MARTA tracks over I-85.  (photo submitted by Chad)

Put down the smartphone and pick up your license and registration please.

Georgia’s texting-while-driving ban goes into effect today, which means that police officers can now pull over multi-tasking drivers and slap them with a $150 fine and 1 point on their license.

“But how will they know I’m texting and not reading ancient parchment scrolls?!”, you ask distractedly, glancing down at your Blackberry.

Well, basically it starts by observing that your vehicle looks like it’s being driven by a couple capuchin monkeys, that’s how.  From NPR…

Sgt. Robert Moody of the Georgia State Patrol says it’s easier than you might think to figure out whether someone is typing a message behind the wheel. Texters often weave in and out of lanes, and drive more slowly.

“If you’re looking down, and you’re not paying attention to the road, you may let off the gas and instead of running 55 or 60, you’re running 35 or 40,” Moody says. “Those are the kind of things law enforcement can look for. Once we see those violations, why did that violation occur?”

Oh, and from there, they can also subpoena your cell phone records.  So, there’s that too.

If you were silly enough to judge Atlanta based solely on the opinion of the internet’s generally rambling, slightly paranoid and snarky conscientiousness, you’d be apt to think the city was on the verge of collapse;  that at any moment, the city’s vital signs would flat-line as the highways clogged like a ephemeral artery, the populous suffocated from a general lack of art and culture, the 30 Deep gang was discovered to actually be a front for Charlotte transit advocates.

Well, Atlanta’s got some news for us.  For all its modern day problems, it’s still one of nation’s top world cities according to the Globalization and World Cities Study Group’s 2008 study – which I came across on Wikipedia – which ranks “world cities” based on the proliferation of “advanced producer services” such as accountancy, advertising, finance, and law.

In fact, only New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles (all “Alpha” cities) rank above it, when viewed this way.  (See the full chart after the jump.)

So, while I’m not encouraging us to pat ourselves on the back into extinction, I do believe we shouldn’t let the city’s weaknesses completely overshadow the city’s continuing prowess and potential.

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Back on her Decatur horse, Pecanne Log says that the city “was home to the original NIMBYs”.  Christa has unearthed a 1939 AJC article where the writer unearthed a few odd facts from “The Inventory of County Archives – DeKalb” about Decatur from an even earlier time.

Among them, a 1860 plan to build a wall on the west side of Decatur to keep “that offensive, boisterous and growing community of Atlanta on its western boundaries”, and a little ditty that Decatur residents used to recite as a rallying cry against laying track for the “dirty” railroads within the city limits.

Christa also references the oft-cited rumor that Decatur residents actually turned down an offer to become the “terminus” station for the coming rail line, but I’ve always heard conflicting reports as to whether this is in fact true.  Most state this as fact – or at least accepted rumor – but a couple doubting Thomases have mentioned to me that there’s actually no proof of such an offer being made (and rejected) and that Atlanta (aka Marthasville, aka Thrasherville, aka Terminus) is actually a more logical spot for a number of railroads as that’s where many of them intersect.

Perhaps the aforementioned aversion to having track inside the city limits was expanded upon to come up with this revised history, which puts Decatur in a slightly more favorable light?  I dunno.  It sure would be interesting to look at “The Inventory of County Archives” though!