friend of the built environment

Quite often, sport boosters try to paint themselves as the epitome of civic pride: they love their team, they support their city. This is often the root argument when tempers flare over sport-facility-based redevelopment projects. “We love our Downtown and we want to make it livlier with our team”.
Would that it were true. The reality [...]

A good interview with former German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder, which provides another good perspective that the mainstream media is simply failing to broadcast. An especially astute observation about why Russia matters to the West:
“I see Russia as part of Europe, more than as part of any other constellation…  And we in Germany and Europe should [...]

Why is it that most of the nurses I see outside of Winston Salem’s two large institutional hospitals are either obese or smoking or both? Shouldn’t anyone taking the hippocratic oath be required to first apply it to themselves?
How many years you expect it will be until no one bothers washing their hands at public [...]

“Who’s Your City” asks Richard Florida in his new book. Yes, it’s another Richard-Florida-bashing screed from your favorite uncreative classless git.
I’m probably more guilty of committing these sort of ‘city hunting’ atrocities - described by Florida as the most important thing a person will ever do. I’m aware, however, that this habit of mine is [...]

Courtesy of Amber, a nice, easy-to-read overview of the stinky stuff happening on Wall Street

Ah… It’s nice that there’s someone putting money into this building - and a lot of it by the looks of the window treatments.
The Armoury was a place used by operative governments for the purpose of storing weapons that kill and maim people. But we, as free and enlightened sodomites, are taught to make use [...]

It’s not very surprising that so many Americans are such fans of the “Drill Now! Drill Everywhere” mentality to ’solving’ gas prices. Most people know nothing about market economics and this also explains why so many people continue to puff up over ‘price gouging’ and other conspiracy theories.
See, there’s these two countries called China and [...]