elva

for those of you who knew her, click the pic and tell me what you think

the elm on 11th street

it looked bad last season and over the last few months, it's bark split apart, so  i knew it was a goner---now it's been cut down

spi

gidewon's nightclub in the old buildings at p'tree & 12th has gotten the last of its permits---but the opponents won't give up, i am sure---there goes the neighborhood, they will tell you and they'll be looking for the least infraction as an excuse to have them shut down

there'll still be a vast sea of asphalt behind the building, but personally i'm looking forward to a little more activity on the streets

you might just look like a democrat

we could simplify the election process by eliminating all campaigning and just posting candidate's pictures for us to vote on:

The authors concluded that people possess "a general and imperfect" ability to infer political affiliation based on facial appearance, which is related to stereotypes about Democrat and Republican personalities. The ability to surmise other perceptually ambiguous traits, such as sexual orientation and religious group membership, has been reported in similar studies. . . . In a study published in Science in February 2009, subjects were able to predict from a pair of photos of faces alone which political figure would win an election. Even children could pick the winner when asked who they would prefer to be captain of their boat. And in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in November 2007, researchers linked competence perceived from a candidate’s face to his or her electoral success.

a car-centric city

atlanner can be a dreadful place to walk

our tax dollars at work

so while everybody was trashing shirley there toward the end, they forgot the huge thing she got accomplished: getting the overhaul of our sewer system underway-----two giant tunnels are being built, one out the utoy creek watershed and one out south river-----in huge rains that might otherwise overwhelm the system, these tunnels, which are each over a mile long, will serve as holding tanks for sewage

we may have a shitty transportation system but at least we won't have shitty rivers

pushing back

if you didn't see obama talking to the republican house retreat, you should watch this---not so much his opening remarks as the q&a afterwards

yikes

Given that coconut crabs can reach a weight of 14 kg (30 lbs) – roughly the weight of a four-year-old child – they represent the upper extent of how big terrestrial animals with exoskeletons can become in today’s atmosphere.

vanishing silence

And silence . . . is rapidly disappearing, even in the most remote places. He says there are fewer than a dozen places of silence—areas "where natural silence reigns over many square miles"—remaining in America, and none in Europe.

and light pollution is the "evil cousin" of noise ---

midtown and chainlink

night light

the loews has finally got some signage

diminished expectations

That doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between the parties, that everything would have been the same if McCain had won. But progressives are in the process of losing a big chance to change the narrative, and that’s largely because they have a leader who never had any inclination to do so.

i hope that is not true, but i'm afraid it is

the tunnel from hell

our intown representatives are earning their keep---they just introduced this bill

Code Section 32-2-80 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to public-private partnerships entered into by the Department of Transportation, is amended by adding a new subsection to read as follows: (f) The department shall not issue any request for proposal or enter into any contract under this Code section that calls for the construction of a tunnel to aid in the mitigation of traffic congestion in this state.

toys

tempting, until you read the pcworld review----actually i just want to feel one right now---perhaps that would be enough

skeevy

so the guy that posed as a pimp and doctored tapes in an attempt to ruin acorn's reputation has been arrested for attempting to wiretap a senator's telephone in a federal bldg

he is in deep doo-doo

check out his compatriots

so you hate atlanta?

a native son makes a point:

"I just can't stand this suburban attitude about the whole thing."

your personal infrastructure

Scientists have claimed people should remove old copper pipes from their homes or install special filters because the metal has been shown to build up in their bodies and cause serious health problems.

i was so happy with my new copper pipes on sinclair avenue, cause it meant no more brown water from the rusty galvanized pipes, which were a great advance over lead pipes, which were a great advance over wooden pipes, plus plastic just seems like a cheap substitute

it just goes to show you, don't it? 

pure joy

after 8 days in the rubble

go get 'em, ken

Somewhere just after 12:30 p.m. on a cold Wednesday this month, the image of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as a Western pragmatist and wily political deal-maker evaporated in a cloud of heated rhetoric. After months of doing battle with the oil and gas industry, the typically cautious Salazar lost his cool in a media call Jan. 6, blasting companies for acting like they were "kings of the world" and treating the country's public lands as their own personal "candy store."

it would paradise if it weren't for the traffic . . . .

this is just sad:

Tracks were being laid in front of the Metro Atlanta Chamber this week so Georgians could see an actual light rail car — making a stop in town for a couple of days. The light rail vehicle, which also can operate as a streetcar, was on its way to Charlotte, N.C. as part of the North Carolina city’s second phase of its public transit system.

just as birmingham and every other southern city got toasted by us in the 60s and 70s, now we're watching charlotte, nashville, houston, and dallas doing what they need to do, while we stagnate---that's what happens when the yahoos are in charge

although hope springs eternal and all---as i told a friend: surely all of our elected officials can't be clueless----

lobby fire wall

only in new york i guess---

a maestro at work

twilight of the republic

In opening the floodgates for corporate money in election campaigns, the Supreme Court did not simply engage in a brazen power grab. It did so in an opinion stunning in its intellectual dishonesty.

thank god that bush didn't appoint any of those damn activist judges

cottonwoods on juniper

i fergot to post this yesterday

nevermore

for the first time in 60 years, nobody left cognac and roses for his birthday, january 19

damn the republicans

i want to see obama and the democrats govern like their predecessors did: to hell with "bipartisanship"

The seismic events of the last few days ends, in some respects, the phony war of the first year of Obama's presidency. As is the case in truly fracturing democracies, the opposition simply does not and cannot accept the fact that it is out of power. The incoherence of the opposition to Obama - that he is both Jimmy Carter and Adolf Hitler, as Stephen Colbert pointed out last night - reveals the irrationality of the hate. It began immediately on the FNC/RNC right. And the ferocity of the campaign against Obama, the sheer dickishness of the GOP and its acolytes, the total oppositionism to everything he has done and indeed anything he might do... suggests that any hope for some kind of cooperation from this rump is impossible. . . . This is about a cynical nihilist attempt to break this presidency before it has had a chance to do what we elected it to do by a landslide vote. It is an attempt to destroy a majority's morale, to break a president's foreign policy autonomy, to prevent engagement in the Middle East peace process, to stop action on climate change, to restore torture, to increase tensions with the Muslim world, to launch a war on Iran. We cannot delude ourselves that if Obama fails, this is not the alternative. It is.

jobs i wouldn't want. . .

dex is a brave little cat—one of the only things i've ever seen that sends him skeetering for cover is the window washers---

another gift from bush's supreme court

The Thursday morning decision represents a rare moment of judicial activism from the conservative Supreme Court, which upends a century of law and replaces the current regime of campaign finance regulations with the opinions of five Supreme Court Justices. . . . "The majority's approach to corporate electioneering marks a dramatic break from our past. Congress has placed special limitations on campaign spending by corporations ever since the passage of the Tillman Act in 1907... We have unanimously concluded [in 1982] that this 'reflects a permissible assessment of the dangers posed by those entities to the electoral process'... and have accepted the 'legislative judgment that the special characteristics of the corporate structure require particularly careful regulation... The Court today rejects a century of history when it treats the distinction between corporate and individual campaign spending as an invidious novelty born' in a 1990 opinion."

we're in deep shit if congress doesn't fix this now---

update: and that may not be possible

peachtree streetcars?

i don't think it's gonna happen by the end of 2012, as this piece says, but the peachtree streetcar has a better chance of happening than any other progressive mode of transportation being discussed in this godforsaken state

we're #1!

or at least the advocate has designated atlanner the gayest city in america---wha????

Georgia isn’t the most gay-friendly state, but Atlanta is undoubtedly our gayest city—with 29 gay bars here, there’s a reason it’s dubbed Hotlanta. Atlanta’s several queer events include one of the nation’s largest Prides in October (returning to Piedmont Park this year), and MondoHomo, a May event celebrating art, drag, burlesque, film, and BBQ. The gay epicenter is Midtown, anchored by Outwrite Books, a giant gay bookstore bucking the national trend—by staying in business! . . . . These cities where everyday gays live—towns and boroughs with a mix of baby carriages, gay bars, and B&Bs—signal the continuing movement of gay people into mainstream American life, which in turn also signals an eventual end to lists like this. In 10 years or so every Main Street USA will probably be too gay to measure. Won’t that be nice?

guinness smells spring

58 degrees, clear blue sky, breeze from the wsw at 8---nice

mlk

so much for the diet

this is the last of a perfect storm of eating this weekend: friday it was bangladeshi on buford hwy (monthly get-together with some friends), last night walked up the street  to gordon biersch (in the rain with some new-found friends and fellow old building "enthusiasts," shall we say, tonight with an extravagant home-made dinner in morningside (helping to entertain visitors from the nether reaches of america)

i feel a little bloated and distended

earthquake relief

i guess mass production would destroy the value, plus we might run out of pins

a ruined city

with bodies piling up in the streets of port-au-prince, it's hard to think about the city itself with virtually every major landmark destroyed---begun in 1882, the cathedral was the tallest building in the city, so that it was impossible to get lost in the city---it may be reconstructed but it won't be restored---likewise the presidential palace, which was designed in 1912 by a haitian architect and completed in 1920---what a mess----at least the heart of new orleans survived intact

do it

maybe this is the silver lining:

PARIS – France on Friday urged Haiti's creditors to speed efforts to cancel the impoverished Caribbean nation's debt, a stranglehold that began two centuries ago when Napoleon demanded reparations for the island's independence. In 1825, France demanded 150 million francs in gold as reparations for lands lost by former slave owners. Haiti took massive loans from American, German and French banks at exorbitant rates of interest to pay back France.

what is the matter with these people?

first it's robertson and his nonsense---now limbaugh saying Obama's call to action to help Haiti was nothing but something "they" will "use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community, in both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It's made to order for them"---that was right before he actively discouraged appeals for donations, saying "We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax."

then i noticed last night as i flipped around the teevee that fox was going on with their usual blather---which turned out to, in fact, be the case the whole evening----

maybe they didn't want everybody to get too depressed watching a huge disaster unfold---or maybe they're just assholes

reminds me of katrina

think about what you eat

The chicken and pork industries have wrought unprecedented changes in bird and swine flu. Billions could die in a deadly flu pandemic, the likes of which we have never seen. -- Greger very clearly delineates how a virus begins, mutates, and becomes dangerous. As with so many problems we are seeing lately -- environmental or health -- factory farmed meat seems to be a big part of the cause. . . . It is time for humans to remove their heads from the sand and recognize the risk to themselves that can arise from their maltreatment of other species.

which is one reason i won't eat meat

the devil is us

wanna know why haiti is so messed up, nevermind the earthquake? go here and follow the links

"the gop-fnc merger"

I watched two minutes of palin's debut on fox last night and wanted to break the teevee

Think of the TV in Iran and you'll get the fuller picture.

haiti deserved it. . .

per pat robertson, at least----

Televangelist Pat Robertson said Wednesday that earthquake-ravaged Haiti has been "cursed" by a "pact to the devil." . . . . they got together and swore a pact to the devil.. . . and ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other" . . .

what a worthless excuse for a human being---

here's to you mrs. robinson . . .

 scandal in ulster---is homophobia bringing down a government?

The investigation into Iris Robinson's past would surely not have happened had she not gone on national radio to declare that gays were perverted abominations.

you can depend on it: the loudest homophobes are invariably enormous hypocrites

going for broke

I understand, but reject, certain religious teachings that denounce homosexuality as morally wrong, illegitimate, or unnatural; and I take strong exception to those who argue that same-sex relationships should be discouraged by society and law. Science has taught us, even if history has not, that gays and lesbians do not choose to be homosexual any more than the rest of us choose to be heterosexual. To a very large extent, these characteristics are immutable, like being left-handed. And, while our Constitution guarantees the freedom to exercise our individual religious convictions, it equally prohibits us from forcing our beliefs on others. I do not believe that our society can ever live up to the promise of equality, and the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, until we stop invidious discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

that's from ted olson, and you really need to read the whole thing---he's a veteran of both the reagan and the bush2 administrations, where he was solicitor general, but is now leading the arguments before the circuit court in support of overturning prop 8 as unconstitutional---he's going for the whole shooting match, too, by arguing equal protection under the 14th amendment---andrew sullivan points out:

Olson is different - a man of impeccable establishment conservative credentials who sees the injustice and perversity of singling out gay couples for truly punitive government discrimination.

this could be our brown vs. board of education if it goes to the supreme court

peggy

a great lady has died

math's "most beautiful structure"

Mathematicians discovered a complex 248-dimensional symmetry called E8 in the late 1800s. The dimensions in the structure are not necessarily spatial, like the three dimensions we live in, but they correspond to mathematical degrees of freedom, where each dimension represents a different variable.

now they've seen it in the real world---

i wish that i could say that i even begin to understand mathematics

read frank rich . . .

. . . then go out and slap a bankster

What we don’t know will hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.

. . . and after you have finished that, start squealing at your congressional representatives to fix the regulations that the republicans (with the connivance of the dems) tore up over the last twenty-five years

aging

There is no doubt that the gay community, like our whole American culture, is youth-oriented. Accordingly, too many young people view the prospects of aging with aversion. But I think they are wrong to think that way. So let me list a few of what seem to me are the advantages of growing older. Here are five. There are others.

cotton states exposition

a friend just gave me an original edition of new york state's report on the 1895 cotton states & international exposition at piedmont park---some great  renderings by bradford gilbert, who directed design of most of the buildings, and excellent images, some new (to me)---also details of the buildings that i hadn't seen before---e.g., they were all wooden, and most had shingled exteriors, stained grey, with "moss-green" roofs and "dull white" trim---the mineral and forestry building was built with several varieties of raw wood, left in its (more-or-less) natural state---the electric lights were a huge hit

thnx, sara

still winter

normally we would have highs around 50 and lows just above freezing---instead we might get above freezing for a high tomorrow---

i have been trying to decide which i like better, weatherwise: the dog days of august or this freezn-ass-cold january

liberty and justice for all

portugal will soon be the sixth country in europe to legalize same-sex marriage

snowing in atlanner

we're actually having a small child's portion of snow this evening---but it's enough to close the airport for outbound flights---might get an inch or two when it's done

it's a dog's life

the homeless dogs in moscow know a thing or two about survival, including how to use the subway to get around

winter sunrise

calling grandma

Long suspected of causing brain tumors, mobile phones are now being eyed as key allies in the fight against Alzheimer's disease, US researchers said Wednesday in a study.

mocking the 2010 census

negro is on the census form this year? really

"child at 2"

wonderful stuff from june corley, an old neighbor on sinclair (now in alabama)---

nice light

walking home in this weather gets the blood flowing but i really like the light

the ponce

for at least four years, the ponce has had scaffolding around the entire street side, covering the sidewalks i think because of fears of falling building parts---some of the terra cotta is not in good shape, but i guess that's been fixed (or they got a different lawyer) since they've taken the scaffolding down---this isn't the first time there have been problems with the building: the balconies on the tower ends of the building were removed decades ago and in the early 80s some philistine developer ripped out all the original windows and replaced them with single sheets of laminated glass---it's still one of the city's best old buildings (and the belevederes are an awesome place for a halloween party, i can attest)

brrrr

some critters really don't like the cold, like the iguanas in florida falling out of the trees

driving america

the number of automobiles in this country actually went down last year--- now that is news

The size of the U.S. car fleet dropped by a hefty four million vehicles to 246 million, the only large decline since the U.S. Department of Transportation began modern recordkeeping in 1960. Americans bought only 10 million cars – and sent 14 million to the scrapyard.

there is hope

crapulent architecture redux

twice as tall as the empire state building, burj dubai is open and, they claim, 90% soon to be occupied --- whatever, it looks like they had some mighty fine fireworks

too cold

18 or some such ridiculous temperature this morning---saw 14 (and maybe snow) in the forecast for later in the week---that's entirely too cold---first time i've seen the pool frozen up

farming detroit

what a great idea

the old, the new, the crapulous

having already deacessioned the chia obama, we now have ready a lot containing 84 books, a small rotisserie oven, a box of doo-dads, and approximately three cubic feet of clothes, most of which are not yet ready for the rag mill

won't goodwill be happy?

i really like the emptier spaces that remain

hear, hear

When we look at job loss [as a factor in the commercial real estate downtown] don't delude yourself that it's purely recession-induced, ... if the only thing we have is a bunch of empty space that you can get cheap, and our unemployment rate is higher than the national average, which it is... folks, that is a road to nowhere. We have to have a governor that embraces Atlanta and tells the legislature to get off this 'two Georgia' stuff. It's old. [emphasis added]
gellerstedt is ceo of cousins properties and knows whereof he speaks----atlanta is stagnating

remembering the naughts

Don't forget the naughts, because this decade, no matter what anyone on the right might say, was conservatism on trial. You want less taxes? You got less taxes. You want less regulation? You got less regulation. Open markets? Wide open. An illusuion of security in place of rights? Hey, presto. You want unlimited power given to military contractors so they can kick butt and take names? Man, we handed out boots and pencils by the thousands. Everything, everything, that ever showed up on a drooled-over right wing wish list got implemented -- with a side order of Freedom Fries. . . . What did we get for it? We got an economy in ruins, a government in massive debt, unending war, and the repudiation of the world. There's no doubt that Republicans want you to forget the last decade, because if you remember... if you remember when you went down to the water hole and were jumped by every lunacy that ever emerged from the wet dreams of Grover Norquist and Dick Cheney, well, it's not likely that you'd give them a chance to do it again.

of course we, being americans, will forget, although maybe not for another generation or so

blue moon eclipse

too foggy to see anything here, but . . . .

"the lost decade"?

another indication of how much the last decade sukd:

For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different.The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation's growth.

but, hey, the rich got their tax cuts and everything under the shining sun got deregulated, so the rest of us just need to adjust

the day after

dog was a little droopy today

kineticistic

the flashy wall at whatever it is at 12th and p'tree is kinda cool even if it looks a little like a crazed clown in this vid----guinness found it noteworthy, but he tends to do a lot of window shopping

happy new year, y'all

save the swamps!

From the Florida Everglades to the bluffs overlooking the Deschutes River in Oregon, conservationists are snapping up prime property for preservation, often at a fraction of what the asking price was at the real estate market’s height.