) But the folks at the D.C. Taxi Commission, say nope. Never happens, or at least it’s never reported to them. Would the folks at emergency dispatch corroborate that story?
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Fuels buildup a myth? Fires suppression budgets inflated?
Let it burn?
As blame is layered upon accusation regarding the Angora fire, here’s an interesting analysis of the big picture. Thoreau Institute researcher Randal O’Toole says he spent a year sifting through the national fire data, and came to some unexpected conclusions.
In Summary: Much of what you know about forest fires is wrong. Congress is the culprit. If you have time, download the long version. It’s only six pages. If you’re pressed for time, download the Op-Ed version. http://www.ti.org/fire.html
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This is what got feminists ticked off in the first place…
Chaz Higgs is guilty, according to a jury, of intentionally jabbing his wife with a needle loaded up with a drug that killed her. That same jury recommended a life sentence with a possibility of parole after twenty years. The wife, politician Kathy Augustine was ambitious, demanding and controversial, says the Las Vegas Review Journal’s account of things. This is a situation that would have driven members of the now-fading Feminist Matriarchy to publish angry books. That was then. Now, it’s simply a “dramatic story of power, passion and poison” for the faux-news crime shows on the networks.
Explore posts in the same categories: UncategorizedTags: Chaz Higgs, D.C. Taxi Commission, forest fires, Kathy Augustine, Randal O'Toole
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