Events

Instead of a bunch of stoplights and crosswalks—and a bunch of accidents involving pedestrians—the village of Poyndon, 20 km north of Manchester, created shared space at its busiest crossroads: Now, a year after construction wrapped up, a video called "Poynton Regenerated" makes the case that the shared space scheme maintains a smooth flow of traffic while simultaneously making the village center a more attractive and safer place for pedestrians, leading to increased economic activity downtown. In the...

Back in November, Chicagoans voted to buy electricity in the aggregate from Integrys rather than the quasi-public utility Exelon. As predicted, the big savings only lasted a few months: And Chicago, where residents saw their first electric-bill savings this month under a 5.42-cent-per-kilowatt-hour deal completed in December with Integrys, will see its energy savings shaved to just 2 percent. ComEd's new price is not yet official. But utility representatives have filed their new energy price of 4.6...

First, TPM on why the FAA closed contract towers and how this is in fact the fault of the very people complaining about them: Sequestration is hitting the Department of Transportation like almost every other cabinet-level department. But unlike other departments, most of its employees work for one agency — the Federal Aviation Administration — and most of that agency’s employees are air traffic controllers. Because of that, sequestration is forcing FAA to furlough employees, institute a hiring freeze...

Wrapping up my day, reading irrelevancies and trivia online, I had occasion to Google one of my favorite lines, "Better a witty fool than a foolish wit." I am horrified and saddened to report that the first site in the search results was "No Fear Shakespeare," to which I refuse to link out of love for the English language. Orwell was right, as always: Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must...

In honor of the new year, here's a round-up of today's unexpected news items: Usability expert Jakob Nielsen advocates usability features for cats. Google has announced a scratch-and-sniff app for your Android device. Virgin America will acquire Alitalia. Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage will leave the series next season. Updates as the situation warrants.

Paul Krugman takes a quiet moment to meditate on the economy: If you think the problem is that wages are too high, your solution is that we need to meaner to workers — cut off their unemployment insurance, make them hungry by cutting off food stamps, so they have no alternative to do whatever it takes to get jobs, and wages fall. If you think the problem is the zero lower bound on interest rates, you think that this kind of solution wouldn’t just be cruel, it would make the economy worse, both because...

Not only does my time evaporate into multiple projects these days, but the number of context switches I've experienced over the past few days hurts. Here's today's timesheet: Yeah, but I shoot with this hand. I worked from home Wednesday so that I could jam on some documentation. How'd that work out? Blogging, by the way, helps me switch contexts. I think.

Something about the Seder I went to last night and the marriage equality cases currently before the Supreme Court got me thinking along these lines: The wise son asks, "What are the statutes, the testimonies, and the laws that the Constitution has commanded you to do?" To the wise son, you say: The 14th Amendment gives every citizen equal protection under the law. The 10th Amendment reserves powers to the States that aren't specifically granted to the Federal Government. And the First Amendment...

Via Sullivan, a description of how Maxwell House Coffee got its brand on 50 million Passover tables: Maxwell House decided to publish a book, specifically a Haggadah, and offer it to customers for free with the purchase of a can of coffee. (A Haggadah recounts the Exodus from Egypt, comprised of prayers, songs, and stories which guide the Passover Seder.) The Maxwell House edition was an instant hit. Today, it’s the most popular Haggadah in the world, with over 50 million printed. Why has this piece of...

Yeah, it's Passover. Time for this: Same people who brought you this last year: