Flight from.... Dunlap!?!

A few years back a young family moved out of the West Bluff, to Dunlap, hoping for green pastures, better schools, and nicer neighbors. Well... I learned today that they have had enough of Dumlap and are moving back to the West Bluff!! All is not sweet up the big rock candy mountain.

Hoowah !

Ethanol

If Ethanol is a viable fuel, doesn't it make sense to curb sprawl, in order to maximize the growing potential. Brazil has had a lot of success with it. Doesn't curbing sprawl, in so many ways, begin to look like a national security issue?! The less sprawl we have, the less oil we use. The less sprawl we have the more fields we have available to grow Ethanol generating crops.

Brazil unveils nuclear enrichment plant

Brazil recently unveiled its own nuclear enrichment plant. Yes.. the same sort that Iran is using. Like Iran, Brazil also refused full inspections. The IAEA let Brazil off, being satisfied to inspect the uranium going in and the uranium coming out.

Nothing to worry tho, there is no oil in Brazil. No double standard here. Nothing to see, move along. There is a lot of Ethanol tho......

Phoney War III

The beginnings of World War I were underwealming. Archduke gets shot. Declarations of War are tossed around and.... the crickets chirp... and chirp ... and chirp. There were headlines of it all being a phoney war. Back in those days it took a bit longer for militaries to mobilize but still... there seemed to be a lot of sitting around in the beginning....


So George Bush says today that we are in World War III ... yes folks it is here because George Bush says so. Does it feel like a war? Seriously... yes we see news about Iraq nightly. Clearly a good many of our soldiers are in harms way. They certainly are in a military conflict. Soldiers are dying... but as a country we are hardly mobilized. There is something phoney about it....

Hercules California vs Wal-Mart

psst.. this has to do with Eminent Domain.

What drew me to look up the town of Hercules was a Drudge headline about Wal-Mart being a target of eminent domain. The article in the San Francisco Chronicle, makes the situation look sort of 'bait n switch'. Developer A got the go ahead to build some new urbanist style development only to sell out to Wal-Mart developing something else entirely. The town of Hercules didn't want a big box store and so offered to buy Wal-Mart out. Wal-Mart refused, preferring to build on the site.

That was interesting... so I looked up Hercules. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot explicitly 'new urbanist' on their city site. I did find it interesting that they are going to let a big box Home Depot in.. but not a Wal-Mart. Their planning however may be 'new urbanist' anyways even if there is not a lot of rhetoric. The San Fran Business Times had a little piece on it. It reads like the developer, Bixby Co. is learning about new urbanism as they go along, and liking it more n more. More can be read in the Chronicle. A quick look over of their zoning ordinance, didn't seem very... 'new urbanist'.... but what do I know....