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The New York Times has another story today about Philadelphia's plans to light the City of Brotherly Love with free Wi-Fi goodness. As a former Philly resident, this plan strikes me as incredibly goofy; most of the people in Philly are so poor, even a crappy $600 notebook is beyond their means. Unless John Street is going to be handing out laptops at The Gallery, the only people using this service will be tourists and Penn students. That sounds callous, I know. There are indeed structural issues in Philadelphia that reinforce the digital divide. West Philly, where I lived lagged the suburbs by two years getting DSL service from Verizon, and cable modem was unavailable until the local minority-owned cable operator was acquired by AOL-Time Warner. In 2001, Baltimore Avenue, which ran by my house was completely torn up to replace the trolley tracks. At the time, I quipped that the city should install fiber-optic trunks in the street while it was dug out, but, alas, that did not happen.

The Times is usually pretty fastidious about getting names right, but the article refers to "Love Park," which is what locals call the public space Northwest of City Hall, but the proper name of the joint is "JFK Plaza." Which leads me to the Infobong.com Trivia Question of the Day! What was President Kennedy's blood type? Click "yeah... and it don't stop" for the answer.

President Kennedy's blood type was B-Negative. We watched the CBS and NBC breaking news coverage of his assassination at my screening today.