Here’s a recent article about another consequence of increased ridership:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/as-bike-lanes-proliferate-so-do-disputes/

Fewer cars, more bike lanes, and safer riders will bring out even more riders!

After the dot.com crash and 9/11 the fed pumped massive cash (euphamistically called “Quantitative Easing”) into the economy. All that money had to go somewhere. Part of it went to create the housing bubble and part of it ended up fueling China and India’s growth under the guise of foreign investment. It’s not too hard to make money when you borrow at 0% (fed funds rate) and lend at 5%. If this decline in poverty trend continues for the next 15 years at the same rate, I’ll concede to your point. This retreating of poverty over the past 15 years was nothing more than a symptom of the phantom wealth and bubble economy of the last decade and a half (as noted by the highest improvements in the poverty rates of India and China).

Economists are 21st century sophists and their “science” of looking to the past data and fitting the best curve is the ancient world’s equivalent of divining the future from bird entrails; total bullshit. Pop Psychology explains (observes) a lot of stuff and even makes it sound logically elegant and its arguments intuitively plausable (Sociology, Pscyhoanalysis, Handwriting Analysis, Astrology, Economics, Tarot Cards etc.) but it falls way short on the other two requisites of rigorous science (prediction and control). The true test of science, the demarcation line of seperating science and non-science is falsification (Karl Popper).

Economics and economists have an absymal prediction rate in general. I’ll start taking them seriously when their prediction rate can beat a monkey throwing darts willynilly at the wall (over 50%).

Cheers

Malc

Recently read another incredible book that I can’t recommend highly enough, especially to all of you who also love Ray Kurzweil’s work. The book is “”My Stroke of Insight”" by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. I had heard Dr Taylor’s talk on the TED dot com site and I have to say, it changed my world. It’s spreading virally all over the internet and the book is now a NYTimes Bestseller, so I’m not the only one, but it is the most amazing talk, and the most impactful book I’ve read in years. (Dr T also was named to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and Oprah had her on her Soul Series last month and I hear they’re making a movie about her story so you may already have heard of her)
If you haven’t heard Dr Taylor’s TEDTalk, that’s an absolute must. The book is more and deeper and better, but start with the video (it’s 18 minutes). Basically, her story is that she was a 37 yr old Harvard brain scientist who had a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. Because of her knowledge of how the brain works, and thanks to her amazingly loving and kind mother, she eventually fully recovered (and that part of the book detailing how she did it is inspirational).

There’s a lot of learning and magic in the book, but the reason I so highly recommend My Stroke of Insight to this discussion, is because we have powerfully intelligent left brains that are rational, logical, sequential and grounded in detail and time, and then we have our kinesthetic right brains, where we experience intuition and peace and euphoria. Now that Kurzweil has got us taking all those vitamins and living our best “”Fantastic Voyage”" , the absolute necessity is that we read My Stroke of Insight and learn from Dr Taylor how to achieve balance between our right and left brains. Enjoy!