That's cool that you think a rat hunt would be fun. Doesn't have to be in NYC, you can have your own rat hunt here in Seattle. Start befriending homeless people, and people in the low low income bracket. I'm sure if you hung around them for a while (give it a month or so), the path to rat fun could be all yours.

I read the headline as "urban rat hats" and was going to chastise (or congratulate) you for mixing your Seinfeld references. Then I realized my subconscious finds Seinfeld references when really there are none.

I'm willing to lift the covenant on property taxes to help fund statewide transportation.

Doesn't anyone think it pretty amazing and embarrassing for us that "Japan has offered to pay for 40 miles of a 300-mile per hour magnetic, levitating train."

Why, it's as if we are poor and ignorant nation in need of assistance.

(Doesn't matter that the Japanese would do us this favor out of their own self-interest.)

Coffin is person-shaped, casket is rectangular. The more you know.

Cienna, if I may-- coffin is person-shaped, casket is rectangular. Just a funeral director pet peeve. Hey, the more you know.

Embarrassing when that happens :(

what the shit? arrested ***62*** times for "trespassing" at his work?? That entire police department needs to be canned.

Car2Go, ZipCar, Lyft, et al, are going to become insanely popular if Metro ends up gutting their system or raising fares by that amount.

@4 many tech companies discount/fund early adopters of their product in new markets as a necessary investment to get the mainstream market the case study/proof point they require.

I also think summarizing this as something that would only benefit the 'washington elite' is asinine
- DC to NYC corridor is the most densely populated and profitable route for Amtrak which currently subsidizes all others
- Our train system is archaic, inefficient and an embarrassment
- Ideally high-speeed train adoption would be managed competently within Amtrak but as that has proven to be a challenge due to a variety of reasons, any external push is welcome motivation

@ 5+6: the link is to the New York Times, who call the box in question a coffin. Don't blame Cienna if you disagree with the nomenclature.

What about a citizen ballot initiative to tax King County to fund metro? Would red-county citizens really vote that down out of sheer spite?

You have a rat terrier! I had a beloved rat terrier. Miss you, Shadow.

@8, he's been stopped and questioned 258 times in four years. He's never been convicted of anything more serious than possession of marijuana.

Miami Gardens PD needs to be taken over by the Justice Department, and the entire force from the chief on down needs to go to prison. Unbelievable.

In other criminal justice system news, a former chemist for Massachusetts's crime lab pled guilty to falsifying TENS OF THOUSANDS of drug tests in order to bolster her reputation as a fast worker. The state now has to comb through their entire system and identify all the cases she worked on, people who didn't just do unwarranted time but lost jobs, housing, custody, or were even deported because of her false positives. Fucking hell.

http://wvxu.org/post/chemist-pleads-guil…

The Economist magazine, hardly a bastion of soft-on-crime liberalism, has just printed a series of reports on the clusterfuck of US jurisprudence, which includes such ludicrously unjust features as debtors' prisons, routine life without parole sentences for minor (or nonexistent) offenses, and for-profit prisons dictating to states how many prisoners they must provide regardless of whether the crimes are being committed or not. It's shocking stuff. Here's part of it:

http://www.economist.com/news/united-sta…

@9, Car2Go et al. can't relieve congestion like a full bus, though. Or even one with just a few people on it.

I don't blame you, Cienna, you're great! Just wanted to be helpful :)

True Misery Is Falsely Accusing a Football Star of Rape

Football/lacrosse… whatever. How long until this chick kills someone too?...

Today a jury found Crystal Mangum guilty of second-degree murder Friday in the stabbing death of her boyfriend, Reginald Daye, in 2011. Mangum stabbed Daye in the side of his chest on April 3, 2011 during a fight at Daye's apartment. In 2006, Mangum accused three Duke lacrosse players of raping her at a party. The charges were dismissed after the evidence did not back up Mangum’s story, but not before her story and accusations made the local and national news.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/11/22/3…

@15:

No argument from me; I didn't mean to imply they were superior solutions to solving mass transit issues, but when mass transit itself becomes so expensive or unresponsive to a community's needs that people either can't or won't use it, other alternatives, such as the ones I cited, are going to fill the inevitable vacuum.