#342 USAF...

#342 USAF is the official designation of 90,000 feet of raw footage stored in College Park, Md which documents the after-effects of the first atomic bombs. Both blast sites at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were filmed by the air force, but the film was "classified because of the horror, the devastation."

Nazi Memories...

I recently noticed a large Nazi flag hanging inside of a house in my hometown.

Since then I've looked at the same house and the same window every time I drive by; day or night. The owner has since covered the window with a bedsheet so you can no longer see the flag.

The residents of Marion County, Oregon have had the same experience in a way. I've visited a former concentration camp in Italy and actually talked with a survivor. When it comes to the Nazi flag I just happen to have a different opinion than the owner of the house in my hometown.

A Penny Saved...

It's not only how much money you earn, but how you spend it. For example, the new $286.4 billion mass transit bill recently approved by Congress included a record 6,371 special projects above and beyond what was actually needed and requested. It's how you spend it.

For the real dirt on the issue take a look at Taxpayers for Common Sense or Citizens Against Government Waste.

The "Neo-Con" Label...

Personally, I dislike how people are assigned labels as if that makes it easier to understand them. At the same time I am wondering what it means to be labeled a "neo-con" or neo-conservative. With the senate in recess John Bolton has been appointed to the United Nations without a vote. Our allies in England have their own opinion and their own label.

Has this happened before? No, but the senate has refused to approve a United Nations nomination in the past: "Richard Holbrooke, who Republicans delayed for 14 months as Bill Clinton's nominee to the U.N., refused to bypass the Senate with a recess appointment, saying that it would introduce him to the world body with no credibility or authority."

The Moral Hazard of War...

In the context of health care and health insurance, "moral hazard refers to the tendency of well-insured patients to use health care with complete indifference to the cost they visit on others."

Not Really Engineers...

Thanks to the work of the Friends of the Book-Cadillac Hotel and a Freedom of Information request it has now been discovered that the two people, Abdul Aquil and Dannie Shuford, who inspected the Madison-Lenox Hotel and decided that it was "structurally unsound" were NOT Registered Code Inspectors.

Their decision to destroy the building, which was (insert surprise) accomplished the very next morning, was due to their observation that a "portion of a staircase in one of the three buildings had collapsed." These guys were neither engineers nor code inspectors. They could have been the department xerox machine repairmen for all we know.

You or I could have done the same inspection, been paid, and provided the same decision that the city wanted (demolition of a historic building for a parking lot in time for the Super Bowl).

Boston Globe+Election...

With the Detroit mayoral election primary it's interesting to note how the "outside world" views the battle being waged at the polls. At least the Boston Globe mentioned the now famous Lincoln Navigator purchase.

First Time for Everything...

My father was very surprised a few weeks ago to actually see city workers of Detroit picking up trash and cleaning the streets. It was the first time he had ever seen anything like that in his life. I also noticed something very unusual in that all of the chain link fences near downtown around the freeway have been painted.

They have been there rusting away for years, but they are now shine in the sun with a beautiful silver coating of paint. Of course, the real question is why should it take a baseball and football game to create the motivation to improve the city?