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November 10, 2010

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“I Can’t Believe It’s Vegan!” October 2010

Reporter Martha Cheng checked out two new vegan restaurants on South King Street.

Wow, that is fantastic, what a great and informative article. The future is vegan and it’s about time more people were introduced to the “kind” diet with venues opening up that cater to them. Thank you.—AN ONLINE COMMENT

“Trains Kill Buses,” September 2010

In his Editor’s Page, A. Kam Napier suggested that a network of on-demand shuttles would be a good alternative to a fixed-rail mass transit system. “In my wildest fantasy, every car owner in Honolulu can join the network as drivers as long as they’re willing to pick up and drop off their fellow citizens as they go about their own business. At the end of the month, the city would drop a little cash into their accounts for the valuable public service.”

If a shuttle/jitney system is such a logical transit solution, why can’t Kam Napier cite even one city where it exists? And if rail is such a failure, why are there no fewer than 74 U.S. cities currently in the various stages of planning, funding or building a full range of rail systems from street cars to commuter heavy rail? For every rail “failure” such as L.A., I can show Mr. Napier five complete rail-success stories.
—AN ONLINE COMMENT

Note from A. Kam Napier: If you want to learn more about this subject, a good place to start is to check out “share taxi” at Wikipedia, which has descriptions of 28 jitney services worldwide. The article there notes that in the U.S., “By 1915, there were 62,000 jitneys nationwide. Local regulations, demanded by streetcar companies, killed the jitney in most places.”

“From These Parts,” September 2010

In Afterthoughts, executive editor Kathryn Drury Wagner points out that, for Caucasians who were born and raised in the Islands, it can be upsetting to be seen as interlopers, based on their skin color.

I am tired of white people being seen around the world as purveyors of oppression. Every country around the world has racist tendencies, yet it is never spoken of and considered something exclusive to white people. I am of mixed heritage and I can tell you this for certain: I would not get the best jobs or be seen as socially acceptable in my father’s nonwhite country because I am not 100 percent of its ethnicity.
If you go to China and you are white or black, you are going to experience racism against you. If you go to Israel and you are not a Jew you will experience racism. If you go to Africa and you aren’t black you will be singled out. To single out white people as the only ones who are racist is, in itself, racist.

Hawaiians should be inclusive of everyone just as all the countries around the world should be. Today’s white people had nothing to do with the downfall of the Hawaiian monarchy. The Japanese did plenty to hurt Hawaii by bombing it, but today someone of Japanese decent is considered acceptable but a white is a haole? —AN ONLINE COMMENT