Editorial & Opinion
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Detroit’s Real Renaissance Center
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 18, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009The Powerhouse Project Draws International Attention To Detroit
Usually when one mentions the words “Detroit” and “Renaissance” together, one is referring to Detroit’s Renaissance Center, four 39-story towers which were originally a Ford Motor Company development project in the early 1970′s and are now owned by General Motors. As someone who grew up in nearby Ann Arbor, with its tree-lined streets, PhD-educated cab drivers, and insanely overpriced real estate, I’ve always sadly thought of Detroit in the same way I might think of Beirut: a slightly scary, bombed-out city that I might have to pass through to go elsewhere. At the same time, I’ve always held some hope for the place, in spite of its history of corrupt mayors and urban blight. I’ve always though that if Cleveland can do it, so can Detroit. Which is why the Powerhouse Project excites me. Although a small project initiated by a handful of people, it’s gaining international attention thanks to groups like Amsterdam’s Detroit UnReal Estate Agency. The basic story is that Detroit couple Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope bought a run-down house in northern Hamtramck (let’s start calling it “NoHam”!) for $1900.00 with the intention of building a mini green power grid in the neighborhood. The project has snowballed a little, so they’ve gotten considerable positive press. To learn more, check out this piece at ModeldMedia.com, this NYT Op-Ed piece, or the WFUM Radio segment The Upside Of Foreclosures, which has both a transcript and an audio stream. You can also visit the Powerhouse Project web site. Let’s go, Detroit! With inspired thinking like this, maybe we can avoid the Bushvilles of Sacramento!
Your Dog Did His Duty, Are You Doing Yours?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 17, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009The Straight Scoop On Plastic Bags And Poop
It struck me yesterday as I was walking the dog and picked up his “business” with a plastic bag that the same Liberal Elitists who who got the whole poop-scooping movement rolling probably never considered the unintended consequences. I was curious. How many dogs are there in America, and how much plastic goes un-recycled because of this practice? Doing some rough math, based on the idea that I can squish a plastic bag down to about a one-inch cube, I determined that we waste enough plastic this way to fill the first 26 floors of the Sears Tower. Which, as you can see, forced me to create one of the worst info-graphics ever. The fact remains that in spite of tremendous improvements in America’s recycling behaviour, we still only recycle an estimated 2 percent of the plastic bags we use daily. San Francisco was one of the first communities to tackle this problem head-on, but real action remains feeble nationwide. Interested in keeping your consumer behaviour green in general? Another big offender is cell phones; consider selling your discarded phones to GreenPhone.com. They claim that for every phone they buy, they plant a tree. You can also make smarter choices in the first place; EnergyStar.gov has been around for ages, and has plenty of great resources for consumers. And for businesses looking for greener computer hardware, there are resources like EPEAT.
Is The Wall Street Journal Relevant?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 14, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Saturday, March 14th, 2009I ran across the opinion piece Is Rand Relevant? yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, expecting something like an exploration of the question. Instead I got an Ayn Rand Institute marketing piece written by their shill, Yaron Brook (who’s also president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute). At the end of the Journal [...]
I ran across the opinion piece Is Rand Relevant? yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, expecting something like an exploration of the question. Instead I got an Ayn Rand Institute marketing piece written by their shill, Yaron Brook (who’s also president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute). At the end of the Journal piece, there’s an invitation to “Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum”. They then offer the opportunity to comment, letting you know that your comment will be reviewed by WSJ editors. Frankly, one may as well send a physical letter, given such an option. Combined with last week’s lambasting of Jim Kramer on the Daily Show, I got a fresh reminder of why corporate media is dying a slow death right now; more than ever it has become a marketing tool for special interests, and at a time when we have more access than ever to diverse sources of information. A year or two ago, I would’ve wanted to rant; now it just seems par for the course…
Monday Demotivators: The “Toss A Cat For No Reason” Mystery
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on March 8, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Sunday, March 8th, 2009Why Do Game Designers Enjoy Torturing Kittens?
Getting up and going to work on Monday morning is extremely over-rated, which is why every Monday, we bring you the Monday Demotivators that are meant to make you late once you do get up. To add insult to injury this week, here are Ten (probably useless) Geeky Tricks for Getting Out of Bed in the Morning, courtesy Wired.com. The list includes ingenius tips like “Go to bed when you’re tired” and “Pick out clothes the night before“. If those do work, here are 5 Reasons Why Sleeping In Every Day Will Boost your Productivity. Just go back to bed, will ya? Whenever you’ve managed to wake up, sit your butt back down here and enjoy the wonderful hand-picked games we never really try, but then eagerly recommend to you anyway. First up: after trying Don’t Look Back, well, I won’t. Designed with a slightly eerie, pixelated style and a moody synthesized cello soundtrack, at first I was a little intrigued. I gave up after about ten attempts at the first obstacle though. Nothing more demoralizing than getting killed by a pixelated snake ten times in a row. For a little pick-me-up, try the annoyingly loud Atomic Racer. Kind of like that “Easter Egg” Spyhunter game in Excel or something, except you have to get used to driving a car moving horizontally across the screen to blow up a nuclear transport. Not sure why that’s something one would want to do, but I guess these game developers don’t always have a grownup around to troubleshoot their concepts. Which would explain games like Kitty Throw, which although not quite as pointlessly brutal as the classic Kitten Cannon, still involves throwing a cat around for no particularly good reason. And they wonder what’s wrong with kids these days. Finally, if you at last ARE awake, and more amazingly still reading, try Electric Box, which actually requires that you do a little reading and thinking. Which is probably more than you would have accomplished by now if you’d gone to work. And cetainly more than I’ve accomplished by finding this crap for you. Happy Monday!
Time Is An Illusion, Lunchtime Doubly So
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 8, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Sunday, March 8th, 2009Who’s behind the daylight savings time conspiracy?
My concept of time was destroyed at a relatively early age, first by reading Ray Bradbury short stories
