Archive for August, 2008
Burning Bush
A solid column on warming policy from Carlos Pascual and Strobe Talbott. Given the threshold and tipping point nature of climate change, there really is an uneven time sensitivity involved. As the authors note, this time sensitivity is amplified by the persistence of infrastructure. If we have a short period of time to bring emissions [...]
Green Roofs
New York City is offering incentives to install them. Why might this make sense? Green roofs, for instance, absorb as much as 70 percent of the rain that might otherwise overwhelm the city’s sewage system during heavy downfalls and run directly in the East River, the Hudson River and New York Harbor. By diverting the [...]
Veeping
It really does look like it’s going to be Romney. Can that possibly be right? I’m scared to say anything about it for fear I might jinx the choice.
Bad News
Bad, bad, bad, bad news: Five climate scientists, four of them specialists on the Arctic, told The Associated Press that it was fair to call what was happening in the Arctic a “tipping point.†Last year was an unusual year when wind currents and other weather conditions coincided with global warming to worsen sea ice [...]
Anti-Fenty Unions
Really? Is this helpful? Aligning yourselves against a popular mayor who’s trying to continue hard reforms in the District by punishing gross incompetence? When everyone in the city is sick to death of the status quo, defending the status quo is not a good way improve people’s opinion of you.
Journamalism
Trying to get something helpful out of all this, let me just mention something. Let’s assume a well-intentioned journalist. Presumably that journalist is going to adhere to something like the standards of professional journalism in trying to deliver something approaching an impartial picture of reality. But these standards are outdated. We continue to learn more [...]
WTF
I’m sorry, guys, I’m trying to write more today, but my brain has been paralyzed by the ludicrous spectacle of everyone in journalism completely losing their shit. The media is warped, for real. Somehow voters are dumb enough to believe every last spam email forward, and yet they manage to watch and appreciate every last [...]
Private Infrastructure
Daniel Hall helpfully gathers together the links to which I’ll be referring on this post. Go read them, please, but I’ll tell you the bottom line. America needs a great deal of infrastructural investment–trillions of dollars worth. We need this to keep stuff from falling apart, to keep cities functioning (and get them functioning better), [...]
The Lines that Bind
Matt makes some good points about new numbers on the effectiveness of “interdistrict transfers” in providing disadvantaged students with better educational options. Let’s think about this, though: There’s been a spate of interest recently among progressives in doing more to promote the availability of “interdistrict transfers†that would let students shift out of their current [...]
Thank you, Hillary
This is the best.