Special Reports

Anybody else catch the Discovery Channel's 2-hour special on global warming on Sunday night?  It recapped the many problems we can expect to see from global warming: potential death for millions of people, millions more forced to move as coastal cities are permanently flooded, extinction for many species of plants and animals, more frequent severe weather events like forest fires, hurricanes and tornadoes, and positive feedback loops that reinforce the warming. It all would sort of a change life as we've come to know it - for the worse. Complete transformation of the planet: Every other issue sort of pales in comparison, and it makes one wonder, how can we be concerned about anything else?

TODAY: WNYC, The Leonard Lopate Show

Continuing to ask the questions that don't seem to occur to his salaried colleagues in the local media, Atlantic Yards Report's Norman Oder has recently been digging in to the critical issues of traffic and parking around Forest City Ratner's massive urban renewal plan for Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

Can it Work for Brooklyn?

Oil Drum points to a recent spike in motorist insanity on Staten Island this week: A retired Port Authority cop out with his wife, pulls in to a strip mall to pick up some Chinese food. An ex-NYPD detective jumps out of his car and guns the guy down in a barrage of 17 bullets. Why? He had been driving too slowly. Add to that, a crash on the Brooklyn-bound side of the Verrazano backing up traffic for miles and a car plowing into the front of a house, and it's just another day in Shaolin.