Tomorrow the US Mint will officially release the newest edition of the One Dollar coin. America is holding its collective breath. Seriously though the Mint is upbeat on this set because of the wildly successful state quarters program. Instead of producing a single, permanent design for the new dollar coin, the Mint will release several. Each year four presidents, going in the order of their inauguration, will be honored with a place on the coin. In this first release we will have coins for Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison.

They’re supposed to be the same size and color as the quickly forgotten Sacagawea Dollar. Their expected success is pinned on the collecting impulse of Americans. This is basically a new way to leech off the popularity of those state quarters. I’m not as psyched as the officials at the Mint though. Remember that the quarter’s design hasn’t changed since the 1960s (except for the bicentennial), so getting a new design was a big deal. The bigger difference between these programs is that the quarter is in every day use. No one really ever used dollar coins. Every one hated the Sacagawea and Susan B. Anthony coins. When I was given a Sacagawea Dollar as change in a McDonald’s the cashier actually apologized to me.

Before them was the Eisenhower Dollar, but that had just as poor circulation. First off it was created more as a memorial to the deceased president rather than a serious attempt at coinage. When this was first made in 1969, the US had not minted a dollar coin in the last 34 years so the use of one was not a normal part of life. Plus the coin was freakishly large and cumbersome to carry around.

I guess that’s the real problem. The US public has never developed a familiarity with a dollar coin. From 1935 and earlier, a dollar was a significant amount of money and not something an average person would carry around in a single unit of currency. How often does today’s average person carry $100 bills with them? The coin was abandoned after 1935 so even as the dollar’s power eroded people still had no exposure to this amount of money as a coin. Finally when it was resurrected it was done in such poor fashion people saw no benefit in using them. So they’re relegated to commemorative sets.

The US Mint loves the idea of a dollar coin because coins last many times longer than paper money. Instead of the typical 18 month life of a dollar bill, the coins would remain in circulation for decades. The public doesn’t think about that though. Sure switching away from paper would save hundreds of millions of dollars each year in printing costs, but 75% of Americans still want to stick with the dollar bill. I wish someone would have asked these people why. Is it because of tradition or because they expect the coins will be just as bad as the previous coin attempts? I would say that maybe people just hate coins but a similar number of people opposed the removal of the penny.

Every time the dollar coin is mentioned you get people saying it will only be a success if the Mint stops printing dollar bills at the same time. Well first of all I don’t think it’s fair to call the switch over a success when you’re just forcing people to switch. While it’s nice for the government to save money, coins are just a big pain to use. I never carry any. They sit in my car or my desk drawer at work until I remember to bring them home and leave them in my coin jar. I don’t want to start doing that with whole dollars. Someone at the MSNBC message boards had a great idea to get around the bulky inconvenience of dollar coins. I wish I could link directly to their post. If the coins are forced on us then we should all just switch to using the $2 bill. I think the next time I have to use a teller at the bank I’ll request some.

One last thing. Go back up and look at the George Washington coin. Doesn’t he look enraged? Washington SMASH!

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you couples out there. Singles, better luck next year.

Really this is the best use of candy hearts I’ve seen. Those things are definitely not meant to be eaten. If you like this check out other artwork by Nathan Sawaya. This guy is the king of lego art!

I recently found an excellent blog named Strange Maps that, as its name says, posts strange and interesting maps online. Today I would like to comment on one in particular.

I have never heard of this footnote in history before but my mind is racing from the possibility of a United States of Greater Austria. The idea, championed by Aurel Popovici, was dreamed up by a group of intellectual advisers to the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. Just imagine what a huge alteration to history this could have been if it was adopted.

If you can’t imagine it, allow me to give you a brief history lesson. It was the assassination of this same Archduke that began the First World War. The assassin was fighting for Bosnia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to unite with Serbia. The First World War laid the foundation for the Second World War. The devastation of that war created the international system we have today. The most famous component of this is the UN, but it also includes organizations like the IMF and the World Bank. Today’s Middle East troubles began with the partition of the Ottoman Empire after WWI and escalated when Israel was created following WWII.

The question that will define this alternate history is if this new government satisfied the minorities in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire would there still have been a First World War? I’ve often heard it taught that the assassination of the Archduke was merely the spark that ignited the war. The implication being that if the Archduke survived, something else would have provoked the war because everyone was itching for it anyway. Is that really true?

The answer really depends on how comfortable the ethnic groups would be in the USGA. If Popovici’s plan worked these ethnicities would be satisfied with the autonomy given them within the federation. This should end most of the terrorist violence plaguing the country. The hardliners that remained would not have public support and as a result there would be little desire for war. On the other hand, if the ethnic groups still weren’t satisfied, the same scenario would play out as it did in our history.

Maybe I’m being too optimistic but I would like to think the USGA, by giving these people a stake in their own governance, would have turned them away from war. I don’t think any country would have been bold enough to invade another. Certainly most countries wanted war but they didn’t want to play the part of the aggressor. Everyone was simply waiting for an excuse to come to them. Since the Balkans would have been pacified by this representative government, I can’t think of another area in Europe chaotic enough to give a pretext for war.

Without a WWI, Tsarist Russia would have remained strong enough to suppress the Bolshevik revolution. This would have meant no cold war, or at least not an anti-communist one. The German Empire would have remained intact and there would have been no WWII. Without the economic consequences of WWI, the world’s economy would have continued to expand uninterrupted. However I don’t know if the Great Depression was inevitable. Economists are still arguing about what caused it.

Don’t let me paint too rosy a picture of the world. Although China would not have become communist because there was no USSR to prop up the Chinese communists, the country would still be ravaged by feuding warlords and an aggressive Japan. I think war between the US and Japan was inevitable too. Nuclear politics would be drastically different. Since Germany did not suffer defeat, there was no Nazi party around to seize power and chase Jewish physicists away to the US. Plus without the fright of a WWII the US probably wouldn’t have thrown much effort into a nuclear program. These two possibilities together mean Germany likely would have been the first country to develop a nuclear bomb.

I wish I knew the details of this proposed United States of Greater Austria. Would it be a republic or a constitutional monarchy? Would it have a parliamentary system or presidential one? Did Popovici model this new government after the USA or did the similarities end with the name? If you know of any good books covering this, let me know in the comments.

Since I started paying attention to real estate I’ve noticed a few community tendencies that seem universal. One of which is bookstores are always going out of business but are always wanted in a neighborhood. That is something that I will never understand. Over and over again people bemoan the loss of bookstores but apparently these businesses can’t generate enough customers. Yet people still cry over them.Myrtle Avenue is searching for a young entrepreneur willing to open a bookstore there. I guess they hope this business will buck the trend. They’re also looking for a cheese shop and organic grocer. I think that tells a lot about the character of this neighborhood and the people who pine for a local bookstore. Oh but I’m wrong because even proletarian Greenpoint yearns for a bookstore.

You’re probably wondering, if you’re still reading this, how can I be so callous about the loss of these important community centers that bring vibrancy to urban thoroughfares. *WHEW* Gotta catch my breath. That sentence had way too much bs in it. Anyway, to answer the question, it’s because I know local bookstores suck. I used to actually fall for that talk about bookstores and that led me to attempt to participate in this bookstore culture. I used to work right on this picturesque small town main street. One day I took a break from work and walked over to the local bookstore. I expected shelves upon shelves of fascinating books and perhaps even some scintillating conversation with neighbors. All I found there was a store with disorganized piles of dusty books. Some of these looked as if they were leftovers from the 1960s. The history section I had come to browse turned out to be two shelves. This was just a huge letdown.

My experience is the reason these stores can’t stay open. After that I never went back and became a confirmed Amazon customer. Amazon provides nearly every book you could want. You can read reviews and it will even suggest other books similar to what you’re looking for. No bookstore can compete with that. Today these stores rely on people’s goodwill to stay open because they cannot give customers what they want. They hope their customers will come and accept what they have.

What I don’t understand is why people would settle for a lower quality of service when they don’t have to. If you need to have a particular book in your hand immediately, you still need to go to a big chain bookstore because local bookstores don’t have a wide selection. No matter how hard I try, I cannot see what satisfaction people get from having a local bookstore around. I could only guess these stores appeal to the disorganized sort who are willing to wander in off the street, pick up a random book and read it. I cannot act like that. When I select a book it’s for a purpose. When I read Sprawl it was because of my new interest in real estate and urban planning. The last book I read, Three Men in a Room, was to learn about government gone wrong. Essentially I was giving myself a civics lesson. The book I’m reading now, Mao: The Unknown Story, is because my knowledge of China is pretty limited. How can I not learn about the man who turned Chinese culture on its head? Reading has a purpose for me. I am not the type to read for the sake of reading. Maybe those are the sort that mourn the demise of the local bookstore.

Sometimes news just knocks the wind out of you. When I loaded MSNBC and saw their headline “Anna Nicole dies” I was so stunned, I just stopped and stared for a good number of seconds. It actually took a bit for that information to sink in. What surprises me more than this news is my reaction to it. I am actually saddened by this. I usually don’t give a crap about what happens to celebrities. This time is different.

Anna Nicole was found collapsed in her hotel room by her personal nurse. Paramedics were called but ultimately nothing could be done and she was declared dead. So little is known now but everyone is pretty much assuming this was a drug overdose. I would bet it was a combination of some kind of prescription drugs with alcohol that killed her. It’s just a feeling, but somehow I just don’t think it was your standard party drugs.

Amazingly, only hours after her death, people are fighting over her memory. On Larry King Live Monique Goen, the wife of the TRIMSPA company’s CEO and Joanie Laurer (best known as the WWE female wrestler ‘Chyna’) got into a nasty fight. Laurer claimed to be a friend of Anna Nicole’s who would often hang out with her. Goen objected and accused Laurer of trying to build up her own celebrity by hitching on to this tragic story.

I am certainly sad to see fate fall upon Anna. I always felt some sympathy for her. She was a pretty girl from the middle of nowhere, who slept her way into some money. Okay it’s hardly a heroic life story but if sleeping with old people for money isn’t work then I don’t know the meaning of the word! Seriously though she did have her tough times being the butt of national jokes and, worse, having to bury her son a few months ago. Now she’s gone but her celebrity will live on and probably in a much better light.

That phrase takes on a little different meaning when you hear the latest rumor. In Touch Weekly is reporting that Britney Spears is having some wild lesbian times. It seems like every gossip blog is picking up the story. How could they resist? I certainly couldn’t. Granted this isn’t a new rumor, but what makes this story worth telling is that In Touch has someone on the record saying Britney bangs women. From the article…

Omar “Iceman” Sharif, who is a friend of Kevin’s, tells In Touch, “Britney was into threesomes and girls.” He says Britney would often invite a bunch of girlfriends over to the couple’s house to party.

Yeah okay he’s a friend of FedEx, which taints his testimony a bit, but still it’s the first time a person’s name can be attached to a confirmation of these rumors. This would be awesome news except that Britney is now old and busted. I don’t really want to imagine her jiggling herself with 6 other girls. It’s a shame these rumors weren’t around in 1998 when she was a sweet piece of ass.

By the way, do you think “Iceman” or his friends realize he has the same name as the legendary actor? Somehow I doubt it.

I am certainly not a foodie but there are a couple of foods I appreciate. Baked goods – donuts, cookies, cakes, pies – are easily my favorite foods. I also love a good knish. Like millions of Americans I definitely don’t subscribe to any of those food ideologies: vegetarianism, veganism, raw foodism, frutarianism. Thanks to a disturbing story I found on Gothamist, a new food ideology has been brought to my attention.

A health guru named David Jubb neglected to get medical attention for his infant son’s broken ankle. Somehow he thought making a splint from chopsticks would be a good enough treatment. Naturally when child services took away his son, it couldn’t have been for his attempt at playing Doctor MacGyver. No it was because ACS was on a vendetta against him because he is a lifefoodarian.

Now this was news to me. “Life food” is not an obvious term so I had no idea what this was about. Gothamist was thorough enough to link to David Jubb’s definition. Hey, did this guy invent this stuff? Whoever did is batty. Here’s a few select quotes.

Lifefood encompasses an awareness that our food is most whole as it has life force and vital electrics intact. Lifefood, like raw and living food, is neither cooked nor chemically processed thereby preserving it’s energetic, enzymatic, and nutritional integrity.

Lifefood is wild food or closer to the types of food that humans evolved with. This is about foods that have kept their life-force intact. To some considerable extent, the time worn adage: “You are what you eat” is true. Our morphological field (the energetic and physical shape we assume) is altered by how we perceive and interact with our environment, and by what we consume. We, as other animals on earth, can communicate, adapt and interact with our environ- ment through ways of being in resonance, which includes eating.

Reading this I had to wonder if I lived in the Middle Ages. Lifefoodism is nonsense. Biology and medicine have been rigorous sciences for centuries now and in that time we have learned a lot about digestion and our metabolism. Sure we don’t know everything and there are still questions to answer, but we definitely know food does not have a “life force”. These ideas would make sense to ancient people if they weren’t already starving and happy to get any kind of food into them.

Overstated has put together a list correlating San Francisco neighborhoods with neighborhoods in New York City. I think it’s mostly correct, although I would expect some lively discussion to be generated from this.

One thing that jumped out at me is Treasure Island/Roosevelt Island. I don’t think Treasure Island has quite the same bleakness that Roosevelt Island has.

Somehow the Mission being equivalent to Williamsburg doesn’t sit right with me either. The Mission is more crime ridden. I think comparing it to Bushwick might be a better choice.

A lot of the condos that wow me, costs some ridiculous amount of money. Like say… 50 Gramercy or 1 York. But I had a boring Friday and spent some time browsing new developments around where I grew up and I came across North 11th & Roebling from The Developers Group.

I’m specifically talking about unit #217-2. This is an 815 SF two bedroom, one bath, and I love the place! The layout is perfect for me! It’s also near my old neighborhood so I could do my shopping in all the same familiar places. Oh donut shop, you sell the best donuts in the world! I hope you’re still there.

Now let’s take a walk through the floorplan. The apartment is a two bedroom so I would sleep in one and turn the other in my office/project room. Then I could have my dream of a workbench that is as tall as my chest. That would be perfect for when I have to scrutinize something.

I love how the kitchen is setup. It’s small like virtually every New York kitchen but it still feels open. I complain a lot about kitchens in New York because they’re usually cut off from the rest of the house. They’re typically  claustrophobic too. This one though is wide open and that counter is a great place for friends to hang out while I’m cooking. Right across from the kitchen are a few closets. One of them hides a washer/dryer set. Now that is a necessity. Having to lug my laundry outside is just barbaric. I would use that large center closet for coats, but I think I would use that small one on the end as a pantry.

This is the first floorplan I’ve read that has a “recreation room”. I really can’t explain that one. I realize there is no obvious delineation between the two sides so you can’t label one side as the living room and the other as the dining room. Still though it’s a weird label. The left side would be my living room. I would try to hang the LCD on that small wall near the kitchen. The closet next to it would be my DVD storage space.

The right side would be the dining room. I would prefer a small dining table though because I want to put a comfy leather recliner in that window box and turn it into my reading area. What a great fantasy! Sadly I could never afford such a great place but it’s still fun to dream.

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Lefties sit down for this. I am going to write something that will shock you. President Bush has a good health care reform proposal.

Okay, if you’re reading this, someone has revived you with smelling salts. I’m talking about the proposal Bush introduced during the State of the Union speech. You can read a little more about it at the White House.

Bush’s plan attacks a little looked at portion of the tax code. Way back during World War II the government instituted wage controls. To entice workers, without illegally increasing pay, companies began to offer health insurance. The federal government then gave companies a tax break for the value of their health insurance cost. By FY2004 (most recent year I could find a citation) this cost over $180 billion a year. These costs rise so quickly because the government does not put any cap on the tax break. This encourages companies to choose expensive health plans with lots of features that few workers ever actually use.

What Bush wants to do is move the tax break from companies to individuals. Everyone with health insurance, whether it’s from your company or privately purchased, would be given a $7,500 tax deduction ($15,000 for families). If you have a company health plan that costs more than the limit, the overage would become taxable income.

So how does all this tax talk translate into health savings? Today’s tax system encourages companies to buy the most expensive health plans because the federal government will make up the cost difference. This inflates health care costs because it encourages people to pick the highest plans that have little cost control. Creating a low price incentive will get people to stop buying health services they won’t use. Plus those without company health insurance will have a reason to buy insurance on their own thanks to the tax credit.

I’ll admit this plan isn’t a panacea. It will not do much for those too poor to pay taxes. However that is not a good reason to scrap a plan that will lower health care costs for the vast majority of the population. Let’s do this plan to help most Americans and also think of a separate solution for the poor.

What’s really sad is that this good idea is probably going to be lost by the wayside because of Bush’s unpopularity. If only he proposed this in 2001. Instead a vindictive Congress, with more to gain politically by opposing the president at every turn, will automatically dismiss this plan. Maybe it never really had a chance, even under a different president. You lefties won’t be satisfied until the government nationalizes the health care industry and you can add hundreds of thousands to the federal payroll. I weep for our future.