To D,

Laconic version: City populations and city cultural influence can be seen as a exponential, rather than a linear, relationship.

Loquacious version: The weirdest conversations I’ve had as an urban planning major in college were with fellow student who had not come from the Center of the Universe™* and thus were somewhat miffed that I expressed something of a cavalier disdain for their hometowns. Read the rest of this entry »

Even with the stimulus, Obama hasn’t managed to outspend Bush for the timeframe.

And I really ought to backdate these posts. This is getting ridiculous.

Count the wrong on this cover of the National Review.

Reminds me of being in Cornell and suffering the blithering idiots of the Cornell Review – a right-wing rag whose first articles were written by none other than Ann Coulter, an undergrad at the time. They’d usually oppose any and all minority programs and initiatives that might dilute the school’s 89% white majority while turning a blind eye to hate crimes on campus.

Of which there were many.

‘Course, for some, the Review wasn’t conservative enough, and editors broke off and founded the Cornell American. Well, not so much broke off as started writing for both at the same time while denying any affiliation, so that they could then start debating minority initiatives from two sides at once.

And people wonder why there are school shootings.

The Iranian election, which from all accounts has had an unprecedentedly strong showing with an amazing 70% filing in, is called by Ahmadinejad two hours after polls closed in a surprising landslide victory for Ahmadinejad – odd, because sometimes it helps to actually count the votes. The opposition’s offices are forcibly shut down, and Moussavi and his family are ‘detained’ under house arrest, Ahmadinejad claims, for a “traffic ticket.” The inevitable backlash from enraged citizens who have taken to the streets is quite literally beaten back with, as the NYTimes put it, “robocops on motorcycles.”

The NYTimes calls it a “tense situation.”

Yeah, if an election was stolen before your very eyes by the encumbant and legitimized under the batons of the riot police, it would be a little “tense,” wouldn’t it?

‘Course, while the NYTimes and other papers equivocate such an obvious breach, I’m really kinda concerned most about the Daily Show’s Jason Jones.