INTERNET SCENE SITE
OF SAFE SURFING
With all the smut on the Internet and all
the children in Eugene’s public library and
all the computers with free, unfiltered
Internet access, are youth being
corrupted?
No, says Library Director Connie
Bennett in a recent written response to a
City Council query.
“There have been no known incidents of
children inadvertently viewing possibly in-
appropriate sites being used by adults,”
Bennett writes.
The new library and its branches have
been open for nine months now with 43
Internet computers running 136 hours per
week. In all that time online (90,560 hours),
there has been only one report of viewing
inappropriate material, according to
Bennett. The incident involved adults only
on the second floor of the downtown library.
A much bigger, though still small,
Internet problem the library has is patrons
arguing over who gets to go online next on
the popular computers. About two such in-
cidents are reported every week.
— Alan Pittman
FANS OF FOX NEWS
HAVE SKEWED VIEWS
Regular viewers of the Fox News
Channel are nearly four times as likely to
hold inaccurate views on the war in Iraq
compared to those who get their news from
National Public Radio or the Public
Broadcasting System, according to a recent
study by the Program on International
Policy Attitudes, which studies foreign-pol-
icy issues.
The study surveyed 3,334 Americans
who receive their news from a single media
source. Each was questioned about whether
he or she believed Saddam Hussein was di-
rectly linked with the 9/11 terrorist attacks,
whether weapons of mass destruction have
already been found in Iraq, and whether
world opinion favored the U.S.-led invasion
of Iraq.
Eighty percent of Fox News viewers
held at least one incorrect belief, compared
to 23 percent of public broadcast
listeners/viewers. Following Fox viewers in
erroneous beliefs were CBS at 71 percent,
ABC at 61 percent, NBC and CNN at 55
percent, and print media readers at 47 per-
cent. The study is available at
www.pipa.org/
I-105 BRIDGE ACCESS
PRONE TO CRUNCHING
Mayor Jim Torrey and Councilor Gary
Papé have asked the city to look into what it
can do to make the crash-prone, giant inter-
section at 6th and 7th avenues and
Washington Street more safe, but there may
be little that can be done.
The intersection at the I-105 on-ramp
downtown averaged 22 crashes per year
over the last decade, the fourth highest num-
ber in the city, according to a memo from
city police and traffic engineers. In 2002,
the intersection had 38 crashes, which may
likely put it in the number one spot when all
the data are in.
About three-fourths of the crashes were
rear-end collisions caused mostly by exces-
sive speed. Drivers weave and merge to get
on the interstate at the intersection. When
they slow down, mergers are hit by speed-
ing drivers from behind.
Police wrote 81 tickets at the intersec-
tion last year. In 1999 there were 119 tick-
ets and fewer accidents. But police can’t
focus on the intersection without decreas-
ing enforcement in other unsafe parts of
town. Policing the intersection is difficult
and requires two to three officers at once
because there aren’t safe areas to pull over
cars and police have to pursue drivers
speeding away up I-105. But police have
already stepped up enforcement and will
do more as time permits, according to the
staff memo.
City traffic engineers have tweaked
lights to limit speeding but can find no obvi-
ous changes to the layout of the intersection
that would make it safer. — AP
Ken Ehler
Just inside the
entrance to the
new Eugene Public
Library, take a left
turn to find the
Second Hand Prose
Bookstore, adjacent
to the coffee shop.
Friends of the
Library volunteer
Ken Ehler has
worked nearly full-
time all this year to
establish and manage the bookstore, an adjunct to the library’s annual sale of donated
books. “Ken is energetic and dependable — he’s done an outstanding job,” reports
Friends President Edith White. “In just a few months, the store has made $15,000.” A
native of Chicago (and still a Cubs Fan), Ehler moved to Arizona at age 10 and earned a
Ph.D. in chemistry from UA in 1972. He worked as a research chemist from California
to Switzerland and points between until 1989, when he arrived in Eugene for a job at
Molecular Probes. “They design fluorescent dies for basic biomedical research,” he
explains. An avid reader, Ehler started volunteering at the library in 2000, and began
reading to kids in the SMART readers program at Adams/Hillside School a year later.
He retired at age 56 last year to concentrate on volunteer activities. “My focus in life
is getting books into the hands of readers,” he says, “especially children.”
8 OCTOBER 30, 2003
CURB YOUR FALLOUT
This year’s curbside leaf collection in
Eugene runs Nov. 3 through Jan. 16. Dates
are subject to change. The dates for the first
of two rounds of pickup are Nov. 3-7 for
north Eugene, Nov. 10-14 for central
Eugene, Nov. 17-21 for southeast Eugene,
Nov. 24- Dec. 5 for southwest Eugene, and
Dec. 8-12 for west Eugene.
For more information about the leaf pro-
gram, call the leaf hotline at 682-5383. For
leaf collection in Springfield and outside
city limits, call the county at 682-8565.
COUNTY INITIATIVE
TARGETS ENFORCEMENT
Lane County residents may get a chance
to vote to follow Seattle’s example and make
marijuana offenses the lowest law enforce-
ment priority, freeing up police resources to
go after violent crime. Seattle passed a simi-
lar initiative Sept. 16.
Sensible Lane County, a political action
committee, is working to get an initiative on
the ballot that will amend the Lane County
Charter. The Lane County Cannabis
Initiative prohibits the expenditure of public
funds for marijuana enforcement, arrests,
prosecutions and county jail time.
The initiative “forbids Lane County law
enforcement from contracting with the fed-
eral government, as is the current practice,
for marijuana eradication,” says a statement
from the PAC. “More importantly, county
law enforcement is barred from cooperating
with federal raids on medical marijuana pa-
tients and caregivers.”
“You don’t have to partake to understand
the injustices,” says Pam Driscoll of the Lane
County Pacific Green Party. Driscoll notes
that tobacco kills about 390,000 Americans a
year, prescription drugs kill 100,000, alcohol
kills 80,000, cocaine kills 2,200, heroin kills
2,000, aspirin kills 2,000, but no one has been
killed by marijuana.
Sensible Lane County can be reached at
P.O. Box 1121, Fall Creek, 97438 or online at
http://sensiblelanecounty.tk or e-mail
nejc@resist.ca — TJT
CORRECTIONS/CLARIFICATIONS
• In our Oct. 16 Slant column about LCC
we wrote about the Legislature’s three-year
tax hike helping “save the college from mas-
sive program cutbacks.” Those cutbacks are
not likely to happen right away. According
to LCC’s administration, repeal of the
Legislature’s tax package would cost the col-
lege about $900,000 in funding for the bien-
nium. But because Lane based its 2003/04
budget on a lower allocation, no program re-
ductions are expected this year. LCC’s budget
and programs would be affected in 2004/05.
• In last week’s story, “Unfettered
Expression,” we misspelled the name of
Suzanne St. Cyr.