Viewing profile — UrbanPat

+1 for Christopher Alexander!

Details abound: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-06/goldman-secret-gree... Greece wasn't innocent in this, but it's pretty obvious that Goldman took advantage of them.

You have a point - corruption is endemic to Jefferson County politicians.

Did you read the Bloomberg article at all? The county (not the city) didn't piss the money away - they built sewer infrastructure with it. The reason they can't pay it back is beca…

Actually that settlement fell through. Per Bloomberg, "The county’s efforts to negotiate a definitive settlement were frustrated by the recent sale of sewer debt to investors who d…

I disagree. The racetrack is a bad analogy, particularly when bankers are specifically hired for their advice. If I sell you a car I designed and the car blows up from a design fla…

For the record, I'm certainly not saying that JP Morgan is the only responsible party. Clearly our politicians are at fault, and thus the voters as well. But if you'll read [3] (fa…

I'm confused - are you suggesting the sewer is provided by a private company? The sewer system in Jefferson County is publicly run. And maybe that's part of the problem. Presumably…

Elections DO matter. A major difference between Birmingham and Atlanta is that Birmingham became the poster city for racism because of the way Bull Conner responded to civil rights…

What politician are you referring to? And just for the record, I really like Birmingham. It's a good city. It has had some really terrible politicians, but despite that, it's a rea…

I live in Birmingham, so I need to correct a couple things. First, the "illegal" tax has been around a long time. In this particular case, it was overturned on a technicality [1]. …

Eh, that's doubtful actually. In most US cities (other than, say NYC, SF, and a handful of others), taxi service is expensive and slow to arrive. Parking is free, and cars can be o…

Here's a related question: What will cities look like with driverless cars being shared by groups of people? Parking needs will diminish significantly, allowing cities to become mo…

Yes, that's the whole problem. I'm tired of paying for other people's airline miles, cashback, etc. This is an inefficiency built into the payment system, and it harms small busine…

What do you mean by "SQL Libraries"? Do these interface with SQL to perform analysis?

Wow, thanks for the NSFW title...

It's a clever trick!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2116548608/help-erase-th...