billso.com

According to the Star-Bulletin, four boys were hit by a car by Kukui Tower yeserday at 4:19 pm. The kids were hunting lizards in the shrubbey around the building when a speeding Mercedes hit another car and jumped the curb. The Mercedes plowed into boys. One was taken to Straub in stable condition.

Frankly, I feel more sorry for the lizards than the kids. I think I saw these same boys chasing a green gecko on Fort Street Mall around 4 pm on Monday. Some of the boys almost ran into traffic on Beretania. Then they ran across the street to Kukui Plaza.

I’m sure the children I saw were involved in yesterday’s accident.

I imagine their parents were called by HPD to pick up their injured children from Kapiolani and Straub. Those must have been interesting conversations.

According to the newspaper, the four injured boys all live in the building. Perhaps the building management reminded the families that the sidewalks aren’t their private playground.

Then again, it’s just as likely that no one will do anything about these kids. Every day I see children who run around, scream, or won’t stay seated. Their parents usually watch and say nothing.

The Association of College and University Housing Officers–International (ACUHO-I) sponsors the 21st Century Project, an effort to design modular student residences for university campuses.

See http://www.21stcenturyproject.com/home.htm and http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/01/2007012903n.htm for more details.

Some of these designs use inexpensive fixtures and construction techniques, and can be stacked on each other to create buildings. Other designs use movable walls that let residents partition their living space as needed.

These systems could be applied to our own housing problems in Honolulu.

This article first appeared on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=39

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060805/ap_on_re_us/lonely_nation

“People are increasingly busy,” said Margaret Gibbs, a psychologist at Fairleigh Dickinson University. “We’ve become a society where we expect things instantly, and don’t spend the time it takes to have real intimacy with another person.”

This lengthy news article examines a growing trend in the United States - the shrinking social circle of friends and family. Information technology, and its integration into products, services, and daily life, is seen as a contributing factor to this trend.

More Americans choose to live by themselves as a one-person household. Over 27 million households, or 25 percent of the country’s housing total, fall into this category. In 1950, only 10 percent of households were occupied by a single person.

Dante Hicks: “You hate people!”
Randal Graves: “But I love gatherings! Isn’t it ironic?”
Clerks, 1994

Young people rely on text messaging, cell phones, instant messaging, e-mail and Web sites as an alternative means of forging a broad network like-minded acquaintances. Facebook and MySpace are two popular examples, but both services have come under scrutiny.

The article also points out that users of these two services can link to other users as “friends”. This linkage does not mean that the user knows their online “friends well - or at all.

The textbook does not cover these online social networks well. At the time it was printed, such networks were an emerging business. Instant messaging (IM) was and remains a popular service, but social networks offer users an opportunity to post content and attract new acquaintances.

Chapter 13 offers some interesting points about ethics, society and information systems. Older people who are less familiar or comfortable with information technology find their isolation disturbing. A Boston area organization called Social Capital Inc. is building a volunteer network on the Internet, to “connect neighbors” and create communities.

The effective integration of online social networks into local communities may reduce crime, improve education, and strengthen the local economy, according to Harvard professor Robert Putnam. If these effects are replicable, Honolulu may be a good venue for building community-based online social networks. Honolulu is generally regarded as a “wired’ city, as a large percentage of residents use broadband Internet access. Social Capital’s business model may be appropriate and valuable in our state.

USA: The Village Voice gives the RNC a great big welcome with a top 10 list of all the ways W screwed New York City:

1. Will any convention speaker dare mention the name of Osama bin Laden? What ever happened to Bush’s cowboy threat to “smoke ‘em” out?
2. Why was Bush so afraid of a 9-11 investigation?
3. Was the Bush team awake in the nine months before the attack?
4. Iraq plus tax cuts adds up to a deficit that will force a second-term squeeze on social programs vital to NYC.
5. Bush did OK on the $20 billion, but he’s still shortchanging us on the edges of the minimal pledge he made to a city whose economy took an $80 billion hit.
6. Senator Schumer says NY doesn’t expect a share of Idaho’s farm subsidies, so why does Idaho take a chunk of NY’s security subsidies?
7. What could be worse than lying to GZ workers and residents about the air they were breathing?
8. Bush has left most New York children behind.
9. Ten thousand NY families are in jeopardy of losing their housing subsidies and homes.
10. With NYC the No. 1 target of bio and nuclear terrorists, the go-it-alone Bush administration has torpedoed international treaties that would make us more secure.

Don’t forget that W won’t stay overnight in New York City next week. He gives his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention next Thursday and then runs like a little girly man to Pennsylvania after the balloons drop.

Hawai’i: While the UH housing shortage has left at least 700 students without a room, even more students cannot get classes. UH officials said that configuration problems in Banner concealed the surge in class demand. Banner is a popular registration software system that is used at UH. Increased enrollment also contributed to the shortfalls in classes and housing. Departments scrambled to find lectures for new sections. UH starts classes today.