New Housing Starts Pop The most prominent (bullish) article on the housing market to date? The headline (above) in today’s Star Tribune, covering the 13-county Twin Cities metro area. For context, the seasonally adjusted rate of 872,000 units reflects an 83% increase from the 2009 recession low, but is still well under the 2007 peak of...Read More
Partying Campaigning Like It’s 1999 1899* Maybe 25th U.S. President William McKinley had it right: forget the ennui and tedium of modern political campaigns — the years-long scrounging for campaign cash; repetitive debates; blathery “Town Halls”; etc. Instead, candidates should steal a page from McKinley’s playbook: campaign from their front porch. A virtual, 21st-century porch. 19th...Read More
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Apologies to The New Yorker, whose cartoon inspired this — and actually showed two (precocious) adolescents discussing the election on a playground.Read More
Fight Night in Richfield OK, so the Twins aren’t playing in the post-season. And a Richfield Champ’s certainly isn’t a statistically valid sample. But, it does say something when 18 out of 20 TV’s there were tuned to ultimate fighting tonight, and only one to the American League championship series between the New York Yankees and Detroit...Read More
Once upon a time, “hand-me-down’s” invariably meant clothes or toys. Today, with more technology devices, evolving faster and faster, “hand-me-down” as often as not refers to technology. So, in my family, an older iPod will go from an older child to a younger one; I will get the “latest-and-greatest” smart phone and a year later...Read More
What can you use push pins for? To hold up a container full of push pins (of course!), on the bulletin board pictured above. Kudos to my (almost) 10 year-old son for coming up with that one. P.S: My runner-up sight gag is this graph, titled — what else? — “Number of Graphs Drawn Since 1945.”Read More
