Pittsburghers Take Note

Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick has covered the opening arguments in Kelo v New London. The case, in a nutshell: the city of New London wishes to seize, via eminent domain, private property to sell to private developers to create a new upscale community. Problem is, the current properties are not blighted (the usual criteria for ED), […]

All Quiet

It has been quiet here, eh? I’ve been busy posted and commenting at the Dialogical Coffee House, and I’ve been reading some material that doesn’t lend itself to rapid posting. I’ve also been trying to find a rhythm for writing other material (ie fiction and/or creative nonfiction) that may find its way here. In other […]

Home

Today I discovered that our community group has a website. Not exactly cutting edge design, but, hey, it could be worse. Being a bit of Pittsburgh history geek, I got a kick out of a few of the historical documents on the site, including an article in the 1905 Pittsburgh Leader about Morningside Valley. An […]

Dooyeweerd

Our church’s coffee group (I can’t seem to settle on a name for our little tribe, since our reading material doesn’t stick to a single genre or theme) met last night to chat about the first chapter of Herman Dooyeweerd‘s Roots of Western Culture. Dooyeweerd was one of the driving intellectual forces in Neocalvinism, and […]

Habitat For Humanity

Via Crooked Timber: It seems that owners of Habitat For Humanity-built homes in Virginia are being squeezed by rising property taxes. In a nutshell: the owners are faced with property tax bills that are greater than their mortgage payments. From the Post article: In recent months, Habitat for Humanity of Northern Virginia has launched a […]

News About American Apparel

It seems while American Apparel is sweat-shop free, they still don’t treat their employees so well.

Rally Sweden Recap

Petter Solberg has broken his string of bad luck on this event, and won his first Rally Sweden, kickstarting his championship campaign. In the end, it was easy for Solberg, with his closest rivals, Marcus Gronholm and Sebastien Loeb, retiring on the final leg. The win puts Solberg in a tie for third place in […]

More Bikes, and a Word on Sweden

Matt Chester has a nice little overview of his design philosophy. Most notable are some of the pics he unearthed of the early days of the TdF. The pic below is just plain awesome: Fixed gears. Dirt road. Self-sufficient. Also, the Rally Sweden started today. There was concern that there wouldn’t be enough snow, turning […]

New Urbanism — It’s Everywhere

Reason has chimed in on the New Urbanist movement, and, predictably, Stephen Town and Randal O’Toole aren’t impressed. The bulk of criticism focuses on the crime-friendly nature of New Urbanist developments, thanks to the copious open spaces, mixed-use areas, and alleys.

New Urbanism

Eli passed along information today about Prospect, Colorado’s first New Urbanist community. Viewed under a microscope, it is a very cool looking place — well-designed houses, a community business district with home-grown businesses, trees and parks. But, when viewed as a part of a whole, the project seems to seems to fail at one of […]