Wall or Connection

For Veteran's day, and 20yrs after the fall of the wall:

Berlin's Bernauer Strasse one with the Berlin Wall in June 1968, and the same view on October 20, 2009 without the wall and with a streetcar track and wires.
 

Pictures found here (JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images)

Mumford Quote of the Day

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.
-Lewis Mumford

Nature Photos

Indulge me for a few non-urban photos. The bright sunlight made for beautiful pattern photos of rocks, water and leaves:

grass in crack
 

12" waterfall
 

wet grass flat rock
 

algae making bubbles of O2?
 

leaves in water
 

oak leaves
 

Sycamore with Honeysuckle
 

kids like trees with holes
 

ripples in water
 

crawdad:
 

Small Waterfall

Short nature vid from Hueston Woods this weekend:

Tax and Road Policies Encourage Sprawl

..No Kidding:

....the tax code encourages Americans to live in big, energy-guzzling homes, ... and Congress seems intent on further unbalancing the federal budget to egg on home buyers. ...A particularly bizarre feature of the proposed extension is that the credit would go not only to new home buyers, but also to current owners who decide to upgrade.

But the real problem with the credit is that it continues the long-standing federal push toward far-flung McMansions and away from dense, apartment living. In the 1950s, the Interstate Highway System encouraged Americans to flee older urban areas. Nathaniel Baum-Snow of Brown University found that each “new highway passing through a central city reduces its population by about 18 percent.’’ The home mortgage interest deduction further encouraged suburbanization, because rental units are disproportionately in cities while owner-occupied homes are disproportionately distant from city centers...

 

The Body Suit Fad

Seen today at Sawyer Point Park:

This suit covers everything, including head: 

The security guard had to talk to them: