I happened to stumble on this New York Times article this evening: “Calling Off Auction, Borders Plans to Liquidate.” According to the article, “Borders said it would proceed with a proposal . . . to close down its 399 remaining stores. . . . The company will begin closing its remaining stores as soon as Friday, and the liquidation is expected to run through September.” I presume that the Borders store in Columbia Crossing will be closed in the coming weeks as part of this plan, along with the Borders Express store in the Mall at Columbia. Whether another bookseller will move into either of these locations is an open question. The article speculates that “Other national book chains, like Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, could move into stores vacated by Borders.” but also notes that “Some competing bookstores are already nearby. A spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble said that 70 percent of Barnes & Noble’s stores are within five miles of an existing Borders store.” This is true locally: The Ellicott City location of Barnes and Noble is just around five miles away in driving distance from the Columbia Crossing Borders, and less than five miles away as the crow flies. ...

In a fire-proof vault somewhere in the capital Grover Norquist stores the signed originals of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge in which politicians “solemnly bind themselves to oppose any and all tax increases.” Reading about this put me in mind of the classic Stephen Vincent Benét short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” in which Jabez Stone, a New Hampshire farmer beset with troubles, signs his soul away to the devil (or “Scratch,” as he calls himself in the story). ...

I’m now at the three month mark in the Newt Gingrich weight loss program, and it’s time for another progress report. Just as Newt feels “liberated” by the resignation of many of his campaign staffers, I myself again feel liberated from having to carry around excess weight: I weighed in this morning at 70.0 kg, 1.6 kg less than my weight a month ago, 5.0 kg below my official starting weight of 75.0 kg, and right at my goal weight. That’s one more month I can spend $10 on myself and not on Newt. ...

Now that I’ve set the scene for Chris Leinberger’s presentation on the shift to walkable urbanism, let’s move on to the actual talk. I took notes during the presentation (on my iPhone—how 21st century is that?), and for this post I’ve basically taken those notes and expanded them, adding a few parenthetical comments along the way. If you see any inaccuracies or omissions please contact me and I’ll update the post to correct them. ...

Tonight I attended the presentation by Chris Leinberger on “walkable urbanism” at the Spear Center in the Howard Hughes Corporation building in downtown Columbia. I hope to have more to say about the presentation later, but right now I wanted to reflect a bit on the room and the building in which it took place. The building was the original headquarters office of the Rouse Company; I gather it used to be named the “Rouse Building,” but I don’t know if that name is used anymore, at least officially. It’s one of architect Frank Gehry’s earliest designs; though he’s now famous, Gehry was at the beginning of his career when he designed several structures in Columbia, and the building shows little hint of what later become Gehry’s signature style. ...

A month or two back I donated in support of HoCo Rising’s personal “End Homelessness in Howard County” drive, and have through the years also donated to other local organizations and causes. It’s natural to do so, and if I were more involved in Howard County affairs than I currently am I’m sure I’d encounter many more opportunities to promote and donate to local Howard County and Maryland charities. However today I’m going to stop and consider the question: In one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, should we really be spending our charity dollars locally? ...

It’s now two months since I started the Newt Gingrich weight loss program, and time for another progress report. The stakes are higher now that Gingrich has officially announced he’s running for president. Fortunately I was able to meet this month’s goal, as I weighed in this morning1 at 71.6 kg, 1.3 kg less than my weight a month ago, 3.4 kg below my official starting weight of 75.0 kg, and 1.6 kg away from my goal weight of 70.0 kg. Once again I can keep $10 in my pocket and out of Newt’s. ...

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, so here it is: If for some odd reason you want to read more from me than my occasional blog posts, note that I do maintain a microblog (or “tumblr,” as the cognoscenti call it, after the underlying service) at hecker.tumblr.com where I record short thoughts, including links to articles I thought interesting. Some if not all of these posts I could publish on my main blog, but I tend to reserve that blog for longer posts with more analysis and background research. Posting to the tumblr is quick and easy, and so I don’t feel the need to justify time spent in posting in the same way as I do on my WordPress.com blog. ...

Lots of people love filling out quizzes to find out things about themselves they probably already know, and if you’re that type of person here’s another one for you: the new “political typology” quiz from the Pew Research Center. It’s part of a new and interesting “Beyond Red vs. Blue” research study designed to suss out how people in the United States cluster in their political views. My responses put me in the “Post-Moderns” group, though I should note that I didn’t fit the profile exactly in terms of my answers to the quiz, and also that some of the questions don’t allow for nuance or “none of the above” answers. For example, in national security matters I’m a follower of Thomas P. M. Barnett, and thus consider non-military approaches to security, including extending economic globalization, equally as important as military efforts. However the response “Good diplomacy is the best way to ensure peace” doesn’t really capture that very well, so I answered the opposite, “The best way to ensure peace is through military strength.” ...

Some time ago I complained about Maryland restrictions on direct-to-consumer genetic testing. The FDA is currently deliberating about whether to impose similar restrictions for the entire US, essentially forcing anyone wanting access to their own genetic data to do so only through their doctor. If you’re at all interested in this particular issue, or if you’re concerned about government restrictions on personal freedom in general, I urge you to submit a public comment before the deadline of midnight tonight (Monday, May 2). (Note that the page has a timeout feature, so if your comment is more than a sentence or two I advise you to compose and save it beforehand and then paste it into the comments field. Also, for really long comments you can upload a Word or PDF document.) ...