The Olympia city council voted initial approval on the question of whether to make OlyWa a NFZ. Does anyone know what "initial approval" means? Read about it here and here.

Here's what someone named "Bird Dog" thinks about it.

A two-minute google search produced this partial list of other cities that are NFZs:

Takoma Park
Las Vegas
Santa Cruz
Arcata
Davis
Berkeley

I guess there are quite a few more:

Johnson said more than 1,200 cities and 100 countries are "nuclear-free." Olympia's ordinance is based on one adopted by Takoma Park, Md., that was approved 20 years ago and survived a legal challenge.

Here's a pdf of the Takoma Park NFZ Act.

Anyone have the energy to make the arguments for and against?

In a newspaper swap, ownership of The Daily Olympian has been transfered to the Knight Ridder news organization. Read about it here. Some think that this is a good thing:

Seattle Times
"My reason for some optimism in Bellingham and Olympia is that Knight Ridder at least has a distinguished past," writes Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University. "The same cannot be said for Gannett, always a bottom-line corporation."

Here's a link to the company's corporate history.


My understanding is that Knight Ridder was the only news outlet that actually didn't buy what was coming out of US gov't sources during the run up to the war in Iraq and actually did some investigative reporting about WMD. There is some evidence of K-R's independence here and here.

Here's a bit from On The Media.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Clark Hoyt, Washington editor of Knight Ridder, writes that my interview with reporter Walter Pincus (quote) "left the false impression that the Washington Post was way ahead of other media in fact-checking the Bush administration on the war in Iraq. "In the critical period leading up to the war, the Post's coverage mostly reflected official White House and Pentagon views. Pincus wrote on the Post's front page, for example, that intelligence officials believed that Saddam Hussein would be toppled by a coup on the eve of an American invasion. Knight Ridder, the nation's second largest newspaper company, was virtually alone in reporting that senior military officers and intelligence officials believed the administration was overstating the dangers posed by Saddam, exaggerating his ties to al Qaida and downplaying the dangers of a new war in the Middle East. The Post is a great newspaper, but it was way behind the curve on this story at a time when it could have mattered."

Someone with the initials A.E. blogs about Oly. music here. The calendar is a bit clunky, but it has information that people need to know. A.E.'s mission statement:

ae started OlyMusic.com because good friends said Olympia needed a music calendar webstyle, 'cause kept seeing flyers for shows after they were over.

This Saturday:

• 4:45 ALL AGES at the VAULT in Oly. $2 Failing Winter, Nice Try Stanley, Electric Blue Phantom
• 8:00p Live Jazz at The Spar
• At Jazzbones International Touring Act The Paperboys Celtic Rock $12 930pm 21+
• Old Time Relijun The Saints of Everyday Failures special guests $5 cover 9pm doors/10pm show @ The Clipper

Check it out.