Um…

Matt Yglesias, our Harvard-appointed overseer, reports:

Satellite

miami.jpg

There’s something pretty cool about the shape of the Miami-related sprawl when you pull it out to an appropriate distance. I’d been interested to know what, if anything, is legally or practically preventing the city from just expanding further and further west if anyone happens to know.

Oh, that’s where the mountains are. No use building there; alligators top to bottom.

Meanwhile, Megan McArdle is being Megan in Vietnam this week (on whose tab no one knows), all like, ‘gosh, I never anticipated that things in Asia would be so…Asian.’

She’s trying to explain the market situation there, libertarian-style, whilst carefully avoiding any reference to the so-called “V__tn_m W_r,” which obviously had no political or social effect upon anything. The prequel:

Twenty-four hours worth of travel time gives one a lot of time for thinking, even with a new Nintendo DS Lite (sent to me, weirdly, as a free gift by Comcast). A lot of what I thought about was this blog, and the occasionally wearying job of political debate. The night before I left, I had a conversation with a friend about the practice of calling people closet cases, which he mildly defended by asserting that excessive protestations against homosexuality are often a way to bolster one’s masculinity.

Really? We’ve never heard that idea before. Could it be true? Occasionally wearying though it is, let us debate.

Every day we thank Providence for the wisdom of the Alphas.

[Hanx! Aaron]

 

Comments: 85

 
 
 

Is Yglesias really that dense? Hasn’t he heard of the Everglades?

That is unmitigated buffoonery.

 
 

Well there is a National Park down there, but that can be fixed. And the sugar cane folks are there, but they have more clout than God, and then there’s the Gulf of Mexico…

 
 

Megan is how tall again? Over 6 feet? In Vietnam? Sweet Jeebus.

I’m a 6’2″ white-ish guy, I’m in Vietnam fairly often, and they make fun of me being tall. Once you’re out of Saigon it’s like you’re the tallest guy in the whole damn country … little kids gather around cause you’re like a one-man freak show.

A woman that tall … she’s probably got guys humping her leg wherever she goes.

 
 

What a fucking idiot, that Yglesias as well.

 
 

The Rule Which Shall Never Be Broken:

You never ask factual questions in a column. You consult teh Googull with your question, then upon receiving said answer, continue or not continue writing your column.

 
Smiling Mortician
 

There’s something pretty cool about the shape of the Miami-related sprawl when you pull it

Like Florida doesn’t already have enough dick jokes.

 
 

Um, mountains? Florida? I do not think that word means what you think it means.

 
 

Both Matt and Megan say that we should stick to the big basket cases and leave them alone. Then they resume writing this shit. It begs for attention.

 
 

I can’t believe this little gem has gone by uncommented upon:

Quoth our Woman in Vietnam, Megan:

“I had an interesting discussion recently about the 2008 election. Reliable Democrats seem so certain that it’s a lock that it doesn’t matter who they nominate. Nomination thus becomes a form of self-expression; and the self they seemingly most want to express is “Screw you, Republican jerks”. Since Hillary Clinton best fills that bill, then she should be the nominee. The belief that she, alone, can best put the screws to Republicans, and therefore she, alone, must be the nominee, seems surprisingly common.”

More concern trolling follows that piece of brilliance.

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/11/night_thoughts.php

 
 

Mountains, hah! I don’t know if y’all remember I Dream of Jeannie — or remember much besides Barbara Eden in that (leg starts twitching) outfit, anyway — but the “action” supposedly took place in Cocoa Beach, Florida, just south of Cape Canaveral. The “filming,” however, clearly took place in California, as sometimes, while people would be talking in “Cocoa Beach,” you could see huge snow-capped mountains in the background. Which is hilarious, ’cause, well, Barbara Eden’s hillier than pretty much any place in Florida. There, I said it.

 
 

C’mon folderol. You can do it! You can understand the concept of snark and sarcasm on a blog noted for both!

You can do it! Think harder!! Harder!! HARDER!!

 
 

Oh, you took care of it. Hehe. Cos I was about to.

Say, Russia has a lot of land in the East that looks incredibly underdeveloped. Bet they could really make some money with that. Hell, if they put in a gated community with a skeet-shooting range, I’d be tempted to move there. Well, I’d make sure it has wireless internet first, but that’s just a given.

What I find even more interesting, however, is this city’s meandering blue wall. Is the east side of the city at war with the west? I can’t understand why else they’d take the trouble of building that thing. And why blue? Must have spent a lot money on it — just for the blue paint! You know I ought to do a post on infrastructure…

 
 

Doug Wells:

that rule kind of applies to everything.

“hey, how do i get there from my house?” (use a map program)
“who directed that movie?”
“where can i get a decent slice of pizza”

and so on. do some research, dammit.

also, though matt y is on our side, he sure is a fucking tool and a careerist. sigh. maybe he’s aspiring to reach paul berman-esque heights one day.

 
 

Yep, doodlebean, I always quote The Princess Bride when I’m trying to be deadly serious. Except at funerals, when it’s Monty Python all the way.

 
 

Yglesias thingie needs link.

[Is fixed!]

 
 

There’s something pretty cool about the shape of theMarin-related sprawl when you pull it out to an appropriate distance. I’d been interested to know what, if anything, is legally or practically preventing the county from just expanding further and further west if anyone happens to know.

All of the development just seems to cling to the eastern edge of the damn place. What’s up with that?

mikey

 
 

Kiwihopeful ~ I agree wiht Megan that we should nominate Clinton to say “Screw you, Republican jerks.” In fact, I think that should be her slogan. Not that she’s my first choice, but I love to hear the sound of conservative heads popping.

I don’t know that the Democratic nominee would win; I can only hope that enough Americans return to their senses to make it so.

 
 

Although to be fair, Robert, the ‘decent slice of pie’ question is intensely subjective.

 
 

There was a day when these kinds of vapid musings were shoved into various desk drawers, never to be seen again until and unless the writer achieved greatness elsewhere, in which case they would be put out as “juvenalia” and regarded as curiosities by scholars of the authors’ greater works. Thanks Internet age! I’m so glad I get to read this stuff while it’s still fresh and steaming.

 
 

I am as befuddled as Matt, but in the opposite direction. What practical barrier is there that is preventing Miami from expanding eastward?

 
 

Oh, Ann Coulter modern feminism is way ahead of you Megs. Not only are homophobes gay, promiscuous straight men are too! Well, if their name is Clinton…

COULTER: That’s what we call in the writing business, a joke. No, I mean, I state a manifestly obvious fact… I mean, everyone has always known, widely promiscuous heterosexual men have, as I say, a whiff of the bathhouse about them.

MATTHEWS: But, you know, you were on — I was watching you on Deutsch [CNBC’s The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch] last night. I watched it because it was all over the blog sites, you can’t miss it.

COULTER: Yes!

MATTHEWS: You were immortal in that interview by the way. And you said it because you were sort of pushed to say it. I just wonder if you believe it.

COULTER This is standard —

MATTHEWS: It’s a joke. It’s a joke.

COULTER I — I —

MATTHEWS: It’s not a joke.

COULTER It’s not only not a joke, it’s not even surprising. If feminists were not so in love with Bill Clinton, this is like standard —

MATTHEWS: OK.

COULTER For any feminist with the benefit of something beyond a community-college education, this is standard —

MATTHEWS: OK.

COULTER — feminist doctrine that wild promiscuity shows a fear-hostility of women.

And Chris Matthews is definately NOT ghey, becaust he thinks that Ann is just immortal in her interviews and he loves to dish about who the homos are.

But to be fair, she may have been resting her stilletto on his nutsack, its hard to say from the transcript.

 
 

The “filming,” however, clearly took place in California, as sometimes, while people would be talking in “Cocoa Beach,” you could see huge snow-capped mountains in the background.

Snow-capped? IDOJ was filmed in Burbank.

There are often mountains in the background of Hollywood TV series, but most of the time they are our own humble non-snowy Santa Monica Mountains, or the San Gabriels. Maybe on rare occasions you could see a little snow on Mt. Baldy, but not much.

 
 

I’d been interested to know what, if anything, is legally or practically preventing the city from just expanding further and further west if anyone happens to know.

Seminole & Micckasuckee rservations. Jeez, Matt, look it up.

 
 

But to be fair, she may have been resting her stilletto on his nutsack, its hard to say from the transcript.

Actually, it’s safe to say she wasn’t. We’re talking about Chris Matthews, here; if she’d had her heel on his wedding tackle, he would have been gushing about how it was a tour-de-force of nutsack-crushage, the likes of which he’d never experienced.

 
 

Doesn’t Yglesias know that the real estate developments west of Miami are all brown and mud-topped, as mandated by some of the country’s strictest zoning lregulations?

 
 

If Miami builds downwards they’ll have a cozy place for the Morlocks to stay.

 
 

Not to be an asshole self-promoter, but I wrote about that bit by Megan yesterday, Kiwihopeful, over at firemeganmcardle. Click my name, if you wish.
I didn’t get around to that phrase “Reliable Democrats”, tho. Something about it really bothers me. Maybe it’s that Megan sees herself as the arbiter of how true a Democrat someone is. Not that I really identify as one.

 
 

As someone who visited Vietnam about three years ago, I find McArdle’s observations stomach churningly naive and/or offensive. I want to slap her around, but I don’t think my arms are long enough.

 
 

People Please!! Matt knows there is a swamp there!!!! He is just asking why Miami can’t sprawl over it!! He’s not a moron AT ALL!

see e.g.

Did the president really gut the Endangered Species Act yesterday while no one was paying attention? So I’ve heard, at any rate. If so, good riddance. You’ll all yell at me, I suppose, but really: Who cares? Species die, shit happens, get over it. Clean air, clean water, and lower carbon emissions I’ll get behind that stuff impacts, you know, people.

link

 
 

MIAMI WILL EAT US ALL

 
 

Yglesias and McArdle were hired as commentators almost straight out of college. They should have spent at least a decade or two working at real jobs before they were hired as commentators. Then their insight might actually have some value. (Well, maybe there isn’t much hope for McArdle…) As it is, they’re just a couple of recent college grads bullshitting. Why should anyone care what they have to say? Where will their careers be a decade from now when their only real work experience is blogging and their peers have been slogging anonymously in the trenches, gaining insight.

 
 

I can’t think of anything good the Everglades have ever done for me. I’m sure if swampland were important I would have learned about it at Harvard. Also, does anyone know why the Amazon has been allowed to remain standing? It doesn’t seem to be doing anything useful. And can we kill all the bees, already?

 
 

As a perfect follow-up to Kathleen’s citation above, MY has updated his post.

UPDATE: Yes, yes commenters I know it’s a freaking swamp but there’s plenty of development on ex-swampland in Florida — hence all the canals and weird-looking lakes.

Drain that swamp! Ain’t any people in it anyhow. Nevermind the reservations.

 
 

So this is Broder in the pupal stage.

 
 

I call fake Matt. Too few typos.

 
 

Dios mio Kathleen, that Yglesias post approaches Althousian levels of stupid.

Pfui.

 
 

Blackie: Then don’t read this:

“Now where I’ll probably lose your support is when I say that I don’t even really care about the school prayer question, but speaking from experience I was forced to engage in sectarian Christian prayer in my (non-public) school and it was fine.”

Sorry! Made you read!

 
 

A lot of what I thought about was this blog

Blogging is the pornography of the semi-literate poseur.

 
 

UPDATE: Yes, yes commenters I know it’s a freaking swamp but there’s plenty of development on ex-swampland in Florida — hence all the canals and weird-looking lakes.

But who cares? Pave the whole fucking thing I say! You want fucking nature, go to a zoo.

 
 

#
norbizness said,
November 15, 2007 at 22:18
So this is Broder in the pupal stage.

ROFLmao and pissing myself.

 
 

There’s something pretty cool about NYC being The Five Burroughs when you think about it at an appropriate distance. I’d been interested to know what, if anything, is legally or practically preventing the city from just expanding into Six or Seven Burroughs if anyone happens to know.

 
 

In addition to tribal and park boundaries issues, there’s also the problem of drinking water. If enough surface area isn’t preserved for freshwater infiltration into the regional aquifers then salt-water/sea-water intrusion will “poison” water supplies. I guess this is somewhat of a practical consideration…if your into that liberal islamocommiefascist freshwater agenda thingy.

 
 

Yglesias and McArdle were hired as commentators almost straight out of college. They should have spent at least a decade or two working at real jobs before they were hired as commentators. Then their insight might actually have some value. (Well, maybe there isn’t much hope for McArdle…) As it is, they’re just a couple of recent college grads bullshitting. Why should anyone care what they have to say? Where will their careers be a decade from now when their only real work experience is blogging and their peers have been slogging anonymously in the trenches, gaining insight.

Sadly (in the case of McMegan) No! She appears to have some actual experience. And sadly, barring major, major meltdowns, they’ll be in the same places, or better, ten yrs. on.

And (fake?) MY: (The Five Burroughs. Six or Seven Burroughs)

There was only one William S, dead lo these ten yrs. We’ll never have another one.

 
 

Comments being moderated? Two linkies automatic spam filter? Or did I eff something up, thereby losing my carefully crafted comment?

 
 

I am as befuddled as Matt, but in the opposite direction. What practical barrier is there that is preventing Miami from expanding eastward?

Rufus, urban expansion into the Atlantic was expressly forbidden by the Innsmouth Treaty of 1931.

 
Herr Doktor Bimler
 

the Innsmouth Treaty of 1931.
Thoroughly documented in The Jennifer Morgue.

 
 

1. What practical barrier is there that is preventing Miami from expanding eastward?

None! I say make Biscayne Bay into one huge map of the world. Or at least build a big palm tree in the water sticking out from Miami Beach.

2. That’s a real gem, Kathleen.

3. For me the real mystery here is why the map fails to mention Kendall by name.

 
 

Oh gawd, those commenters are brutal.

And this guy is supposed to be Very Serious™.

 
 

actor212 said,
“A lot of what I thought about was this blog”
Blogging is the pornography of the semi-literate poseur.

Yup, Megan is a narcissist. Her blog is the mirror she holds to admire herself with. It is so endlessly fascinating that she dreamily brings it back to her mind over and over and over. Wait till she discovers that it is possible to update your blog by texting from your cell phone.

 
 

M. Bouffant: The spam and moderation settings must be cranked up a little high. I just posted a comment (in this thread) with one linky and it didn’t make it through.

 
 

[checking spam filter…]

 
 

“…urban expansion into the Atlantic was expressly forbidden by the Innsmouth Treaty of 1931.”

That’s just a goddam piece of paper that predates nine-eleven. I’m telling you now, the last place the Islamomexigays would think to look for Americans to behead is under the sea. It’s time to rethink our priorities, here.

 
 

Ach, despammed. Sorry about that.

 
 

Why is Cape Cod shaped like that? And does Buzzards Bay really smell like the armpit ?

 
 

M.Y.: I’d been interested to know what, if anything, is legally or practically preventing the city from just expanding further and further west if anyone happens to know.

Non-snark answer: It IS expanding further and further west every year. A Landsat image of southern Florida from 1970 would show almost no development except along the eastern coast. The eastern side of the Everglades have been drained and channelized and filled and developed steadily for many decades and it is still going on.

 
 

A Landsat image of southern Florida from 1970 would show almost no development except along the eastern coast. The eastern side of the Everglades have been drained and channelized and filled and developed steadily for many decades and it is still going on.

Too true. In fact, if you look at this map you can see that the urban area has expanded significantly more west-east since 1973 than north-south.

 
 

The Everglades are getting squeezed from the other side as well, namely Collier County.

 
humbert dinglepencker
 

Stupid bint. There’s no such thing as a ‘free gift.’ If it’s a GIFT it’s free!

 
 

I’ll take a wild guess and say that yo Matt has never read any Carl Hiaasen.

Might do him a world of good to give it a try.

 
Smiling Mortician
 

ex-swampland

This swampland is no more! It’s bleedin’ deceased!

 
 

When I lived in Broward back in the early 80s, highway 441 up past Loxahatchee was a 2 lane dirt road with just a rundown, but hellaceously good barbeque joint down off of (I think) Atlantic.

Last time I was there it was a huge commuter road, 4 lanes each way. The landscape is spray painted with generic suburbia. Can’t even recognize the place. The Sawgrass expressway opened up huge amounts of development to the west.

So yeah, it’s been developing like crazy over the past couple decades.

Since Matt doesn’t google, neither shall I … I’d guess there are probably land use and zoning issues, as well as Army Corps of Engineer issues, in going much further into the swamp.

The zoning issues are manageable, given the traditional South Florida rezoning toolkit (err, basically a large amount of cash in a small paper bag, surreptitiously handed over to a county commissioner while at an area Denny’s).

Course, it could just be they’ve run out of fill dirt.

 
 

Well since nobody bothered to post a real world, non-snarkish rebuttal, I will.

Insurance.

Building and/or operating anything down south in coastal areas just got way more expensive (wind and flood insurance), and just when it looks like real estate capitalization rates finally hit their insanely ridiculous lows. (In early spring…they’ve been climbing ever since.)

In other words, SELL, MORTIMER! SELL!

 
 

I’ll take a wild guess and say that yo Matt has never read any Carl Hiaasen.

Gaud I love that guy. Better than therapy.

 
 

Stryx,

I think Matt should spend some quality time with Skink.

McArdle should spend some quality time with Las Nachos de Diciembre.

 
 

reachin’ waaay back into the thread: zsa sed-Over 6 feet? In Vietnam? Once you’re out of Saigon it’s like you’re the tallest guy in the whole damn country

This year my department hired a new teacher, a naturalized citizen born in Vietnam. Dude is way taller than me.

Guess he must be from Saigon. . .

 
 

“even with a new Nintendo DS Lite (sent to me, weirdly, as a free gift by Comcast).”

….
Is that a major, huge, dead-elephant red flag to anyone else? Comcast hates people. Why would they anyone anything, much less a DS Lite, a product for which they have zero ownership of?

 
 

Hells, bells, the fool is in Saigon, right now!!! Will have to extgra carefull in mu Fridya night pub crawl tonight, in case i come across some brainless, 6 ft tall drunken fool.

 
 

My take on the deal with the Matt and Megan show? It’s something I call “precious snowflake syndrome”.

Both of them are of an age to have been raised by parents who believed that their highest calling was to nurture their children’s self-esteem. While this sounds harmless enough, it’s produced a lot of young people who have never yet encountered the idea that they need to do something actually praiseworthy before they receive any praise.

I suspect they both went right from hearing “Yay, you made a poopie on the potty!” when they were two to hearing “Yay, you made your bed!” when they were five to hearing “Yay, you did your homework!” when they were seven to…well, you get the pattern.

In short, they honestly think that everything they do and say is quite remarkable, because this is what they’ve been told all their lives.

Apparently, dealing with these folks in the workplace is enough of a challenge that articles in management literature are starting to show up about them. Older managers are having a hard time knowing what to do with younger workers who expect a constant stream of praise for doing things like showing up to work on time.

Luckily for both of them, it looks like they come from families wealthy enough to ensure that they’ll never have to have a direct, unmediated contact with reality.

 
 

Dammit, Skink’s going to be on the rampage again. If it makes this moron feel any better, developers are trying to get CentCom as well–to turn into condos. For once, I side with CentCom. This is the reason for my mock-deification of Carl Hiaasen characters.

Actually, after last night’s debate yet again convinced me of the strangeness of voting for the lesser of two to three evils, I think I really will mock the entire election even though I swore off blogging of any kind.

Skink4Prez, dammit, just as long as the rest of the U.S. is at the same risk as Floriduh!

 
 

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Researchers note that children which grin the quickest were smiled at much more generally. If parents are pleased and smiling, it is a given that the child is likely to grin promptly. Much research on kids has been executed, and scientists uncovered that giggling assisted with youngsters’s capacity to sustain pain and was likewise reliable in the recovering procedure.

 
The National Lampoon
 

Itchy and Scratchy are mere plagiarists.

 
 

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