Fwd: Pittsburgh Banning Beekeeping?!

[infryq]

Just got the email below from the Burgh Bees list, where I lurk and learn cool things about urban beekeeping in Pittsburgh. If you're local and a fan of beekeeping in Pittsburgh, please write to Jason Kambitsis or come to the hearing as described below. If for some reason you are not a fan of urban beekeeping but could be swayed by a small handful of facts, consider the following:

• There is a major honeybee crisis worldwide. A plethora of confusing diseases have wiped out a devastating fraction of all wild honeybees. Beekeepers are the honeybee's best hope for survival.
• If you have or want a vegetable garden in Pittsburgh, you want urban beekeepers. Bees only travel a limited distance from their hive: no local pollinators means no fruit (botanically speaking! so that means cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and the like, too)
• People have been keeping bees in Pittsburgh for years, mostly under the City's nose and with the cooperation of their neighbors -- even in dense areas like the North Side. This is why there are bees in Pittsburgh. There are well-known and -communicated techniques for handling urban hives in a way that's safe for both bees and humans.
• Local bees mean local honey. Local honey has a therapeutic effect on local pollen allergies. I should know; my allergies developed when I was a kid in Mt Lebanon, and there is nowhere I've lived where my allergies are worse than they are in Pittsburgh. Honey helps. Strangest thing.
  

The email:

Burgh Beesers, the City of Pittsburgh needs to hear from YOU!

This is a Call to Action to all beekeepers and bee-lovers. The City of Pittsburgh has drafted an Urban Agriculture Ordinance that greatly restricts beekeeping in the Burgh. The proposed restrictions would in effect ban beekeeping in many of our city's dense neighborhoods, where our members have been safely keeping bees for years.

We have requested that the city amend their proposed ordinance to better accommodate our urban beekeepers and to encourage safe and responsible beekeeping. Attached are our proposed revisions.

The ordinance will be brought to the Planning Commission on February 16th and we need all of you there to show the Commission, which doesn't believe that beekeeping is "a big thing" in and around the Burgh, how many beekeepers and beekeeper supporters there are in our parts. Please either come to the Planning Commission meeting on the 16th (details below) or send an email of support to Jason Kambitsis at jason.kambitsis@city.pittsburgh.pa.us urging the City to adopt Burgh Bees' recommendations. Please cc Burghbees@gmail.com on your email to the city, so that we can keep a count!

Planning Commission Hearing:
Tuesday, February 16, 2009 at 2:00 p.m. at 200 Ross Street, 1st Floor.
Please add your name to this form if you plan to come, so we'll have an idea of how many people will be there. https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFJBMzhkVnA5UVJMY19wWXJzcEJqcVE6MA

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hi there! I know this is somewhat off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using
for this website? I'm getting tired of Wordpress because I've had problems with
hackers and I'm looking at options for another platform.
I would be fantastic if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.

[infryq]

It's polite to sign anonymous posts. :)

It's a bit weird that you're posting this question in a four-year-old article instead of on something more recent. After all, it's not like it would be any more off topic. Combined with the anonymity, it's the sort of thing a creepy person would do. I recommend keeping an eye on that when posting to strangers' blogs in the future.

On my browser there's a big link in the upper right that says "LiveJournal" (or alternately a smaller link in the right sidebar below the tags that says "Powered by LiveJournal.com"). If you click that, it will take you to the frontpage for the livejournal blog platform, which has been operating since 1999. Wordpress, on the other hand, wasn't started until 2003. These and many more blogging options are listed on wikipedia in the category, Blog Hosting Services. I wouldn't call LJ "good," since after the creators sold it it's become somewhat crufty and occasionally unreliable. However, it does have a critical mass of people I know, and that matters to me. I've had the same blog for twelve years, and I'm not really the early-adopter type that critically evaluates every new blogging platform that comes on the market to see if I should switch or not. I'm happy with the tools I use so long as they're not in the way.

I don't know what you mean by hackers. Do you mean that (A) people are literally exploiting a security hole in your blogging software or server to obtain access to otherwise restricted content or services on your blog? [NB: If their ultimate goal is theft or vandalism, the proper term for this is "cracker". Hackers are largely just curious.] (B) people keep guessing your password / your current host keeps "accidentally" publishing its users' password hashes or plaintext? or (C) people keep posting spam comments to your blog entries advertising e.g. prescription drugs?

If your problem is (A), it sounds like it's personal. Can't help you there. If it's really bad you can try browsing under an alias and use TOR to hide your identity, but that's got nothing to do with your blog platform. If your problem is (B), you can start using a more secure password or passphrase, and read web security blogs to see providers are paying due attention to storing that information safely. Alternately buy a static IP and run your own blog on a cheap machine in your basement. Then if someone gets your password hash, the only one to blame is you! If your problem is (C), most blogging services permit restricting comments by requiring commenters to have an account in a whitelist or complete a captcha before posting. LiveJournal supports the former, but I normally have that feature turned off (obviously). By googling "wordpress restrict comments" and "wordpress captcha comments" I can see that WordPress supports both (and likely other methods as well), so maybe you just need to do more reading about the features of your preferred blogware.

HTH!