This is my short, cheapest sharp, pregnancy reading of the CodeNEXT ‘draft’ that came out this week.

I’ve been describing it as “activist flypaper” for years – and am sad to state that may have been overly optimistic. My quick reading of the code makes it look even worse than what we have today. I don’t think many, so far, disagree at a high level, too. It basically zones the entire city outside downtown and corridors to a maximum of 2 stories (even the parts where the new transect code applies, much less the huge swaths of the city which still get essentially the old code) and adds additional restrictions on ADUs compared to current code. It adds code obstacles for even downtown redevelopment by promulgating stupid ideas about minimum lot width and floor plates. The plan, folks, is a bad plan. Even if you like planning, it’s a bad plan. For a freedom urbanist, it’s horrible.

This is not a step forward; it’s a step back. My strategic take is going to be to try to support those making individual recommendations for change¹ but to also urge everybody to look at the plan as a whole and remember “worse than nothing”, which this thing is. Rather, it’s worse than doing nothing. Current code, as suburban as it is, is still better than this piece of garbage.

If you want a longer reading by a more qualified person with a different strategic outlook on it than I have, you could not do better than to read Chris Bradford’s take.
This is my short, website like this sharp, sales reading of the CodeNEXT ‘draft’ that came out this week.

I’ve been describing it as “activist flypaper” for years – and am sad to state that may have been overly optimistic. My quick reading of the code makes it look even worse than what we have today. I don’t think many, so far, disagree at a high level, too. It basically zones the entire city outside downtown and corridors to a maximum of 2 stories (even the parts where the new transect code applies, much less the huge swaths of the city which still get essentially the old code) and adds additional restrictions on ADUs compared to current code. It adds code obstacles for even downtown redevelopment by promulgating stupid ideas about minimum lot width and floor plates. The plan, folks, is a bad plan. Even if you like planning, it’s a bad plan. For a freedom urbanist, it’s horrible.

This is not a step forward; it’s a step back. My strategic take is going to be to try to support those making individual recommendations for change ((register on the site linked above, then wade through hundreds of pages of code through a bad internal scroll window to make comments that will doubtl but to also urge everybody to look at the plan as a whole and remember “worse than nothing”, which this thing is. Rather, it’s worse than doing nothing. Current code, as suburban as it is, is still better than this piece of garbage.

If you want a longer reading by a more qualified person with a different strategic outlook on it than I have, you could not do better than to read Chris Bradford’s take.
Well, bronchi there’s some kind of exhibition game going on tomorrow against Indiana State, hepatitis but we all know that can’t be a real game that counts, right? Because it wouldn’t be fair; wouldn’t be “success with honor” to beat up on a team from a conference whose stadiums average around 16,000 seats and from a league which offer substantially lower athletic scholarships than our league does…

Division I FCS schools are currently restricted to giving financial assistance amounting to 63 full scholarships. Unlike Bowl Subdivision schools, Championship Subdivision schools may divide their allotment into partial scholarships, but Championship Subdivision schools are limited to 85 players receiving any sort of athletic financial aid for football. Because of competitive forces, however, a substantial number of players in Championship Subdivision programs are on full scholarships.

According to the fine folks at BSD, there’s nothing wrong with doing the football equivalent of having the Texas Rangers not only play a game against the Round Rock Express but have it count in the standings for both teams. After all, both teams play the same game by the same rules, right? Balls and strikes and whatnot?

Huh. Doesn’t seem right to me. But I’m assured by the homers at BSD that it still doesn’t matter because everybody does. So I’m sure that if I look at the top-flight programs in the BCS conferences, I won’t find anybody who didn’t schedule a 1-AA team. Let’s start!

Team	1-AA games
Ohio State	None
Michigan	None
Nebraska	Chatanooga
Florida State	Charleston Southern
Miami	Bethune-Cookman
Virginia Tech	Appalachian State
Pitt	Maine
Oklahoma	None
Texas	None
Texas A&M	None
Noter Dame	None
Oregon	Missouri State
UCLA	None
USC	None
Alabama	Georgia Southern
Auburn	Samford
Florida	Furman
Georgia	Coastal Carolina
LSU	Northwestern State

It goes on like that. Point is that the biggest SEC teams and ACC teams seem to schedule a 1-AA team every single season; and most top-flight programs from other conferences did not. (Of course they schedule one once in a while – Hi Michigan!; but not every single season like Penn State has done lately). An interesting aside: Most of the teams on that list with 9-game conference schedules actually didn’t schedule a 1-AA game.

So, homers, I breathlessly await your apology. Everybody doesn’t do it. And after that, I guess you need to decide who you want to be more like: Michigan, Notre Dame, USC, UCLA; or Florida, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama, Pitt? Just let me know, K?

On the urging of BSD Mike, erectile who is currently by fiat significantly less of a jerk than Jerky McJerkyJerk, seek I want to offer my sincere reconciliatory apology to anybody at that site whose feelings were hurt by being grouped into a grouping they disagreed with. I myself find great emotional torment in being described as a “hater”, and I have been assured by significantly non-jerky persons that this may be the result of grouping certain thinkers into a group they do not think they should have been part of, despite this being technically a temporal paradox as I think the grouping happened AFTER the haterlabelerating.

Since this point, every so often, M1EK’s name will be invoked with disgust in various quarters as a hater. Hate hate hate hate. Those who know me know this not to be true, but I hate being called a hater. No, this is not how I feel:

So obviously given my own state of Hurt Feelings, I’m sorry if your feelings were hurt too. Let’s go back to the posting that immediately preceded my ban from BSD. This comment, which I received from somebody I don’t know from Adam:

Question…

did you move out of PA on your own, or were you chased-out by your “neighbors” with pitch-forks/shovels & scythes…because they want to keep Happy Valley – happy (just like all others want to keep this fine BSD Blogisphere)

…get it now?

Go “enable” yourself on a longhorn…

Old School… MEETS New School!

by BlueWhiteLife on Aug 29, 2008 7:30 AM PDT up actions

is doubtlessly still in the queue for “moderator had best respond PUBLICALLY and make clear this behavior will not be tolerated”. The fact that the current new current moderator of BSD has not rectified this injustice makes me want to send him back to the Jerk Shop for more Jerkiness. Jerk.

But let’s be clear: that attack, made directly on my person, was clearly deserved. The comment to which it referenced is here:

Beating up on the weak sisters

isn’t what Penn State football is about. Not in my opinion, anyways. You can go ahead and be proud of a game you’d be making fun of if UM or OSU scheduled them – but I’m not going to enable this despicable behavior.

I wasn’t about to take your parking space anyways. The drive from Texas is a bit too much to pull off.

by M1EK on Aug 29, 2008 6:56 AM PDT upactions

This horrible comment above wasn’t actually MADE to that user, nor, really, to any user directly, but clearly it merited that vicious personal attack in response. Oh dear sweet baby Jebus watching your Baby Einstien tapes, it makes me shudder to think of how mean I was even today. And, so, for that, I’m sorry. So very sorry. 

(awesome image of Jim Tressel photoshopped on the Sorry dude from South Park lost to the sands of history)

I’m sorry for referring to your site as infested by groupthink. It is no excuse that I was banned for attempting to defend myself in language which was 25% as vigorous as that with which I was attacked. It is no excuse that the moderator did not step in and moderate; i.e., indicate that attacks against those with unpopular opinions were just as bad as attacks FROM those with unpopular opinions. My course of action at the time should have been to grin and take it.

I’m so very sorry. Sorry.

(some other awesome image I can’t even remember also lost to the sands of history. Fickle internet.)

I’ve been assured by the old less jerky previous jerk that if I were to seek reconciliation from commenters like the above, that I’d receive it. Obviously I think several years of cultural cement won’t be undone quite that easily, given the obvious evidence above that has been ignored for years. Hence the tone of this article, which you may have noticed is slightly unserious. But here’s hoping! With that in mind, let me reiterate these key points, some of which I’ve said on other forums (not just the easily defensible home court you guys like to hide out on):

1. Go read my “About” page. Seriously. Do it. Come on, do it.
2. Joe Paterno runs the cleanest program in college football. Period. When people at Ohio State claimed “everybody does it”, I helped them understand that, NO, THEY DON’T, and there’s somebody on their eastern border who might be able to help them learn how not to DO IT any more either. Well, if by “helped them understand” you mean “beat it into their skulls for the benefit of the 100 readers who lurk”, because as we know, no commenters’ minds ever get changed by participating in comments, but readers’ sometimes can.
3. It is NOT an accident that Penn State has never received a major violation. It is NOT an accident that two schools of the relative few that try the absolute hardest to play by the rules haven’t been caught violating the rules. It’s not that there’s no major media presence in State College or that no cub/club reporter could make their career bringing down the big catch. It’s because we try harder.
4. Joe is a crafty mofo when he is in full possession of his faculties. I hope he’s back. He seems somewhat better.
5. I root for us in EVERY DAMN GAME despite sometimes being a smart-ass about rooting against us when we play Indiana State. Before big games I have been known to pull the (significantly broken) old trumpet out of the garage and play the fight song for good luck. In Austin, Texas.
6. My prediction for this year is very difficult to make. I can see us going anywhere from 7-5 to 11-1 (flier at 12-0). The last time I went out on a limb and made a prediction, it was 8-4 for Clark’s big year. Was wrong then. Was right the previous year with 8-4 for Morelli.
7. I was firmly on Team Devlin in the sense that he should have been given the starting job for Iowa that year, and that game alone. Clark was clearly sub-par (clearly); and if you don’t play your 1(b) guy when the 1(a) guy got knocked out with a concussion and clearly isn’t back yet, the right decision is clearly to transfer.
8. I am firmly on Team Bolden. I firmly believe he showed better skills AND better potential playing against those damn good defenses the first few games of the season when the running game thought it was better to place all of the burden on a true freshman quarterback. I clearly thought he was right to seek a transfer after the bowl game, which was a complete disaster that should have scared away many potential quarterback recruits. I am surprised it apparently didn’t.
9. Be a fan. Drink Kool-Aid! But understand that people who don’t drink Kool-Aid don’t just hate; they may just have a more discriminating palate.
10. I continue to read BSD, especially now that you’re virtually the only game in town. Feel free to blow me: some kisses.
11. I’m actually sorry if any of your feelings were ACTUALLY hurt, or undeservedly so.

Sincerely,

The Bigger Man

1. register on the site linked above, then wade through hundreds of pages of code through a bad internal scroll window to make comments that will doubtlessly be used as evidence of a public input process but not be taken seriously [↩]