Ape Man

Tyler Cowen says…
The housing sector is down twenty percent and the price of oil is flirting with $90 a barrel, maybe $100 to come. Yet the quarterly growth rate was just reported at 3.9%, led by surges in consumer spending and exports. It is wrong to think we have turned the corner, but [...]

This was originally going to be a response to a comment that Mr. Corbusier left on this post. But I got a little carried away so I decided to make it a post of its own.
Mr. Corbusier,
The quality of your response was far more than my off-the-cuff comment deserved. I only wish that I was [...]

Corbusier and I had (or are we having?) an exchange of views over at Articture + Morality on New Urbanism. I am re-posting something that I wrote in his comment section for the benefit of those who like to keep tabs on what I am up to.
Corbusier,
Thanks for the reply. I am sorry that it [...]

If you have been keeping awake as the talking heads drone on, you have probably heard of America’s problem with aging infrastructure. After all, we have had the levees break in New Orleans. We have had a bridge collapse in Minnesota. We have a major dam threatening to blow in Kentucky. Since all of these [...]

While Corbusier and I have some similar criticisms of New Urbanism he takes issue with my statement that New Urbanism is doomed to failure. He argues that New Urbanism should be considered successful because of its commercial success. As he puts it…
Although I’ve expressed skepticism on some of the results promised by proponents of New [...]

Every now and again, a poet will ask his audience for thoughts on his poem. This has always struck me as a vaguely indecent proposition. It’s rather as if someone stood before you fully clothed and asked for a commentary on their body. Technically all modesty is preserved, but it’s still a rather awkward request.
My [...]

Is the drop in shipping rates charged by oil tankers in the Middle East a sign that OPEC is not able to meet its production targets?
Is the low amount of shipping traffic coming into America’s ports just noise in the data or is it a sign that we are going to have a really bad [...]

This was cross posted over at Watching the Trades

Over at Architecture + Morality (they changed the “and” to the plus sign) Corbusier has a new post up called “What Makes a Community: The Problem of Property Ownership and New Urbanism.” As usual, Corbusier’s post is excellent and long overdue. (How come all the good writers [...]

This from the Brussels Journal….
In Belgium, unlike anywhere else in the world, the three official trade unions, not the state, pay unemployment benefits. Each year the government gives them the necessary funds and also pays them a fee for every unemployed person they cater for. The perverse result is that it is in the unions’ [...]

A while back an anonymous commenter tried to get me to react to this article in Slate. In the words of my anonymous commenter, “I just posted that to see your reaction to the educated class contemplating encouraging species suicide.”
I don’t know why this person wanted to bait me. I have posted numerous posts on [...]