Dec 28, 2007

5,000 years wandering around...

thinking others are crazy for believing in different fairy tales.



Cool map, though.

Dec 23, 2007

nothing new under the sun

J. Edgar Hoover wanted to arrest and detain some 12,000 Americans to counter "treason, espionage and sabotage" in 1950.

From the BBC:
Mr Hoover wanted the president to suspend the centuries-old legal right of habeas corpus, which protects individuals against unlawful arrest.

The FBI director planned to detain the suspects - whose list of names he had been compiling for years - in US military and federal prisons.

And people think of the 50s as a golden age.

Dec 21, 2007

what drought?


News of parched Atlantans has permeated even my news-anemic world - evidently the entire metropolitan area and its suburban and exurban surroundings are screaming for a drink and praying for rain.

...But not in Clayton County, where a series of man-made wetlands, channels, and
reservoirs convert ten million gallons of wastewater a day into water that can
more easily be made potable, AND save the county 60% of its monthly electric
bill. Twenty years and $15M ago, the county bucked the trend of the rest of the
area and started planning a little more intelligently, with the long-term goal
of becoming drought-resistant. Through phased, long-term planning (the fourth
and final phase will be complete in 2010) and progressive design, it seems
they've done just that.
You can find the heartening and very interesting article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Moo, Baa, La la la!

I know no more needs to be said about the astonishing stupidity of the Administration and its faith in our absolute credulity, but every once in awhile it's fun to revisit concrete proof of their insulting inadequacy.

From Daily Kos, via pseudorandom:
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon." -- Condoleezza Rice, May 16, 2002

Really, Condi? REALLY?!
WASHINGTON -- In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties. One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon -- but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.-- USA Today, April 18, 2004

I was amazed when I read Richard Clarke's 'Against All Enemies' because while I was ready to believe the administration may not have done everything possible to avert an attack, I hadn't assumed such a bunch of hawks would so happily slap on the blinders to what had been non-partisan expertise from many directions. Willful ignorance that ascends to the criminal followed by lies relying on unquestioning acceptance.

Hmmm... good point.

From Defective Yeti:


If life begins at conception as so many evangelicals insist, shouldn't we be celebrating Christmas sometime in April, when the Big Guy first knocked Mary up?

Dec 17, 2007

Something to write home about

® 2006 Photo Credit: Nicola Kuperus

Finally made it to Slows Bar-B-Q the other day for lunch after driving past it almost every morning since they started painting the old empty building it's now housed in. Places like Slows are exactly what Detroit needs - the proverbial good food and good service in a great space the likes of which every out-of-towner should be taken.

The mac and cheese wasn't as epiphanous as it was the first time I tried it, but it was still good, and the sammich, stuffed with pork, pickles, and cole slaw was outstanding.

As an aside, I'm normally of the opinion that links pages are anachronisms, especially on business pages, but the one on the Slows site offers a glimpse of the direction in which the city could go if it so chooses.

Dec 7, 2007

early-morning neighborhood design question

Is it economics or aesthetic that determines the shapes of new neighborhoods?
When shelling out 250 grand for a place in the exurbs, are gently curving roads and clustered courts the result of some focus group that found people prefer the sensation of gliding through a scenic area every time they drive home? An 'over-the-river-and-through-the-woods' sensation brought on by the abolishment of long, straight corridors of homes and sidewalks?

Or, are those Mandelbrot, spoke-on-a-wheel house layouts in suburbs the result of the price of concrete? You'd think if you had x acres to build houses on, you would resort to some more or less constant grid as that would maximize the number of houses you could sell. However, if the builder also has to build the roads that lead to those homes and for which they are only indirectly compensated, it makes sense to make as little road as possible, and that would result in spurs that lead to clusters of houses. Especially if land is proportionately cheaper than roads, as you can afford to squander some land to save on roads. Not ideal in terms of numbers of homes, but still not bad.

Granted, if the x acres you bought is bounded on three sides by the fields of farmers who've not yet sold out, it may make sense to use courts to fill in some corners where you couldn't have streets passing through to larger arteries anyway, but it still seems unlikely that the space couldn't be filled with more properties if grids were used.
Writing this, I'm picturing a neighborhood of curving roads and I'll admit, it seems nicer than the one I grew up in of 1920s square geometry, complete with alleys. But is that a result of an ingrained aesthetic that I'd be willing to pay more for (enough to make up for the builders' loss in homes that could have been built) or is it a conditioned response based on the generally more-expensive neighborhoods that feature such layouts?
Boy! First it was title insurance, now the layout of residential neighborhoods. Whooo-EE bad juju is nothing if not eff you en fun!

Dec 6, 2007

just when you think it's safe...

To give a bunch of anti-tax types some attention, they go and get batshit crazy.

I followed a FairTax link to its site and read the introductory stuff, thinking 'huh, this sounds plausible at first blush.' The equivalent of cautiously circling a huge and still smoking, but fascinating rock half-embedded in my lawn in spite of the fact that I've been burned touching those rocks before.

And then I saw as one of the benefits of the FairTax, "Abolish the IRS." Good luck with that - not even Tom Delay would've signed something making him responsible for the loss of 100,000 jobs in a single stroke. A note to the PR dep't at FairTax: Don't use words like 'abolish' when discussing huge bureacracies - it makes you sound a mite unrealistic.

Other than that, it sounds pretty good - a consumption tax with protection for the poor built in. God knows how it could actually be implemented, though. And just what is a 'prebate?'

UPDATE: Some pretty good explanations and answers in this Balloon Juice post, where my ilk prove they can be just as closed-minded and mean-spirited as the wingnuts.

fotD17


Found this one when skimming this Utrecht set.

Dec 5, 2007

a new ambassador in Detroit

Good news, and a whiz-bang animation to go with it (link in the center of their homepage). The Ambassador Bridge in Detroit will indeed be 'twinned' by the current owner. Other ideas had included new state-and-federally-built bridges in a few different locations, most of them well south of the existing crossing, requiring a number of huge changes to the existing communities and highway infrastructure.

I'm not convinced another bridge is needed, but as the plan stands, the new one will replace the existing except in times of very high traffic, when it can be opened to the overflow. I think this is the best solution to what in the short term is probably a non-issue; does anyone without a vested interest in a new bridge really expect cross-border traffic to increase greatly over the next 5-10 years?

Side note: The Ambassador Bridge is the only privately-owned bridge on a US border, and it handles more traffic than almost every other crossing, bridge or not.

Dec 3, 2007

If I ever get to Washington D.C. I'm going to call on Kenneth R. Harney and buy him a beer. Mr. Harney has been a great voice on a topic that has been a thorn in my side for about the last 7 to 10 years, sham/joint venture title companies. This article by Kenneth Harney appeared in the Free Press yesterday.

Update:
Hmmm, it looks as though we are unable to access the link. Anyway, the jist of the article is that if your realtor, lender or builder says you have to use their affiliated title company you should question their intention because they may be making more profit off of you for services they themselves are not performing. Unless steering (an illegal activity, by the way) is a service.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071202/BUSINESS04/712020567/1017/BUSINESS

Dec 1, 2007

ninety-what?

A few months back I started listening to 93.9 'The River' a Detroit station going for middle-agers that still want to hear The Clash. The play a great variety of new and old, but almost all of it quality, even if they never stray too far from the well-known. For the last few days, though, they've SU-HUCKED! I only listen when in the kitchen or sometimes while driving, but it seemed like they were a totally different station - The Jonas Brothers?! Eugh. And some other song, "I Want to be a Rock Star'? that is really a neuvo-country scree - was that Toby Keith?! Jesus Christ on a Bike.

When I indignantly complained to my wife, who'd been out of town for a couple of days, she asked if it had been like that since the power outage that happened the day before she left.

"Yeah, probably."

"And what station is it?" she asked, glancing at the display on the radio.

"96.3"

"Don't you mean 93.9?"

Exasperated, "Yeah! Oh... Nevermind."

If I weren't such an idiot, we wouldn't have as much to laugh at.

fotD16


DetroitDerek takes some great shots - I especially like his Signs and Billboards set.