As you read this, my brand new dual-E5620 and its eight cores of terrifying web-serving might are idly twiddling their thumbs.  The gigabit Ethernet port, with its dozen-or-so 10-gigabit pipes to the outside world, flickers occasionally out of sheer boredom.  The SAS RAID-10 setup  is mildly amused, but you would be too if you were spinning around at 15,000 RPM.

Cool things are happening.  Details soon.

Someone forgot to tell the city that we’re teetering on the verge of financial disaster.

See this? We can do better.

An article in PennLive yesterday described the project in detail.  Put simply, it calls for the complete reconstruction of the area from Seventh & Reily to Cameron & Maclay, by way of Seventh St.  Seventh will be widened from two to four lanes, new streetlamps will be installed, new sidewalks will be poured, and a lot of behind-the-scenes infrastructure improvement will take place.

All of which will create a major city artery that empties out onto Reily Street — the gateway to HACC and midtown.  It’s likely that this will also drive up land value within the corridor, which will in turn spark development and reinvestment.

Take that gas station on the corner of Seventh & Maclay.  The corridor improvements could cause that land value to skyrocket, allowing the owner to take out a loan to finance construction of a better convenience store … or even a deli.

Take the vacant lots between Sixth & Seventh in the corridor.  Those owned by the city can be doled out for high-density development, and those owned by individuals will likely jump up substantially in value.

What if that entire neighborhood became a vibrant, desirable place to live?  Before you laugh, recall that just over a decade ago nobody considered downtown or midtown to be prime parts of the city.

The benefits of the project are simply too great to list.  And it’s likely that within a few years — especially with Vartan’s three developments along neighboring Sixth Street, to say nothing of the new federal courthouse — the improvements will spread to the surrounding neighborhoods.

The Northern Gateway will help anchor a consistent, modern redevelopment initiative across the entire length of the city.  And once the project is completed, it will very likely improve conditions on Sixth over the same stretch.

Since most of the affected area is currently populated by vacant lots, it’s hard to envision a scenario where this doesn’t have a positive impact on the city.

Coupled with ongoing midtown redevelopment and downtown’s still-strong entertainment district, I can’t help but wonder:  Could this help reverse Harrisburg’s decades-old population decline?

To put that another way, are we witnessing the beginnings of the rebirth of our city?

The Furlow was designed in 1908 by Charles Howard Lloyd, a renowned Harrisburg architect.  It was originally home to Commercial Bank, and later became the site of the first Pennsylvania-owned liquor store.  Details on subsequent uses vary, but the building shuttered for good in the early 1980s.  Its final purpose was as a luxury apartment building.

Details are a little hard to pin down, but it appears that plans for the building call for ground-level boutique retail with about two dozen one-bedroom apartments above.  This is where details become sketchy.  Some sources seem to suggest that the building will cater to low-income residents, while others seem to suggest that the building will cater to young professionals.  The latter obviously makes more sense for midtown.  If you provide young professionals with an attractive place to live in what has become THE place to live in the city, they’ll move in and bring their disposable income with them.  That’s great news for the merchants and investors who have been holding out along Third St these last few years.  The small surge of residents that this building intends to draw could be the catalyst that helps neighboring businesses evolve from “sustainable” to “profitable”.

To put that another way, recall that ten years ago, many people still considered midtown to be a blighted part of the city.  Today, thanks to heroic efforts among the locals, midtown has emerged as the arts & culture district of Harrisburg.  The place where all the cool kids want to live.  And while there are plenty of townhomes and lowrise rentals to be had, some of us just prefer high-density living.  At this moment, that’s simply not available in midtown at any price.

The building’s redevelopment is being handled by Greenworks.  I’ve found that exactly half of the city loathes Greenworks, while the other half supports them fanatically.  I know nothing about the company or its goings-on, so feel free to school me in the comments below.

As part of the renovations, Greenworks will be demolishing the single-story structure in the rear of the building.  This was clearly not part of the original building, and I’m happy to see this cinder-block monstrosity disappear.  In its place will be off-street parking and some sort of elevator / storage building.  Zoning hearings are coming up for this on September 7 and 12.  I will definitely be there.

If the Furlow building does indeed target young professionals, this will be a boon for midtown’s stability.  The 1500 Project is selling high-end condos just a few blocks east, and Lofts at 909 handle furnished rentals to the south.  Neither of these really fit the bill for those of us who, for a variety of good reasons, would rather rent long-term.  Given Harrisburg’s near-total lack of upmarket rentals, high-end apartments in the Furlow would see unprecedented demand.

Unless Executive House plans to go upmarket with their three new floors of one- and two-bedroom apartments, of course.  But that’s another posting.

You see, Nancy Eshelman — a long-time opinion writer at the Patriot News — published a story over the weekend complaining about downtown Harrisburg.  I’ve read and re-read her article several times, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out what, exactly, she is complaining about.  Read the article for yourself and if you can come up with anything, please let the rest of us know.  The only conclusions I’m able to reach from that particular article are:

• Nancy Eshelman eats dinner downtown at 2am (incidentally, where?)
• Nancy Eshelman is confused about the location of Beaver Stadium
• Loud noises

I think she might have attempted to bring up guns, too.

I get that she’s complaining about “downtown Harrisburg” and “people” and “music”.  That’s pretty clear.  And she’s extremely displeased with the way 20-somethings behave these days.  Twenty years ago (we’re talking 1991, in case you’re bad with math), 22-year-olds had checkbooks.  Today, they ruin downtown with their “loud music” (and I bet nobody ever pays their tab by check anymore).

Oh, and something about vomit.  And urine.  She definitely seems to think that downtown Harrisburg is a Lovecraftian nightmare of people enthusiastically vomiting and urinating all over everything in sight.

Nancy, this is what 20-somethings do (the going downtown to socialize part, not the vomiting and urinating part).  This is how they spend their weekends.  Not all of them, of course, but the ones within the scope of your article do.  It’s part of life.  Rest assured that most of the participants of the “downtown debauchery” (that’s a first) go home and have meaningful, productive jobs to attend to, which they do quite well.  Some of them even have children, tucked away with a babysitter.  Some will take cabs home.  Many more will ride with a designated driver.  A handful will even walk.

And then there are those who aren’t even 20-somethings.  Having spent a good chunk of my 20s working in a downtown nightclub, I can say with absolute authority that bad behavior knows no age limit.

Downtown can be a noisy place.  In case you missed the circa-2001 memo, downtown is the city’s entertainment district.  It is intended to be a place where people can go out, socialize, and generally enjoy themselves.  It is not meant to be a quiet getaway where 60-somethings can knit in peace.  That you would even presume this to be the case defies words.

While you may be pleased with yourself for being the nosy bluehair at the next table who shushes everybody, it’s worth pointing out that this makes you the nosy bluehair at the next table who shushes everybody.

Granted, the notion that this was a publicity stunt seems far more likely than the possibility that the city suddenly found some magical happy-time cure-all solution that they forgot existed and that staved off closing for now.

Because otherwise, they’d just be a bunch of obnoxious pricks.

DUE TO UNFORTUNATE FINANCIAL CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND OUR CONTROL, THE CITY OF HARRISBURG WILL BE CLOSING IMMEDIATELY.  ALL WILD WEST ARTIFACTS, PARKING GARAGES, AND INCINERATORS ARE ONLY $4 EACH.  THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO GET A SOUVENIR BEAVER FOR ONLY $9 OR A MIDTOWN SINKHOLE FOR $15.

My first thought was that this was nothing more than a poorly-executed promotional gimmick.  I mean, come on — who doesn’t know that their city is on the verge of shutdown at least several months in advance?  Mayor Thompson may be dense, but even she’s been acknowledging that the city is in poor financial shape since before her first day in office.

But the more I thought about it, I began to realize that absolutely nobody is this classless.  Nobody is this mean.  Nobody has so much disregard for their neighbors that they’d resort to such a deplorable tactic.  The thought of faking a “going out of business” notice just to drum up business for the city is just vile and would shred whatever reputation the city had left.

So it’s pretty obvious at this point that the city isn’t fooling around.  Clearly this is an honest case of the city making a good-faith, last-ditch effort to drum up some revenue in order to pay final bills.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and I’m certain they’ve done it with only the best intentions.  I implore my fellow Burgers to come out for one final Harrisburg Huzzah, as I am 100% confident that this is absolutely, positively, not a promotional stunt.

Unless they’re still open tomorrow, of course.

Back on Thursday, October 14th, PennLive reported on an alleged attack that occurred the previous Saturday (10/9).  At approximately 1:30am, a newlywed couple reported that as they were exiting the garage from the fourth floor, ten guys surrounded their car, dragged the 6’3″ 250-pound husband out, beat him senseless, attacked her, and stole exactly nothing.

There were a lot of aspects of the original story that still don’t make sense:

• The attack allegedly happened at 1:30am on a Saturday. The parking garage is FULL of pedestrians at that hour!  And yet, nobody saw anything.
• Even on the fourth level, lots of people would be attempting to drive out of the garage “early” at that hour.  The layout of that garage is such that there’s really only one way out.  Nobody happened to drive past the attack?
• To exit the garage, the victims would have to drive past a cluster of Harrisburg police officers. There are always 3-5 stationed at the island between the entrance and exit ramps.  However, the victims waited until the next morning to report the attack.
• The victims possibly had to drive past Pinnacle Health’s ER — but they didn’t stop (it is possible that they exited the city via another route).
• NOBODY heard any screams.
• NOBODY, except the alleged victims, saw the incident.
• NOBODY reported a suspicious group in the area (surely, other people walked past the group of 10 alleged assailants).
• The victims first stated that nothing was taken, then reported that the man’s wallet was stolen.

Now, I’ve heard of victims not wanting to report a crime out of fear of retaliation.  But that isn’t what happened — the alleged victims reported the incident, then stopped cooperating several weeks later.

Hopefully this will all be cleared up in the next few days.

Remember that with the exception of the Allegheny Mountain & Lehigh Valley tunnels, all of the PA Turnpike tunnels were once railroad tunnels for the never-finished South Penn.  The concrete shell you see today was built sometime between the late 1930s and early 1960s, depending on whether you’re travelling through the newer twinned tubes (mostly eastbound) or the original tunnels (mostly westbound).  All of the original tunnels date back to shortly after the Civil War.  I point this out only because in today’s Interstate-highway- and jet-based world, it’s easy to forget that railroads were once the dominant force in our economy.

The East Broad Top Railroad was founded in 1856, six years before the start of the Civil War.  Due to funding considerations, it wasn’t actually built until the 1870s and did not enter service until 1873.  Over the next few decades, the EBT expanded passenger and freight service throughout the towns of Mt. Union, Orbisonia, Saltillo, and Robertsdale, as well as several nearby boroughs and villages, before crossing into Fulton County and servicing several mines.  Service ended in 1956 — exactly one century after its charter.  Much of the rail remains throughout the easements, as you’ll see in a moment.

Today, the line is used to run a number of tourism- and photography-oriented events and is operated by the East Broad Top Preservation Society.  A non-profit organization, the Friends of the East Broad Top, exists to help preserve and maintain the EBT.  If  you have any interest whatsoever in capturing some unique, truly Pennsylvanian photographic and/or sightseeing opportunities, I highly recommend their Fall Spectacular.  The 2010 Spectacular has unfortunately concluded, but they still have other events remaining this year — and I will be hosting a group trip up for the 2011 run.  Naturally, there are costs involved — but considering the cost of maintaining and operating the line (after all, you can’t exactly swing by Costco to pick up a replacement locomotive), as well as EBT’s relatively close proximity to Harrisburg (about 90 minutes), the price is beyond reasonable.

This past weekend, however, focused on one particular unused segment of the line.  Calling the run west of Orbisonia “abandoned” is technically incorrect.  The line still exists and is still the private property of the EBT.  It is simply out of service and, for the moment, unusable.  The owners generously gave us permission to walk the line as we saw fit, as long as we agreed to hold them harmless from any injury.  Let’s face it — the segments we walked hadn’t seen maintenance in over a half century, and the tunnels are collapsing.

If you’d like to see the line, the absolute best way to do so is to volunteer with the Friends of the East Broad Top.  They need everyone from general laborers to skilled tradespeople.  The EBT is an important chapter in Pennsylvania’s history, and even if you can’t volunteer, their memberships are dirt cheap.

After spending some time navigating a half dozen state highways from Breezewood, we arrived at a conspicuous cutaway flanking either side of PA-994.  After turning around and parking near the game lands at the top of the mountain, we took a short walk down the hill and were shocked to find fully in-tact rails.  Armed with permission from the owners, we set out to walk the easement in search of whatever time would permit us to see.

There were two aspects of the track that I wasn’t expecting.  The first was the curvature of the track.  This by itself wasn’t shocking, but the curve continued through the tunnel.  The second was the elevation of the easement.  Because of the steep slope of the mountain, the track obviously had to be leveled off with heavy-duty mounts of dirt.  And because of the curved approach, it was necessary to build an actual hill into the mountain — complete with a miniature valley between the mountain and the easement.

The tunnel itself wasn’t very far off the road.  But like all good disused tunnels, it wasn’t obvious until you were within a stone’s throw.  And it was incredible.  To a casual observer, it may appear as just another hole in the mountain.  Perhaps nothing more than a cave.  Yet when you consider how much strata had to be punched through in order to make this happen, and when you consider the era in which this was done, the tunnel becomes truly amazing.

Unfortunately, despite its awesomeness, the tunnel itself is in pretty bad shape.  As this area is laced with anthracite, and given that anthracite will begin to slowly erode after being exposed to oxygen, the tunnel is littered with rubble from multiple collapses.  A giant boulder (formerly part of the ceiling) and tilted timbers provide an unmistakable warning sign that this tunnel is dangerous and unstable.

A spring covers the tracks inside the tunnel with several feet of cold water.  Despite the fact that this is all well below the surface of the top of the mountain, the relatively short length of the tunnel means that temperatures inside do dip below freezing (history confirmed this when a locomotive hit a patch of ice in 1911 and derailed).  With each passing winter, the ice penetrates into every tiny crack and crevice, putting additional strain on the walls, floor, and ceiling of the tunnel.  Given this unending cycle of stress, and given the inherently unstable nature of the surrounding strata, the tunnel should not be entered.  Footsteps alone could be enough to trigger a rockslide, and your rescue would be unlikely.

Needless to say, we didn’t hike through the tunnel.  We returned to the car and drove a few hundred feet down to the crossing on the opposite side of the hill.  Like before, the crossing was obvious if you know what you’re looking for, but completely anonymous to anyone passing by inattentively.  We pulled off, collected our gear, and began walking towards the opposite portal.

The easement grading wasn’t quite as severe as it was on the opposite side of the tunnel, but it was still noteworthy.  Nonetheless, it still presented us with its share of surprises.  Shortly after departing the roadway, we encountered an unmistakable reminder that nature will ultimately reclaim this land.  A decent-sized tree — still alive, no less — had been topped over and had taken the track with it.  This had the effect of lifting about a dozen feet of track several inches off the ground.

The most perplexing feature was the narrowing of the track.  Naturally, the rails on a track must remain an exact distance apart; there is minimal tolerance for variation.  But here, the individual rails were barely more than one foot apart in stretches.  The explanation is surely a simple one — shifting land, tomfoolery by locals, slow-but-steady pressure from growing trees — but neither of us found any evidence to determine the actual cause.  Perhaps a railfan with more experience will find this post and comment on our observation.

As we walked towards the tunnel, we encountered a three-story wooden structure that we initially thought was a building used by the tunnel watchmen (a door on the entrance you’re about to see necessitated manual operation).  Further research revealed that those buildings have long since disappeared, and that this was most likely simply an abandoned house.

The southern / eastern portal has a concrete face that was installed around 1919, several decades after the tunnel was opened.  This face slightly reduced the length of the tunnel and featured a door used to keep snow and ice out of the tunnel.  Initially manually controlled by watchmen, the system was briefly semi-automated in the late 1940s so that the engineers and brakemen could open and close the door themselves.  By the early 1950s, the doors were returned to manual operation after a few too many incidents involving the door shutting on a caboose.

The conditions inside the tunnel are generously described as “unknown”.  Although it is possible to walk inside this portal, doing so is not recommended.  The risk of being hit with falling rock is substantial.  Surprisingly, the ties and rail are in good condition, despite being surrounded with running water.  While the ties are rotting away, they are still visible and clearly identifiable.  The entire line is clearly visible up until the first rubble pile, at which point they begin to fade away under the dammed-up reservoir of the spring.

If the tunnels and rails don’t look bad from the outside, the inside of this particular portal gives a good indication of exactly how much time has passed since the line was last maintained.  Rotting wooden planks are slowly dropping onto the track below, resulting in ever-growing piles of rock throughout the tunnel.  While it’s pretty slick to look at, it won’t be much longer until this tunnel — or at least the wooden structures within — are no more.

As both daylight and my batteries were fading, we had to bail a little ahead of schedule and return to the car.  We will definitely return in the spring.  There’s another tunnel nearby, and the entire length of the East Broad Top is filled with what looks to be incredible scenery and rich history.  I will also be taking a group up for one of their tours in the fall.

As a footnote to this whole adventure, our first stop of the day was a very brief tour of the abandoned turnpike tunnel in Sideling Hill.  As we passed the Route 30 parking area, I counted no less than a dozen cars in the lot and on the shoulder.  And as we went past the Oregon Road parking area, we observed a van full of cyclists unloading their bikes from the trailer.  And when we finally reached Sideling Hill, there was a group of about ten people pausing at the entrance.  These numbers all add up to far, far more visitors to the AT than I have ever seen in any one trip.  In fact, moreso than all the trips combined.  I’m glad to see more people learning about and enjoying the Abandoned Turnpike.  I just hope that common sense prevails among the visitors, and that the site continues to remain largely in-tact and free from aggressive vandalism.

There is a long-standing (and incorrect) Internet Urban Legend that has spent well over a decade misleading people who should know better.  The legend in question pertains to sites that contain user-submitted content, such as — for example — PennLive.  The legend goes something like this:

“If you edit, delete, or otherwise modify user-submitted content, you become responsible for said content and any legal ramifications it brings.”

This wildly-inaccurate assumption is regularly dispensed by Armchair Internet Lawyers and dime-a-dozen consultants.  And it needs to die.

For context, the Clinton administration passed a very evil piece of legislation in 1996 called the Communications Decency Act.  Like so many laws, it was well-meaning in spirit but outright oppressive in its approach.  It was a knee-jerk reaction to some senator discovering that the Internet has offensive content.  To make a very complex issue very simple, it effectively held everybody responsible for any content that passed through their grasp.  If the CDA were still in full effect, any offended reader would be able to hold any given news site liable for any offensive third-party user comments, just as if the news site had written them itself.  The consequences would be staggering.

Needless to say, the CDA was a ridiculous law that was torn to shreds almost immediately after its passage.  But one critical section remained.  Section 230 of the CDA actually establishes immunity to content providers.  This is why sites can allow users to submit content (sometimes anonymously) without fear of prosecution.  Yet somewhere along the line, some Armchair Internet Lawyer ™ decided that Section 230 contained a footnote waiving all protection if the content publisher edited the content itself.

Curiously, the law — and subsequent caselaw — says no such thing.  In fact, courts have repeatedly explicitly stated the opposite.

One of the simplest-to-understand cases involving Section 230 is Zeran v America Online.  There are mountains of interpretations available online, but the court’s decision is crystal clear on its own (emphasis mine):

The relevant portion of § 230 states: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1).2 By its plain language, § 230 creates a federal immunity to any cause of action that would make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service. Specifically, §230 precludes courts from entertaining claims that would place a computer service provider in a publisher’s role. Thus, lawsuits seeking to hold a service provider liable for its exercise of a publisher’s traditional editorial functions — such as deciding whether to publish, withdraw, postpone or alter content — are barred.

Put simply, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the notion that content publishers are free to exercise any editorial rights over user-submitted content as they might if they created the content themselves.  It strengthens this by affirming that actions against any legal claims — in this case, a claim for damages resulting from alleged defamation — must be brought against the content creator and NOT the publisher, even if the publisher edited (or deleted, or even published) the content.

The distinction here is clear and important:  The publisher can be held responsible for their own content, and a third-party creator (in this case, an anonymous user) can be held responsible for their own content, but neither party can be held responsible for the other’s content, regardless of any subsequent editing.

So what brought on today’s post?

The Patriot News’ website, PennLive.com, is a comic cacophony of trolling, racial slurs, bigotry, and other signs of civilized behavior.  This is nothing new; it’s the way it’s been for a while.

If the Patriot News wants to maintain this as their public-facing  facade, then such is their right.  Online distribution will be their future, and if this is the image that they prefer to maintain for themselves, then so be it.  I understand that the newspaper industry is in its death throes, largely thanks to an ongoing resistance to adopt to changing times (see paywalls), and a paper’s gotta do what a paper’s gotta do.  I personally think it undercuts any image of professionalism or journalistic integrity when that much of your site consists of trolling, but what do I know?  I must admit that I’ve never been at the helm of a single failing newspaper website — not that PennLive is “failing”.  Not one.

On the other hand, there are ways to effectively moderate your site’s content.  Sites like Fark, Slashdot, Engadget, Something Awful, and even Digg — all of which pull more traffic than PennLive — use unpaid, community moderators to cancel out crappy content.  The result is interesting (if not always upright) dialog.  Sure, those sites still feature trolls and stupid arguments.  But the instigators wind up getting whacked over the head with suspensions of posting privileges and/or bans so many times that the prospect of re-registering for every comment they post becomes enough incentive to drive them away.  Fark even has a unique facet to troll-defusing in that freshly-registered accounts can’t post for the first 24 hours.

Now, PennLive and/or the Patriot News can make any argument against content moderation they want.  They can argue that it’s their *right* to publish racial slurs (and it is).  They can argue that they *like* publishing personal attacks (which they may).  They can argue that there’s simply no way to effectively filter out content at this volume (which is entirely untrue; see the rest of the Internet).  They can even argue that they just don’t care (which does, in fact, appear to be the case).

But then I’d just have to ask:  Why even bother having a “Community Rules” section in the first place?

The Patriot News has slowly-but-surely been dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet age.  Even PennLive has improved itself slightly over the past 18 months.  But it’s still a stale print-and-deliver content delivery mentality (really — their latest innovation is, I swear I am not making this up, a video of a woman talking about upcoming stories).  I get breaking news through Twitter and Facebook, then read about it a few days later in the paper.  I could devote an entire site to how the newspaper industry will either modernize itself or continue dying off, but there are already plenty of those out there.

PennLive, moderate your content.  Screen user comments before publication (honestly, there are scripts to do this; failing those, it takes one employee to handle your entire family of sites with a delay of only several minutes).  And when users do report content, delete the content that’s actually offensive and in violation of your already-existing rules, and not just every report that comes in (I don’t know if you know this, but people will often report content that disagrees with their own worldview just because).  Recruit your most active users as community moderators to police and maintain your user-fed areas.  Score users so that users with oft-reported content are forced into a moderation pool, or go the other way — give users with over 100 posts and under 1% reported content a pass, and put everybody else in the pool.  There are literally countless ways to do this, and the sites that have a handle on their content are the very sites who have been raiding your readers for the past decade.

To put it another way, catch up to where the rest of the Internet was ten years ago.

Or don’t.  Journalists don’t die; newspapers do.

A woman was mugged in the River Street Garage (the one on Second; no idea why they chose to name it after the small alley that runs behind it rather than the major thoroughfare that runs in front of it, but I digress), a c-store clerk was robbed, a guy was mugged with a brick, a dude was assaulted in a park near Italian Lake, a teen’s laptop was stolen while he was using it, some dude kicked a woman in the face and stole her purse, and a guy was stabbed while walking around.  The “and a half” comes from a Harrisburg guy who was charged with breaking into an apartment in Carlisle.  And again, this was all reported in a 24-hour period.

Naturally, the PennLive West Shore Trolls did not hesitate to blame this on Linda Thompson / Barack Obama / the Democrats / the Liberals / “those people” / people who don’t listen to Glenn Beck.  But the real question remains unanswered — what just happened?

Was this a statistical fluke?  It’s possible, but unlikely.  True flukes don’t happen often, even with as broad a subject as “crime”.  And when they do, they’re often small blips on the radar.  More often than not, there exists an underlying foundation of causes (important distinction:  ”causes”, not “justifications”).  Each cause may only be small — an employer notifying its employees of layoffs, a local bank deciding it can no longer delay foreclosures, perfect weather, a speech, a song, and so on.  If you imagine a scale weighing people’s conscious, moral decision to behave well on the left, and all the factors contributing to bad behavior on the right, and the causes as weights of varying sizes, you can see how a combination of seemingly-unrelated occurrences can impact our daily lives.

Does this represent an editorial shift at the Patriot-News or PennLive?  There have been accusations in the past that the Patriot News and/or PennLive and/or the Mayor’s office fail to report on a lot of significant crimes in the city.  Without only hearsay and anecdotal evidence, I can’t speak to the veracity of those claims.  But if they were true, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a media outlet or political figure has been ensnared in a egregious conflict of interest.  In the old days of print media, there used to be a reasonable explanation for limited crime reporting:  the amount of space on the paper.  Today, you can look at the Harrisburg Police Department’s preliminary reports and see for yourself.

Is regional crime really accelerating this quickly?  Or, more importantly, is Harrisburg accelerating any faster than the surrounding municipalities?  Probably.  It’s a city; comparing it to Camp Hill or Wormleysburg or Linglestown is laughable at best.  Looking at the big picture, violent crime dipped about 5.5% nationwide in 2009, though it’s still a little to early to get a clear picture.  Statistics being what they are, however, we’re still left without any real insight into what — if anything — is happening.

The actual answer lies somewhere in a combination of the above.  Economic and social factors play significant roles in molding the crime rate, while the reporting policies of our media outlets and elected officials deeply affect how much we’re made aware of.  All of this, of course, is a fancy way of saying “I don’t get paid enough to figure this out.”  The only definitive statement I can make is that this is why I went back to renting, rather than purchasing another home in midtown.  The city’s finances — those economic reasons we were just talking about — are going to play a massive role in how the coming years play out.  And until we get those in order, there is absolutely no way I am going to stake a mortgage to any municipality in Dauphin County.

Is Harrisburg a bad place to live?  Not at all.  We have a collection of vibrant neighborhoods in midtown, decent employment opportunities, a location central to larger metropolitan areas AND rural countryside, and enough infrastructure to weather any storm that comes our way.  I will continue to rent in the city until the bullets start flying through my balcony door.  The one true question, then, is as follows:

Is Harrisburg entering the 1970s again?