Quoted without comment

D-squared::"The great thing about the market mechanism, of course, is that when it kills a million people, it doesn't leave fingerprints."

Strolling in the garden

A bit of inside Batlimore media baseball: Marc Steiner is no longer with WYPR. Bad for them and us. Good for us is that he's figured out that he can do his own podcasts which he releases through the auspices of his Center for Emerging Media. If you're a Wire fan then you should check out his series of related podcasts. All the usual faces are there including David Simon and Ed Burns. Also included are some interviews with cast members who are Baltimore natives. Rock on....

One Park

I've been keeping a somewhat suspicious eye on the new Open Society Institute blog that is supposed to share big ideas about how to fix the city. This week's posting by Steve Ziger is interesting: make a big park through and around Baltimore. It seems like a great idea, but also raises a bunch of questions. Mine, in no particular order, are these: how do you police that space? Much of the green space in Baltimore has been used for illicit activity at least as much as it has for the kinds of recreation that Ziger mentions. Also, where does the land for this green space come from? And who is it for? Who manages it? Are parks for the middle class going to destroy urban neighborhoods in the 2000's the way interstate highways and urban renewal have in decades past? Are they another public/private partnership that winds up being a big giveaway to some management company?

Also, I wonder what happens to heritage resources (historic buildings, archaeology sites, and so forth). Baltimore hasn't been doing so well with managing them these days, and I wonder how a large parks system would deal with the roundhouse on Falls Road, or an industrial heritage site.

Anyway, I don't wanna diss too hard, because I do like the idea, but I do hope that folks think it through a bit.

I can only summarize this with sound effects

So I won't bother... Read it, you know?

I'm breathing easier too...

Rodger Payne at the Duck on the (unlikely existence of) suitcase nukes.

This is How the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Rolls on Halloween

Photographic proof that Chuck Hagel can have just as much fun as the next guy...

Song for the day before the Day of the Dead

Or just a song for the dead, and not gratefully, no not just one tiny bit. Happy Halloween everybody.

Once were Linus....

Just damn insightful.

(link fixed...)