If You Can Find 300 Crabs In Newtown Creek, You’re Set For The Year . . .

I’d like to meet the person who eats even one crab from Newtown Creek:

Brooklynites should be wary about eating anything they catch in Newtown Creek because of high bacteria levels, said state scientists, who recommended that women under age 50 and children under age 15 refrain from consuming any fish caught in the waterway. Men over age 15 and women over age 50 should limit their intake of North Brooklyn seafood at one meal of bluefish, carp, and bass per month, and no more than six crabs per week, the study said.

Greenpoint boaters welcomed the news.

Location Scout: Newtown Creek.

We’ll Always Have Singapore

The other day Clyde Haberman quipped that unlike some other recent mayors who traveled abroad and got wacky ideas, Bloomberg “should be able to resist some undesirable ideas that will fall his way in rigid Singapore, where it doesn’t take much to step out of line.” Actually, the mayor sounds like he’s right at home.

Which is to say, it’s not Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr that makes people think ideas are bad, it’s that bad ideas make people take to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Which is also to say, happy constituents don’t have any reason to bitch on Tumblr:

The mayor noted that technology, despite its benefits, can add new pitfalls to an already grueling process. “Social media is going to make it even more difficult to make long-term investments” in cities, Mr. Bloomberg said.

“We are basically having a referendum on every single thing that we do every day,” he said. “And it’s very hard for people to stand up to that and say, ‘No, no, this is what we’re going to do,’ when there’s constant criticism, and an election process that you have to look forward to and face periodically.”

Later, Mr. Bloomberg noted that long-term urban planning “requires leadership, and standing up, and saying, ‘You know, you elected me, this is what we’re going to do,’ and not take a referendum on every single thing.”

At that, the mayor’s interlocutor, the Singaporean professor Kishore Mahbubani, took back the microphone.

“I think the Singapore government sympathizes with your point about social media,” Professor Mahbubani said, prompting loud laughter from the audience. “We are having the same daily referendums in Singapore.”

Don’t Worry Mom, This Tattoo Is Just A Pilot Project

I just I just captioned a New Yorker cartoon. Such is the power of the Bloomberg Administration’s brand of creative thinking:

It has never been easy for a mayor to get things done in New York City, where every government proposal must navigate a thicket of community groups, policy boards, and empowered neighborhood gadflies who can blackball a project in a blink.

So the Bloomberg administration has taken a tack that could be called “do it first, answer questions later.” And the key to the strategy is to start small, and to use the word “pilot.”

Dozens of marquee administration projects, as broad as transforming the city streetscape with pedestrian plazas and bright green bike lanes or using new ways to train principals and encourage school attendance, have started as so-called pilot programs, ostensible experiments that are often exempt from the usual forms of city review.

The pilot has emerged as the mayor’s signature policy weapon. Admirers see an innovative way around red tape. Critics see a blunt tool that undermines democracy by minimizing the public’s role in scrutinizing the ideas of government.

Remember This Next Time The Board Of Elections Somehow Knocks You Off The Voter Rolls And Forces You To Use An Affidavit Ballot

William Shawn died in 1992 and he’s still on the voting rolls. Same for Walter Cronkite:

Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers — including movie stars Lena Horne and Natasha Richardson and beloved restaurateur Elaine Kaufman — are also on the voting rolls long after they died.

Location Scout: New York City Voting Booth.

Holding Out For A Day When Fecal Rampages Will Not Always Be Deemed So “Bizarre”

“Staten Island man set pregnant ex-girlfriend’s apartment ablaze in bizarre fecal rampage, cops allege”:

“I’m the devil!” [the suspect] was heard yelling as he knocked on a neighbor’s door early Sunday morning.

. . .

When firefighters and police arrived, [the suspect] was naked and still had the evidence on his hands, the source said.