D.C. Marriage Rate Lowest in U.S.
Tyler Cowen points me to an interesting discussion on the subject "Why So Few D.C. Residents Are Married." Washington City Paper's Amanda Hess cites a Pew survey finding that "Only 23 percent of women and 28 percent of men and in D.C. are married, compared to 48 and 52 percent nationwide. The rates in D.C. are so low that they ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 23, 2009 10:00
Caption Contest
Time for the Monday OTB Caption ContestTM (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) Winners will be announced Thursday PM Last Thursday Contest winners will be announced Tuesday PMPosted in Outside The Beltway on September 7, 2009 09:03
Planning: USA vs. China
Matt Yglesias notes that Shanghai has a long-term plan for expanding their subway system and laments that we're not so forward thinking here in America. What’s striking is the extent to which we don’t operate like that here in the United States. I think everyone believes that over the next couple of decades the Washington, DC metro area will continue to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 10, 2009 12:48
Bikes and Cars
John Cole points to a new law in Colorado making it illegal for motorists to throw objects at bicycles. Previously, it has only been a citable offense if one's aim was good. Cole wonders, "What kind of twisted jackass throws something out of a car at a biker?" and several of his commenters note the high degree of hostility bikers face ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 4, 2009 11:19
Baby Bites Al Franken
Waiting at DC's Reagan National Airport yesterday evening for a flight to Minneapolis, we caught a photo of this baby biting Al Franken's nose: Okay, so it was our baby. Franken was very gracious and accommodating. One of the joys of being a United States Senator, apparently, is that one can not read a magazine -- or for that matter, sit ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 25, 2009 12:32
The Biggest Obstacle to Blogging
Megan McArdle reports that she has had a fourth bicycle stolen since moving to DC, all of them locked, all of them at her home, the most recent inside a stockade fence. In frustration, she observes, "I think I'm done with bike commuting. I'd rather just hand out $100 bills to random people on the street; at least I ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 21, 2009 13:47
DC Most Dangerous Driving City
Aaron Brazell passes along word that DC and Baltimore are the most dangerous driving cities, as calculated by Allstate Insurance. Bengt Havorson has the list: The Safest Driving Top Ten 1. Sioux Falls, SD 2. Fort Collins, CO 3. Chattanooga, TN 4. Cedar Rapids, IA 5. Knoxville, TN 6. Fort Wayne, IN 7. Lexington-Fayette, KY 8. Eugene, OR 9. Boise, ID 10. Colorado Springs, CO Bottom of the List – Riskiest Driving ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 20, 2009 15:27
DC Thriving During Recession
NYT urban planning professor Mitchell Moss has taken to the pixels of something called New Geography to point out what most of us already knew: Washington, DC thrives during bad times for the rest of the country. His historical discussion of the District's evolution from swampy backwater to major city is interesting. But this, I think, goes too far: Washington has always ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 14, 2009 08:19
9 Dead in DC Metro Crash
[caption id="attachment_38314" align="alignright" width="400" caption="Investigators and officials continue to work at the scene of a rush-hour collision between two Metro transit trains in northeast Washington, D.C., Tuesday morning, June 23, 2009. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)"][/caption] At least nine people have died and dozens injured in a crash of two Red Line trains on Washington, DC's Metro subway, by far the deadliest in ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 23, 2009 08:31
DC Interns
Andrew Sullivan links an amusing blog devoted entirely to complaining about DC interns, who are depicted as stupid, rude, and annoying. I'm sure a large contingent of them exist that are some or all of those things. The fact remains, however, that many DC offices couldn't function without a large contingent of interns, most of whom are unpaid or receive only ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 5, 2009 11:29
Premier League vs. American Team Sports
To illustrate that US professional sports have a lot of "hilariously anticompetitive interferences in the market" compared to the English Premier League, Daniel Davies constructs an artificial sports league based on all major professional teams in "Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington DC" in order to achieve a comparable population and economic basis to compare ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 27, 2009 07:27
Freddie Mac CFO Commits Suicide
Freddie Mac CFO David Kellerman has killed himself, DC's WUSA9 reports. David Kellermann, Acting Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Freddie Mac, was found dead this morning. Fairfax County Police officials tell 9NEWS NOW they responded to his home around 5 a.m. after his wife alerted them to his suicide. Kellermann was 41 years old. According to Freddie Mac's website, Kellerman was ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 22, 2009 08:38
A Tale of Two Tea Parties
The Boston Tea Party of 1773: On the cold evening of December 16, 1773, a large band of patriots, disguised as Mohawk Indians, burst from the South Meeting House with the spirit of freedom burning in their eyes. The patriots headed towards Griffin's Wharf and the three ships. Quickly, quietly, and in an orderly manner, the Sons of Liberty boarded each ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 16, 2009 06:24
Urban Density
Tim Lee does Google maps for three neighborhoods he's lived in and one he's thinking of moving to and notes the incredible range of compactness (as visually demonstrated from many more streets showing up in comparable map grids). It’s amazing how many people you can pack into a small area. It’s also interesting to note that that St. Louis neighborhood, the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 30, 2009 11:36
Protests Don’t Work
Brian Knapp has a good roundup of critiques of protest rallies and concludes that they have outlived their usefulness. Another problem with public protests is that fact that they are generally annoying. Protests, rallies, and other outdoor events that are organized to accommodate large swaths of people also must accommodate their bathroom breaks. They also tend to eat up civic resources ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 5, 2009 07:02
