This is cross-posted at The Good Reverend.

Here in Philadelphia, the metropolitan transit company, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (Septa), is extensive and fairly popular, but it's not the nicest system in America. For starters, the buses and trains come less frequently than is probably optimal, and even those times at which they do come are not entirely predictable, despite published timetables. It's also quite dirty, both on trains and in stations, compared to newer systems like Washington's or the Bay Area's and also older systems like the New York subway. But perhaps the biggest problem is that, if you leave out buses, which are not very speedy, and the regional trains, which are only good for going to suburban areas, and scrape beneath the surface to look at the heart of the system—the subway—it's not very extensive at all.

Septa has only two proper subway lines, each following a straight shot down the city's east-west and north-south divider streets (the Market Street route also continues as an elevated train into the more suburban, near northeastern part of the city, while the Broad Street line has one short spur that provides some variation to get to another part of Center City). There is a third line, operated by the port authority, that provides a few central stops and heads across the Delaware into New Jersey. And there are five trolley routes that run on above-ground tracks through West Philly before diving into a tunnel and running as small subways under Center City. But that's it: if you're going through the center of town in one of the cardinal directions, or if you are going to New Jersey or West Philly, you are set. If you are going anywhere else, it's going to be a schlep.

It would be nice to have more nonbus public transit routes. Tourist or occasional ridership—coveted because it alleviates the effect of inefficient peak rush-hour periods—would probably increase if visitors and consumers could get on the subway in Old City and get off at, say, the Art Museum, South Street, or the Italian Market. But it's hard to find the money for such projects in part because, evaluated in and of themselves, they are not cost effective at all.

Mr. Speaker, I take to the floor today, not as a Democrat or a Republican, but as an Iraq war veteran who was a captain of the 82nd Airborne Division in Baghdad.

I speak with a heavy heart for my fellow paratrooper Specialist Chad Keith, Specialist James Lambert and the 17 other brave men I served with who never made it home.

I rise to give voice to hundreds of thousands of patriotic Pennsylvanians and veterans across the globe who are deeply troubled by the President's call to escalate the number of American troops in Iraq.

I served in Baghdad from June of 2003 to January of 2004. Walking in my own combat boots, I saw firsthand this administration's failed policy in Iraq. I led convoys up and down Ambush Alley in a Humvee without doors, convoys that Americans still run today because too many Iraqis are still sitting on the sidelines.

Fresh off the plan from the Philadelphia River City folks to install a moving sidewalk along the Schuylkill rail bridge to 30th Street station, at-large council member Jim Kenney has announced an official consideration of rubberizing Philadelphia's sidewalks:

He says rubber sidewalks are made from recycled tires. They don't crack, and they last longer than concrete. Kenney says rubber sidewalks could also reduce the number of slip-and-fall accidents and the resulting lawsuits.

Link. Clearly a pattern is developing here. Our old-fashioned concrete sidewalks are too boring and static. We need dynamic, interactive sidewalks that will pull people to work and shopping, or at least them them bounce a little. You just know George Jetson was Philly at heart.

They finally did it. They found water ice on Mars.

Septa's AGM of Public and Operational Safety, Jim Jordan, was on The NewsHour last night alongside former Undersecretary of Homeland Security Asa Hutchinson talking about the US public transportation response to terrorist threats. He said that after 9/11, then again after Madrid, and now after London, they have stepped up security, doing things like putting out more officers and more bomb dogs and improving comunication channels between Septa and law enforcement agencies both local and federal.

The image of the newly redesigned Freedom Tower they're about to build in New York appears, to me, to be a giant, elongated copy of the Cira Centre with a spire on the top.

The Rittenhouse Review recommends the first play at Phoenixville's Colonial Theatre since the Theatre reopened six years ago:

“Visiting Mr. Green,� originally produced in New York in 1997, is a dramatic comedy about an elderly man -- that would be Mr. Green -- who wanders in to Manhattan traffic where he is nearly in New York City and is almost hit by one Ross Gardiner. As his sentence for reckless driving, Gardiner must visit and assist Mr. Green, a recent widower living in a fourth-floor walk-up, with household tasks once a week for six months.

The Colonial Theatre says, “What starts out as a comedy about two men who do not want to be in the same room together turns into a gripping and moving drama as they get to know each other, come to care about each other, and open up old wounds they’ve been hiding for years.�

Link. I, for one, am stunned. Jim might be the first person in decades to manage to write a whole post about the Colonial without using the word "blob."

The PhillyBlog forums have a thread marking the twentieth anniversary of the MOVE bombing in West Philly, including links to stories in the Inquirer and Daily News.

For the first time in almost thirty years, men are welcome to wear form-fitting bathing suits down at Cape May:

There was no push to eliminate the little-known rule, City Administrator Luciano Corea Jr. said, but for a resort that once required men and women to swim in the ocean at different times of day, it made sense to modernize.
"We had no complaints, and we've never issued a summons for it, to my knowledge," Corea said. "Technically, we could have left it on the books. It was never enforced anyway."

Link to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Pesky'Apostrophe has a hilarious take:

I certainly don’t associate Speedos with gay men. I associate Speedos with 400 pound, super hair Italian men in their 50s who think it’s a turn on to show off their goods from underneath gigantic stomachs.

Link.

Slate Magazine has a photo slide-show/essay today they call "Extreme Museum Makeover: How Do You Create a New Home for the Barnes Foundation?" The photos amount to an architectural tour of some of the world's greatest museums, and the copy transforms those museums into advice for the Barnes Foundation. They also make sure to include some historical information about the museum itself.