concerning the power pole mystery: I believe because the pole was top heavy, and the wires kept it from falling over, the base swung upwards into the 2nd story window like a teeter-totter

@1: A percentage who aren't tweaking have a realistic chance of doing so.

@1: hilarious. there are plenty of people on permanent disability who live in subsidized housing situations and will never be self-sufficient.

hopefully these recently-sheltered folks do become self-sufficient members of society, but more likely is they'll wind up in a similar situation as the permanently disabled. which is preferable to having them live (and die) on the street.

The pictures aren’t even the craziest thing about that downed electrical pole in Madison Valley: while it was being worked on, some wacko carjacked the utility guy at knifepoint, then rammed the stolen car into another guy riding a scooter. The cops finally caught up to him near UW. https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle-carjack-utilities-police/281-fe84af7b-19c3-430b-9099-b3c7ee38614f

Yes yes to Ghosts the British version.

@7: Though pathology such as paranoid schizophrenia should be fairly easy to diagnose.

Matt, The Polar Star is more appropriately called an "ice breaker". As far as maintaining her station in Seattle during the northern summer, changing home ports every six months would be expensive and ultimately stressful on the crew and their families. Besides, it would be ludicrous to home port an ice breaker in San Diego!

Not to cast a discouraging word, but there has been a really big emphasis on getting homeless vets off the streets here in Los Angeles. Great, right? It's been pretty successful getting people who have been in service to our country housed. New construction. Clean. No extraordinary rules and regulations. Counseling, if desired. Social services, if desired.

After 18 months the city wanted to do an appraisal of the effort (for which they and we should all be very proud) only to find that about 43% of those housed had decided to return to the streets. Alarming and sad, but I'm digging the fact that maybe 57% have a reason to get out of bed - so to speak.

Yes. If a small program is highly successful at helping homeless people then scale it up, measuring and documenting the results at every step. This is exactly how public policy is supposed to work.

It's the antidote to "we have have to do something!" politics.