crosscut.com : History

Election reflections

Crosscut — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:00:01 PDT

A veteran political insider remembers good statesmen of the past and shares his choices for today's primary.

Amazing Bigfoot discovery!

Crosscut — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:01:01 PDT

From what I can tell from news reports, yesterday's press conference by Bigfoot hunters claiming to have found a Sasquatch corpse in Georgia had some startling revelations. One is DNA results that answer the question: Just what is Bigfoot?

Enough with the SLUT jokes

Crosscut — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 05:00:01 PDT

It's time to take stock of the effect of all those jokes about Seattle's streetcar.

A newsstand's last stand

Crosscut — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:00:01 PDT

Seattle's "last surviving corner newsstand" is endangered. The Los Angeles Times reports that the blue news kiosk on the corner of Third Ave. and Pike Street downtown has been ordered shut down by Seattle's Department of Transportation.

Bellevue's 'Little Eichmann'

Crosscut — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:00:01 PDT

Finding the banality of Nazi evil close to home.

Was we 'robbed' by nature?

Crosscut — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:00:01 PDT

I couldn't help but laugh at this bold headline on CNN.com: "Gravity, erosion rob Utah park of popular arch." Why so funny? There wouldn't even be an Arches National Park if it wasn't for gravity and erosion. In fact, many of the West's most popular parks are monuments to gravity and erosion (think the Grand Canyon for one).

Death by a thousand cuts

Crosscut — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 05:00:01 PDT

Pacific Northwest corporate history began with timber, and with the demise of Weyerhaeuser it's a fast-fading cultural heritage.

Land rush on top of the world

Crosscut — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:21:01 PDT

The search for the Northwest Passage spurred the European exploration of the Pacific Northwest. With global warming, Arctic land claims are heating up as the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Russia, Iceland and Norway vie for sea lanes, the seabed and once ice-bound islands. Finally, there's a great visual to sort out these competing claims.

In Everett, history is now history

Crosscut — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:00:01 PDT

For decades my mother ritually pulled out the Everett Herald sports page, folded it into squares, and inserted it neatly under the cat pan.

Travels with Charley and GPS

Crosscut — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:01 PDT

A Depression-era book series is the ultimate road-trip must-have, a way of comparing past and present as you tool around the country like a latter-day John Steinbeck. And in Washington, a new version even links travelers to the digital age.

Sidewalk crack addict

Crosscut — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:00:01 PDT

As a public service, we bust a few myths. Suffice it to say that all roads do not lead to Rome.

Space tourism is nigh, but a new space age is not

Crosscut — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:00:01 PDT

Four years after Paul Allen won the X Prize with SpaceShipOne, Virgin Galactic has unveiled WhiteKnightTwo, bringing space tourism closer to reality. But in terms of achievement and fundamental technologies, we're merely watching a glitzy remake of the 1960s with private funding.

Spying in defense of liberty

Crosscut — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:00:01 PDT

Barry Goldwater famously said that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." But I suspect even the late Arizona senator and 1964 GOP presidential candidate might be creeped out if he knew about the privatization of Big Brother. Is it OK for private groups to infiltrate domestic citizen's groups? Is spying in defense of liberty a virtue or a vice?

Our balls on ice

Crosscut — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:00:01 PDT

Has the last Seattleite with local pride turned out the lights? A recent trip to Safeco Field makes me wonder.

Is Big Nanny running your town?

Crosscut — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:43:01 PDT

The libertarian magazine Reason has published a list of the biggest nanny cities in the country. The results for the big cities on the Pacific Coast are interesting. Portland is caught in a kind of "nanny sandwich" between Seattle and San Francisco. Apparently, the most ecotopian town in the Pacific Northwest has escaped the worst excess of politically correct fussiness.

The good, the bad, and the vexing

Crosscut — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:14:01 PDT

Here are start-of-week cheers and Bronx cheers. First, the good stuff: Dave Niehaus in the Baseball Hall of Fame and justice at Fort Lawton.

Seattle and the elixir of growth

Crosscut — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:00:01 PDT

In some moods, I think that Seattle's business renaissance has peaked. Starbucks is contracting, Microsoft is stumbling, Boeing is losing bids, Safeco is sold, and Washington Mutual is sinking. Has our formula of rapid growth spreading across the globe run into the wall?

But then I look at the front page of today's "Marketplace" section of The Wall Street Journal, where three of the four stories are about Seattle-based companies. There's the story of Microsoft's scramble in the executive suite, with the sudden departure of Kevin Johnson, formerly in charge of the Yahoo merger campaign; Costco reporting an earnings squeeze as the prices for merchandise are rising faster than they can pass along costs to its value-seeking customers; and Amazon doubling its second-quarter profits as customers shift from shopping by car to shopping by online.

How art reflects nature: an interview with David Guterson

Crosscut — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:00:01 PDT

The stories of 52-year-old Bainbridge Island author David Guterson have much to owe Washington state, which serves as a powerful setting for everything he writes.

Lesson in laughter

Crosscut — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:24:01 PDT

Controversy this week over the current New Yorker cover, showing Barack and Michelle Obama in all the worst ways the paranoid right could imagine, proves two basic lessons from the history of journalism.

The first is that a medium that is in the process of being overrun by emerging new media had better understand what that involves.

More fun than Deliverance!

Crosscut — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:00:01 PDT

Spend your summer vacation in Eastern Washington, an exotic locale where lakes are slippery, the Scablands surprising, and wheat farmers are smashing stuff for fun.