geekosystem

There's always been something I didn't trust about raccoons. Maybe it's the fact that they're scavengers who have knocked over more of my garbage cans than I care to recall. Or maybe it's just their beady, criminal eyes resting in the domino-masks that denote them as nature's criminals. Whatever the reason, all my suspicions about raccoons were confirmed this morning when news broke that a pair of raccoons -- who are probably terrorists -- have taken over a tower crane in Seattle, scaring off workers and hamstringing construction work on a new apartment complex.

Hailing from Washington, I can happily confirm that yes, as you may have heard, it rains quite a bit there. Somehow, though, we mostly get by just fine. Now, a University of Washington meteorologist has run the numbers to find that our NFL team has not only found ways to live with the rainy, wet conditions that are par for the course in the Northwest -- they actually thrive in them. The playoff bound Seattle Seahawks are more likely to win home games in rain or snow, and not by just a little.

Seattle, Washington is already known for its incessant rainfall and having the honor of being labeled the cradle of all things grunge that defined the '90s generation, but soon it will be adding another feather in its cap once the city will be known for playing host to a sophisticated broadband network. Responding to the citizens' desire for better broadband service, Gigabit Squared (GB2) -- a broadband developer based in Washington -- and Seattle mayor Mike McGinn announced an agreement in which the city will be working closely with the company to build a "fiber-to-the-home/fiber-to-the-business broadband network" (FTTH/FTTB), providing an unparalleled service aimed to benefit Seattle's numerous institutions as well as its residents.

Seattle's Lake City library has been fighting a particularly contentious fight lately, upholding patrons' right to watch pornography on library computers. Well, not that specifically, but rather the right of patrons to access whatever content they like on the library's unfiltered Internet content, LOLcats and porn alike. Naturally, there have been some complaints about the pornography, but things have been astoundingly civil so far.

Is Twitter the right forum for an inane list of police complaints generated over the course of a day? Many Seattle residents are considering this question in the wake of an experiment by the Seattle Police Department, who tweeted out all the calls they received for 12-hours the way they would go out on a typical police scanner. The Police Department was trying to show citizens what a typical day of emergency calls coming into the department was like. The social media platform seemed like a good way to reach a lot of people. The only problem was that the police didn't tell any of their twitter followers what they were doing.

Have you seen this masked man, Seattle? First reported in November, a man wearing an exceedingly well-made superhero costume has been stalking the streets of Seattle, looking for crime to fight. Like in Kick-Ass, except real. He calls himself Phoenix Jones, and apparently, he has actually prevented a crime.

A remarkable thing happened in the Seattle area earlier this week: When a Boeing engineer named Duane Innes was driving to a baseball game, he saw a pickup truck driving erratically, with the driver slumped over the wheel. With the truck barreling towards a busy intersection, Innes used "basic physics" to save the life of the other driver, who turned out to be an 80-year-old man passed out due to circulatory problems.