Busses for the poor
I considered taking the Long Island Rail Road,
but I can’t afford it, and I don’t have a car.
-- Sheryl McKenzie, who lives in Manhattan and commutes
to a nonprofit company in Hempstead.
« February 2007 | Main | April 2007 »
March 26, 2007
March 24, 2007
Safe from Sub-prime in the suburbs ?
Even affluent suburbs have their share of such borrowers.
Steven Habetz, chief executive of Threshold Mortgage, a
broker based on Westport, Conn., says subprime loans
account for about 5 percent of his business. That could
drop, though, as lenders leave the market.
March 19, 2007
Mortgage rate reset: Cagan and First American
First American CoreLogic projected the impact of ratereset as it relates
to mortage payment increases and foreclosure.
"Mortgage Payment Reset: The Issue and the Impact," is available at www.firstamres.com/MPR2007.
March 18, 2007
Julian Sanchez
Reasonable JulianSanchez notes the prophecy of Max Headroom,
Examples:
dollars and dreams, conspicuous reduction.
March 17, 2007
NOAA vs the world
Paul K Greed asks about why the anomaly figure is
less worrisome than it seems:
1. All weather observers are safely far away from Iraq
2. It's still 72 F and sunny in La Jolla
3. America is still read, white and blue.
March 16, 2007
Remote road in Labrador
March 15, 2007
Queens street numbers, house numbers
Signs Indicate Queens, NY Street Numbers and House Numbers.
In order that a house number may be of greatest value in indicating
the location of its premises, the number is divided into two parts,
separated by a dash, in which the first part of the number is the
same as that of the nearest cross street or avenue, intersecting
the avenue or street to the west or north, and the second part of
the number represents the distance, as expressed in lot intervals,
between such corner and the house, a number being assigned
for each 20-foot space.
Odd numbers are assigned to buildings on the north sides of
avenues and the east sides of streets, while even numbers
are used for houses on the south sides of avenues and the
west sides of streets; in which the term “street” is used to
designate all thoroughfares running north and south, and
“avenue” is employed for thoroughfares running east to
west or at right angles to the streets.
For instance, if a house is on 30th Avenue, between 25th
and 26th Streets, the first part of the number would be 25.
If the house is on the north side of 30th Avenue, and is at
the corner of 25th Street, the second part of the number
would be 02. That is to say, the first mentioned house
would be called 25-01 30th Avenue, indicating that it
was on 30th Avenue and occupied the lot space adjacent
to 25th Street, in the block between 25th and 26th Streets,
and was on the north side of the avenue.
As another illustration, take the number 125-42 221st Street.
Such a house would be situated on 221st Street, in the block
between 125th and 126th Avenues, because the first part
of the number is 125. It would be on the west side of
221st Street, because 42 is an even number.
Dividing 42 by 2, because half of the lots would be on
the west side and half would be on the east side of the
street, gives 21, the number of lots between the house
and 125th Avenue. As a space of 20 feet is allowed for
each lot, the distance of the house from 125th Avenue
would be 21 x 20, or 420 feet.
That is to say, the number 125-42 221st Street, would be
a complete description of the location of a house, and
could apply to only one position in the entire borough.
Since the number assigned to a house is based entirely
on its location, it follows that when houses occupy plots
wider than 20 feet it is necessary to skip over one or
more numbers.
[Via ]
March 14, 2007
Kübler-Ross model
The Kübler-Ross model describes, in five discrete stages,
the process by which people deal with grief and tragedy
Enumeration of stages (1969)
The stages are:
1. Denial - The initial stage.: "It can't be happening."
2. Anger .: "How dare you do this to me?!" (either referring to God, the deceased, or oneself)
3. Bargaining .: "Just let me live to see my son graduate."
4. Depression .: "God please don't take him away from our family"
5. Acceptance .: "I know my son will be in a better place"
March 13, 2007
Storage Nation
Some people are astonished that I’m so proud of it.
They think we’re funny that we’re spending money
to store things.
-- Beth Silver Pilchik, 36, a marketing consultant who
admits talking about her storage unit with friends at
cocktail parties.
She also jokes that the storage locker she rents at
Manhattan Mini Storage has better security than
their Upper East Side apartment.
They are not the only ones taking this approach to clutter.
According to Michael T. Scanlon Jr., president of the Self
Storage Association, a trade group, 11 million American
households currently rent storage space, an increase of
90 percent since 1995 — even as the size of new American
houses has grown and the size of the American family has
shrunk.
In the last two years, close to a million more households
have joined the ranks of storage renters, and there is
now more than two billion square feet of rental storage
space in the United States, earning more than $22 billion
in gross revenue in 2006.
Jerelyn concurs.
March 12, 2007
Meritocracy and Blogrolling
March 11, 2007
LIC Alliance
Long Island City Alliance on LIC development
and LIC and Astoria life.
March 10, 2007
Queens' Crap
QueensCrap:
Curbed on over development,
Infill slums vs Broadway Flushing Auburndale area
(the "privileged" community far to the east of downtown).
Immigrant storage (57th Avenue, east of Van Horn Street in Elmhurst).
Flushing is starting to to look worse than a scene from Blade Runner.
March 9, 2007
pekingduck
Peking Duck, China-centric Asian blog.
March 7, 2007
March 6, 2007
Few loans cause many losses
About 20% of the loans in the subprime market "cause more than half the losses.
-- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. fixed-income strategist Michael Marschoun.
We hope this is an ex ante statement. Ex post, we would think that fewer
than 8% of all mortgages cause 100 % of losses.
Cited in
Home Lenders Cut the Flow Of Risky Loans
Default Fears Drain Subprime Pool, Adding To Pressures on Prices
By RUTH SIMON, JAMES R. HAGERTY and MICHAEL CORKERY
February 26, 2007; Page C1
March 5, 2007
FastLaneDaily
Fast Lane Daily portal of driving and automotive blogs.
March 4, 2007
Savy viewers
The Comedy Central audience is more serious than its reputation
allows. The public may still think of the “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report”
audience as a group of sardonic slackers, Gen-Y college students
who prefer YouTube to print. But publishers say it’s a much more
diverse demographic — and more important, a book-buying audience.
“It’s the television equivalent of NPR. You have a very savvy, interested
audience who are book buyers, people who do go into bookstores,
people who are actually interested in books.”
March 3, 2007
How to argue, part 2: My view
You are doing what you accuse older feminists of doing
-- declaring your views unassailable simply because you
have them.
They say,"You weren't there,"
You say, "You aren't here."
Okay, but you still have to make your case -- plenty of
young women, including young feminists, don't share
your POV. Your real beef with Ariel Levy, for example,
is not that she's too old and out of it to understand
young women (she's only in her early thirties).
It's that you don't agree with her view that today's
sexual culture (girls gone wild, hooking up etc) is
basically exploitation and exhibitionism packaged
as feminism. I'm not saying she's right or wrong,
I'm just saying that "Female Chauvinist Pigs" presents
an actual argument, not a mindless ignorant diss
of young women by some old fussbudget who
knows little about them.
Katha Pollitt, in response to The Feminist Sorority.
How to argue (without facts or logic), the series.
March 2, 2007
Group health
In a group health plan, the employer typically pays a large
share of the premium, so most employees sign up as
soon as they are eligible, regardless of their health status.
The health plan covers a mix of sick and healthy workers.
By contrast, individuals and independent contractors are
more likely to defer coverage until they need it, so the pool
of people insured is, over all, less healthy. Sick people
consume more health care. As a result, the cost to insure
them is higher.
Janet S. Trautwein, executive vice president of the National Association
of Health Underwriters, which represents insurance agents and brokers.