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Mike is right that Boston’s buildings arent seismically sound, but the problem is more fundamental than that: the Back Bay, which has some of the city’s most beautiful housing as well as the Hancock and Prudential high-rise office buildings, got its name from the fact that it used to be part of the Charles River; [...]
Archive for April, 2009
April 7th, 2009
Category: Disasters
Just in case you think buildings that can’t survive earthquakes are only a problem in other countries with weak codes and corrupt enforcement, think again. Memphis and Boston are coming due for big shakes, and they are full of old masonry buildings that will cause hundreds, maybe even thousands, of deaths. I’m probably safer living [...]
April 7th, 2009
Category: Torture
…of this and the rest of the whole humiliating story. I’m ashamed as an American, as a citizen of a democracy where I can’t duck responsibility for government malfeasance, as a scholar of policy and governance, as a teacher, and as a parent. I’m ashamed to sit in the same faculty senate as John Yoo. [...]
April 6th, 2009
Category: Commerce and its discontents
Corporate managements should seek regulation if unfettered competition prevents them from offering socially optimal products.
April 6th, 2009
Category: Commerce and its discontents
Kevin Drum discusses legislation to outlaw phosphates in detergent (to protect waterways). A fun extra of the piece is a link to a blogger at Redstate salivating at the coming Great Times of vigilantes beating legislators to death, and armed rebellion, over this. But the line that rang a bell in my head was this, [...]
April 6th, 2009
Category: Disasters
unreinforced masonry buildings do. No earthquake ever hit anyone in the head or buried a child; forget about the earth opening up and swallowing people. It’s heavy stuff falling on you that kills, period. Piles of brick and stone with rooms in them in seismic zones are scheduled for demolition, either at a time chosen [...]
April 5th, 2009
Category: International Affairs
Obama says zero nuclear weapons is an (eventual) objective of US policy and that he will seek US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This is a greater reversal of Bush foreign and security policies than we have so far seen.
April 5th, 2009
Category: International Affairs
A man recently murdered in unusual circumstances in the Washington suburbs had a key role in the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999; we are on the watch for conspiracy theories as well as any actual facts that may point to the motive for the crime.
April 5th, 2009
Category: International Affairs
Yesterday’s New York Times cites competition with South Korea as a possible motive for the North’s weekend space launch attempt. Also, a reminder that a North Korean nuclear ICBM, even if it existed, would not pose a huge incremental threat to the US, compared to other delivery means that are available that would be more reliable and less detectable.