policy – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Tag Archives: policy

June 30, 2011 – 6:00 am

blowing the fuse

[Detonation at the Birds Point inflow crevasse, during the night of 2 May 2011.] As sand boils appeared in Cairo, the swollen rivers continued to rise.  The city was under mandatory evacuation orders, and the flood gauge was expected to reach 63 feet — not high enough to over-top the city’s levees, but high enough [...]

By rholmes | Posted in floods, infrastructure | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (4)
May 9, 2011 – 7:00 pm

the economist on american infrastructure

["Enroute high" aeronautical chart of the airspace around Washington, DC, via the US Division of the International Virtual Aviation Organization and SkyVector.com.  American airports rely on obsolete ground-based air traffic control,a system whose "imprecision obliges controllers to keep more distance between air traffic, reducing the number of planes that can fly in the available space" [...]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, economics, infrastructure | Also tagged , | Comments (4)
April 24, 2009 – 3:13 pm

biofuel skepticism

Biofuel skepticism — both cellulose alcohol and algae — albeit from a source with an obvious (and stated) agenda. While I’m skeptical of these skeptics’ agenda, the environmental and political problems that have resulted from pushing first-generation biofuels (corn ethanol, palm oil) here and abroad suggest that its worth at least listening to the skeptics [...]

By rholmes | Posted in asides | Also tagged , | Comments (0)