http://www.murderingmouth.com Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:23:42 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Great new post from the Urbanophile: What if instead of spending a huge amount of money to try to save one building, the city found a little bit of money to do basic maintenance to preserve the structural integrity of many buildings – and create a safe path through parts of ... http://www.murderingmouth.com/2010/03/11/respect-for-ruins/ An interesting thing I observe every day is the declining horizon of basic business, social and personal decision-making. Something I hear time and again is "well you just can't predict how things will be in X years -- things change so fast" -- a result of exponential changes to inputs ... http://www.murderingmouth.com/2010/03/10/safe-and-calm-with-our-blinkers-on/ I sometimes find it amusing that a society so dead-set against taxes, government and social support still expects a first-world level of service from any multi-user institution. Today I spent an hour stuck on a train that was having electrical problems. Like true troopers, the staff provided incredible customer service and ... http://www.murderingmouth.com/2010/03/07/disinvestment/ Chris Briem and Mike Madison both have some interesting commentary on East Liberty. Some quotes that strike me: Virtually all of the good news about contemporary East Liberty [...] conveys the impression that the area is being transformed into a generic upscale suburb, with the big box stores, higher end retailers, ... http://www.murderingmouth.com/2010/03/04/east-liberty/ A great bit from Wired (via The Vigorous North): So what can we do? We should change our focus to the other side of the equation and curtail not the texting but the driving. This may sound a bit facetious, but I’m serious. When we worry about driving and texting, we ... http://www.murderingmouth.com/2010/03/04/phones-v-cars/ Regarding my personal addendum to the last post: I noted that I feel re-use should be a foremost priority to sustainable urban planning. This belief is based around the concept that titles this journal: the built environment. I feel that buildings are a part of the environment, not simply an asset ... http://www.murderingmouth.com/2010/02/26/arbitrary-design-decisions-vs-quality-and-durability/ Rick Cole, courtesy of the Urbanophile: Sustainable urbanism doesn’t have to carry the weight of the overhead and egos of mega developers, starchitects, and all the myriad fixers — lobbyists, lawyers, flacks, event planners, consultants etc. — that live off their wake. It doesn’t put the public purse at risk on ... http://www.murderingmouth.com/2010/02/26/great-quote/ So today I called my mortgage lender to ask for my PMI to be cancelled, as my mortgage balance recently fell below 80% of the purchase price of my home. The lender apparently agreed that the home is still worth approximately what was paid for it, since they agreed to ... http://www.murderingmouth.com/2010/02/24/leverage-arbitrage/ I previously noted now well Republicans work collectively right now. Part of this is because Republicans are a more ideological party than Democrats today. They are also able to enforce discipline within the party quite well as a minority, especially considering that as the opposition it eliminates any specific need ... http://www.murderingmouth.com/2010/02/23/the-senate/ An interesting thought reading some of Kunstler's archives recently, on the financial impact of Y2K: As it turned out, very little happened on New Years Day, 2000. Scoffers exulted in their righteous rightness. The truth, though, was that immense sums of money had been spent -- hundreds of billions worldwide -- ... http://www.murderingmouth.com/2010/02/21/y2k-and-the-internet-boom/