Paleofuture cities, paleofuture finance and just simply the future

Lots to catch up on I suppose.

Via the Transportationist, which says it is via David Brin, but from Popular Mechanics is a really cool paleofuture pictorial of Cities of the Future.

h/t to Otis White... but does anyone have any inkling at all whether there is a local version of this story from Atlanta: Paying a price for risky schemes, Derivatives meltdown costs metro Atlanta entities $394 million. Several hundred local municipal pension funds near by.  I would say it would be a newsworthy story if we didn't have this problem. Oh yeah. Beyond the PWSA of course.  Were they the only example here?

You might have caught that the PG's Cutting Edge blog roundup on Sunday caught my comments here last week on teaching Mandarin in the schools.  Think that was in jest?  Check out the news from the other day that Indiana is going to partner with the Chinese on Economic Development.

and this is just about the present, but you have to love lists that rank Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh together.