My suspicion is that I have less to say on this subject of national flags than I’d like to think, but I’m still feeling my way around in terms of the appropriateness of featuring certain material on this blog, so in the meantime it is best that I linger on the fluffier subjects. And I
As I keep my blog on life support while I remain in the Afghan theater, I hope—more or less—to alternate posts with observations on life here behind the wire with more of my conventional posts, featuring photos taken from this past summer and earlier. Today’s post has been surprisingly difficult for which to gather information,
While I continue to sift through articles and scholarship on neighborhood associations in my free time, I’ve come to realize I’ve let the posts lag a bit too much. So I offer a quick rumination on a topic I love but haven’t featured much: license plates. Some states doggedly adhere to a certain design over
In many ways, this study serves as a companion piece to the previous blog entry. Both articles explore a social phenomenon that has swept the nation, largely manifested through increasingly palpable policy justified by the goal of providing for the common defense or promoting the general welfare. The previous post, scrutinizing passenger screening at airports
It is easy to attribute The Great Recession to the increasingly visible decision among many states to cut long-standing social services. In a good portion of the country, publicly supported interstate rest areas have lost much of their reason for being; with so many other options at the exit ramps along our many limited-access highways,
An unusually intense period at work reduced my blogging activity to a few uninspired posts these past few weeks, but at long last I can return to the second part of my study on the application of labels such as “neighborhoods” and “subdivisions” to sub-districts within a larger metropolitan area. In the first part, I
I have long wondered what forces were at work that spurred the transition from using the term “neighborhood” to the more contemporary “subdivision” when referring to residential communities in metropolitan environments. One could easily rattle off some widely held assumptions that more often than not distinguish the two, and I’m bold enough to assert that
The average well-traveled person who looks at the remarkably uniform street walls below will likely draw a conclusion that the photo comes from Washington DC. After all, with the alabaster facades, the prosaic fenestration, and—most tellingly—the uniform height of all the structures, the photo could capture a typical avenue in the sprawling central business district
In the first part of this post, I explored two primary characteristics that explain why Indianapolis’ only true shopping hub on the south side, the Greenwood Park Mall, remains a retail powerhouse. It defies the odds for the suburban shopping malls, many of which are struggling with high vacancy rates, while hundreds more have already
My previous post on this subject explored my hypothesis, on how school districts derive most of their competitive advantage from demographics that favor high educational attainment. The greatest public schools (typically not in collar townships) earn their cachet far more from demographics that skew towards either low poverty or ethnic homogeneity (or ideally a combination
My suspicion is that I have less to say on this subject of national flags than I’d like to think, but I’m still feeling my way around in terms of the appropriateness of
As I keep my blog on life support while I remain in the Afghan theater, I hope—more or less—to alternate posts with observations on life here behind the wire with more of my
While I continue to sift through articles and scholarship on neighborhood associations in my free time, I’ve come to realize I’ve let the posts lag a bit too much. So I offer a
In many ways, this study serves as a companion piece to the previous blog entry. Both articles explore a social phenomenon that has swept the nation, largely manifested through increasingly palpable policy justified
It is easy to attribute The Great Recession to the increasingly visible decision among many states to cut long-standing social services. In a good portion of the country, publicly supported interstate rest areas
An unusually intense period at work reduced my blogging activity to a few uninspired posts these past few weeks, but at long last I can return to the second part of my study
I have long wondered what forces were at work that spurred the transition from using the term “neighborhood” to the more contemporary “subdivision” when referring to residential communities in metropolitan environments. One could
The average well-traveled person who looks at the remarkably uniform street walls below will likely draw a conclusion that the photo comes from Washington DC. After all, with the alabaster facades, the prosaic
In the first part of this post, I explored two primary characteristics that explain why Indianapolis’ only true shopping hub on the south side, the Greenwood Park Mall, remains a retail powerhouse. It
My previous post on this subject explored my hypothesis, on how school districts derive most of their competitive advantage from demographics that favor high educational attainment. The greatest public schools (typically not in