Quantcast
728 x 90
728 x 90
728 x 90
728 x 90
728 x 90



  • Movie Review: Margin Call0

    • January 31, 2012

    Margin Call opened four months ago, so this review isn’t exactly timely, but for readers who haven’t seen it, it purports to be about the 2008 financial crisis. Since the Antiplanner has written extensively about this crisis, I found the movie intriguing enough to watch the DVD. The entire picture takes place during about 27 […]

    READ MORE
  • Breaking Down the Barriers0

    • January 30, 2012

    Leave it to the New York Times to put the most negative spin on a conference about driverless cars. “Collision in the Making Between Self-Driving Cars and How the World Works,” reads the headline. As the Antiplanner wrote three years ago, the main barriers to driverless cars are institutional and bureaucratic, not technological. So it […]

    READ MORE
  • Warren Buffet’s Secretary Needs a New Accountant0

    • January 26, 2012

    “Asking a billionaire to pay at least as much [tax] as his secretary is plain common sense,” says President Obama. When Warren Buffett announced that his secretary paid a higher rate than he did, some people calculated that he must pay her at least $200,000 a year to put her in an (average) 19 percent […]

    READ MORE
  • Building Eyesores Creates Jobs, Especially When You Tear Them Down0

    • January 25, 2012

    Honolulu has the best bus system in America, taking a higher percentage of commuters to work and carrying more daily riders per capita than any other bus system. But just having the best bus system isn’t good enough for some people, who just have to have a rail line to have “real transit.” So the […]

    READ MORE
  • To the Moon, Alice0

    • January 23, 2012

    The Economist suggests that sending a woman to the moon would have a more positive impact on the economy than building high-speed rail. Certainly, a trip to the moon would use more modern technology as the first high-speed rail line was built in 1964 but we didn’t send a man to the moon until 1969.

    READ MORE
  • Self-Driving Cars in the Pipeline0

    • January 21, 2012

    The hit of last week’s Detroit Auto Show was the 2013 Ford Fusion. This was a surprise because the car was merely a stylistic upgrade of an existing model. The real significance of the Fusion is not the “strong personality” or the fact that Ford will offer both hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions, but that […]

    READ MORE