Drilling through my RSS feeds today I fell back in love with the Strange Maps blog. A wonderful collection of cartographical curiosities; I had forgotten how much I enjoyed reading it.
This particular selection details federal ownership of land across the United States. Private ownership-loving America holds about 30% of it’s total landmass in federal hands. [...]
Who owns the Western United States? 07.02.08
McCains: Why cut taxes when you can just evade them? 06.29.08
San Diego Country isn’t happy with the McCain family. Turns out, one of the many trusts that administers one of their seven homes hasn’t paid taxes in four years. McCain’s trust scrambled to pay nearly all of the outstanding debt to the county. $1,742 of a total $6,744.42 remains.
If that seems like an [...]
CEOs for Cities report: “Driven to the brink” 05.06.08
A striking graph from the CEOs for Cities report, “Driven to the brink” on gasoline prices and land use planning. (press release and full document).
(via Steve Davis at Smart Growth around America).
The Economics of Time Travel 04.11.08
Really neat post about transtemporal economics at Agoraphilia. What would trade through time look like? Glen Whitman looks at migration and time travel:
If wages are expected to be higher in the future, then once the cost of time travel falls low enough, we can expect people to start migrating in large numbers into the future [...]
Politics Has Lost Control of “Rogue Economics” 04.06.08
Loretta Napoleoni, Italian economist and Fulbright Scholar, has a new book that’s piqued my interest. Her appearance on Democracy Now this week finished with me very interested in her book. [Full Transcript] Napoleoni defined rogue economics at the start of her interview with Amy Goodman:
Rogue economics is a sort of umbrella under which we find [...]
LINKS 00009 03.10.08
[Globalization and Robots Edition]
Lessons from the 1000 years of history of trade and war - “One striking feature of today’s international economy is that, as in the 19th century, regions with very different factor endowments are being drawn into closer contact with each other, as what used to be known as the Third World opens [...]
Information is cheap(er) 02.14.08
Felix Salmon highlights the declining price of knowledge:
Cost of sequencing Craig Venter’s genome: $3 billion, over 10 years
Cost of sequencing James Watson’s genome: $1 million, over 2 months
Cost of sequencing an anonymous African’s genome: $100,000, over 1 month
Costly fuel means costly food 01.20.08
I watched the Calgary Flames beat the L.A. Kings with some friends at the Saddledome on Friday. Afterwards, the conversation among my fellow hockey-goers turned to peak oil and the cost of living… naturally.
When talk of the sharply rising price of food and potential mass starvation and food crises came up there were incredulous [...]
Links 00003 01.12.08
Calgary’s just released Economic Development Strategy - Rather progressive report outlining recommendations for the future of Calgary. Like most sensible reports they receive, the City government will likely ignore it.
The origins of the Federation of North American City States - Speculative social fiction from All About Cities
Original SimCity goes open source! - Blast [...]
Carbon Trading Lecture at UofC [Event] 01.10.08
Larry Lohmann, the editor of “Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power”, an exhaustively-documented new book critiquing “carbon trading” is speaking in Calgary on January 14th.
He argues that carbon trading is an ineffective method for reducing carbon emissions.
I believe that carbon trading IS an effective, available, and actionable approach to reducing [...]
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