April 2009
Startling New Evidence That Not All Conservatives... →
Car-dependency also requires the nuclear family to become a primary transportation resource. Parents must shuttle their children to school, soccer practice, and even their friends’ houses until the children can shuttle themselves (at peril to their lives) in late adolescence.
See? On a roll, like I mentioned before.
Q: What Will The Puget Sound Region’s... →
A: This. No this. No this. No this. OK, I give up.
hugeasscity’s on a roll today.
ooking back 20 years, nothing much changed in the transportation landscape of the Puget Sound region. Yes, there was incremental change along the established trajectory (i.e. more cars and roads), but nothing transformational. The prospects for transformational change appear to be much greater in the...
“Those kids graduate and pretty much continue to have the same dating woes...”
– Why Being Smart Won’t Get You Laid Not the evening to read this. Not at all.
“I never wanted to write this book,” he tells us at the outset, in a hangdog...”
– The Atlantic Online | May 2009 | The Passion of Alec Baldwin | Caitlin Flanagan
Some of you—okay, my coworkers—might recognize...
Tackling the news-technology challenge: GonzoCamp! →
I’m considering attending, if only to pepper people with HST quotes few will recall but me and shaking my fist angrily when they bash ‘big media’.
WatchBBC NEWS | Special Reports | Audio slideshow: African banjos
Grammy award-winning banjo player Bela Fleck travelled to The Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Uganda and Tanzania to find out, recording an album and documentary film with the musicians he met along the way. The film, Throw Down Your Heart, is released on 24 April.
Best audio slideshow I’ve seen so far. Every audio slideshow should include...
Shakespeare for Presidents - NYTimes.com →
Sitting for one official portrait, for instance, Lincoln fought the tedium with a spontaneous performance of the opening soliloquy from “Richard III,” along with running commentary on how most actors he’d seen play the role had botched it.
syska:
Jimmy Smith - Root Down (And Get It)
...
Class Dismissed by Sandra Tsing Loh →
Some 25 years have passed since the publication of Paul Fussell’s naughty treat Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, and I think this quarter-century mark merits the raising of either a yachting pennant, an American flag, or a wind sock with the Budweiser logo (corresponding to Fussell’s demarcations of Upper Class, Middle Class, and Prole). For readers who somehow missed this...
“Those -99.99…% figures can be a little deceiving so let me add some perspective....”
– CrossingWallStreet.com: The Worst Stock of the Decade
footnoted.org: Carl Icahn’s move to North Dakota… →
They moved a company majority-owned by Icahn to ND just in case Icahn somehow loses majority share? Weird.
Firms Infused With Rescue Cash Find Money to Fund... →
Top recipients of federal bailout money spent more than $10 million on political lobbying in the first three months of this year, including aggressive efforts aimed at blocking executive pay limits and tougher financial regulations, according to newly filed disclosure records.
The biggest spenders among major firms in the group included General Motors, which spent nearly $1 million a month...
syska:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Sull’aria… Che...
A View from the Inside « The Baseline Scenario →
If you haven’t picked up on one of the dozens of recommendations from other blogs, I recommend reading Phillip Swagel’s long and detailed account of the view of the financial crisis from his seat as assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department. It’s particularly useful for people like me who make a habit of criticizing government officials.
footnoted.org: Welcome to North Dakota! →
Delaware is getting some competition from a seemingly unlikely place: North Dakota, which enacted what is widely considered to be a shareholder friendly law in 2007, called the North Dakota Publicly Traded Corporations Act. According to this article in the WSJ back in December, the new law makes it easier for shareholders to nominate their own slate of board members and vote on things like...
Steepster →
Finally a drinking-themed site that corresponds to when I’m alert, thoughtful and in front of a computer rather than impaired and wrestling with tiny buttons on a mobile device.
“Looking back, I suspect that if I had died, the accident might well have been...”
– How We Drive: J.G. Ballard, R.I.P. Interesting tribute to JG Ballard on Traffic’s blog. Nice tie-in.
Financial Innovation for Beginners (The Baseline... →
Securitization is one innovation that helped overcome this problem and increased access to credit, and I think securitization on balance is a good thing. But it’s not in the same category as the iPod, or better floss, or better shoelaces, which are things that make people’s lives better directly. Securitization is something that increases access to credit, which may or may not be good, depending...
Logic+Emotion: Will Twitter See An "Oprah Effect",... →
This is when influence could potentially create a perfect storm. Great numbers of “lower level” influencers can of course create a movement, and when combined with even just a few “higher level” influencers who have access to communication platforms—a critical mass of awareness and influence can be reached. This is where Twitter finds itself at the moment. It has millions...
WatchPC Pond Skim on Vimeo
The Banker Who Said No - Forbes.com →
A sign in Beal’s office reads: “Often wrong, but seldom in doubt.” His tenacity led him on a six-year seemingly quixotic quest suing his own regulator, the FDIC, over thousands of terrible subprime loans Beal bought after it seized a failed Pritzker-family-owned bank in 2001. Beal claimed the FDIC made loans to unqualified buyers that did not meet the representations the agency...
Company fires up geothermal plant in Utah - Yahoo!... →
MINERSVILLE, Utah (AP) — A 10-megawatt geothermal plant in Utah’s west desert began delivering electricity Thursday to its sole customer, the city of Anaheim, Calif.
Raser Technologies Inc. of Provo says it fired up the plant about 15 miles west of Minersville in Beaver County, where the company drilled into a hot-water system a few thousand feet underground. The plant provides...
syska:
The Guess Who - These Eyes
These eyes...
CrossingWallStreet.com: The Libertarian Way to... →
I always thought [Article I, Section 8] was some curio still left in the Constitution. I even joked with a friend recently that [letters of marque] would be the best way to fight the pirates.
I joked too soon. I give you, Ron Paul:
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has called for the use of congressional letters of marque to allow private security forces to patrol international waters and assume...
syska/tesslynch:
Modest Mouse - Polar Opposites
...
FEV, Inc. to Unveil Hummer H3 with Raser... →
Couldn’t be a Smart Car, could it, Dada. Had to be a damned H3. However, I’ll put that aside if the H3 includes a gun turret.
Calculated Risk: Corporate Credit Union Portfolio:... →
WatchPeaches - “Talk to Me” on BIGSTEREO So glad I’ll have a new Peaches album for the beginning of sunny season. Can’t wait for the show here in Seattle. Last time Peaches came to town, we had the honor of helping support her silver platform boots as she started her set from the ledge next to us. Epic rock out followed. (Sadly, no Eagles of Death Metal on this tour.)
WatchAnimal Collective - My Girls (Nice unofficial video) via Nialler9
Whose Father Was He? (Part One) - Errol Morris... →
This is the kind of serial online storytelling that makes me wish DFW had better tools at the time of his journalistic efforts. Also, it’s a great series of posts.
Grandma dies trying to stop sword fight... →
Grandson, 39, charged in death; another relative, 69, in critical condition.
I wish our new story pages were ready for this gem. Then again, odds of video or an interactive reenactments are low for wire stories.
CrossingWallStreet.com: The Meredith Whitney... →
Speaking of Taleb, he had a piece in the Financial Times the other day and went into full Napoleon Dynamite mode:
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of...
