Visitor Locations
- Super View of Glendale and Phoenix
One of the Expedition 35 crew members on the International Space Station used a still camera with a 400 millimeter lens to record this nocturnal image of the Phoenix, Arizona area on March 16, 2013. Like many large urban areas of the central and western United States, the Phoenix metropolitan area is laid out along a regular grid of city blocks and streets. While visible during the day, this grid is most evident at night, when the pattern of street lighting is clearly visible from above -- in the case of this photograph, from the low Earth orbit vantage point of the International Space Station. The urban grid form encourages growth of a city outwards along its borders, by providing optimal access to new real estate. Fueled by the adoption of widespread personal automobile use during the 20th century, the Phoenix metropolitan area today includes 25 other municipalities (many of them largely suburban and residential in character) linked by a network of surface streets and freeways. The image area includes parts of several cities in the metropolitan area including Phoenix proper (right), Glendale (center), and Peoria (left). While the major street grid is oriented north-south, the northwest-southeast oriented Grand Avenue cuts across it at image center. Grand Avenue is a major transportation corridor through the western metropolitan area; the lighting patterns of large industrial and commercial properties are visible along its length. Other brightly lit properties include large shopping centers, strip centers, and gas stations which tend to be located at the intersections of north-south and east-west trending streets. While much of the land area highlighted in this image is urbanized, there are several noticeably dark areas. The Phoenix Mountains at upper right are largely public park and recreational land. To the west (image lower left), agricultural fields provide a sharp contrast to the lit streets of neighboring residential developments. The Salt River channel appears as a dark ribbon within the urban grid at lower right. Image Credit: NASA
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Category Archives: Economics
Shutdown / Debt Crisis
So how’s that for a headline? That one get your alarmist hackles up? It should. A friend of mine quoted The Economist this morning and it kind of sent my blood pressure up: The Economist on the government shutdown. Key … Continue reading
Posted in Current Events, Economics
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Governmental Mismangement
Well the whole Fiscal Cliff issue has been deferred for two months. Then we will see what happens. In the meantime, Roberta X has boiled the entire issue down to a couple of well written paragraphs. The money lines: This … Continue reading
Posted in Current Events, Economics
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Tort Reform and Other Rantings
A friend of mine threw a link to this article up on Facebook earlier. I started to comment on it, and it rapidly grew into a rant. So, I thought I would clean it up a little and make it … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Economics, Society
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Economics
Some interesting numbers that are pulled together from multiple sources today over at Hot Air. The article supports the position that our “Fiscal Cliff” is not going to be solved by revenue increases. Go read it, and then my comments make sense. … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Politics
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Europe In The News and The Scary Crystal Ball
Well, it appears as if there are some new developments going in on the Continent, that unfortunately appear to be old actions being resurrected for the 21st Century. Let’s take a look at the highlights of recent events: Greece continues to have widespread protests … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Current Events, Economics, History
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Six Minutes of Wisdom
An interesting snippet from Bill Whittle today, that brings us Rudyard Kipling’s wisdom and observations from 100 years ago. Take six minutes to watch. Like this:Like Loading…
Posted in Economics, History
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And So It Goes
The death of a brand. I have commented previously, probably multiple times, that unions have outlived their usefulness. There was a dark time in our history where unions were vital to the growth of the economy and industry. Unions were … Continue reading
Economics News
Any interesting analysis on the current economic situation in the US. This one focuses on the velocity of M1 and M2. Break out your econ books, and dust off those facts and terms from where all that knowledge that you … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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Interesting Happenings in Europe
A couple of interesting things beginning to show up in Europe lately. Item 1: Item 2 maybe more prophetic (whole story here and here): This morning’s Der Spiegel (Germany) has a real doozy worth paying attention to. – The … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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Focus
Most of our focus recently has been on the US political landscape as we near a critical election. What everyone is missing, perhaps intentionally is the critical events in Europe. Based on today’s election Greece will either adopt severe austerity … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Politics
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