Detroit’s bankruptcy filing has kicked up a storm of numbers that animates the city’s predicament: $18 billion owed to some 100,000 creditors; 40% of streetlights broken; two-thirds of the city’s ambulance fleet out of service.
Yet a mere three digits go a long way toward capturing the Motor City’s long, steep decline: 313. This has been the city’s main telephone area code since such codes were first assigned 66 years ago. And when Detroit was given 313, it marked it as essentially the fourth-most-important metropolis in the United States.
The system bestowed the lowest numbers — including a “1” rather than a zero in the middle — to the most populous cities with the greatest volume of incoming calls to businesses and individuals. Such numbers — such as 212 for New York and 213 for Los Angeles — were the quickest to dial using the rotary phones of the time.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson
"If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here." - Barack Obama, June 7, 2013
RIGHT'S RIGHT 
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Fri Aug 16, 2013 8:42 am
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