friend of the built environment

Back from an amazingly wonderful holiday in Pittsburgh and Charleston. I’ll post some pictures and commentary and miscellaneous thoughts later this week. Until then, I leave you with this lovely photo from Mt Washington.

It’s nothing like the crap I went through my first couple years with US Airways, when they were going through their excruciating merger with America West. That was pure hell for anyone in the greater Charlotte or Philadelphia areas.
But since then I’ve switched over to being a Delta kinda guy. Actually, Northwest - they have had the [...]

It’s sort of annoying to hear everyone talk of how cheap clothes are at department stores, when I have spent hours looking for anyone with either of the two types of clothes I wear at any sort of unusual discount. I have been paying around 30 bucks per pair for Levi’s 569 jeans for years [...]

I find it fascinating to learn that Mexico is the only country in the world that still uses silver in circulating coins. It definitely makes me consider the Peso as a hedge against the inevitable inflation we’re going to experience once all this bailout largesse filters into the money supply.
It’s interesting that Americans think the [...]

A view from my walk today.

I sometimes chuckle at the people who are out there stocking up on guns and ammo in case Obama gets tough on the Second Amendment (which I’m sure is a huge priority for him…), or in case an economic collapse leads to civil unrest and general social unpleasantness.
I also chuckle at those who are stockpiling tons of [...]

We are being harvested. One reason to reconsider the benefits of a wholesale conversion to a ’service economy’ (aka, one that produces no tangible goods) is that we end up here: spending trillions of Federal Reserve Notes to support our only remaining large domestic businesses - banks. Meanwhilst, the only large manufacturing industry we have [...]

…Let’s not fuck it up like the last one, m’kay?

This piece really sums up my feelings of late toward the generation that ruined our lives:
Boomers might be on the dark side of the cemetery lawn. The rest of us will be taking their name in vain for the mess they bequeathed. “The psychology of Boomers is, ‘There is no future, we are it,’” Males [...]

It’s interesting that, despite having much better scientific screening resources in place, America still bans healthy homosexual men from donating desperately needed blood, whilst most of the rest of the developed world, including Russia, whose social attitudes toward sexuality are somewhat more conservative, allow it.