Well, my post presupposes that increasing density is a problem in the first place and addresses how to solve that problem. If one rejects that premise, then of course what I said doesn't apply.

For the record, I like both the single family houses and the higher-density stuff in those photos, but I agree they shouldn't be mixed together quite like that. What they ought to do is pick which nieghborhoods should go higher-density and which should be preserved (and it's valid for the answer to be "all of them," if that's what they decide), and adjust the zoning accordingly.

Of course, the real solution would be for Amazon to open satellite offices in other cities (say, Atlanta) and stop trying to turn Seattle into a company town.

The real question is: When do we cross the line when legislating aesthetics.

This isn't necessarily an issue of aesthetics, it's an issue of size and density (lot floor area ratios). It could be fixed by simply changing the zoning such that only single-family houses were allowed, with a floor area ratios less than X, and with a maximum roof height less than Y.

Alternatively, the older houses in those photos look old enough that they could just declare the neighborhood to be a historic district and then they couldn't be torn down to build gigantic new shit. In that case, the only aesthetic consideration would be "matching what's already there."

By the way, your diesel's filter does remove most of the soot. It fails to catch the ultra-fines however.

My diesel was made in 1998. It doesn't have a particulate filter at all, and emits a small puff of soot when I floor it. (When I occasionally use dino-diesel instead of bio-diesel, the puff gets larger and I think something's wrong until I remember I put dino in.)

My small car puts out particles so big that they're visible, you insensitive clod!

(And it's supposed to do that... it's a pre-2007 Diesel. Of course, it has a functioning EGR system and uses Biodiesel, so it doesn't put out as much of them.)

(In fact, the emerging concern over "ultra-fine particles" is starting to make me wonder if engineering the soot out of Diesels -- which doesn't make it go away, but just makes the particles the same size as those produced by gasoline engines -- might not have been such a great idea.)

Then fix your damn catalytic converter, for fuck's sake!

You know, even if you're an enthusiast there's no excuse not to have a functioning cat. It's not as if it makes more than a negligible difference in horsepower (especially if the car is close to stock). I have a 25-year-old Miata that I use for autocross, and you know what? Even though it's so old that it's no longer even required to meet emissions, all the equipment is still intact, it doesn't smoke, and it doesn't smell. If I had to get it emissions-tested tomorrow, I'd fully expect it to pass with flying colors.

Now, as for your rotor apex seals, those I can't blame you for failing to replace since they require disassembling the engine. But the cat isn't enough trouble to justify neglecting.

CO2 is in a different category than "air pollution" in the sense that "air pollution" causes health problems (directly), while CO2 only causes climate change.

It's also in a different category because the solution to reducing it is different. In theory, it would be possible to eliminate all "air pollution" other than CO2 from an internal-combustion engine exhaust, if you had the right kind of catalytic converter/filter/etc. on it. In contrast, the only way to eliminate CO2 from an internal-combustion engine is to turn it off.

That's funny, the police report and all reporting on the case claim that he did.

The VIDEO proves he didn't.

Let me guess - the ghost of Bob Marley came to you in a dream, and told you The White Man Executed Tamir

I AM "The White Man," you shiteating fuckwad! What, you think because I have the shred of basic human decency necessary to admit the truth I can't possibly be white?! Fuck off, you racist douche!

Yea, but that's like saying I'm a Mariners fan because I grew up near Seattle.

Not at all. We have the Second Amendment precisely because we had the experience of violently rebelling against tyranny, and recognized the benefits of ensuring that it would be able to happen again, if/when the time came. That is an experience the British and Canadians never had, and that makes us different.

It's fine to be patriotic and all, but do you actually have something against being British or Canadian in modern times, or are your thought processes unchanged from a few centuries ago?

Thought process only need to be changed when they've been proven incorrect. The thought processes that produced the Second Amendment remain correct.

We fought Because we didn't want to pay the king. We won because we had guns.

Now you're lying, too. Tamir Rice never reached for a damn thing.

Information that could make civilians more dangerous to police or military should not be available to civilians at all, obviously.

Indeed, that is obvious -- obviously WRONG!

The police and military exist for the benefit of civilians, and for no other reason whatsoever. The second they forget that is the second they should be put down like rabid dogs.

Your statement might be the most dangerously wrongheaded totalitarian bullshit I've read so far this year.

Our commitment to gun ownership is WHY we're Americans (and not British subjects, or even Canadians) in the first place.

You are continuing to blatantly lie.

Tamir Rice "waved around" precisely nothing, and "refused to drop" precisely nothing. He was in fact shot to death before he would have even had a chance to do anything remotely resembling that!

That depends on how onerous and anti-democratic the ballot access laws are, and how gerrymandered the district is.

I'd never suggest the cops have an easy job, or that most of them aren't really trying to help clean up the neighborhoods of crime and violence. The problem is, the negative focus on officers today comes from stories on practically a weekly basis where police corruption, misbehavior or mishandling of evidence or people is uncovered. I don't know what exact percentage that works out to, but it's far too great of one -- even if by the numbers, it's only 1% of the police on the force.

The problem is that even if only 1% of the cops are directly corrupt, the other 99% of cops who fail to report them -- and that number apparently really is damn close to 99% -- are indirectly corrupt too.