Thanksgiving English Quiz: Grammar in The New York Times

Can this sentence, from the New York Times article on the DeLay conviction, be read as anything other than evidence of the collapse of journalism, and hence of language, and hence of civilization?

To be guilty of money laundering, the prosecution had to show the money had been obtained through an illegal activity before it was laundered.

They succeeded in showing that, so I guess that means the prosecution is guilty of money laundering.

This is the frigging NYTimes!  Are there no editors sharp-eyed enough to change “To be guilty of …” to “To prove …” ?  Predicates need subjects!  Otherwise they run wild and incriminate innocent people.

Update: Commenter GD provides the necessary transit angle on this story:

William Safire is rotating in his grave. The question now is how to harness that energy and power rail transit with it 😉

Happy Thanksgiving to American readers.  If you had to fly in the USA yesterday, I hope it was stimulating.

Seattle + Snow = Futility

Dear Seattle readers, if you still haven’t figured out that you need to stay home, watch this.  Its a slice of life on John Street, Capitol Hill, Seattle, yesterday evening.

 

The transit angle on the story appears at 2:43.  Good thing nobody used the bike rack.

Stay home!

Connections vs Complexity

In my first “basics” post on connections, I explained why a network that requires connections (or as North Americans call them, “transfers”) can actually get people where they’re going faster than a network that tries to avoid them.

But there’s another important reason to plan for connections rather than direct service, one that should be important to anyone who wants transit to be broadly relevant to urban life: Unless you welcome and encourage connections, your network will become very, very complex. Continue Reading →

Connection Fare Penalties: Why They Happen

Is it fair to have to pay more if your trip requires a transfer or connection?  I’ve argued that it isn’t, but I also have an appreciation of the difficulty of eliminating these penalties.  So when complaining about a fare penalty, try to understand the situation from the transit agency’s point of view.  Not because they’re right and you’re wrong, but because you many need to help them solve the problem that it presents for themContinue Reading →

“Mapnificent”: Your Freedom to Roam

Long ago I highlighted an early product by WalkScore.com which enabled you to select a location and time of day, and then showed you a map of all the places you can get to on transit within a specified time.  Reader Tom West points me to a new effort along similar lines, called Mapnificent, by Stefan Wehrmeyer.  He describes the product on his blog in both geeky and practical detail. Continue Reading →

The Peril of Low Base Fares

Are transit fares in Los Angeles cheaper than in San Francisco?  That’s the impression you’ll get from a direct comparison of the base adult cash fare.  The travel blog Price of Travel just compared the base fares of 80 major tourist cities around the world and noted that, while San Francisco Muni’s base fare is $2.00, that of the Los Angeles County MTA is $1.50. Continue Reading →

The Horrors of “Transferring” in 1974, and a Happier Future

Connections, or transfers as North Americans depressingly call them, are the foundation of a simple, frequent transit network that’s there whenever you need it.  I laid out the basic argument here, but in brief, a transit system that tries to run direct service from everywhere else (so that nobody has to make a connection) ends up as a confusing tangle of hundreds of overlapping lines, few of which are frequent enough to rely on or simple enough to remember.  Continue Reading →