Nation & World | Officials: Oil leak may last months | Seattle Times Newspaper

As BP shifted from the "top kill" effort to its latest fallback plan to stop oil gushing from one of its Gulf of Mexico wells, the Obama administration, the company and scientists conceded Sunday that the crude could continue flowing until August.The Seattle Times | Officials: Oil leak may last months
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The end of the era of oil has arrived sooner than the government anticipated. The hope of an orderly transition over the next decade has been cut short.
Comparing it to natural disasters just does not fit most likely because there is nothing natural about it. A natural reaction, accepting that winds blow, or waves sweep up on shorelines, usually cuts short our ability to create preventive measures, but not this time.
We all know we can do something to stop this, or at least slow it down.
This will be transformative.

I blame Steve

I watched the video like any armchair ethnomusicologist. I was hoping for a one song Rough Guide of mid-1970's popular American music.
Thanks Steve for posting this on Facebook but now I have a problem.

A few days later I brought something home to 2010 that I am having a hard time washing off my mind, the musical hook, FM radio's revenge.

Ok, make it stop. What removes this musical hook from my mind?

Clearly, I am open to suggestions.

Ezra Klein: How to build your condos (in China)

This nice little suburb, it turned out, had been built in 2006. And like a lot of things in China, it was built all at once, on top of a village that already existed.

Photo and story by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, click here to read the rest of How to build your condos (in China)

I would say terrible, horrible, things about China if I did not see the exact same thing right here in Seattle. Converting unused manufacturing space (upzones) into "mixed use, walking communities" is usually a good idea. But often enough it is little more than a crass execise in capitalism, displacing low income housing for pretty condos.

In China a "walkable" community that is bicycle "friendly" isn't urban chic, but a way of life. But, they are not coming down from a century-long automobile high.

Here in Seattle there are new patches of vacant land that should be reclaimed, that do not displace poor people in favor of less-poor people, empty car lots.
When the economy went into the ditch, dragging the car companies with it over their tipping point, I was left with urban blight. Go to the corner of 130th St and Aurora Avenue North there are two vacant car dealerships on the NW and SE corners. I do not expect the car dealership "industry" to return anytime soon. Parts of Seattle, and likely parts of most American cities of any meaningful size, have an "auto row" or some other shorthand for land zoned for car dealerships. That land should be rezoned, and reclaimed as living space.

It doesn't take a village idiot to point that out.