Open Thread

[Justin7]

Sad that "Outsourced" is not being renewed.

So you're the guy who liked this show?

[datadyne007]

FTAO Van:

http://www.architizer.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/maps.jpg
Posted on Architizer this morning.

[vanshnookenraggen]

FTAO Van:

http://www.architizer.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/maps.jpg
Posted on Architizer this morning.

Nice. Still debating whether to get a map tattoo.

[tobyjug]

So you're the guy who liked this show?

Yeah. Asha is hot.

[palindrome]

yeah she was ^.

[BostonUrbEx]

I'm having a problem with Google Maps. I've stopped working on my MBTA map becuase if I right clicked on a point in my line to remove it, it zooms out. Every time I make a right click (not double, just single!) it zooms out. I have no way of removing points unless I delete entire lines. I thought maybe it was just because my map was getting too big and bulky, causing glitches. But I just started working on a highway consolidation project and it's doing the same thing.

Anyone know what to do?

[tobyjug]

Just for the hell of it today took the commuter boat from Rowes Wharf to Hingham Shipyard and back. Had a few drinks at Beer Works and Alma Nova in the Hingham Shipyard. Lots of sunbathing cougars at the Alma patio (if you like that sort of thing.)
$12 bucks round trip. They have bars on the boats too.

Nice views of the harbor and skyline.

[Lurker]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304066504576345553135009870.html?m od=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

http://s.wsj.net/img/wsj_print.gif

THE SATURDAY ESSAY (http://online.wsj.com/public/search?article-doc-type=%7BThe+Saturday+Essay%7D&HEADER_TEXT=The%20Saturday%20Essay)
MAY 28, 2011

Hard Times, Fewer Crimes

The economic downturn has not led to more crime?contrary to the experts' predictions. So what explains the disconnect? Big changes in American culture, says James Q. Wilson.



By JAMES Q. WILSON (http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=JAMES+Q.+WILSON&bylinesearch=true)

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AD044_CRIME4_G_20110527175011.jpg Getty Images A NEW YORK CITY police officer stands outside Grand Central Terminal on May 2. Policing has become more disciplined, focused and data-driven over the past two decades.



When the FBI announced last week that violent crime in the U.S. had reached a 40-year low in 2010, many criminologists were perplexed. It had been a dismal year economically, and the standard view in the field, echoed for decades by the media, is that unemployment and poverty are strongly linked to crime. The argument is straightforward: When less legal work is available, more illegal "work" takes place.
The economist Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, a Nobel laureate, gave the standard view its classic formulation in the 1960s. He argued that crime is a rational act, committed when the criminal's "expected utility" exceeds that of using his time and other resources in pursuit of alternative activities, such as leisure or legitimate work. Observation may appear to bear this theory out. After all, neighborhoods with elevated crime rates tend to be those where poverty and unemployment are high as well.
But there have long been difficulties with the notion that unemployment causes crime. For one thing, the 1960s, a period of rising crime, had essentially the same unemployment rate as the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period when crime fell. And during the Great Depression, when unemployment hit 25%, the crime rate in many cities went down. Among the explanations offered for this puzzle is that unemployment and poverty were so common during the Great Depression that families became closer, devoted themselves to mutual support, and kept young people, who might be more inclined to criminal behavior, under constant adult supervision. These days, because many families are weaker and children are more independent, we would not see the same effect, so certain criminologists continue to suggest that a 1% increase in the unemployment rate should produce as much as a 2% increase in property-crime rates.
Yet when the recent recession struck, that didn't happen. As the national unemployment rate doubled from around 5% to nearly 10%, the property-crime rate, far from spiking, fell significantly. For 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported an 8% drop in the nationwide robbery rate and a 17% reduction in the auto-theft rate from the previous year. Big-city reports show the same thing. Between 2008 and 2010, New York City experienced a 4% decline in the robbery rate and a 10% fall in the burglary rate. Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles witnessed similar declines.
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AD033_PRISON_D_20110527015737.jpg
ZUMAPRESS.com AN INMATE in his bunk in Santa Ana, Calif. Some researchers say that higher rates of imprisonment can explain a quarter or more of the drop in crime.

Some scholars argue that the unemployment rate is too crude a measure of economic frustration to prove the connection between unemployment and crime, since it estimates only the percentage of the labor force that is looking for work and hasn't found it. But other economic indicators tell much the same story. The labor-force participation rate lets us determine the percentage of the labor force that is neither working nor looking for work?individuals who are, in effect, detached from the labor force. These people should be especially vulnerable to criminal inclinations, if the bad-economy-leads-to-crime theory holds. In 2008, though, even as crime was falling, only about half of men aged 16 to 24 (who are disproportionately likely to commit crimes) were in the labor force, down from over two-thirds in 1988, and a comparable decline took place among African-American men (who are also disproportionately likely to commit crimes).
The University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index offers another way to assess the link between the economy and crime. This measure rests on thousands of interviews asking people how their financial situations have changed over the last year, how they think the economy will do during the next year, and about their plans for buying durable goods. The index measures the way people feel, rather than the objective conditions they face. It has proved to be a very good predictor of stock-market behavior and, for a while, of the crime rate, which tended to climb when people lost confidence. When the index collapsed in 2009 and 2010, the stock market predictably went down with it?but this time, the crime rate went down, too.
So we have little reason to ascribe the recent crime decline to jobs, the labor market or consumer sentiment. The question remains: Why is the crime rate falling?

One obvious answer is that many more people are in prison than in the past. Experts differ on the size of the effect, but I think that William Spelman and Steven Levitt have it about right in believing that greater incarceration can explain about one-quarter or more of the crime decline. Yes, many thoughtful observers think that we put too many offenders in prison for too long. For some criminals, such as low-level drug dealers and former inmates returned to prison for parole violations, that may be so. But it's true nevertheless that when prisoners are kept off the street, they can attack only one another, not you or your family.
Imprisonment's crime-reduction effect helps to explain why the burglary, car-theft and robbery rates are lower in the U.S. than in England. The difference results not from the willingness to send convicted offenders to prison, which is about the same in both countries, but in how long America keeps them behind bars. For the same offense, you will spend more time in prison here than in England. Still, prison can't be the sole reason for the recent crime drop in this country: Canada has seen roughly the same decline in crime, but its imprisonment rate has been relatively flat for at least two decades.
Another possible reason for reduced crime is that potential victims may have become better at protecting themselves by equipping their homes with burglar alarms, putting extra locks on their cars and moving into safer buildings or even safer neighborhoods. We have only the faintest idea, however, about how common these trends are or what effects on crime they may have.
Policing has become more disciplined over the last two decades; these days, it tends to be driven by the desire to reduce crime, rather than simply to maximize arrests, and that shift has reduced crime rates. One of the most important innovations is what has been called hot-spot policing. The great majority of crimes tend to occur in the same places. Put active police resources in those areas instead of telling officers to drive around waiting for 911 calls, and you can bring down crime. The hot-spot idea helped to increase the effectiveness of the New York Police Department's Compstat program, which uses computerized maps to pinpoint where crime is taking place and enables police chiefs to hold precinct captains responsible for targeting those areas.
Researchers continue to test and refine hot-spot policing. After analyzing data from over 7,000 police arrivals at various locations in Minneapolis, the criminologists Lawrence Sherman and David Weisburd showed that for every minute an officer spent at a spot, the length of time without a crime there after the officer departed went up?until the officer had been gone for more than 15 minutes. After that, the crime rate went up. The police can make the best use of their time by staying at a hot spot for a while, moving on, and returning after 15 minutes.
Some cities now use a computer-based system for mapping traffic accidents and crime rates. They have noticed that the two measures tend to coincide: Where there are more accidents, there is more crime. In Shawnee, Kan., the police spent a lot more time in the 4% of the city where one-third of the crime occurred: Burglaries fell there by 60% (even though in the city as a whole they fell by only 8%), and traffic accidents went down by 17%.
There may also be a medical reason for the decline in crime. For decades, doctors have known that children with lots of lead in their blood are much more likely to be aggressive, violent and delinquent. In 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency required oil companies to stop putting lead in gasoline. At the same time, lead in paint was banned for any new home (though old buildings still have lead paint, which children can absorb).
Tests have shown that the amount of lead in Americans' blood fell by four-fifths between 1975 and 1991. A 2007 study by the economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes contended that the reduction in gasoline lead produced more than half of the decline in violent crime during the 1990s in the U.S. and might bring about greater declines in the future. Another economist, Rick Nevin, has made the same argument for other nations.
Another shift that has probably helped to bring down crime is the decrease in heavy cocaine use in many states. Measuring cocaine use is no easy matter; one has to infer it from interviews or from hospital-admission rates. Between 1992 and 2009, the number of admissions for cocaine or crack use fell by nearly two-thirds. In 1999, 9.8% of 12th-grade students said that they had tried cocaine; by 2010, that figure had fallen to 5.5%.
What we really need to know, though, is not how many people tried coke but how many are heavy users. Casual users who regard coke as a party drug are probably less likely to commit serious crimes than heavy users who may resort to theft and violence to feed their craving. But a study by Jonathan Caulkins at Carnegie Mellon University found that the total demand for cocaine dropped between 1988 and 2010, with a sharp decline among both light and heavy users.
Blacks still constitute the core of America's crime problem. But the African-American crime rate, too, has been falling, probably because of the same non-economic factors behind falling crime in general: imprisonment, policing, environmental changes and less cocaine abuse.


http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AD045B_CRIME_G_20110527223636.jpg



Knowing the exact crime rate of any ethnic or racial group isn't easy, since most crimes don't result in arrest or conviction, and those that do may be an unrepresentative fraction of all crimes. Nevertheless, we do know the racial characteristics of those who have been arrested for crimes, and they show that the number of blacks arrested has been falling. Barry Latzer of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice has demonstrated that between 1980 and 2005, arrests of blacks for homicide and other violent crimes fell by about half nationwide.
It's also suggestive that in the five New York City precincts where the population is at least 80% black, the murder rate fell by 78% between 1990 and 2000. In the black neighborhoods of Chicago, burglary fell by 52%, robbery by 62%, and homicide by 33% between 1991 and 2003. A skeptic might retort that all these seeming gains were merely the result of police officers' giving up and no longer recording crimes in black neighborhoods. But opinion surveys in Chicago show that, among blacks, fear of crime was cut in half during the same period.
One can cite further evidence of a turnaround in black crime. Researchers at the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention found that in 1980, arrests of young blacks outnumbered arrests of whites more than six to one. By 2002, the gap had been closed to just under four to one.
Drug use among blacks has changed even more dramatically than it has among the population as a whole. As Mr. Latzer points out?and his argument is confirmed by a study by Bruce D. Johnson, Andrew Golub and Eloise Dunlap?among 13,000 people arrested in Manhattan between 1987 and 1997, a disproportionate number of whom were black, those born between 1948 and 1969 were heavily involved with crack cocaine, but those born after 1969 used very little crack and instead smoked marijuana.
The reason was simple: The younger African-Americans had known many people who used crack and other hard drugs and wound up in prisons, hospitals and morgues. The risks of using marijuana were far less serious. This shift in drug use, if the New York City experience is borne out in other locations, can help to explain the fall in black inner-city crime rates after the early 1990s.
John Donohue and Steven Levitt have advanced an additional explanation for the reduction in black crime: the legalization of abortion, which resulted in black children's never being born into circumstances that would have made them likelier to become criminals. I have ignored that explanation because it remains a strongly contested finding, challenged by two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and by various academics.
At the deepest level, many of these shifts, taken together, suggest that crime in the United States is falling?even through the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression?because of a big improvement in the culture. The cultural argument may strike some as vague, but writers have relied on it in the past to explain both the Great Depression's fall in crime and the explosion of crime during the sixties. In the first period, on this view, people took self-control seriously; in the second, self-expression?at society's cost?became more prevalent. It is a plausible case.
Culture creates a problem for social scientists like me, however. We do not know how to study it in a way that produces hard numbers and testable theories. Culture is the realm of novelists and biographers, not of data-driven social scientists. But we can take some comfort, perhaps, in reflecting that identifying the likely causes of the crime decline is even more important than precisely measuring it.
?Mr. Wilson is a senior fellow at the Clough Center at Boston College and taught previously at Harvard, UCLA and Pepperdine. His many books include "The Moral Sense," "Bureaucracy," and "Thinking About Crime." This essay is adapted from the forthcoming issue of City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute.


Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

[jass]

I'm having a problem with Google Maps. I've stopped working on my MBTA map becuase if I right clicked on a point in my line to remove it, it zooms out. Every time I make a right click (not double, just single!) it zooms out. I have no way of removing points unless I delete entire lines. I thought maybe it was just because my map was getting too big and bulky, causing glitches. But I just started working on a highway consolidation project and it's doing the same thing.

Anyone know what to do?


They recently cut a bunch of features, so I alsos topped work on my map. You can no longer search for maps, and you can no longer overlay maps on top of each other. So before, you could check "MBTA Map" and have those lines appear, and then click "Highway map" and have that ALSO appear. Now? One at a time.

Its major BS.

[BostonUrbEx]

They recently cut a bunch of features, so I alsos topped work on my map. You can no longer search for maps, and you can no longer overlay maps on top of each other. So before, you could check "MBTA Map" and have those lines appear, and then click "Highway map" and have that ALSO appear. Now? One at a time.

Its major BS.

Yeah, I remember when you could do that, too... It was kind of annoying that they did that...

I sure hope they didn't remove the feature to delete a point on a line, ugh...

EDIT: I just tried using Google Chrome. A single right click zooms out with Chrome too. They removed the right click menu?! -.- Ugh... maps are too much a pain in the ass to do now...

[BostonUrbEx]

South Bay Interchange

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1iettVQAQcA/TNj6q-UgiRI/AAAAAAAADCk/EmI3O29Lsxc/s1600/ljq4.jpg

[jass]

Yeah, I remember when you could do that, too... It was kind of annoying that they did that...

I sure hope they didn't remove the feature to delete a point on a line, ugh...

EDIT: I just tried using Google Chrome. A single right click zooms out with Chrome too. They removed the right click menu?! -.- Ugh... maps are too much a pain in the ass to do now...

Yeah, same happens to me. Right click on the map opens the menu, but on a line, it zooms out.

[JohnAKeith]

The WSJ column, above, was very educational.

In a nutshell, "experts" believe that crime continues to fall, even in a bad economy, because of one or more of these:

* Better technology available to police departments
* Many criminals already locked up
* Reduction in usage of crack and cocaine
* Better crime prevention methods (burglar alarms, car security systems)
* No more lead in household paint

The last one was right out of left field, for me. WTF?

Here's the explanation:

There may also be a medical reason for the decline in crime. For decades, doctors have known that children with lots of lead in their blood are much more likely to be aggressive, violent and delinquent. In 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency required oil companies to stop putting lead in gasoline. At the same time, lead in paint was banned for any new home (though old buildings still have lead paint, which children can absorb).

Tests have shown that the amount of lead in Americans' blood fell by four-fifths between 1975 and 1991. A 2007 study by the economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes contended that the reduction in gasoline lead produced more than half of the decline in violent crime during the 1990s in the U.S. and might bring about greater declines in the future.

[statler]

I'll give a crisp new dollar bill to anyone who buys me this (http://www.mbtagifts.com/shop.php?p=255) or this (http://www.mbtagifts.com/shop.php?p=259).

Thanks in advance.

[dshoost88]

This is a video I took tonight of the lightning storm:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6DnOkN1gfY&feature=channel_video_title

[BostonUrbEx]

^ Sweeeeeeet.



Live feed of BPD, BFD, MSP, Logan FD, and other dispatches: http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?action=wp&feedId=6254

[datadyne007]

I'll give a crisp new dollar bill to anyone who buys me this (http://www.mbtagifts.com/shop.php?p=255) or this (http://www.mbtagifts.com/shop.php?p=259).

Thanks in advance.

It's too bad they didn't save the maps in Copley that still had the A-line. They were badly damaged, but I really wouldn't care.

[kmp1284]

I have to say, I'm a little surprised this story of rather extreme community hysterics never found its way to archBoston, then again there's probably some asshole here who sympathizes with these low-rent crackpots.

Police arrest 3, abruptly end Whole Foods' first meeting with Jamaica Plain residents

By Matt Rocheleau, Town Correspondent

The heated debate over Whole Foods? plans to move in to Jamaica Plain reached an unprecedented peak Thursday night when three people were arrested at a community meeting, prompting police to end the forum nearly a half-hour earlier than planned.

It was the first time Whole Foods officials met face-to-face with the neighborhood that has been divided over the issue -- despite some more recent signs of unity -- since plans for a store in Hyde Square were first announced nearly five months ago.

The crowd of more than 300 listened to company executives calmly at the start before repeated outbursts began. Neighbors shouted down one another and Whole Foods officials alike, at times with name-calling and personal attacks.

Opponents to the national grocer?s arrival donned light blue T-shirts reading ?I support an affordable and diverse JP? and waved blue-colored flyers passed out by leaders of the Whose Foods grassroots group beforehand. Supporters of the Whole Foods store countered with yellow-colored flyers.

Several police officers on detail were active from the meeting's start, ushering all attendees standing in the aisles to find a seat in packed the auditorium at the Curley K-8 School, a few blocks from where Whole Foods plans to open a store in late fall, replacing the former Hi-Lo Foods.

The Latino-specialty grocer closed after four decades when its owners, Newton-based Knapp Foods, leased the building to Whole Foods.

After hanging an anti-Whole Foods banner that said: ?Displacement: What is Whole Foods going to do about it?? from a balcony seating area, two attendees and neighborhood residents, Chloe Frankel, 27, and Andrew Murray, 22, were arrested.

The banner unveiling led to an eruption of chants against the supermarket company?s intentions and dozens of others then headed for the exits in apparent disgust. On their way out, some stopped to shake the hands of Whole Foods representatives who sat facing the crowd in a row of chairs set up at the front of the auditorium.

Police said the balcony area had been cordoned off and people were advised specifically not to venture up there. Boston police spokesman Officer Eddy Chrispin said that when police then asked the duo to leave the building, they refused to cooperate and were arrested on charges of disrupting a public assembly and trespassing.

Later, another activist attempted to hold up a second banner in the middle of the auditorium?s main seating area. The sign was not fully unveiled, but activists later said it read ?One meeting is not enough.? After a brief tug-of-war between several audience members and police officers, who attempted to confiscate the banner, Peter Blaiklock, 49, of Jamaica Plain was arrested on a charge of disrupting a public assembly.

Several moments later, police shut down the meeting as around one dozen officers stood outside the school's front entrance to help disperse the crowd. Several cruisers lined Centre Street with their lights flashing.

"Ultimately officers deemed it appropriate to discontinue the meeting concerned about the ability to maintain a peaceful environment for the safety of all in attendance," police said in a statement Friday.

A small group of residents then journeyed to the District E-13 police station and marched in a circular pattern on the sidewalk outside to protest the arrests. The three arrested at the forum were released one after the other to applause, hugs and megaphone chants around two hours after the meeting had been cut short. Each of those arrested will later be summonsed to West Roxbury District Court, police said.

When asked if she felt she did anything to warrant her arrest, Frankel said: ?Of course not.?

?We were just exercising our right to free speech,? she continued.

Blailock declined to comment on the specifics of his arrest other than confirming he was charged and saying he felt the meeting was productive overall. Murray declined to comment.

Each of the arrestees wore one of the light-blue T-shirts handed out by the Whose Foods group before the meeting.

?It was unfortunate that the meeting had to end the way it did,? said Whole Foods spokeswoman Heather McCready by phone after the meeting ended. ?We thought there was a good, healthy dialogue going on,? but also noted that police said they felt there was sufficient safety concern to abruptly empty the auditorium.

The spokeswoman said the company plans to meet with the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council (JPNC), which in early March passed, by one vote, a measure to publicly oppose Whole Foods? plans and shortly thereafter formed an ad hoc committee to explore the issue.

?We received a lot of information and feedback that we plan to closely consider,? she added.

The JPNC ad-hoc committee is expected to issue a report along with recommendations that are expected to include asking Whole Foods to sign a community benefits agreement. McCready said the company would need to first see and review such a potential agreement before commenting on the matter.

As the auditorium was being vacated, Helen Matthews, a spokeswoman for the Whose Foods group, said the presentation by Whole Foods officials was underwhelming, and of the arrests: ?I?m in shock ? There never was any intention for anything illegal to be done, and nothing illegal was done.?

Whose Foods member Martha Rodriguez, a 25-year-old Jamaica Plain resident of 14 years, waited outside the District E-13 police station with her 5-year-old son, Abraham.

?I knew there was a lot of tension in the neighborhood over this issue, but I never expected this kind intensity,? said Rodriguez, one of several residents who had a chance to speak before the meeting ended. ?It wasn?t fair. They were just holding signs ? I think the police were a little too aggressive and defensive.?

On the school?s front steps moments after the forum had been shut down, District 6 Councilor Matt O?Malley expressed dismay at the way the crowd interrupted one another and said he was surprised there were arrests.

?It?s certainly been a contentious issue,? he said, but also noted that there were also moments in between when the crowd was respectful and listened to one another: ?I hope for more of that the next time we meet over this issue. I still feel people can come together to find some common ground here.?

Standing beside O?Malley, another attendee, Susan, said she?s lived in the neighborhood for 35 years and was taken aback at how the meeting went and ended.

?I?ve never seen anything like this at any community meeting in Jamaica Plain,? she said, noting that while the discussions grew chaotic at times, ?there was nothing dangerous or violent that happened.?

On Friday, JP for All, a grassroots group that supports Whole Foods' plans for JP released this statement: "There were a great number of us in the room tonight that were excited to hear that issues such as parking, traffic, public transportation, after-hours parking, providing healthy foods to children, and product availability are being addressed by Whole Foods. It?s unfortunate that a community meeting designed to address neighborhood concerns and solutions to address those concerns was hijacked by a group of people who have no other plan than to cause a distraction. We look forward to hearing more about Whole Foods plans and how we can work together to build a long-term partnership that will benefit Hyde Square and Jamaica Plain."

Before the forum was dismissed, Whole Foods officials had presented the company?s general vision and practices and introduced some of the JP store?s management. Each audience member was welcomed with a reusable shopping bag placed on each seat that contained informational flyers, a copy of the company?s spring magazine and post cards for residents to provide the company with product suggestions for the Hyde Square store.

Residents then lined up behind microphones set up in the two different aisles and spoke both in opposition and support ? with frequent interruptions from fellow crowd members. Comments were directed to company representatives both in support and opposition to the store?s plans.

Some asked why Whole Foods had not held such a meeting sooner with the community. Company officials said that news of their impending arrival broke sooner than they had anticipated and before a lease had been signed.

After the 20-year lease was inked and their plans for a store were confirmed through an announcement, officials explained that the company followed its usual protocol for store openings by waiting until store management and other concrete details about the supermarket were finalized before meeting directly with the neighborhood.

Whole Foods also addressed traffic and parking related concerns saying that while the store and its parking lot are both relatively small, they have secured 20 additional overflow parking spaces at a lot at the adjacent MSPCA-Angell headquarters.

Once the store has a chance to gauge its sales volume, it may allow its parking lot to be shared by area business during non-peak hours and when the store's closed.

The company said the store?s location makes it particularly appealing for both shoppers and workers who can walk, bike or take public-transit there. Additionally, the store will offer home delivery service.

While officials said the Centre Street building?s interior will be overhauled, the building?s exterior will remain almost entirely the same as it looks now, with the exception of installing Whole Foods? name and logo, which will be displayed across a set of non-contiguous rectangular signs reminiscent of the former Hi-Lo.


http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/jamaica_plain/2011/06/police_arrest_3_shut_down_whol.html

[Lurker]

If you had lived in the South End during the 80s and 90s you would have seen the same stupidity. There's some nutjobs that really want a neighborhood to stay a shithole for the benefit of cheap rent or simply because they like it that way. Many of the anti-gentrification people in my area preferred waist deep trash in the alley and half the buildings being boarded up simply because it kept their cheap rooming house residences in operation and drugs readily available.

In J.P. the scenario is playing itself all over again, though it's even worse: People on government subsidy want to tell private property owners how they want the neighborhood run because of an entitlement culture. Then there are these stupid rich kids that want to pretend they're "slumming it" and want the neighborhood to stay "edgy" or "gritty" simply to have something to gloat about in conversations with fellow assholes. Lot's of brain dead "anarchists" that don't understand what an "anarchist" are also taking the opportunity to make trouble out of a sense of playing revolutionary.

[datadyne007]

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/250051_1338925753188_1232460504_30985491_3222777_n .jpg

Bite me.

[Lurker]

Canada isn't even a real country.

A real country requires quality beer or possession of nuclear weapons.

Canada has neither.

I'd also pay good money to watch Wally the Green Monster knock those two Canuck Green Men senseless in an epic melee outside the penalty box.

[BostonUrbEx]

Boston shows up in 3 of the 4 listed studies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city

Also, ranked #19 in one, and #20 in another.

[datadyne007]

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/06/09/problematic-glass-st.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Bo ing%29

Problematic glass staircase in new courthouse

Franklin County, Ohio Judge Julie Lynch is advising people in dresses to avoid a staircase with glass risers in the middle of a new $105 million courthouse that opened Monday. From CNN:
She speculates that men, who didn't take half the population into account, designed the stairs.

Attorney Lori Johnson was startled by the transparent stairs. She worries not only about stares, but also how many cell phones have cameras attached.

"The next thing you know, you're on the internet," Johnson said, according to 10TV. "It sounds like a lawsuit in the making."

While security guards warn women about taking the stairs, it seems most are just hoping people will be mature about the situation.

"They hope people will be mature? That's not a solution," Lynch said to 10TV. "If we had mature people that didn't violate the law, we wouldn't have this building."

Note: The treads are not even transparent. It's just the risers. See the link above for the picture.

/facepalm

[Lurker]

Men don't typically understand the need for skirt friendliness. Hence whey many balconies and catwalks in modern spaces have horrible viewing angles with regards to womens' modesty.

It has been known for several years now that glass stairs need to be opaque and not transparent because of this problem! All they need to do is sandblast the glass or install a film on the back of the risers. Very inexpensive fix.

[statler]

Let's not forget about street grates!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_UVkn22TaUP4/TLY-gYmWh9I/AAAAAAAABaA/UwRjxZjfnCY/s1600/moonro2.jpg

[GW2500]

If you had lived in the South End during the 80s and 90s you would have seen the same stupidity. There's some nutjobs that really want a neighborhood to stay a shithole for the benefit of cheap rent or simply because they like it that way. Many of the anti-gentrification people in my area preferred waist deep trash in the alley and half the buildings being boarded up simply because it kept their cheap rooming house residences in operation and drugs readily available.

In J.P. the scenario is playing itself all over again, though it's even worse: People on government subsidy want to tell private property owners how they want the neighborhood run because of an entitlement culture. Then there are these stupid rich kids that want to pretend they're "slumming it" and want the neighborhood to stay "edgy" or "gritty" simply to have something to gloat about in conversations with fellow assholes. Lot's of brain dead "anarchists" that don't understand what an "anarchist" are also taking the opportunity to make trouble out of a sense of playing revolutionary.


While I agree one Whole Foods isn't the end all be all. You do realize that metro regions NEED affordable (aka poor) areas. Your logic seems to be everyone should just become rich. The micro event here paints the bigger picture of another affordable area no longer being that. The poorer people who live there will get kicked out. Maybe that's just the natural cycle of things, but they will have to go somewhere. And offices will still need to get cleaned. So where do they go? Pretty much every suburb around here has an anti density, anti affordable, anti public transportation, ( IMO anti minority/immigrant) policy. A neighborhood can go from poor to rich and the neighborhood will improve, of course the people who lived in it when it was poor won't feel the improvment, they will have gotten forced to move to another poor area where the same problems exist or will occur. They're are not enough good paying jobs out there for everyone, embrace that fact then tell me how evil food stamps and rent assistance are.

[Lurker]

There's plenty of affordable housing in Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Chelsea, Somerville, and Everett for those people to move.

It's wrong to entitle people to live in an expensive city with subsidies. Wastes properties that would otherwise be contributing more to the tax base and distorts market conditions. Everyone works hard to afford the homes they live in, why should one group get a deal by crying poor?

The lack of REAL affordable housing, i.e. dense transit connected and walkable neighborhoods with micro sized units such that people can afford them on a cost per square foot basis, is the fault of the BRA and snob zoning practices. If more of the city was built out like Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton, with ubiquitous dense 1920s style courtyard apartment buildings, and transit at the doorstep, there'd be less of a housing problem. Hell, even if BU managed to suck all of its students out of Brighton there would be a large swathe of affordable housing for most of Boston's working class.

[JohnAKeith]

Hollywood got our skyline wrong again:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitpic/photos/full/319544597.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJF3XCCKACR3QDMOA&Expires=1307854326&Signature=dA4l2oifbe0R42vNRm54kFhfSd4%3D

[datadyne007]

The skyline looks fine to me. =/

Left to right: Pru, 111 Huntington, 101 Huntington, Avalon (?) condos (at Prudential Center), Boston Marriott: Copley Place, Westin Copley Place, Hancock, 500 Boylston (The Newbry in front), Old Hancock.

Actual photo:
http://www.sdamn.org/images/Convention%202008/Boston%202008/Boston%20Skyline.JPG


...
Edit: Is this just a sarcastic joke about the giant spaceship in the middle of our city?

[statler]

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm7vyqbtxE1qzs6oc.jpg
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm7vzsUVVs1qzs6oc.jpg
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm7w0b1xgU1qzs6oc.jpg
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm7w0rmf7f1qzs6oc.jpg
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm7w13UB8V1qzs6oc.jpg

[Lrfox]

Van's stuff has turned up an interesting convo (http://www.city-data.com/forum/city-vs-city/1304643-unbuilt-highways-nyc-boston-providence-albany.html) over at City-Data

[Lurker]

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm7vyqbtxE1qzs6oc.jpg
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm7vzsUVVs1qzs6oc.jpg
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm7w0b1xgU1qzs6oc.jpg
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm7w0rmf7f1qzs6oc.jpg
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm7w13UB8V1qzs6oc.jpg

Isn't that guy missing a jar of mustard?

[JohnAKeith]

Data, it was a bit of both. According to the photos I compared it with, it looked as though they had done a bit of editing but in your photo it looks like a complete match. Except for the alien structure.

[datadyne007]

Data, it was a bit of both. According to the photos I compared it with, it looked as though they had done a bit of editing but in your photo it looks like a complete match. Except for the alien structure.

The way they rendered the image made the Newbry look really weird to me. When I first saw the pic you posed, I thought they moved City Hall to the Back Bay, lol.

[Mayor Menino's Crohn's]

Canada isn't even a real country.

A real country requires quality beer or possession of nuclear weapons.

Canada has neither.

I'd also pay good money to watch Wally the Green Monster knock those two Canuck Green Men senseless in an epic melee outside the penalty box.
Wally can just push those green men over...he doesn't need to throw a punch

To be fair...Canada has the bomb...haven't you seen Canadian Bacon?

[statler]

You know what seems really embarrassing now? Hosting a rally for Ray Bourque after he won the Cup for another city. It was embarrassing then too but now even more so.

That was the nadir of the Loserville era.

[tobyjug]

I admit to feeling smug about the Bruins win. I watched Game 6 at a bar in Montreal. It was all:

"You Boston people are a bunch of thugs, eh?"
"Your team is a bunch of cheats, eh?"
"You Yanks are all uncivilized boors, eh?"
"Canada is going to beat your Yank ass, eh?"
"The Cup is coming back to Canada where it belongs, eh?"
"Good thing you Yanks are going to lose so we don't have to see some fat Yanks turning over cars, eh?"

Ah, Canadians. So full of grace, manners and the power of prognostication.

[GW2500]

^^ You want to shut up Canadians when talking sports, simply say play us in ANY other sport. And even then we gave them a run for the money in the Olympic finals.

[Suffolk 83]

Anybody go to the parade? There was a ton of people there. Mostly annoying high school kids. The line 'I remember my first beer' was uttered a lot yesterday

[BostonUrbEx]

I was going to go in with my dad to see if we could go get in the Suffolk University library on Tremont but I wasn't sure if it was open during summer courses or not. Also, when a doubledraft leaves Lowell already FULL and makes no stops, cops tell people in Swampscott waiting on a crammed platform that there will be no more trains stopping after several packed trains roll past, and the Providence line runs completely out of trains... you know you're not getting close...

[BostonUrbEx]

http://massengale.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/1923aerial.jpg

2011 City of Boston Master Plan for Next Century: Revert to 1920s Boston

I'd murder cute little innocent puppies, turn myself in, and plead guilty if it would get Boston back to this. Okay, maybe not puppies... But definitely the mayor or president...

[datadyne007]

Anybody go to the parade? There was a ton of people there. Mostly annoying high school kids. The line 'I remember my first beer' was uttered a lot yesterday

I got lucky. I had work at 12:15 at AE and right as I was coming out of the headhouse at Gov't Center, the parade was going by, so I got to watch it before work. It was cool, but I DVR'd the actual news coverage which gave a much better view. Sat was so obnoxious - drunk customer after customer stumbling into AE, ruining our numbers and holding up our sales staff from actually assisting customers who actually wanted to buy.

[Ron Newman]

what is 'AE' ?

[datadyne007]

what is 'AE' ?

American Eagle. I work at the Marketplace Center store.

Also of note on Sat were the station closures. The MBTA closed both Copley and Park St (yes, Park St - GL and RL) due to "safety concerns." Oddly, they were having passengers use Boylston as an alternative to Park St.

[kz1000ps]

Anyone else here besides me not jump on the Bruins bandwagon?

[blade_bltz]

^ Me. Of course, I'm in California, but still I doubt it would have made a difference. The only thing that could get me excited about hockey would be a return of THE WHALE to Hartford.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bwZbWZhAaM&feature=related

[Lurker]

Anyone else here besides me not jump on the Bruins bandwagon?

Of course!

[kz1000ps]

Good. I was feeling a bit lonely in my neck of the woods.

[Mike]

I never thought they'd catch him alive.

http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20110623police_say_fugitive_mob_boss_whitey_bulger _arrested_in_santa_monica_1/srvc=home&position=0

[Lrfox]

Anyone else here besides me not jump on the Bruins bandwagon?

Me. Don't get me wrong, I used Game 7 as an excuse to get wasted on a Wednesday with friends and run around outside the Garden screaming like a giddy schoolgirl; but I didn't jump on the bandwagon. I'm happy they won, but I certainly didn't go to the parade.

I watched more Red Sox games over the span of the playoffs than Bruins games. The only exceptions were when I was out at the bar with friends who were into it. I still don't own a single piece of Bruins merchandise and don't plan on it.

[datadyne007]

I grew up on Bruins hockey with my dad & grandparents. Of all the Boston sports, they were the ones I have always enjoyed watching the most and wanted to win. Basketball, baseball, and football just bore me.

[BostonUrbEx]

I never thought they'd catch him alive.

http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20110623police_say_fugitive_mob_boss_whitey_bulger _arrested_in_santa_monica_1/srvc=home&position=0

I never thought they'd find him alive OR dead.

[Beton Brut]

I never thought they'd catch him alive.

I wonder if his new playmates at Leavenworth will greet him with a Life Achievement Award, or a lead-pipe shampoo...

[BostonUrbEx]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFTeG-RoBTQ

[palindrome]

common sense prevails in NY.

[datadyne007]

common sense prevails in NY.

Yes it does!! They even had republicans for it. Now THAT's progess!!

[BostonUrbEx]

I don't think we should be that happy for NY, as this is what should be expected, not something strange... frankly I find it pretty sad that most states haven't already done the same. It's 2011 and this America. Seriously, what's the hold up (except the bible belt states, of course, which wouldn't take it without a fight). Grrr, damn society...

[Ron Newman]

Rhode Island, now you're the one who looks like you're behind the times.

[datadyne007]

Rhode Island, now you're the one who looks like you're behind the times.

It's been that way the whole time anyway, lol.

[Justin7]

what's the hold up

Republicans?

[datadyne007]

Republicans?


+1.

[vanshnookenraggen]

It's a generational thing. Same thing with segregation and miscegenation in the 1960s. As liberal about gays as my parents are I know it's still different for my generation in terms of acceptance.

[kz1000ps]

Funny/scathing read over at The Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mandrake/8598889/Architect-behind-the-Gherkin-says-he-has-finished-designing-strangely-shaped-edifices.html):

Architect behind the Gherkin says he has finished designing strangely shaped edifices

.....The Birmingham-born Mr Shuttleworth, who is known as "Ken the Pen" because of his draftsmanship, attributes the fad for unconventional shapes to the self-obsession of his colleagues. "I think a lot of architects are really egotistical, almost like artists who see themselves as a one-man show," he said.

Curbed (http://curbed.com/archives/2011/06/29/post-traumatic-postmodern-syndrome-hatred-of-crazy-buildings.php#more) and Architizer (http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/23861/shuttleworth-london/) have taken to calling Shuttleworth's affliction "Post Traumatic Post-Modern Syndrome." I think I've got it too, though I don't think of the Gherkin and other blobs as PoMo..

[datadyne007]

Lol, I love the term Post-Traumatic Post-Modern Syndrome.

[gooseberry]

Hey NIMBY's, I thought people shrivel up and die if there isn't sun on them at all times?
Shade: A weapon against skin cancer, childhood obesity (http://yourlife.usatoday.com/parenting-family/story/2011/06/Shade-serves-as-a-weapon-against-skin-cancer-childhood-obesity/48965070/1)

More mind blowing stupidity courtesy of City Hall. (http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/06/30/little_data_tie_motorbikes_to_crime/)

[datadyne007]

Hey NIMBY's, I thought people shrivel up and die if there isn't sun on them at all times?
Shade: A weapon against skin cancer, childhood obesity (http://yourlife.usatoday.com/parenting-family/story/2011/06/Shade-serves-as-a-weapon-against-skin-cancer-childhood-obesity/48965070/1)

More mind blowing stupidity courtesy of City Hall. (http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/06/30/little_data_tie_motorbikes_to_crime/)

http://www.straferight.com/photopost/data/500/medium/double-facepalm.jpg

[Ron Newman]

Whether or not the motorbikes are used to commit crimes, it sounds like they are a quality-of-life issue (noise, pollution, recklessness) in certain neighborhoods. I wouldn't want them racing up and down my street at all hours.

[BostonUrbEx]

The only thing I see wrong is that the city seems to just be seizing them all over the place. What if someone goes and uses them up in a field in NH or something and not at all here? They went in to a house and just took 13 bikes just like that?

[datadyne007]

Yeah, I'm fine with the city enforcing a no-dirtbikes policy on the city streets (meaning ticketing/confiscating during actual operation of the vehicle), but I think it's ridiculous to start confiscating every dirtbike in this city while they are not in use.

So the suspects fled on dirtbikes, so what? That doesn't prove that dirtbikes are a crime hazard in the least sense. All it proves is that the suspects had a clever escape plan.

[tobyjug]

They'll be after my guns next.

[GW2500]

Cool pics of Boston turning 300 (from 1930's or so) They had an arch I think infront of Quincy Market.

http://www.universalhub.com/photos

That post lead to this flickr thread, which is enormous and awsome.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/tags/lesliejones/

[BostonUrbEx]

Anyone want to give up some super secret fireworks viewing locations? Don't really know any public ones if there are any... I'll probably just be down the western most island on the Esplanade, down towards Mass Ave (Then walk fast to Kenmore (Hynes is a cattle drive)).

[datadyne007]

I prefer to watch them from the Cambridge side of the River.

I don't know if your proposed route would work because the Esplanade gets barricaded off and everyone gets hearded in through the entrance at Arlington.

[BostonUrbEx]

I prefer to watch them from the Cambridge side of the River.

I don't know if your proposed route would work because the Esplanade gets barricaded off and everyone gets hearded in through the entrance at Arlington.

Worked last year. Everyone walked down the westbound Storrow. Most of the people then went up the ramp to Mass Ave and walked down Mass Ave to Hynes (we peeled off at Comm Ave when it became apparent that hundreds of people were meandering down Mass Ave this way).

[Ron Newman]

The entrance to the Esplanade at Arlington is actually closed to all pedestrians on July 4th. People get herded over to Berkeley Street. Your plan sounds like a good one. Plenty of folks were already walking and biking up and down that part of Storrow this afternoon.

[datadyne007]

The entrance to the Esplanade at Arlington is actually closed to all pedestrians on July 4th. People get herded over to Berkeley Street. Your plan sounds like a good one. Plenty of folks were already walking and biking up and down that part of Storrow this afternoon.

My bad. I meant Berkeley (it was "Arlington" (T stop)) in years past due to only the Berkeley entrance being open.

[BostonUrbEx]

So, stuck to the same basic plan as last year but we weren't quite on the western-most island on the Charles, we were even further west from that and still had an amazinggg view. At the end we avoided the Mass Ave ramp crush and continued to the Charlesgate ramps and then scurried down Beacon and popped down the Kenmore busway headhouse. We were so quick that when our trolley got to Hynes, it was still fairly empty. By the time we got to Copley the crowds were definitely coming down upon us. Arlington was a ZOO!

Everything was great for us though, except the trolley on the return trip had no AC... and it was packed...




I love how everyone is able to just mob the Storrow because it's closed, but it would be so much more convenient if it were just gone. The fences, ramps, etc... such a pain. Luckily I actually thought it out before hand though, so it was a quick run. Or maybe they should put gates in the fences in some parts. Chain them up most of the year, open them up for events. Love how there's always a National Gaurdsman shouting "WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON MY FENCE, MAGGOT? GET OFF *MY* FENCE! YOU GO AROUND MY FENCE!".

[JohnAKeith]

I am meeting Governor Dukakis for a private half-hour discussion later today.

Any questions you'd like him to answer? (And, don't be smarmy!)

[Lurker]

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/07/04/the-shame-of-the-cities-and-the-shade-of-lbj/


The Shame of the Cities and the Shade of LBJ

Walter Russell Mead
President Lyndon Johnson and the “best and the brightest” who staffed his administration led this country into three quagmires. By far the most famous, but perhaps not the most expensive and dangerous resulted from LBJ’s escalation of the Vietnam War. More than 50,000 Americans and many more Vietnamese died as a result of that policy; our country was bitterly divided in ways that still weaken us today, and the economic cost of the war was immense. It contributed to the wave of inflation that shook the country in the 1970s and in addition to the interest on the debt from this ill-starred venture we are still paying (as we certainly should) pensions and medical costs for the vets and their spouses.
The Second Great Johnson Quagmire now destroying the nation is the Medicare/Medicaid complex. These entitlement programs are the biggest single financial problem we face. They dwarf all the Bush-Obama wars; they make TARP look like small change. They not only cost money we don’t have — and are scheduled to cost inexorably more until they literally ruin the nation — they have distorted our entire health system into the world’s most bloated and expensive monstrosity. Thanks to these programs, we have a health system that marries the greed of the private sector to the ineptitude of government, and unless we can somehow tame these beasts America and everything it stands for could be lost. (Note, please, that by comparison Social Security can be relatively easily reformed to be solvent for the next 75 years. The New Deal, whatever its shortcomings, was almost infinitely more realistic and sustainable than the Great Society.)
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/files/2011/07/LBJ-Medicare.jpg (http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/files/2011/07/LBJ-Medicare.jpg)
LBJ Signing the Medicare Bill (Source: Wikimedia Commons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lyndon_Johnson_signing_Medicare_bill,_with_Ha rry_Truman,_July_30,_1965.jpg))

But that is a subject for another day. The third Johnson Quagmire is the War on Poverty, and specifically the attempt to treat inner city poverty primarily as a racial problem. After the Medicare/Medicaid catastrophe the single greatest policy failure of modern America is urban policy. Since the Great Society era of Lyndon Johnson, the country has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into poor urban neighborhoods. The violence and crime generated in these neighborhoods costs hundreds of billions more. And after all this time, all this money and all this energy, the inner city populations are worse off than before. There is more drug addiction and more social and family breakdown among this population than when the Great Society was launched. Incarceration rates have risen to levels that shock the world (though they make for safer streets); the inner city abortion rate has reached levels that must surely appall even the most resolute pro-choicers not on the Planned Parenthood payroll. Forty percent of all pregnancies (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/nyregion/07abortion.html) in New York end in abortion, with higher rates among Blacks; nationally, the rate among Blacks is three times the rate (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-04-19/news/ct-met-abortion-trice-0420-20110419_1_abortion-rate-black-abortion-abortion-providers) among white women. Put it all together and you have a holocaust of youth and hope on a scale hard to match.
This is not a lot to show for almost fifty years of fighting poverty — not a lot of bang for the buck.
We need to do better. The state of the American inner city is anunacceptable human tragedy, and the costs in money spent and prosperity forfeited create an unsustainable drag on the national economy at a time when we need all the help we can get.
There is more. Those neighborhoods — and the prisons in which so many young urban men spend large chunks of their lives — threaten the peace and security of the country as a whole. Extremist cults, some domestically based and others relying on foreign money and enthusiasm, fish in these troubled waters for souls, and sometimes they catch a few. This could turn ugly. An old friend who has spent much of his life fighting violence and extremism in the inner city puts the danger like this: think about “The Wire (http://www.hbo.com/the-wire/index.html)” and think about all the talent, ingenuity and training that goes into the drug gangs. Think about their ability to operate in defiance of the police, think about their connections with international crime and the amount of money they can raise.
Now think about what life would be like in this country if the leaders of those groups embraced violent religious extremism and sought, as many have done overseas, to finance a terror campaign through drug money.
This is, I believe, a serious threat down the road; there are already a few early warning signs and while we should not be stampeded into panic about them, the situation is one to watch with concern. Where there is no real hope, people clutch at straws — and on present trends conditions in the inner cities are likely to get significantly worse. Bad and dysfunctional as the remaining Great Society programs are, we are entering an era of government budget cutting. Given the power that unions, middle class and elite lobbies have, inner city residents stand to take a disproportionate share of any cuts. If it’s a choice between helping poor children in the inner city or paying inflated pensions to retired union workers, where will the politicians come down?
The Great Society legacy is not all bad. The voting rights legislation and the affirmative action programs introduced at that time helped a solid African-American middle class to expand. Increasingly, the country now has second and third generations of African-American families who have college educations and who are represented at all levels of business, the professions, politics and the arts.
Not that the Great Society deserves as much credit as its backers like to claim. Most of African-American progress since 1965 is due to the dogged hard work of people determined to change their own lives. Government action did play a role, but clearly racial attitudes in the United States have dramatically changed, perhaps especially so among conservatives. When conservative Republicans whose parents were Dixiecrat segregationists cheering on Lester Maddox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Maddox) now swoon at the rhetoric of Herman Cain (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gZPOyDQ-3oAQz0AxCxQ31fuMXjJQ?docId=c1ee9996260743d28dabc36 169981f43), give standing ovations to Condoleezza Rice, write angry letters to editors when liberal journalists attack Clarence Thomas and elect an African American Republican to the House of Representatives from Charleston, SC, we must recognize that something has changed.
In any case, the Johnson-era approach to urban poverty was largely predicated on the idea that our urban problems were a race and justice problem. Discrimination in housing, jobs and education had created the “ghetto”; ending those practices, compensating for them through affirmative action and providing infusions of cash to jump start urban investment and “renew” down at heels urban neighborhoods would win the war on urban poverty.
To the extent these ideas and the policies they inspired had merit, things got better. The middle class grew and many African Americans moved out of segregated neighborhoods and public housing projects into the suburbs. But this wasn’t the whole story, and even as Great Society era programs worked for some, conditions in the inner cities worsened for many who remained.
The result is the urban quagmire in which we now find ourselves. We are spending massive amounts of money and conditions are getting worse. Liberals recognize this as a problem in Afghanistan; they are more reluctant to see it in St. Louis — but it is true. What we are doing now isn’t working and while some of the reforms being tried (especially in education and perhaps also new ways of handling drug issues) offer promise, there is no light at the end of the urban tunnel.
The urban quagmire into which the Johnson administration (blue thought at its zenith) led the United States reflects a massive intellectual failure. We still have racial problems in this country, but the urban problem at its core about much more than race. To think clearly about the inner cities, we are going to have learn to think less racially — to for example learn to think about our inner city problem as if most of the urban poor were white.
Inner Cities in Context
The first step is to put the African-American presence in the cities in historical context. The Great Migration of African-Americans from southern farms to northern cities was one of many such movements in the modern era. For hundreds of years now, changes in agriculture have been sending people from the countryside into the city. The rising productivity of agricultural workers, the growing concentration of land ownership in the hands of well-capitalized large proprietors and the mechanization of farm work meant that peasants have been leaving the field for the city all over the world.
The African American urban migration was one of these mass movements of population. It was not unlike waves of migration to the US from much of Europe; farmers and farm workers were either pushed off the land or drawn to the possibilities of urban life and many of them came to America’s burgeoning cities in search of better lives. As cotton culture was mechanized and sharecropping gave way to large estates directly worked by the owner, millions of African-Americans streamed to northern cities between 1910 and the 1960s just as Italians, Greeks, Russians, Poles and Jews had done between the Civil War and the immigration restrictions of the 1920s.
We are, incidentally, seeing many more Great Migrations today: in North America we have rural Mexicans and Central Americans are streaming into cities in Mexico and across the US. The Turkish migration into Germany followed this pattern; much of the North African migration to western Europe and the internal Chinese migration from country to city is of this kind as well. Rural migrants are swelling the population of African cities from Capetown to Cairo; they are filling the cities of South and Central Asia. Globally we are in the middle of a Great Migration that sometime in this century will put a majority of the world’s population into cities for the first time ever.
Historically, cities were tough places to move to. Back in the eighteenth century and in most of the nineteenth, mortality rates were often higher and in many cases much higher in cities than in rural areas. Sanitation was primitive; food transport was slow and uncertain and refrigeration did not exist. Social safety nets were porous and weak. The cities were regularly scourged by disease and fire. Urban populations tended to shrink in those years if not continually renewed by fresh migrants from the countryside.
Economically and culturally it wasn’t easy, either. Back in the country, young people (the bulk of the migrants then and now) were integrated into strong social patterns. They were mostly honest and hardworking. There were relatively few opportunities for the sons and daughters of poor peasants and laborers to be anything else.
When they got to the city, there were no strong extended family networks to provide a social safety net in bad times — or to enforce social discipline and healthy habits in good ones. Cities, classically, have more temptations than the country does — that is one reason adventurous young people in particular like to move to them. With no social safety net, no public health and no support system, many migrants became statistics on the urban mortality rolls. Drinking badly made gin, eating poorly preserved and often contaminated food, and living in unsanitary neighborhoods was not a recipe for longevity. Throw in venereal disease in an era that knew very little about prevention or treatment, and it is easy to understand why cities needed constant replenishment from the countryside.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/files/2011/07/GinLane-748x1024.jpg (http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/files/2011/07/GinLane.jpg)A 1751 engraving of Gin Lane by William Hogarth (Source: Wikimedia Commons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GinLane.jpg))



The old urban migration was a kind of Darwinian test. Migrants had to maintain their social discipline and sharply limit their indulgences in the dangerous but alluring diversions of urban life. Failing to do that meant an early and often very unpleasant death.
The growing European cities of the eighteenth and early to mid-nineteenth century had what Marx called a lumpenproletariat of deracinated residents who had lost their footing in the country but been unable to establish themselves on steady terms in the city. They were the petty thieves, prostitutes and hustlers of the day — the pages of Dickens are full of them. Their numbers tended to grow as the pace of urbanization sped up, but epidemics and hunger continued to take their toll.
Beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing through to the present day, urban demography changed. Mortality rates in cities dropped as people grew to understand the importance of clean water, learned how to fight or prevent infectious disease and the quality of the food supply dramatically improved. Add the provision of a social safety net and the conditions existed for what we have seen: the development of a cycle of urban poverty spanning many generations.
When the Great Migration of rural African-Americans came north, beginning around World War One, they were more like the Mexican immigrants of today than like a Marxist lumpenproletariat. By and large they were hard working and clean living people who were willing and able to work at sometimes backbreaking jobs to provide for their families. Despite the corrosive effect that slavery had on family ties and despite the inevitable strains that great poverty places on family life, African American family ties were much stronger then than they are in today’s inner city.
Many African Americans established themselves in urban middle class communities; Harlem and Queens (this most glamorous and cosmopolitan of New York boroughs included Jackie Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Malcolm X among its residents) contained vibrant, exciting and safe neighborhoods. Schools often worked much better than many do now; the social infrastructure of African-American neighborhoods was comparable and in some cases stronger than in other neighborhoods of recent urban immigrants from around the world.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/files/2011/07/800px-Louis-armstrong-house.jpg (http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/files/2011/07/800px-Louis-armstrong-house.jpg)
The Louis Armstong House in Corona, Queens (Source: Wikimedia Commons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Louis-armstrong-house.jpg))

Over time, two trends appear in such neighborhoods. Some residents (luckier or more talented) establish secure lives in the urban economy. Over time they tend to move away from the old neighborhoods to less crowded parts of the city and to the suburbs. Those who do not for whatever reason make this transition successfully begin to lose the inherited culture and discipline of the country. In the old days a high mortality (and high infant mortality) rate would limit this population. These days, though abortion, violence, drug addiction and crime take a toll, the modern scourges are less effective than the older ones and many more people survive physically in the city while failing to find secure livelihoods there. As one dysfunctional generation gives rise to another, inherited social structures weaken further, and we see what we see.
African Americans formed the first nucleus of what is likely to be an ongoing underclass not so much because of their skin color (though with many craft unions and employers holding to white only hiring practices discrimination had an effect) as because of their timing. African Americans were the last wave of migrants to hit the American industrial belt; while the 1920s immigration laws cut the flow of European immigrants to a trickle, the African American influx continued into the years when American factory employment stagnated and then began its (so far) inexorable decline. Black America showed up for the party just as the bar was closing down.
Many African Americans transitioned to the modern economy. Even as factories stopped taking on new workers and laying off old ones, African Americans went to college in record numbers. Like second and third generation European migrants to city life before them, they found middle class jobs on police forces, in schools, in fire departments, sanitation departments and in the civil service. Some pursued military careers and others went into business, finance, politics and law.
A critical mass, however, did not make the adjustment in time. Early generations of American immigrants headed quickly from the cities onto family farms up through the Civil War; from the Civil War through the Vietnam era the factories provided a bridge into the middle class. For the last forty years that avenue has been closed; new waves of immigrants have been forced to find new paths into the middle class. For some, it is proving difficult, and we have already seen the signs of social and family breakdown and a growing gang culture among some newer immigrant groups.
Once a community has reached the levels of dysfunction and defeat that characterizes the third, fourth and fifth generations of the modern American underclass, conventional social programs no longer work particularly well. Affirmative action does not help a thirty year old illiterate with a drug habit get a job. The most dedicated teachers in the best schools cannot compensate for the lack of basic parenting at home. A community of young men who have never known a father’s care or even seen a father caring for a family cannot be prepared for adult life by anything the government can do.
There are no magic solutions to problems this deeply rooted, but we are going to dispel the shadow of LBJ from our urban policy and find new approaches to urban problems that break with the core assumptions of the catastrophically wrongheaded ‘best and the brightest’ of the 1960s. Thinking less racially about urban problems is part of the answer; in future posts I will make more suggestions. This is a complicated subject and clear answers are not easy to find; I will be looking to responses from readers to help me figure things out.


http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/07/04/the-shame-of-the-cities-and-the-shade-of-lbj/

[Lurker]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-08/too-many-public-works-built-on-rosy-scenarios-virginia-postrel.html

http://cdn.gotraffic.net/v/20110707_203919/images/logos/logo_post_b.gif
Postrel: Public Works Built on Rosy Scenarios

By Virginia Postrel - Jul 8, 2011
“Infrastructure” may be one of the least glamorous words in the English language, but with the right touch the concrete and steel of roads, bridges, tunnels, dams and railroads can look as alluring as a movie star. Witness the sleekly seductive illustrations produced for today’s California High-Speed Rail Authority (http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/gallery_statewide_08.aspx) or the midcentury pictures of effortlessly flowing superhighways, a genre that reached its apotheosis in Walt Disney (http://topics.bloomberg.com/walt-disney/)’s “Magic Highway U.S.A.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6pUMlPBMQA) in 1958.
This glamorizing extends not just to imagery but also to forecasts. Project promoters routinely overstate benefits and understate costs -- and not just a little bit.
“Cost overruns in the order of 50 percent in real terms are common for major infrastructure, and overruns above 100 percent are not uncommon,” Bent Flyvbjerg (http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/research/people/Pages/BentFlyvbjerg.aspx), a professor of major program management at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School, writes in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy (http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/centres/bt/Documents/UnfittestOXREPHelm3.4PRINT.pdf). “Demand and benefit forecasts that are wrong by 20-70 percent compared with actual development are common.”
To draw these conclusions, Flyvbjerg analyzed results from 258 projects in 20 countries over 70 years, the largest such database ever compiled. Like the “stars without makeup” features in celebrity tabloids, his research provides a disillusioning reality check. “It is not the best projects that get implemented, but the projects that look best on paper,” Flyvbjerg writes. “And the projects that look best on paper are the projects with the largest cost underestimates and benefit overestimates, other things being equal.”
Flyvbjerg got curious about forecasts when, as a young professor in Denmark (http://topics.bloomberg.com/denmark/), he watched the Great Belt rail tunnel, connecting Scandinavia (http://topics.bloomberg.com/scandinavia/) with continental Europe (http://topics.bloomberg.com/europe/), go “terribly wrong,” with long delays and cost overruns of 120 percent. “I began to wonder not only why that was the case, but also whether it was common or not for that to happen,” he recalls in a telephone conversation. (The tunnel opened in 1997.)
Finding no comprehensive data available, he assembled his own -- and found that the big picture looked very much like the little one. “It’s very common to have cost overruns in big construction projects,” he says. “It’s the norm. It’s not the exception.”
On average, urban and intercity rail projects run over budget by 45 percent, roads by 20 percent, and bridges and tunnels by 34 percent.
And the averages tell only part of the story. Rail projects are especially prone to cost underestimation. Seventy-five percent run at least 24 percent over projections, while 25 percent go over budget by at least 60 percent, Flyvbjerg finds.
By comparison, 75 percent of roads exceed cost estimates by at least 5 percent, and 25 percent do so by at least 32 percent.
California (http://topics.bloomberg.com/california/) Dreaming
Promoters of rail and toll-road projects also tend to substantially overstate future use, making those projects look more appealing to whoever is footing the bill. Rail projects attract only about half the expected passengers, on average, while in new research still in progress, Flyvbjerg finds that toll roads (including road bridges and tunnels) fall 20 percent short. (Non-toll roads also miss their traffic projections, but their errors go in both directions.)
Rail-ridership predictions are especially over- optimistic in the U.S., where the average gap between expectations and reality is 60 percent, compared with 23 percent in Europe. So a back-of-the-envelope calculation would suggest that California High-Speed Rail can expect to carry only 15.6 million passengers a year by 2035, rather than the 39 million projected.
Using the average cost overrun, California should also expect to spend almost $8 billion, rather than the estimated $5.5 billion, for the project’s first 100-mile (161-kilometer) leg from Borden to Corcoran, the “train to nowhere” in the Central Valley. Raising the estimate by the average overrun, however, means that you still have a 50 percent chance of spending even more.
As the toll roads suggest, overruns aren’t unique to government projects. Even privately built chemical- processing plants suffer from similar, though less drastic, underestimates of cost and overestimates of capacity. As many a Dilbert comic strip (http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-09-14/) has pointed out, salespeople often close a deal by promising more than they can deliver.
So why do these mistakes happen again and again?
Project managers often blame a combination of bad luck, unexpected delays and changes of plan -- the same things that inflate the costs of remodeling your bathroom, only on a grand scale.
It’s true that planners change their minds. “They decide to have higher safety standards,” Flyvbjerg says, “or higher environmental standards, so the cost of the project goes up. Often you will find that the geology of the project was not well covered. So when you start digging, you find things in the ground that you didn’t expect, and the costs go up.”
But a smart project manager should anticipate the unanticipated and adjust the budget accordingly. Professionals, after all, generally have far more experience than the average homeowner. They know the sorts of things that can go wrong.
“It’s nothing new that geology is difficult,” Flyvbjerg says. “We know that geology is difficult. No matter. It’s ignored in project after project. Therefore, the problem is not geology itself but the fact that we disregard geology.”
Bias of Optimism

A charitable explanation is that promoters are starry- eyed and suffer from what psychologists call optimism bias. But it’s suspicious that forecasters rarely seem to learn, even over decades of experience. Alas, contractors, local governments and other advocates have strong incentives to underplay costs and exaggerate benefits to sell their services or attract funding.
“Some forecasts are so grossly misrepresented that we need to consider not only firing the forecasters but suing them, too -- perhaps even having a few serve time,” Flyvbjerg writes in his Oxford Review of Economic Policy (http://topics.bloomberg.com/economic-policy/) article.
Even with his gloomy findings, Flyvbjerg is an optimist. “Things don’t have to be like this,” he says. “It’s not like the weather. It’s a human artifact that we are producing, and hence we can do differently.”
He would like to see better incentives -- punishment for errors, rewards for accuracy -- combined with a requirement that forecasts not only consider the expected characteristics of the specific project but, once that calculation is made, adjust the estimate based on an “outside view,” (http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/centres/bt/Documents/Curbing%20Optimism%20Bias%20and%20Strategic%20Misr epresentation.pdf) reflecting the cost overruns of similar projects. That way, the “unexpected” problems that happen over and over again would be taken into consideration.
Such scrutiny would, of course, make some projects look much less appealing -- which is exactly what has happened in the U.K., where “reference-class forecasting” is now required. “The government stopped a number of projects dead in their tracks when they saw the forecasts,” Flyvbjerg says. “This had never happened before.”
Unfortunately, the world’s biggest infrastructure projects, including the recently opened high-speed rail line between Beijing and Shanghai (http://topics.bloomberg.com/shanghai/), are subject to no such checks, or even to scholarly examination. Flyvbjerg has been trying for years to get data on project costs in China (http://topics.bloomberg.com/china/), to no avail. “Their data are simply not reliable,” he says. He quotes an unidentified Chinese colleague who said, “If the party says there’s no cost overrun, there’s no cost overrun.”
No wonder promoters look so longingly at China. There, infrastructure glamour is the law.
(Virginia Postrel writes about commerce and culture, innovation, economics and public policy. She is the author of “The Future and Its Enemies” and “The Substance of Style,” and is writing a book on glamour. The opinions expressed are her own.)


To contact the author of this column: Virginia Postrel in Los Angeles (http://topics.bloomberg.com/los-angeles/) at vpostrel@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this column: Mary Duenwald mduenwald@bloomberg.net.


®2011 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

[datadyne007]

If you ever need a road built, I've got you covered:
http://i51.tinypic.com/23tpjl5.jpg

...fml.

[BostonUrbEx]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djbQoVpsw4E

[GW2500]

Boston.com has a stalled projects picture slide. Not really new news, but there is a fair amount of stalled residential units in Eastie.

http://www.boston.com/realestate/gallery/stalled_construction_projects/?p1=News_links

[BostonUrbEx]

So the US spends billions fighting forest fires every year. Then we spend billions more to support plants which depend on regular forest fires which no longer have the life-giving forest fires. And THEN we spend billions more to support the species of animals which depend on the species of plants which depend on the forest fires! BUT WAIT- THERE'S MORE! Call right now, and the US will give you money for your house that burned down in the forest-fire-prone area you decided to build it in. Just call 1-800-MONEY-TREE

[Lurker]

So the US spends billions fighting forest fires every year. Then we spend billions more to support plants which depend on regular forest fires which no longer have the life-giving forest fires. And THEN we spend billions more to support the species of animals which depend on the species of plants which depend on the forest fires! BUT WAIT- THERE'S MORE! Call right now, and the US will give you money for your house that burned down in the forest-fire-prone area you decided to build it in. Just call 1-800-MONEY-TREE

So we should cut down all the trees and put them a tree museum as a solution to this perennial problem? Charge people a buck fifty just to see them in order to pay off the national debt? Pave paradise too and put up a parking lot, with a cute boutique and a swinging hot spot? Nice mixed used development for more revenue. Of course all of it would have to be LEED certified....

[BostonUrbEx]

http://money.bundle.com/article/fast-food-nation-cities-spend-most-fast-food/11

http://money.bundle.com/content/images/Fast_Food_Nation_Large.jpg

Top fast food cities ranking:

1. Plano
2. Madison
3. Wichita
4. Akron
5. Fort Wayne
6 .Kansas City
7. Chandler
8. Raleigh
9. Baton Rouge
10. Omaha
11. Norfolk
12. Lincoln
13. San Jose
14. Columbus
15. Tampa
16. Fort Worth
17. Houston
18. St. Louis
19. Birmingham
20. Dallas
21. Laredo
22. Austin
23. Memphis
24. Orlando
25. Chesapeake
26. St. Paul
27. Jacksonville
28. Toledo
29. Garland
30. Corpus Christi
31. Aurora
32. Boise
33. Arlington
34. Tulsa
35. Indianapolis
36. El Paso
37. Lubbock
38. Montgomery
39. Durham
40. Miami
41. Denver
42. Chicago
43. Phoenix
44. Modesto
45. Lexington-Fayette
46. Tucson
47. Minneapolis
48. Oklahoma City
49. Mesa
50. Greensboro
51. Rochester
52. Virginia Beach
53. Atlanta
54. Anaheim
55. Glendale
56. San Antonio
57. Nashville-Davidson
58. Milwaukee
59. Portland
60. Stockton
61. Seattle
62. Charlotte
63. Scottsdale
64. Santa Ana
65. Cincinnati
66. Albuquerque
67. Arlington
68. New Orleans
69. Colorado Springs
70. Buffalo
71. Honolulu
72. Anchorage
73. Fresno
74. San Diego
75. Hialeah
76. Cleveland
77. Sacramento
78. St. Petersburg
79. Chula Vista
80. Riverside
81. Long Beach
82. Henderson
83. San Bernardino
84. Baltimore
85. Bakersfield
86. Pittsburgh
87. Reno
88. Washington
89. Las Vegas
90. Manhattan
91. San Francisco
92. Los Angeles
93. New York
94. Huntington
95. Jersey City
96. Oakland
97. Detroit
98. North Hempstead
99. Philadelphia
100. Boston


(Out of 100 total cities studied)


Interesting to note that for the most part, places you must drive around and are chalk full of strip malls are towards the top. Places with mass transit, are very urban, very walkable, etc are at the bottom.

[Ron Newman]

Very surprising to find Madison, Wisconsin at #2 on such a list.

However, keep in mind that this list counts only money spent at eight chains: McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, Arby's, KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Subway. Except for Subway, these have pretty minimal presence in the Boston area. We've got plenty of other fast food, both chain (Au Bon Pain, Panera, Chipotle, Anna's Tacqueria, Dunkin Donuts) and independent (oodles of pizzerias, sub shops, taco and burrito places, etc.)

[blade_bltz]

No Jack in the Box, Carl's Jr, or In n Out = worthless for California. As represented by the extraordinarily low rankings of many California sunbelt sprawlers.

[statler]

Yeah, if the put DnD on that than this list would look very different.

[datadyne007]

Even with Dunkin and Starbucks, we still don't spend much money at chain fast-food because it doesn't freaking exist or it closes at 11PM (Seriously, it's Copley Square - you should be open until at least midnight, 1/2AM preferrably). This city is pathetic for fast-food. In the end, it's a good thing because we continually rank in the top 10 healthiest cities in America (sometimes top 5).

[AdamBC]

Woo-hoo I grew up in #5! Doesn't surprise me - the regional chains - Penguin Point, Hot n Now, etc didn't do so well in the 90s and the national chains took their market share.

Also, the Pizza Huts in the region use better ingredients than Papa Johns or any other chain pizza place, so they're as good as a local place in many parts - so that drives their use as well.

[statler]

Does anyone have a Google+ invite laying around?

[datadyne007]

Does anyone have a Google+ invite laying around?
Sure, send me your email.

[statler]

Thanks datadyne! PM'd.

Got it, thanks again.

[KentXie]

http://money.bundle.com/article/fast-food-nation-cities-spend-most-fast-food/11

http://money.bundle.com/content/images/Fast_Food_Nation_Large.jpg

Top fast food cities ranking:

1. Plano
2. Madison
3. Wichita
4. Akron
5. Fort Wayne
6 .Kansas City
7. Chandler
8. Raleigh
9. Baton Rouge
10. Omaha
11. Norfolk
12. Lincoln
13. San Jose
14. Columbus
15. Tampa
16. Fort Worth
17. Houston
18. St. Louis
19. Birmingham
20. Dallas
21. Laredo
22. Austin
23. Memphis
24. Orlando
25. Chesapeake
26. St. Paul
27. Jacksonville
28. Toledo
29. Garland
30. Corpus Christi
31. Aurora
32. Boise
33. Arlington
34. Tulsa
35. Indianapolis
36. El Paso
37. Lubbock
38. Montgomery
39. Durham
40. Miami
41. Denver
42. Chicago
43. Phoenix
44. Modesto
45. Lexington-Fayette
46. Tucson
47. Minneapolis
48. Oklahoma City
49. Mesa
50. Greensboro
51. Rochester
52. Virginia Beach
53. Atlanta
54. Anaheim
55. Glendale
56. San Antonio
57. Nashville-Davidson
58. Milwaukee
59. Portland
60. Stockton
61. Seattle
62. Charlotte
63. Scottsdale
64. Santa Ana
65. Cincinnati
66. Albuquerque
67. Arlington
68. New Orleans
69. Colorado Springs
70. Buffalo
71. Honolulu
72. Anchorage
73. Fresno
74. San Diego
75. Hialeah
76. Cleveland
77. Sacramento
78. St. Petersburg
79. Chula Vista
80. Riverside
81. Long Beach
82. Henderson
83. San Bernardino
84. Baltimore
85. Bakersfield
86. Pittsburgh
87. Reno
88. Washington
89. Las Vegas
90. Manhattan
91. San Francisco
92. Los Angeles
93. New York
94. Huntington
95. Jersey City
96. Oakland
97. Detroit
98. North Hempstead
99. Philadelphia
100. Boston


(Out of 100 total cities studied)


Interesting to note that for the most part, places you must drive around and are chalk full of strip malls are towards the top. Places with mass transit, are very urban, very walkable, etc are at the bottom.

You'll probably also see a correlation between the average income and the amount spend on fast food.

[BostonUrbEx]

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2011/07/23/crashgal1__1311436888_5621.jpg


"Fire crews from Boston, Revere, Chelsea, Woburn, Somerville, Belmont, Cambridge, Lynn, Lynnfield, Burlington, Danvers, Stoneham, Malden, Winchester, Medford, Wakefield, Everett, Winthrop, and Logan Airport responded to the Saugus explosion."

[statler]

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnydfe13XX1qzvjw2o1_500.jpg

[AdamBC]

Don't know if this has been posted before. Not sure which thread to put it in either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bhyIgrxCY0

[Ron Newman]

And except for the fishing boats at T-Wharf, everything shown in this video is still here and looks the same now as it did then.

[JohnAKeith]

Universal Hub linked to this a couple days ago. It's an 1899 map of Boston that you can zoom in on, in amazing detail.

http://www.bigmapblog.com/2011/us40-10-boston-massachusetts-birdseye-map-1899-walker/

[briv]

I've got a bunch of these super-high-res map files, including the one in the above post. I posted a thread about them (http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?t=1194) back in 2006, and included a link to an uploaded zip file containing them. That link is dead now, but if people are interested I think I can dig them up and re-host them.

[statler]

http://i.imgur.com/tzFPI.jpg

[datadyne007]

Just wanted to announce that I may marry Revit at City Hall tomorrow. The toposurface from CAD integration is just too awesome. That would have taken me hours to 'smoove' with SketchUp. 10 seconds of processing and I have a full, accurate, 3D topo model of Jamaica Pond. <3

[briv]

I smell a CADmonkey :)

[datadyne007]

Final crit is next wed. Good times... err...

[BostonUrbEx]

Just wanted to announce that I may marry Revit at City Hall tomorrow. The toposurface from CAD integration is just too awesome. That would have taken me hours to 'smoove' with SketchUp. 10 seconds of processing and I have a full, accurate, 3D topo model of Jamaica Pond. <3

I don't think you can marry software yet, even in Massachusetts.

[datadyne007]

She's all fun and games until she crashes anyways and when Revit crashes, it crashes hard.

[statler]

Moving Day
http://i.imgur.com/2ecqP.jpg

Changing apartments in New York City is an ordeal today, but it’s a great improvement over the old system, when every lease in the city expired at 9 a.m. on May 1 and thousands of people moved to new lodgings simultaneously. Davy Crockett witnessed the spectacle during a visit in 1834:

By the time we returned down Broadway, it seemed to me that the city was flying before some awful calamity. ‘Why,’ said I, ‘Colonel, what under heaven is the matter? Everyone appears to be pitching out their furniture, and packing it off.’ He laughed, and said this was the general ‘moving day.’ Such a sight nobody ever saw unless it was in this same city. It seemed a kind of frolic, as if they were changing houses just for fun. Every street was crowded with carts, drays, and people. So the world goes. It would take a good deal to get me out of my log-house; but here, I understand, many persons ‘move’ every year.

The tradition ran from colonial times until World War II, when a shortage of men finally ended it. That’s more than a century, an oddly long run for such an unpopular practice. “There may be some doubt as to whether landlords make out leases to suit the habits of the people, or whether the habits are a result of the leases,” journalist Luke Grant had written in 1909, “but there is no doubt that the custom imposes hardships on every one concerned.”

Source (http://www.futilitycloset.com/2011/07/29/moving-day/)

[BostonUrbEx]

All I want to do is send a simple letter to Canada... how much is it... can I just drop it in a box or do I have to go to the PO?

Speaking of PO... how much does it cost to get a PO box?

[Ron Newman]

USPS.com

[BostonUrbEx]

USPS.com

I tried that. It tells me I have to ship a letter as a package. Surely that can't be right? There must be some sort of glitch? Why would I put a letter in a box.

[Ron Newman]

I don't see any place where it says that. As for the post office boxes, those vary by size and location so you'll have to phone or visit your local post office.

[datadyne007]

You can just go to any branch and tell them "I want to send this letter to Canada." They'll put the correct stamps on it and charge you whatever it costs. Seriously, people even do this to mail domestically (it's really weird and a waste of time, but w/e).

[blade_bltz]

I sent a letter to Canada earlier this week. What datadyne said. They weighed the envelope and then printed a big barcoded "stamp" with the calculated postage written on it ($1.08).

[TikiNYC]

Terrible, awful, catastrophic news from Tokyo.

https://twitter.com/#!/TheTokyoForum/status/95796960245714945

This is the world's largest city, and for something like this to happen is terrible. I know people there, including forum members, who are now leaving. There are two places in Japan - Tokyo and Not Tokyo - so for them to move to Osaka or Fukuoka is life-changing and culture-shattering as I am told that there is a huge difference between being in Tokyo and being in another smaller city.

[BarbaricManchurian]

GTFO

[statler]

Though I doubt there are many Fountains of Wayne fans here, here is a song about the Acela. Enjoy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ldxRzaivp4

[GW2500]

Terrible, awful, catastrophic news from Tokyo.

https://twitter.com/#!/TheTokyoForum/status/95796960245714945

This is the world's largest city, and for something like this to happen is terrible. I know people there, including forum members, who are now leaving. There are two places in Japan - Tokyo and Not Tokyo - so for them to move to Osaka or Fukuoka is life-changing and culture-shattering as I am told that there is a huge difference between being in Tokyo and being in another smaller city.

What would be causing Tokyo to be more radioactive than Fukuoka?

[TikiNYC]

What would be causing Tokyo to be more radioactive than Fukuoka?

Radiation, mercury, who the hell knows what else, and Anchor Babies that drift over with the Gobi sands from Chai-Na Land each year? Just a guess as to what they might be thinking over there.

There's a guy on our forum (http://www.tokyojoe.tk) who lives in Tokyo, and hostss a podcast about Tokyo. His name is Joe (can't tell you his surname here but he might) and hes been over there for close to 35 years. Ask him.

[Beton Brut]

Big FoW fan, statler. They're the best parts of Simon & Garfunkle and The Ramones.

Alas, the fascists at YouTube have taken the video down.

[datadyne007]

Bahaha -
http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/215095_582487613410_41900141_32223324_4493883_n.jp g

Beginning of computers starting to take over the world... one Captcha at a time.

[BostonUrbEx]

^ Saw someone post one on a different forum just yesterday that contained some oriental characters. Skynet has commenced.

[datadyne007]

People have also had the Euro symbol (€) appear in Captchas.

[Lurker]

I don't understand the "read books" part of their stop spam bit.

[statler]

reCAPTCHA (http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore)

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows.

reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly..

[statler]

Make sure to watch the whole clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu_LK_iEFE8&feature=player_embedded#at=89

[Ron Newman]

that's a CBS owned-and-operated station (as is our WBZ)

[BostonUrbEx]

Anything for ratings. Next thing you know they'll be showing our fireworks from impossible angles. Oh wait-

[datadyne007]

2nd Ave subway worker sings Sinatra everyday during the lunch hour. His fellow workers help him set up and take down the equip!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoOwCSgvNs0

"We're tryin to give back a little bit, y'know, with all the construction."

He sounds just like Sinatra! (not lip-synced!)

[BostonUrbEx]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33yRk0oJdNY

Many flawed arguments.

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06Q6berM0j0&feature=player_embedded#at=18

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Mxfk272tZo&feature=player_embedded

"Beating up on Chinese clubs made up of players their own age apparently got boring for Real Madrid, so they decided to take on 109 Guangzhou children (in honor of Real's 109 year history). Real still won, but only by a score of 2-1.

Though some of their players aren't much taller, this proves that playing Barcelona is definitely tougher than playing 109 Chinese children."

[palindrome]

Curbed Boston is hiring. Anyone interested?

http://dc.curbed.com/archives/2011/08/curbeds-hiring-for-boston-dallas-denver-miami-and-new-orleans.php#more

[datadyne007]

Well tonight was interesting... I was part of a drug deal tonight, in that I sold a $50 giftcard to a man so he could buy crack outside (now, remember that I work at Faneuil Hall). He even said "this is for crack." Then it got even weirder when the dealer came into the store literally 2 minutes later and bought a bunch of clothes with the $50 gift card that was just purchased and traded for a crack rock.

Lesson of the night: In Boston, American Eagle Gift Cards are valid tender in drug deals. I love this city.

[palindrome]

How did he pay for the giftcard?

[datadyne007]

How did he pay for the giftcard?

Credit card. I guess that was the whole issue... he didn't have cash to pay the dealer, so an AE gift card was apparently an acceptable alternative. I just can't get over the fact that there are people selling drugs in Faneuil Hall Marketplace at 8:30PM during tourist season lol.

[BostonUrbEx]

Credit card. I guess that was the whole issue... he didn't have cash to pay the dealer, so an AE gift card was apparently an acceptable alternative. I just can't get over the fact that there are people selling drugs in Faneuil Hall Marketplace at 8:30PM during tourist season lol.

Better than the Common at 1AM, what could be more suspicious.

I once saw a guy pass a little bag off to someone else in State Street. It was all one quick motion, it was if they didn't know each other or even acknowledge each other, they just walked past each other, one slipping the bag, one passing the cash, and off they went.

[JohnAKeith]

Curbed Boston is hiring. Anyone interested?

http://dc.curbed.com/archives/2011/08/curbeds-hiring-for-boston-dallas-denver-miami-and-new-orleans.php#more

Don't you think I'd be perfect for this?

[Beton Brut]

I wouldn't be surprised if they contacted you, John.

[briv]

Don't you think I'd be perfect for this?

Definitely.

[Lurker]

http://chainsawsuit.com/

[statler]

You never struck me as a webcomic kind of guy Lurker.

What else you read?

[JohnAKeith]

I don't understand women. Like, they see another woman, a complete stranger, and walk up to say, "Oh, I really like your blouse."

I mean, really??

[statler]

Women tend to be more social and open to personal relationships than men.

There are many sociological and biological theories as to why this might be.

[Lurker]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1680121.ece

April 20, 2007

Russia plans $65bn tunnel to America

Tony Halpin in Moscow

Russia has unveiled an ambitious plan to build the world’s longest tunnel under the Bering Strait as part of a transport corridor linking Europe and America via Siberia and Alaska.
The 64-mile (103km) tunnel would connect the far east of Russia with Alaska, opening up the prospect of the ultimate rail trip across three quarters of the globe from London to New York. The link would be twice as long as the Channel Tunnel connecting Britain and France.
The $65 billion (£33 billion) mega-project aims to transform trade links between Russia and its former Cold War enemies across some of the world’s most desolate terrain. It would create a high-speed railway line, energy links and a fibreoptic cable network.
Proposals for a tunnel under the Bering Strait were first advanced a century ago under Tsar Nicholas II but foundered with the outbreak of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. The idea was revived after the collapse of the Soviet Union but was shelved once again in Russia’s financial meltdown of 1998.
Russian officials insist that the tunnel is an economic idea whose time has now come and that it could be ready within ten years. They argue that it would repay construction costs by stimulating up to 100 million tons of freight traffic each year, as well as supplying oil, gas and electricity from Siberia to the US and Canada.
Maxim Bystrov, deputy head of Russia’s agency for special economic zones, said: “This will be a business project, not a political one.” The tunnel across the international date-line would be built in three sections through two islands in the Bering Strait and would link 6,000km (3,728 miles) of new railway lines. The tunnel alone would cost an estimated $10-12 billion to construct.
The scheme is being championed by Viktor Razbegin, deputy head of industrial research at Russia’s Economic and Trade Development Ministry. He has long advocated a tunnel under the Bering Strait to provide a land route between Russia and the US, and published a feasibility study in the 1990s.
He told journalists that state and commercial companies would form a public-private partnership to fund and run the project. A conference in Moscow next week will propose an inter-governmental agreement with the US to underwrite construction of the transport link in return for a stake in the business.
Russian Railways is said to be examining the construction of a 3,500km route from Pravaya Lena, south of Yakutsk, to Uelen on the Bering Strait. The tunnel would connect this to a 2,000km line from Cape Prince of Wales, in West Alaska, to Fort Nelson, in Canada.
The project could save Siberia and the US $20 billion a year in electricity costs, according to Vasily Zubakin, deputy chief executive of Hydro, a subsidiary of Russia’s main electricity producer, Unified Energy Systems. The company plans to build two giant tidal plants in the Far East to supply tengiga-watts of electricity by 2020.
However, some of those said to be involved in the project appeared sceptical. Sergei Grigoryev, vice-president of the state oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, said: “I’ve never heard of this plan. We need to first develop fields in East Siberia.”
Others also questioned whether it made economic sense, pointing out that Alaska has large oil reserves of its own and that China’s huge market was closer and more lucrative.
The tunnel on the Russian side would start in the Chukotka region, governed by Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea FC, who appears unlikely to plough his fortune into such a risky venture.

[Ron Newman]

That's from 2007. What has happened since?

[BostonUrbEx]

Can't do it on the backs of Russia and US alone. Need to get China on board (and perhaps Canada... whatever little chunk they can put in...)

[GW2500]

^^ Whats the point, I imagine that the Bering Sea side of Russia is also pretty desolate, so it would be a very long train ride to go from one major metro region to the next.

[BostonUrbEx]

^^ Whats the point, I imagine that the Bering Sea side of Russia is also pretty desolate, so it would be a very long train ride to go from one major metro region to the next.

Freight mostly. Probably bundle some oil pipelines into the project.

[statler]

Heh.

https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23BosFroshAdvice

Well, it was funny until people started getting all serious.

[datadyne007]

Heh.

https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23BosFroshAdvice

Well, it was funny until people started getting all serious.

EPIC.

"Best after parties are always on the Melnea Cass Boulevard"

[datadyne007]

http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/319578_566843840052_181100233_31751898_6132514_n.j pg

Typical August 31 in Boston.

[statler]

Sox game + move-in week(end) + BU Bridge construction = Yeaaaah, I'll be staying away from that area tonight.

[Ron Newman]

what does that map show? what URL did you use to reach it?

[datadyne007]

what does that map show? what URL did you use to reach it?

It's just the iPhone's standard Google Maps w/ traffic enabled. It's actually my friend's screenshot (I wouldn't be caught dead with an iPhone).

You can just go to Google Maps (maps.google.com) and turn on traffic though. http://maps.google.com/?ll=42.343193,-71.07914&spn=0.078284,0.194836&t=h&z=13&vpsrc=6&layer=t

Google Earth can do it too.

[statler]

I swear there are no limits to the type of things that Wikipedia can teach us (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology).

Bonus points to those who know why this suddenly relevant and extra bonus points to those who knew all about this prior to this week.

[Beton Brut]

I believe Mozart's potty-mouth was referenced to some extent in this book (http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Constanze-Francis-Carr/dp/0380698846).

Kyle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Broflovski) said it best: "German people are weird."

Weren't we done with these clowns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insane_Clown_Posse) in 1998?

[statler]

"potty-mouth"

Heh.

(And you, of course, get all the bonus points)

[Beton Brut]

I've willfully ignored the musical stylings of Messrs Violent J & Shaggy 2 Dope for the the entirety of their career. For my money, they're the worst thing to come out of Detroit since the Ford Pinto. I heard about their collaboration with Salzburg's favorite son on (of all places) sports-talk radio this morning. Maybe the blue hairs and the Juggalos can get down together if H&H (http://www.handelandhaydn.org/) decides to do another crossover concert.

[Lurker]

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/9380/224c5a3501ec4e34a135099.jpg

[vanshnookenraggen]

I literally laughed out loud.

[BostonUrbEx]

I hope I can reach Dickfinity one day. It's like internet nirvana.

[BostonUrbEx]

I just realized this the other day that on the north side of the city, you can't go from 1S to 93N or 93S to 1N, basically you have to do a run up Rutherford, through lights, street traffic, Sully Square, etc. Ahh, the wonders that $20+ billion can buy.

[Lurker]

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/09/06/jp-morgan-explains-the-euro-crisis-with-lego/
JP Morgan explains the euro crisis with Lego
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2011/09/9yrold2.jpg
This chart comes from a Michael Cembalest’s research note (http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2011/09/09-06-11-EOTM-European-Minifigure-Union.pdf) today. The key is in there too. I’m not making this up:


The toreador in a floppy hat, and the F1 driver with his helmet, represent Spain, Italy and the rest of the Euro Periphery.
The three men with helmets, shields, and medieval weaponry represent the CDU, CSU and FDP parties in Germany.
The blue-and-white sailor boy is Finland. Obvs.
The woman with an oversized carrot and her friend in overalls with a shovel represent the Social Democrats and Greens.
Wotan represents the Bundesbank.
The piggy bank is the IMF.
The grey-haired Banque chap is the ECB.
The chap in the red bib is Poland.
The artists are France.
The angry chef, the sweeper with a broom, the airline pilot, and the rest of the motley crew at bottom left, represent EU taxpayers in Core countries.
The storm troopers are the EU Commission and Euro Group Finance Ministers, chaired by Jose Manuel Barroso and Jean- Claude Juncker.
The monocled banker and his assistant are EU bondholders and shareholders.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2011/09/iceland.jpg Full credit here is given to “Peter Cembalest, who specializes in conceptualization of such phenomena”; I assume that Peter (age 9) helped out too with the Icelandic bonus extra, for people who make it to page three. But Iceland sadly didn’t make the cut as one of the “12 players in the EMU Debt Crisis most likely to affect policy from here”.
Cembalest does at one point feel the need to explain what he’s doing here:If today’s diorama analysis borders on the absurd, so does maintaining the fiction that accumulation of massive public and private sector claims in Europe can somehow be engineered away.
Still, I like the idea of sitting all the key European players in a room with a box of lego and telling them to work things out that way. The results couldn’t really be more farcical than those of the EU bank stress tests.

[vanshnookenraggen]

http://forgifs.com/gallery/d/43625-1/supportpost.jpg

It works on so many levels.

[statler]

Am I the only one who will miss MikeFM?

Granted, the bumps were cheesy but they were pretty much the only music station in town you could listen to days on end without hearing the same song a thousand times.

[BostonUrbEx]

Whaaaat? They're still pretty new, I feel like it was yesterday when their predecessor station (forget what it was) had their last day and Mike took over. I really enjoyed how they actually had variety. It was the anti-107.9.

[statler]

The parent company is moving (simulcasting) WEEI to that spot and have no plans to relocate Mike.

[statler]

I just learned that in the UK 'fancy dress party' means the complete opposite of what I would expect it to mean.

Silly Brits.

[BostonUrbEx]

http://www.acceptingabundance.com/2011/08/cant-even-go-to-park.html

Some people disgust me. And this is pretty damn disgusting.

[Ron Newman]

Repeating my reply to that from over in Universal Hub....

Dearest Stacy,

I suggest you stay out of Union Square, Davis Square, or for that matter any other part of Somerville. Or Cambridge. Or the South End. Or Jamaica Plain. Or especially the Fenway.

May your kids grow up to reject your intolerance and embrace the variety of human experience.

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S75Rfva9O8&feature=player_embedded

[datadyne007]

I have an interview at BR+A (Bard, Rao + Athanas) Consulting Engineers (http://www.brplusa.com/index.html) of Watertown on Thursday morning! So excited!

I finally might have a co-op.

[Lrfox]

Congrats!

[statler]

Neat. (http://parisapartment.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/urban-archaeology-sleeping-beautys-paris-apartment-discovered/)

[palindrome]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Bu ffalo_buffalo

[Lrfox]

http://www.acceptingabundance.com/2011/08/cant-even-go-to-park.html

Some people disgust me. And this is pretty damn disgusting.

Sort of the opposite that blog post: http://pics.spaceghetto.st/?v=kidsreligiondfsdfsth.png

[datadyne007]

Hired on the spot!! Fck yes!!

[vanshnookenraggen]

Congrats!

[Beton Brut]

Good news! And they're a good company. They did a good job for us on Yawkey.

[datadyne007]

Good news! And they're a good company. They did a good job for us on Yawkey.

I mentioned Yawkey (I did some research about them before I went) when we were talking and he whipped out all of Yawkey's drawings, plopped them on the table, and showed me them!

They're starting me monday, btw!

[Beton Brut]

Right on!

[statler]

Nice! Congrats and good luck!

[briv]

Congratulations, datadyne.

[Beton Brut]

In considering the way this thread has changed direction over the last few posts, I've often wondered why we don't have an informal "internships and careers" thread...

[datadyne007]

I still don't really know who is an architect, engineer, etc and who isn't on this board. I only know a few. It always confuses me.

Thanks everyone for your well wishes. I'm so excited to be finally free from the nasty grip of retail!

[tobyjug]

What about CERN's "discovery" that sub atomic particles travel at greater than the speed of light? My thought is that the velocity of all matter is in a state of decay, including that of light. The rate of decay is not uniform, so particles that ought to have a constant velocity relative to the movement of others could overtake a like type.

What do you experts think is going on?

[statler]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/neutrinos.png

[tobyjug]

I guess "cold fusion" was a dud (unfortunately). Maybe "slow light" is the next fail?

[JohnAKeith]

9 Cool Under Over Pass Projects, Atlantic Cities

Elevated freeways slice through cities all over the world. At their best, they make getting into and around cities incredibly easy; at their worst, they segregate and isolate communities. Somewhere in between those two poles is a ton of potential. The spaces beneath those overpasses are often underutilized – or utilized in ways illegal or undesirable. Cities are beginning to take advantage of these dead spaces as usable parts of the public realm. These projects highlight some of the ways cities and communities are taking advantage of the space beneath freeways.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2011/09/under-overpass-projects-under-freeways/192/#slide1

[JohnAKeith]

Craigslist ad:

Boston Architecture News Writer

Multi-City urban planning and architecture online magazine needs students or professionals in architecture, urban planning, public admin., or public relations to write summaries of projects and events for magazine. Periodic attendance at planning commission, community group, or business district organization meetings encouraged but not required. Social media savvy a plus. Non-compensated but terrific opportunity to network, gain access and recognition in spare time in high exposure role. You will receive credits in website along side nationally known architects and planners. Additionally, our news contributors often receive press access to various events, which otherwise charge for entry. Applicants please write letter describing your interest, education, career path, and social media skills/aptitude. Resume optional but appreciated. Please identify the city for the ad to which you are responding.

http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/egr/2616110510.html

[Lrfox]

http://i785.photobucket.com/albums/yy139/jfoahs04/OxfordComma.jpg

[BostonUrbEx]

^ Excellent!

[Beton Brut]

^ Seconded. Beton Brut approves of the Oxford Comma.

[statler]

Alternately, you could give a moment of thought to what you are writing and construct your sentence in a way that removes the ambiguity and the need for extraneous commas.

We invited JFK, Stalin and the strippers.

Easy.

[Lrfox]

^Buzz Killington, is that you?

[statler]

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081201204915/uncyclopedia/images/7/75/Grammar_Nazi_Logo.jpg

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGwsA1V2r4&feature=player_embedded

[datadyne007]

The Arsenal on the Charles (http://www.taotc.com/) might just be the best office park to work-in... ever. Annual tenant appreciation lunch from Casa del Pedro - lemon and chipotle chicken with Spanish rice... mmm... They even have live music in the lobby.

http://i51.tinypic.com/zyizyg.jpg

[vanshnookenraggen]

http://forgifs.com/gallery/d/81039-1/cool_story_bro.jpg?

[datadyne007]

The drink was disgusting though. Some sort of lemon & sugar cane concoction. All of my co-workers agreed that tequila would have been a more appropriate beverage for the event. ;-)

[JohnAKeith]

Because I'm a g.damn Boston police officer, that's why!

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/powiceoffisa.jpg

Washington Street median, 8:45am, Tuesday morning.

[datadyne007]

The most interesting man in the room
21 Sep 2011
By Jody Brown — Filed under: Coffee with an Architect ,Featured

I’m an Architect. I’m the most interesting man in the room.

I’m wearing all black. I’m near sighted, but have compensated with extremely attractive and/or expensive eyewear. I have radical mood swings. But, only on the inside. You’d probably never know what I’m thinking. And, I’m sure I wouldn’t tell you.

I have excellent taste in …. almost everything. Just ask me. I am brooding right now. Over in the corner, sipping my cosmo (because I can pull that off). I’m not approachable, I’ve worked on that for years. I seem like I know things. Dark things. Perfectly aligned symmetrical things. But nothing about things that you want to talk about. I would rather talk about Richard Serra or Edward Hopper, or we could discuss Diebenkorn if you’d like. No, I am not going to talk about architecture. I never talk about architecture. We can talk about television. Mad Men? yes… Inside the Actors Studio? of course, but ideally Inspector Morse ca. 1988. Or we could just discuss cars.

More after the break.

Could you get me another Cosmo?

I have a beautiful wife, but I have no family, no children, no history, no connection to anything domestic. I don’t play golf. I have clubs, just in case. In the trunk of my Alfa Romeo

I work hard. No really, I work very hard. You think you work hard? You’re wrong. In fact, I’m working right now. I haven’t slept since 1984. I’m on my second decade of an all nighter. You have no idea. Your job is easy compared to mine. You don’t create, you produce. That’s easy. Right?

I spent a year in Europe studying under someone you’ve never heard of, who won a very prestigous award which you’ve also never heard of. This was my foundation for my “practice” I run today. I worked on a famous building you have also never heard of. I won an award for that too. I have a plaque with my name in fancy lettering in my office. I have a turtle neck. Not a “mock-turtle-neck” those are for writers or journalists.

Your tie is crooked. I noticed that when you first came over. I could fix that, but what’s the point really. Also, there were 17 canapes on that tray and only 16 had tooth picks in them. The mirror on that wall is slightly tilted. And, this part of the flooring is not orginal to the building. And, that sprinkler head is slightly off center.

And, seriously, go get me another cosmo…

I’m an Architect, I’m the most interesting man in the room.

Stay thirsty my friends { Coffee with an Architect }.

J
http://www.archdaily.com/170799/the-most-interesting-man-in-the-room/

[Lurker]

http://www.archdaily.com/170799/the-most-interesting-man-in-the-room/

As I sit here comfortably swaddled by a giant wing chair in my 19th Century townhouse on my laptop, with a glass of Chivas Regal 12 in hand, donning a velvet robe, pajamas from Frette, Italian slippers, with WCRB blaring in the background, and occasionally stoking a roaring fire in the Rumford, I find this article insulting.....

[BostonUrbEx]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9vEI9Qw4Y3w/TnpYewYLvUI/AAAAAAAACHY/zm9GxasGCHI/s400/ayn%2Brand%2Band%2Bgod.png

[datadyne007]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9vEI9Qw4Y3w/TnpYewYLvUI/AAAAAAAACHY/zm9GxasGCHI/s400/ayn%2Brand%2Band%2Bgod.png

Lol, more Oxford comma jokes.

So today I noticed that Mass put those portable display boards on all the major highways (95, 93, 24, 495, etc) stating "left lane travel only when passing." This is a month after I got a ticket for traveling in the left lane at 75mph (in a 65) on 24. The issue of left-lane travel has always been up in the air. Statie was such a douchebag. Meanwhile, the guy in front of me was weaving at 85mph.

[BostonUrbEx]

I thought MA was one of the few states where left lane travel was allowed? Or did they just never enforce it before?

[BostonUrbEx]

Also, has anyone else see the "Plows use caution" signs? They're at literally EVERY overpass in the state. Noticed them a couple weeks ago, and I can't find a single bridge that doesn't have them.

[palindrome]

http://i.imgur.com/uyNbk.gif

[Lurker]

Also, has anyone else see the "Plows use caution" signs? They're at literally EVERY overpass in the state. Noticed them a couple weeks ago, and I can't find a single bridge that doesn't have them.

It's a "Cover Your Ass" statement by that state so that if a state, or state contracted, plow damages a car, or causes an accident, by pushing snow or ice over the side into traffic below, the plow driver is directly responsible and not the state or contractor.

[BostonUrbEx]

http://pics.livejournal.com/enthusemarc/pic/000ytcty

Brutalist frog is not pleased.

[kz1000ps]

For the NFL-meets-AD fans out there:

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpquv7epft1qlwkpho1_500.jpg

PS: who's getting their hopes up about AD's return to film AND TV??

PPS: FUCK THE JETS!

[datadyne007]

I got this markup this morning. Rofl...

http://i51.tinypic.com/ji0rau.jpg

[Lurker]

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_urb-sammler.html

Myron Magnet
Mr. Sammler’s City
Saul Bellow’s prophetic 1970 novel captured New York’s unraveling and remains a cautionary tale.

Fear was a New Yorker’s constant companion in the 1970s and ’80s. We lived behind doors with triple locks, some like engines of medieval ironmongery. We barred our ground-floor and fire-escape windows with steel grates that made us feel imprisoned. I was thankful for mine, though, when a hatchet turned up on my fire escape, origin unknown. Nearing our building entrances, we held our keys at the ready and looked over our shoulders, as police and street-smart lore advised; our hearts pounded as we tried to shove the heavy doors open and slam them shut before some mugger could push in behind us, standard mugging procedure. Only once was I too slow and lost my money. A neighbor, who worked at a midtown bank, lost his life.
So to read Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet when it came out in 1970 was like a jolt of electricity. Just when New York had begun to spin out of control—steadily worsening for over two decades until murders numbered over 2,200 a year, one every four hours—Bellow’s novel described the unraveling with brilliant precision and explained unflinchingly why it was happening. His account shocked readers: some thought it racist and reactionary; others feared it was true but too offensive for a decent person to say. In those days, I felt I should cover my copy with a plain brown wrapper on the subway to veil the obscenity of its political incorrectness.

The book was true, prophetically so. And now that we live in New York’s second golden age—the age of reborn neighborhoods in every borough, of safe streets bustling with tourists, of $40 million apartments, of filled-to-overflowing private schools and colleges, of urban glamour; the age when the New York Times runs stories that explain how once upon a time there was the age of the mugger and that ask, is new york losing its street smarts?—it’s important to recall that today’s peace and prosperity mustn’t be taken for granted. Hip young residents of the revived Lower East Side or Williamsburg need to know that it’s possible to kill a city, that the streets they walk daily were once no-go zones, that within living memory residents and companies were fleeing Gotham, that newsweeklies heralded the rotting of the Big Apple and movies like Taxi Driver and Midnight Cowboy plausibly depicted New York as a nightmare peopled by freaks. That’s why it’s worth looking back at Mr. Sammler to understand why that decline occurred: we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Lengthy article continues

[statler]

Today's to-do list:
*Take "Corporate CEO's Are SCUM!" sign and flip it over
*Write loving tribute to Steve Jobs
*Walk from Dewey Sq to Boylston St

[Lrfox]

PS: who's getting their hopes up about AD's return to film AND TV??!

I don't. I can't see where they're going to go with it. Unlike many great shows that go well beyond their prime (I'm looking at you, The Office), it wrapped up at its peak. Best case scenario,it provides a few laughs. Worst case, it leaves me with a bad taste for a series I really enjoyed.

[statler]

PS: who's getting their hopes up about AD's return to film AND TV??

http://i.imgur.com/lButB.jpg

[vanshnookenraggen]

I don't. I can't see where they're going to go with it. Unlike many great shows that go well beyond their prime (I'm looking at you, The Office), it wrapped up at its peak. Best case scenario,it provides a few laughs. Worst case, it leaves me with a bad taste for a series I really enjoyed.

I was burned before by Family Guy. However AD is run by someone who is the opposite of Seth McFarlane and someone who is just trying to wrap up a series, not milk it for every last dollar.

[BostonUrbEx]

http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/6580/deletecm.png


Halp. My professor blows.

[BostonUrbEx]

I wish I had a decent professor. Just had to teach myself how do that crap.

[datadyne007]

"Eternal Flame"

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/eternal_flame.gif

[statler]

Ha! I was right (http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2011/1006/99-Wall-Street-protesters-boo-CEOs-but-mourn-Steve-Jobs)!

[datadyne007]

Similarly:

http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/166957_10150852956240716_902865715_21297144_210541 8537_n.jpg

[BostonUrbEx]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbDeS_mXMnM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOtMkEkFpJw

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zxxM9EYQzY&feature=player_embedded

[Ron Newman]

Except for Dow Corning, the corporations listed in that photo aren't generally regarded as "evil".

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2oymHHyV1M&feature=youtu.be
Ron Newman is advised to alter his vacation plans accordingly.

[Ron Newman]

what was that? An elk? A ram?

[datadyne007]

what was that? An elk? A ram?

The title of the video is "Mountain biker gets taken out by BUCK"

[Ron Newman]

ahh, I missed that. The title disappears as soon as I start playing a video.

[BostonUrbEx]

what was that? An elk? A ram?

Someone from Brockton driving in Cambridge.

[Lurker]

It was an antelope. He's lucky it wasn't a lioness.

[Lurker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFtJZb7uwmw&feature=related
Meanwhile in Belarus.......

[BostonUrbEx]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC8mxKziRnk

What the-

[BostonUrbEx]

How the hell do primaries work in this state? It's rather hard to find information, perhaps I'm not searching for the correct terms...

I'm registered as a third-party. I'm not D, nor R, nor Unenrolled. So can I vote in anything on primary day? I don't know if there are third party primaries, especially where I don't think there is more than one candidate. I know Massachusetts isn't an open primary, but it's not closed, either. Here, unenrolled can grab a D or R ballot, so I'm wondering if I can do that, too.

[Ron Newman]

No, if you are registered in a party, you can only vote in that party's primary.

[datadyne007]

Long night at work... got out at 9pm

[BostonUrbEx]

No, if you are registered in a party, you can only vote in that party's primary.

Lame. What if there is only one candidate? Are there ever any issues of any kind tacked onto primary ballots? (like when they tacked the dog racing bill onto the general election)

[statler]

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lt0zaxpNWr1qk178fo1_500.jpg

[Ron Newman]

No, primary elections never have ballot issues on them. Those are only in general elections in November.

[datadyne007]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC8mxKziRnk

What the-

Video won't last long because of the James Bond theme. I used an obscure remix (the epic one from the Goldeneye trailer) on a school project in hs and YT recently pulled it. Like seriously, only had 1,000 views in 3 years.

And the video itself... whack, dude. Whack.

[JohnAKeith]

There's not much to complain about here. Switch to the unenrolled after this year's election, then you can pick up either - any - ballot at the next primary.

It doesn't matter for municipal elections, of course, because, at least here in Boston, they aren't run on a party-affiliation basis.

I've been happily unenrolled since 2006. I hate the Democratic Party leadership in this state for all its cronyism, etc. Sadly, being unenrolled was seen as something suspect in my race for State Rep 3 years ago - everyone thought I was a Republican in sheep's clothing.

I wish they would change the "unenrolled" to something else. "Unenrolled" sounds like "unregistered" (perhaps on purpose?). Much better would be "unaligned" or "non-party" which makes more sense.

Someone on this board remarked that being unenrolled and voting in a party preliminary contradicts the belief that your vote is anonymous. True, if you pick the Republican or Democratic ballot, people will know, since it becomes part of the public record.

A small issue, but one nonetheless.

[Lurker]

There are few basic problems with being unenrolled:

-You get lots of junk mail from every single party and campaign. (STUFFED MAILBOX MAKE LURKER ANGRY!)
-It violates the spirit of a primary if anyone can intentionally vote for either party's weakest candidates during a primary, in order to cause chaos, and a potential upset in the general election.
-Privacy issues concerning the "secret ballot" as Mr. Keith as already noted.

I don't really see an easy solution to these problems.

[JohnAKeith]

Am I pulling a Republican ballot in the US Presidential primary? Yes.
Am I doing it so I can vote for Herman Cain and against Mitt Romney? Yes.
Will it make a difference in the results? No.
Will it make me happy? Undoubtedly.
Is it an "abuse" of the voting privilege? Eh, sort of, kind of, but I can live with that.

[JohnAKeith]

I have no reason to doubt the photographer's claim that this is real.

The "Cabinet Minister's" office, Dubai, 10/13/2011

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/Picture1-1.png

[BostonUrbEx]

One reason I'm wearing of flipping party/unenrolled/party/unenrolled is because, should you seek any public office at all, isn't this publicly available, and you'd be branded a flip flopper? Don't know that I'll ever run for any elected position ever, but rather keep things neat and tidy, and I'd rather not stick to unenrolled.

Also; I think "unaffiliated" would work fine, and no confusion with the Independent Party.

[datadyne007]

I have no reason to doubt the photographer's claim that this is real.

The "Cabinet Minister's" office, Dubai, 10/13/2011

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo139/JohnAKeith/Random/Picture1-1.png

Looks like a screengrab from SimCity 4.

[Lurker]

Speaking from personal experience, this may very well end badly.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/10/why-is-obama-sending-troops-against-the-lords-resistance-army/246748/
Why Is Obama Sending Troops Against the Lord's Resistance Army?

By Max Fisher


The pseudo-Christian terror cult has enslaved 66,000 children in its 20-year campaign across several countries in Central Africa, but it poses no threat to the U.S. or its interests




When the Lord's Resistance Army showed up in the Central African Republican village of Obo in 2008, everyone who refused to join them was killed. One of the men they scooped up, Daba Emmanuel, would spend the next year as one of the LRA's slave-soldiers. Indoctrinated, abused, and eventually forced to perform raids like the one against Obo, he survived to tell journalist Graeme Wood his story (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/04/joseph-konys-long-walk-to-and-from-hell/69005/). "We killed the old immediately, and kept the young for work," Emmanuel said.

Recalling one raid on a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he told Wood that his small LRA faction began by gathering all the villagers together. "We put them into the church and closed the doors," Emmanuel remembered. They'd been ordered to steal supplies and find new children to make into slaves. "We entered only to choose some small girls and boys. The rest we burnt." They killed anyone who tried to escape with machetes, logs, or stones -- new recruits like Emmanuel were not trusted with rifles. As with similar groups, it's children who make the most loyal soldiers -- once their home has been destroyed, their language forgotten, and their religion replaced with a cult-like worship of LRA leader Joseph Kony, betrayal or escape is much less likely.

Part insurgency and part cult, the Lord's Resistance Army has waged a 20-year campaign of terror across Uganda, where it originally formed in opposition to the government there, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Sudan. It raids villages, massacres for no other purpose than bloodlust, enslaves child soldiers and child sex slaves, drugs its captives to make them more violent, all in an apparently endless mission that has destroyed countless villages and killed thousands of civilians, transforming one of the world's least governed spaces into one of its most dangerous.

A 2009 U.S. law (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-2478) authorizing financial support to Uganda against the LRA cites studies finding the LRA had abducted 66,000 children and displaced two million civilians. Last year, Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth -- no hawk -- called on Obama (http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/10/12/plan-b-president-obama-get-tough-human-rights) to use U.S. military force against the Lord's Resistance Army. Roth cited the group's overwhelming humanitarian toll, its small size, and (unlike, for example, the Taliban) its extreme unpopularity among the populations it terrorizes.

The U.S. already supplies intelligence and a few million dollars to the Ugandan government in its totally failed quest to stop the LRA and to capture Joseph Kony, who is under indictment for war crimes from the International Criminal Court. On Friday, President Obama announced (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/10/14/letter-president-speaker-house-representatives-and-president-pro-tempore) he would be sending approximately 100 U.S. combat troops to "act as advisors to partner forces that have the goal of removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA. Our forces will provide information, advice, and assistance to select partner nation forces." Special forces will be among them (http://twitter.com/#%21/julianbarnes/statuses/124910889479569408). The troops will not fire unless fired upon, but they will be able to provide much-need intelligence and organizational support to the Ugandan forces; they will also provide an important check (http://www.theresolve.org/blog/archives/3071030503) on Uganda's troops, who might be tempted toward less-than-legal behavior as they crash around Central Africa.

Kony may be barking mad -- he performs bizarre rituals and claims to fight for "the Ten Commandments" -- but he has survived for two decades, outnumbered and outmatched by every metric, on little more than his ideology and his wits. "Kony is a brilliant tactician & knows the terrain better than anybody. He surrounds himself with scouts who have what amounts to an early warning system, which is how he's eluded capture for so long," Morehouse College assistant professor and Central Africa expert Laura Seay (http://www.theatlantic.com/laura-seay) warned on twitter (http://twitter.com/#%21/texasinafrica). "Kony also operates in some of the least-governed areas of the world's weakest states. Many of these places have no roads, infrastructure. All of this adds up for a potential mess for US troops, who don't know the terrain & can't count on host government troops to be helpful or even to fight. This will not be easy for only 100 US forces to carry out, especially given language barriers." Seay also points out that Kony uses children as human shield -- and as much of his fighting force -- making any direct action ethically and morally difficult.

Obama's decision to send 100 troops is a microscopically small deployment compared to the broader U.S. military diaspora: hundreds of thousands of troops in dozens of countries. The list of countries with around 100 or more U.S. troops might surprise you: Colombia, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, and Djibouti, to name a few. That list would probably be a lot longer if it included special forces deployment. Last year, Marc Ambinder reported (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/obama-gives-commanders-wide-berth-for-secret-warfare/57202/) that Obama had approved special forces bases and operations across the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia. But those operations, large and small, target terrorist groups and rogue states that threaten the U.S. -- something the Lord's Resistance Army could not possibly do.

If this if the humanitarian mission that the Obama administration says it is, and if it achieves the humanitarian goals it is setting out to achieve, it would be harder to find a more suitable target than the Lord's Resistance Army. Since World War Two, the U.S. has often presented its military, overwhelmingly the most powerful on Earth, as a force for good and global stability. In execution, it has been a force for furthering U.S., not global, interests -- just like every other national military. Some U.S. military actions, such as the intervention in Libya or the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, were sold as efforts for global peace, and that was probably part of the motivation, but they were also designed to promote American interests: to remove threats and replace them with friendly faces.

It's difficult to find a U.S. interest at stake in the Lord's Resistance Army's campaign of violence. The group could go on killing and enslaving for decades -- as they well might -- and the American way of life would continue chugging along. It's possible that there's some immediate U.S. interest at stake we can't obviously see. Maybe, for example, Uganda is offering the U.S. more help with peacekeeping and counterterrorism in East Africa (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/07/why-al-shabaab-would-attack-in-uganda/59551/), where the U.S. does have concrete interests, in exchange for the troops. But it certainly looks like a primarily or purely humanitarian military mission, if a very small one. The Obama administration is hoping that these 100 troops will succeed where past U.S. assistance (http://defensenewsstand.com/NewsStand-General/The-INSIDER-Free-Article/dod-to-equip-uganda-forces-in-bid-to-destroy-rebel-forces/menu-id-720.html) against the LRA -- intelligence, satellite images, fuel, and millions of dollars -- has failed. Maybe they will and maybe they won't. But this seems to suggest a small but important shift in how, where, and why the U.S. uses applies military force.



Copyright © 2011 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

[vanshnookenraggen]

This is just a theory but it's possible that Obama (or more likely his military advisers) are sowing the seeds/rebuilding relationships in Africa.

I would argue that Africa will be the next battleground for the War on Terror or perhaps a Post-War on Terror world. As America's influence in the Middle East wains and as the wave of Arab Spring washes over the region it looks more and more like the safe havens that terrorists held on to are migrating to Africa (this has been going on for the last 5 years but will probably become more pronounced as nations that were once friendly to terrorist organizations focus their efforts to internal reorder and grass roots change). Also, keep in mind, that Muslim extremists, for all their hate of the West, kill other Muslims far more often. This has turned many people away from their actions in the region and contributes to these organizations needing new stomping grounds.

Africa is the obvious next place for them to go. Most of the nations there are far too poor to be able to keep them at bay and with China investing so much into the continent it seems like a good place to raise capital, i.e. plunder, such as the pirates in Somalia.

Going after the LRA has the benefit of fitting into the American myth of standing up for what's right. But more realistically, I think, it will be a way for us to get in on the ground floor, both in building good will with African governments (i.e. let's make up for the whole Rawandan genocide thing), figuring out who the new players are in the terrorist world, and as a check on China (as in, hey China, we can go anywhere you want to go, just saying).

[Lurker]

In this particular part of the world the whole concept of "countries" is nothing more than trivial lines on paper. Tribalism and barbarism rules. Civilization appears more advanced in Afghanistan than the villages one encounters there. No amount of intervention beyond colonial occupation is going to change anything.

There just isn't enough of a civil society in existence, nor has there even been historically, in these remote areas. If it weren't for European colonial empires and the importation of relatively modern weaponry, these people would be living as uncontacted tribes similar to those in the remote parts of the Amazon. There's very little cohesion or trust between peoples, usually for very bloody reasons.

I don't see how any action in this particular area is going to help or buy any kind of influence. These are incredibly weak and corrupt governments. Nothing short of bribery or force of arms is going to bring them to the table in any sort or reliable fashion. Nor do any of these countries really represent a strategic or overwhelming humanitarian interest.

There are plenty of other places in Africa, with strategic interests, where US forces could be successful and accomplish everything that you've stated in terms of PR or 'reliable' good will.