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This is rather well put: "By 2002, the New York Times reports that, thanks to changes in the tax code during the Bush administration, an eligible buyer can deduct $34,912 of the $48,800 base price of the Hummer … In retrospect they were the perfect emblem of the Bush interregnum, a totem of entitlement, profligacy, social and personal insecurity, militarism as a form of consumption, and absolute pretension"
links for 2009-05-30
31-May-09
links for 2009-05-29
30-May-09
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The BBC 'News' website is apparently now a vehicle for pub marketing campaigns. Good to know.
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"Pupils from the richest neighbourhoods in England are twice as likely to go to university as those from the poorest homes, data analysed by the Conservatives reveals.
The Tories argue this proves the £2.3bn spent each year persuading working-class children to apply to university is largely fruitless."
Classic 'New Tories'. Point to existence of a social problem as proof that anything the state does to try and reduce that problem "doesn't work", then call for cuts.
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"The anti-gay-marriage soundbite, by contrast, makes no attempt at persuasion. It's like saying you oppose the Bush tax cuts because "I believe the top tax rate should be 39.6 percent." You believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman? Okay! But why?
The ubiquity of this hollow formulation tells us something about the state of anti-gay-marriage thought. It's a body of opinion held largely by people who either don't know why they oppose gay marriage or don't feel comfortable explicating their case…"
links for 2009-05-28
29-May-09
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Rob analyses i-Neighbors.org, a website intended to bring together residents of the same real-world neighbourhoods online. This is the kind of thing I'm always saying there should be more of, so it's interesting to see why it didn't work. The main problem as I see it is that in trying to ensure active participation the site effectively discourages passing traffic, which reduces the content available, makes search more difficult and makes engagement more demanding so that the online groups never reach critical mass.
links for 2009-05-27
28-May-09
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First of a series of posts on the proposed redevelopment of Dharavi slum in Mumbai. As Katia says, it's "a microcosm and a test case of whether there will be any space for the poor in tomorrow’s global cities."
links for 2009-05-26
27-May-09
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I think I'm in love.
Climate change: global cause and effect
26-May-09
Two maps of the world. The top one varies country size by the amount of their carbon emissions. The lower one varies country size by the expected increase in mortality rates resulting from climate change. Notice anything?
I’m having difficulty seeing the moral or economic objections to taking the clear, achievable steps necessary to avoid these kind of consequences or something even worse.
Link from Ezra Klein.
links for 2009-05-24
25-May-09
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Easterly asks: Please tell me which you think is more probable:
(A) a country succeeds at economic development, or
(B) a country succeeds at economic development with a wise and capable leadership.But isn't the question ambiguous? If (B) means 'a country succeeds at economic development AND has a wise and capable leadership', then basic probability says (A) is more likely because Pr(A)>PR(A)xPR(B). But if (B) means 'a country succeeds at economic development GIVEN a wise and capable leadership' then we have PR(A|B) which could be higher. Or am I missing something?
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Now there's a provocative thought:
"In his book Intelligence and How to Get It, cognitive psychologist Richard Nisbett concludes that “much, if not most, of the gap in academic achievement between lower- and higher-SES children, in fact, is due to the greater summer slump for lower-SES children”
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"An aide to the mayor said: "It was pretty awful. They were shaken up and Boris was shocked. But it makes the case even more for his super highways.""
It also makes the case for banning that lorry driver and actually enforcing the rules of the road on the rest of them, but I don't suppose that policy lesson is likely to sink in.
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Yglesias on the weird lack of interest in the violence wrought by climate change: "If it were announced that the United States of America was planning on dumping a load of poison on the Carteret Islands rendering them uninhabitable, I think even Sen. James Inhof of Oklahoma would be spurred to action. Certainly I doubt that you'd see a Blue Dog member of the House whining that since the poison factory is located in his district, he doesn't see how we can possibly afford to stop producing the poison. Libertarians wouldn't be arguing that the pristine logic of the free market grants companies the right to poison other people's islands."
links for 2009-05-23
24-May-09
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Findings from neuroscience are starting to reveal how our brains respond to different features of design and architecture.
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Marvellous story about building standards for cat and dog homes: "In their studies, HOK found that daylight was the biggest factor in making dogs and cats calmer and therefore more adoptable. Under LEED, points can be garnered by having daylighting and views. Skylights help dogs know the patterns of the sun. Cats thrive when they have a window to look out of, preferably if there's a bird feeder outside (cat TV)."
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"More Africans want democracy — and more think they're getting it, according to an influential survey co-founded by Michigan State University.
But the latest findings from the Afrobarometer also show the number of African citizens fully committed to a democratic government remains under 50 percent and that demand for democracy still varies widely among African nations."
links for 2009-05-22
23-May-09
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Backhanded progress of a sort.
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Apparently, Bill Easterly thinks all politicians always choose the worst option, everywhere and everyhow. The man is turning into some tenured version of Tim Worstall.
links for 2009-05-21
22-May-09
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Excellent on the pros and cons of cap and trade, and this is a great point: "think about how hard it would be to verify whether China was really implementing a promise to tax carbon emissions, as opposed to letting factory owners with the right connections off the hook. By contrast, it would be fairly easy to determine whether China was holding its total emissions below agreed-upon levels."
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Great post, again. "I remember being initiated into the press lobby at Westminster and being quite shocked by all the etiquette and procedures. To ask the question "why?" was to show yourself up as naive and unworldly."
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Interesting post about using computer simulations to inform planning consultation. I've seen much less sophisticated tools in the past and the effect of being able to see the impact of your choices and having to choose trade off different preferences is really impressive. But as this post says, it's vital that the relationships behind the GUI are transparent.
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Californian politics are a good argument against the value of direct democracy, but then California's status as a very nice place is a good argument against the importance of politics.
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Nice piece about the pleasure garden that preceded the dilapidated Market Estate in Islington.
links for 2009-05-20
21-May-09
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Could see this catching on in London …
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Nice overlay of historic and land-use maps of LA and NYC on Google Maps.
links for 2009-05-12
13-May-09
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The thing about fascists is that very often they are complete fuckwits.
links for 2009-05-09
10-May-09
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High speed rail sounds nice, but not at any cost and not if it only goes to bloody Wormwood Scrubs
links for 2009-05-08
09-May-09
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Nice introduction: "A comedian who had a walk-on part in the Rutles film spoof of the Beatles is poised to deliver a 60-seat super-majority to the Democrats in the Senate as President Barack Obama consolidates his grip on the levers of power."
London bomb damage map
08-May-09
Yersinia Pestis has photographed all the old WW2 bomb damage maps from the London County Council archives, transferred them to flickr, and made this nifty Google map marking some but not all of the strike sites.
View V2 rockets on London in a larger map
Apart from telling a story of great human tragedy, the pattern of these bomb strikes persists in London’s idiosyncratic urban mix to this day, in that the sites were very frequently used for the construction of social housing estates in the post-war decades. Some of these estates have suffered from poor design, construction or management ever since, and social housing in general has become more ‘residualised’ as access has been rationed to the most needy cases. Combine that with the fact that the bombers generally tried to target the kind of areas of heavy manufacturing that have also suffered the worst job losses since the war, and you have a lot of places that stand out as pockets of lasting deprivation, more than 60 years after the bombs hit.
Coincidentally, a new edition of Phyllis Pearsall’s original London A to Z from 1936 has just been published, and there’s an accompanying online map viewer which enables you to see some of the areas that suffered during the war, such as the stretch between Moorgate and Long Lane now occupied by the Barbican centre.
links for 2009-05-06
07-May-09
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Superb piece.
links for 2009-05-03
04-May-09
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If I'm reading Tim O'Toole's remarks here right, he's saying that the Tube signal upgrades wouldn't have caused so much disruption if the detail of the PPP contract hadn't forced closures, unlike the arrangements in Madrid. Which, if true, would be a bit of a scandal.
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Shockingly, it looks like Simon Jenkins has been talking bollocks again.