Archive for March, 2006

Left Center Left speculates that Boston’s population loss is driven by immigrants who are squeezed out by well-to-do natives: The big net losers are Suffolk and Middlesex. The big net gainers are Worcester, Plymouth, Essex and Bristol. Which really means (given the lack of major suburban and exurban development) the cities of Worcester, Brockton, East [...]

Suffolk County, home of Boston, has lost population for two years in a row, writes Jay Fitzgerald in the Boston Herald. But the population loss, which probably is real and not just an estimate that grossly undercounts recently arrived or illegal immigrants, isn’t the really interesting story. Whether Boston has 590,000 people or 570,000 people [...]

A Spanish-speaking couple on the Green Line asked today me whether the trolley we were on was going to Haymarket. Wow. Good question. Who knows? Maybe Park Street is the final stop, thus nixing a trip to Haymarket? Maybe it’s Government Center, also nixing the Hay. But maybe it actually was going to Haymarket? Who [...]

Severly stupid article today in Wall Street Journal about what March Madness basketball teaches us about stock picking (“Net Gains: How Watching Basketball Can Improve Your Approach to Investing”). In it you’ll learn that there’s no such thing as a “hot-hand” in basketball; that is, just because you nail one shot doesn’t make it more [...]

I guess it’s true that Somerville is becoming more like Cambridge, at least if you think of Central Square as quintessential Cambridge. I witnessed an absolutely heartbreaking scene in Davis Square today that felt a good deal more like something out of Central Square than Harvard Square. A young white woman started screaming hysterically on [...]

Charcoal, a pan and some sudafed that’s all you need to make some meth Actually, that’s not true, but it sure is a catchy little tune, isn’t it? Meth is sweeping the nation like nothing has since the days of aaaaah Macarena. It’s so sweeping the nation that Congress has taken powerful action by adding [...]

Update: Adam Gaffin took this baby and shook it and bpdnews.com is reportedly now free from the malicious code mentioned in this post. It’s probably also safe to say that, yes, bpdnews.com is indeed operated by Boston Police Department Staff. Be careful if you browse BPDnews.com, the popular website that reports news from Boston Police [...]

I’m not sure exactly what happened, but from would I could see an MBTA bus sprang some kind of leak (diesel? oil?) in Davis Square, prompting cops to redirect traffic and Public Works to sand the street. Yup, there was a lot of sand. Eventually an MBTA bus salvager showed up. That’s all I have.

Cox & Forkum’s “The Three T’s”.

Washington Post economics op-ed columnist Robert J. Samuelson has a good piece on the current chaotic and destructive state of immigration to America: It’s time to build a real fence or a wall along every foot of the 1,989 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border. There can be only two arguments against this approach to keeping [...]