the houston flood and zoning
New York is certainly zoned and planned, but it suffered $19 billion in damage from Superstorm Sandy, which dropped only a half-inch of rain. But Sandy’s storm surge flooded 51 square miles of New York and inundated 300,000 homes and 23,400 businesses—estimates that exclude the much-larger impacted area in the suburbs of New York City. “‘Smart growth’ plans didn’t prevent that,” noted the Wall Street Journal.
Higher density and zoning don’t guarantee a resilient infrastructure. New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina was both dense and zoned, but this did not protect the city from devastation. In September, Hurricane Irma did considerable damage around residential towers and in downtown Miami. As Houston mayor Sylvester Turner put it: “Zoning wouldn’t have changed anything. We would have been a city with zoning that flooded.”
google and the cia
Did the CIA directly fund the work of Brin and Page, and therefore create Google? No. But were Brin and Page researching precisely what the NSA, the CIA, and the intelligence community hoped for, assisted by their grants? Absolutely.
– link
working in a team
Helpful explanation of the difference between working in a team when developing software vs. working alone.
new world record
The progressive explanation for the slowest economic recovery in nearly 70 years is that expansions after financial crises are always like this. There appears to be no statute of limitations on this excuse, which is especially convenient every four years. But those who want more than a political rationalization might look to the all-time presidential record of costly regulation set by the Obama Administration.
That’s the news from a report to be released soon showing that President Obama’s regulators have completed their 600th major rule. A major rule imposes costs of more than $100 million. For those keeping score, that’s an average of 81 big ones a year, or roughly one every three days the government is open. Who says our bureaucracies are inefficient?
— WSJ
today’s google searches
the referees a dupe
paua
where did caucasian people come from
bacon cheeseburger offend religion
why is there no hair on the back of my leg
hairless calves
hairless calves diabetes
what does jesus say about gambling
quiz of the day
The phrase “Hold That Tiger” refers to:
1) The chorus of a jazz standard recorded by the Original Dixieland Jass Band
2) A retired Thoroughbred racehorse
3) An episode of “Hogan’s Heroes”
4) All of the above
?
get off my lawn
Millenials apparently don’t like eating cereal in the morning. The NY Times published a survey that tells why.
It’s too much work to clean up afterwards. You have to wash a bowl. AND a spoon.
keep calm and carry on
A Gallup poll of Londoners early in 1941 found that the weather depressed them more than the bombing.
-Robert Tombs in The English and Their History
The Germans kill them with bombs every night, and the next morning one hears Schubert in German on the BBC.
-Ibid.
iggy on bowie’s death
Mr. Bowie made a point of visiting Mr. Pop’s parents in Detroit, where they were living in a trailer. “He came to my parents’ trailer, and the neighbors were so frightened of the car and the bodyguard they called the police,” Mr. Pop said. “My father’s a very wonderful man, and he said, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing for my son.’ I thought: Shut up, Dad. You’re making me look uncool.”
UTBAPH
This funeral home UTBAPH (used to be a Pizza Hut):
via the UTBAPH blog at http://usedtobeapizzahut.blogspot.ca
don’t read to your children
Parents who read to their children should occasionally think about how they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, academic says.
who wrote what
Tommy Ramone (RIP) tells song by song who wrote what for the Ramones (RIP, RIP and RIP).
D Clarity 
