Urban renewal in 3 pictures.

POTUS SOTU: "WTF" FTW!!!

"Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion. “I’d call that major downsizing in an evolutionary eyeblink,” he says. “This happened in China, Europe, Africa—everywhere we look.” If our brain keeps dwindling at that rate over the next 20,000 years, it will start to approach the size of that found in Homo erectus, a relative that lived half a million years ago and had a brain volume of only 1,100 cc."

In case you haven't seen it yet: The Jenny McCarthy Body Count.

If you follow his site, you see Radley Balko finds stories like this all the time. Feel free to slam your head against the wall while reading.

Only those who take leisurely what the people of the world are busy about can be busy about what the people of the world take leisurely.

-- Chang Ch'ao via Lin Yutang.

I had a humorous, friendly exchange with a vendor at our neighborhood flea market this fall. My friend was perusing a decorative fabric which promoted "buying local" on it. During the bargaining I noticed the seller had a accent that sounded a little... international.
"So where are you from?" I asked. "England," she replied. "We can't buy from you," I said, "since you're not local!"
"I'm not for sale," she replied.
"Everyone's for sale."

Anyway, here's a brief explanation on why the economics (and the implied morality) of the buy local movement is fundamentally flawed.

Full disclosure: I sometimes enjoy locally sourced foods and goods, but recognize it's a shopping choice, not a moral one, as the authors put it. Some of the gifts I gave at Christmas were locally made, but then I took them to California so I don't know what that means as for "local-ness." One was a book buy a guy who lives in my city, but I don't know where the printing was done. And yes it's a true story above.