From today’s NYT story about a once-gentrifying LA neighborhood now stagnating under the weight of the poor economy:
When Emily Cook, a screenwriter, bought a house four years ago in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood on the Northeast side of Los Angeles, she fantasized what the area might look like in a year or two, with cafes […]

For years, when I would talk to people who weren’t from around here and who expressed shock or disgust at how much it tends to snow in Syracuse, I would reassure them that Central New York had the best snow removal infrastructure in the world. Heck, I would brag about it, even. World’s […]

29 years ago today…

This is footage from ABC’s broadcast, but the audio was taken from live radio coverage (the game was not broadcast on TV live), so it’s a different ending than the famous “Do you believe in miracles!” but no less exciting. Check it out.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s getting on to three years since the New York Regional Interconnect project, the notorious NYRI, began to face resistance across a wide swath of Upstate New York, from Utica to Orange County. There was every reason to think that a divide-and-conquer strategy would work for the company, since […]

A couple months ago, I linked to an article by Dmitry Orlov called Closing the Collapse Gap: the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US. For those who’d like to read a sequel to that article, here’s an extreeeeeeemely long but interesting followup from Orlov, entitled Social Collapse Best Practices. (Again, […]

This post requires some background reading. Go read some recent posts on Sean Kirst’s blog about downtown (here and here), and all the comments. Then, when you are done with those, go to Syracuse B-4 and read her latest, and all the comments there. (Make a cup of coffee or pot of […]

You can hide the fire, but what you gonna do with the smoke? You can close Guantanamo Bay, but what are you going to do with the prisoners? Someone’s afraid that Attica is the new Gitmo:
Chautauqua County Legislator James Caflisch, R-French Creek, sponsored a motion in recent days that would signal the […]

I noticed the following confusing job title in a business roundup in the Post-Standard today: Director of Self-Directed Personal Services.
Just think about that for a second.
They’re “personal services,” but they’re also “self-directed,” so you’re apparently expected to handle them yourself, which implies you’re not exactly getting “personal service” (or indeed, “service” at […]

This morning at around 3 a.m. I woke up for no reason to see that my little Peek was flashing with a new message alert. Normally I would ignore it and go back to sleep, but decided to check. It was an ABC News Alert, which ordinarily isn’t really important news, but I […]

All those years that the Three Men held sway, didja ever want to imagine what sort of crap was caked-on in those Augean stables of Albany? The NYT takes a look at some of the “recently discovered” perks that Senate Republicans enjoyed during their long decades of power: a TV studio, a Senate-owned printing […]