dattmavidson

[dattmavidson]

#doodles

[dattmavidson]

Just found this note doodle and a convo on paper we had @melissa__jpg

[dattmavidson]

The Dollar and City Economics

To understand economics you’ve got to understand currencies. To understand the economics of the modern American city, you’ve got to understand that many of their deficiencies and seemingly insolvable problems like increasing inflation and unemployment are structurally based which stem from a national currency. To grasp this idea, read the following quotes and paraphrasing from Chapter 11: Faulty Feedback to Cities of Jane Jacobs groundbreaking 1984 book, “Cities and the Wealth of Nations.” 

*The few paragraphs that are in italics are my own notes and musings in regards to what I read at the time I took the notes.

*The text in bold are things I think are important for people today to know and understand.

Jane Jacobs, “Cities and the Wealth of Nations,” Ch. 11, 1984.

Before currencies, economic transactions usually involved transactions of commodities. Known now as bartering, this method was highly sensitive to swings in value, as the prices were linked with their scarcity in the city of a transaction and the scarcity of all other known commodities in that city, along with the known scarcity in the foreign city from which the trader came. Theoretically though, “An item in high demand would command good volume and varieties of imports for a settlement, but if demand fell off as additional sources of supply or substitutes found, the superseded product would command diminishing imports, just as falling currency does.” (p. 156, pa. 1).

City-state empires in Mediterranean Europe, the Near East, China, and India all had their own currencies which they usually would base on “metals with widely accepted intrinsic values.” (p 156, pa 2). These currencies and the paper currencies that would come to replace them today are mostly based on a standard of gold and or silver. They “necessarily fluctuated with respect to the goods or labor they could command in given cities at a given time.” (p 156, pa 2). A trend of empires is their want to control the currencies under their dominion.

Jacobs makes the connection that, with the empires she studied, cities with their own coinage that become provincial to another city, or cede their sovereignty to a federation alliance usually cease to produce more coinage.

Although the idea of having control of a currency makes since to a ruler, would the control of other lands create ambition in empires, or was/is it the desire to control neighboring currencies, i.e. the units that symbolize incremental wealth (Iffy logic). Additionally, do the currencies of city-state eventually cease to be circulated because the power of decision was actively championed to move to the empire’s capital, or was it because the role of that currency became redundant, irrelevant, or because the scarcity of commodities that were the value-backers to the currencies before became an unknown? Two things could occur when an empire takes power, at least. One is to plunder any reserves of commodities that might underpin a currency, thus adding it to the technical reserves of the empire, even if it doesn’t physically move it to Rome. Or, the people see the incoming currency as a convenient replacement that allow the rich in a newly provincial city to more easily trade with cities within the empire.

“Even the Roman Empire only gradually eliminated the non-Roman currencies of its conquered provinces and dependencies; only later still, in an unsuccessful effort to combat inflation at the time of Diocletian did Rome decree standardized prices, which is to say really rigid standardized currency values, throughout its realm.” (p 156, pa 2).

When did Diocletian reign of Rome? What were the specific decrees he made? Who were his advisors? What was the mood of Rome? When was information on this first published? Did cities even think to start reminting their own currencies?

The Hanseatic League were unified on some fronts, but a currency union was not one of them. Countries of the league were innovative and creative in “devising instruments comparable to our letters of credit and certificates of deposit for use in their intercity, multicurrency trading.” (p 157, pa 3). While Venice thrived trading Byzantine coinage as well as having their own. Medieval cities minted coins for currency. Cities, and small principalities without a modern form that’d be called a city minted coins. Germany’s economic union began in 1857. Swiss cities, Jacobs calls Cantons, “retained the power to create their own currencies until after 1848.” (p 157, pa 4).

“Today we take it for granted that the elimination of multitudinous currencies in favor of fewer national or imperial currencies represents economic progress and promotes the stability of economic life. But this conventional belief is at least worth questioning in view of the function that currencies serve as economic feedback controls. I am going to argue that national or imperial currencies give faulty and destructive feedback to city economies and that this in turn leads to profound structural economic flaws, some of which cannot be overcome no matter how hard we try.” (p 158, pa 1)

A thesis statement if I’ve ever seen one. The structural economic flaws would be stagflation. A party system fragmented by economic theory neither side has an actual logical grinding to support. And the inability of cities to correct their sluggishness so efforts are pursued in ineffectual social-binding projects like sports arenas, franchises, world events.

“As we all know, when a nation’s currency declines in value relative to currencies of other nations with which it trades, theoretically the very decline itself ought to help correct the nation’s economy. Automatically its exports become cheaper to customer nations, hence its exports sales should increase; and at the same time, its imports automatically become more expensive, and this should help its own manufacturers. Theoretically, then, a declining national currency ought to work automatically like both an export subsidy and a tariff, coming into play precisely when a nation begins to run a deficit in its international balance of payments because it is exporting too little and importing too much. Furthermore, this automatic export subsidy and tariff ought to remain in play precisely as long as it is needed, no longer. If that were indeed the effect that national-currency fluctuations had, they would be elegant examples of feedback control, registering that a correction is necessary and, at the same time, triggering the appropriate correction.” (p 158, pa 2).

“To understand why national currencies don’t actually perform that constructive function, we need to understand how feedback controls work. First of all, it is of the essence that the feedback information governs a responding mechanism. For example, in our breathing, a momentary rise in the level of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream automatically triggers off the brain stem’s breathing center to shoot a message to the diaphragm to contract and allow the lungs to fill again… As organisms, we depend on vast arrays of feedback controls, each working so appropriately and automatically that we are unaware we have them until researchers tell us so. Unstable systems require continual corrections and adjustments, otherwise they would soon succumb to their own instabilities.” (p 158, pa 3).

When enterprises leave the urban core of a city to its region due to crowding, inconvenience and increasing competition for city space, it is triggered by a feedback loop.

“To be sure, the corrections are not wholly automatic, but then, neither is our breathing. We can hold our breath – within limits.” (p 159, pa 2).

“In short, feedback controls are built right into the systems they correct, and the corrections they trigger are not discretionary. They are precisely to the point, and the point is always the specific correction of results of specific previous happenings.” (p 159, pa 3).

“The trouble with national currencies as constructive feedback controls is not that they are feeble at the job”… Instead, they “can represent power of life or death over entire industries.” (p 160, pa 1).

“National currencies register, above all, consolidated information on a nation’s international trade. When net international exports of goods or services rise, relative to those of other nations, the currency, being in demand, rises in value; when exports fall off, it declines in value. International imports and exports of capital work in just the opposite way. If a country has been importing more capital than it has exported (by borrowing abroad, for example), the value of its currency is automatically bolstered. Conversely, if it has exported more capital than it has been importing (by lending, making gifts, paying interest on prior foreign loans, exporting the profits of foreign-owned industries), the value of its currency is automatically depressed to that extent.” (p 160, pa 2).

“The reverse effects of movements of capital do long over-rule a currency’s feedback concerning international trade in goods and services. That factor dominates over the long term. For example, suppose a nation borrows heavily abroad to develop its economy. It’s currency’s value is automatically bolstered from the very fact of the borrowing itself. But then suppose that the development schemes do not pay off in expanded international exports of goods and services, or else in replaced foreign imports. The currency must then decline. The cost of interest on the loan, which seemed so feasible when the loan itself was bolstering the debtor nation’s currency, becomes devastating as the currency declines. That is why heavy international borrowing that does not pay off in a heavily improved balance of trade for the debtor nation can abruptly bankrupt a country unless its lenders agree to keep lending to it and to ease up on repayments and interest. The threat then, of course, becomes bankruptcy for the lenders.” (p 161, pa 1).

Jacobs asks you to imagine two people of different body types were somehow connected to the same pair of lungs. The triggers to the diaphragms come simultaneously, and what if, one of the people is swimming whilst the other taking a nap, etc. It would create hazardous conditions that could potentially become mortally dangerous to a person, organism, system, etc. “Nations, from this point of view, don’t work either, yet do exist.” (p 162, pa 2).

“Nations are flawed in this way because they are not discrete economic units, although intellectually we pretend that they are and compile statistics about them based on that goofy premise. Nations include, among other things, in their economic grab bags, differing city economies that need different corrections at given times, and yet all share a currency that gives all of them the same information at a given time. The consolidated information is bad specific information for them even in respect to their foreign trade, and it is no information for them even with respect to their trade with one another, as opposed to their international trade. Yet this wretched feedback is powerful stuff.” (p 162, pa 3).

“Because currency feedback, at bottom, all has to do with imports and exports and the balance or lack of balance between them, the appropriate responding mechanisms for such information are cities and their regions. Cities are the specific economic units that can replace imports with their own production, and the specific units that cast up streams of new kinds of exports.” (p 162, pa 4).

“Ideally, at a time when a city’s exports are doing well, it needs to receive as wide a range and as great a volume of earned imports as it can, especially from other cities, because those funds of earned imports are the grist the city must have for its vital process of import-replacing. Conversely, at a time when its exports are in decline from diminishing export work a city desperately needs to replace wide ranges of its imports with local production. It also needs maximum stimulation for tentative new types of export work it may soon be capable of casting up. In other words, with falling exports a city needs a declining currency working like an automatic tariff and an automatic export subsidy – but only for as long as they are necessary. Once its exports are doing well, it needs a rising currency to earn the maximum variety and quantity of imports it can. Individual city currencies indeed serve as elegant feedback controls because they trigger specifically appropriate corrections to specific responding mechanisms.

This is a built-in design advantage that many cities of the past had but which almost none have now. Singapore and Hong Kong, which are oddities today, have their own currencies and so they possess this built-in advantage. They have no need for tariffs or export-subsidies. Their currencies serve those functions when needed, but only as long as needed. Detroit, on the other hand, has no such advantage. When its export work first began to decline it got no feedback, so Detroit merely declined, uncorrected.” (p 162-3, pa 5; 1-2).

“If a nation’s international trade is predominantly in rural or resource goods, those exports and the feedback information they bring in falsify and contradict the realities of city trade and production.” (p 163, pa 4). Think of the example of Uruguay and Montevideo.

“Currency feedback that erroneously tells a city its export trade is in fine shape… need not always be fatal. Such erroneous feedback can sometimes be overcome by tariffs, which is how the young United States, for example, evaded the consequences of faulty feedback to its young cities.” (p 165, pa 1).

“Beginning in 1816, the federal government began enacting the first of many tariff measures intended not to raise revenue like the country’s earlier customs duties, but specifically to make manufactured imports artificially expensive. In effect, the tariffs told city people and producers what, in fact, was actually true of their own city economics: You aren’t producing exports, so you can’t afford all these imports you aren’t earning. The tariffs worked. The fact that foreign manufactured goods were now less affordable than domestic equivalents stimulated city import-replacing, and the cities’ economies developed very rapidly instead of living, at one remove, off the earnings of the rural supply economies of the country.” (p 165-6, pa 3; 1).

“In the South, where cities did not become productive, the tariffs simply drove up the cost of living without producing the economic benefits they did in the North. The South’s rural producers were being robbed of the cheap imports they had actually earned; in effect, they were victimized to subsidize city production. So bitterly was this resented in the South that the tariffs were one of the causes of the South’s attempted secession from the Union in 1861 and the four-year slaughter that followed.” (P 166, pa 2).

“Southern cities were more backward in 1816, when tariffs came into play, because earlier they had not begun generating such exports as they technically and economically could for one another, and therefore had not started up the volatile little networks of intercity trade to be found in the North. But why the difference? Here I am conjecturing, but it may have been because the Southern trade in Tobacco and indigo had become so successful so soon. In the North the poorer foreign earnings of the rural economies may have played a part in triggering Boston and Philadelphia into a certain amount of economic make-do as a supplement to the poorer rural economies they served. Whatever the reason, Boston, Philadelphia and other Northern cities with which they traded took advantage of the countermanded feedback in a fashion that Charleston and Richmond did not like.” (p 166-7, pa 4; 1).

“Many countries whose cities or potential cities today are automatically deadened by the inappropriate feedback they get from rural-based or resource-based currency values are former colonies, but by no means all. Some are decadent, poverty-stricken seats of former empires: Portugal, Turkey. Nor are all poor. The oil-producing nations that are economically backward all have cities afflicted with inappropriate feedback.” (p 168, pa 2).

“Tariffs, necessary though they are in nations with underdeveloped of long-stagnated cities and appreciable international trade in resources or rural products, are far from an ideal remedy for faulty and deadening feedback to cities. Tariffs create obstacles of their own to volatile intercity trade. They are particularly hazardous for small countries, not only because they invite retaliatory barriers but also because, in the nature of things, the cities of small nations need heavy and volatile trade with cities across national boundaries. And in large nations or small, tariffs victimize rural economies lying outside of city regions.” (p 168, pa 3).

“The fact that city-state currencies prevailed widely at times and places where significant development was getting underway suggests that national currencies may be fatally premature in some parts of the world now.” (p 169-70, pa 3; 1).

“Once a nation has managed to develop vigorous city economies or has acquired them in the course of political consolidation or military conquest, troubles with faulty feedback are not over but merely take other forms. For these difficulties, not even makeshift remedies such as tariffs are available. Countries with such troubles must simply live with them and ultimately die and decay with them.” (p 170, pa 2).

“Cities have their own individual timing for replacing imports and also for generating innovative exports. To experience a significant episode of import-replacing, by definition a city must first build up a critical, unstable mass of potentially replaceable imports. The cycle of a vigorous city, one that maintains its vitality generation after generation, seems to run like this: first a period in which it generates diverse exports, in the process earning an increasing diversity and volume of imports; second, as export-generating dies down, a significant explosion of import-replacing (provided a critical mass of replaceable imports has piled up, otherwise the city merely declines); third, a period in which potential new exports, often including innovations, are generated in the city’s now greatly enlarged and greatly diversified internal economy; fourth, a period of vigorous export-generating and, it follows, of earning wide ranges and volumes of new, potentially replaceable imports – in other words, a return to the first phase of the cycle and a preparation for repeating the second phase.” (p 170-1, pa 5; 1).

“The cycles of cities in volatile trade with one another do not correspond: rather, they intersect constructively at their different phases, some “feeling vigorous just when others are worn out,” some “loading just when others are delivering.” If all the cities of a nation engaged simultaneously in explosions of import-replacing, the joint economic boom would be horrendous, frantic, probably so impractical as to choke itself off from lack of materials, workers and sheer time to solve practical problems before they became overwhelming. But in any case, such an unbalanced, simultaneous expansion can hardly happen normally because cities require differing phases of one another’s cycles. A city in the phase of generating unprecedented exports (unprecedented for that network of cities) or true innovations needs customer cities in the phase of import-replacing because those cities, shifting their import purchases, can afford innovative goods and services and are the best initial customers for them. Potential cities, just getting started, have historically often depended for their chance at life upon older cities replacing imports and shifting their purchases to exotic new goods or to rural supplies that create an opportunity for a depot city to arise and, perhaps, to develop and flourish. ‘Some go in front, some follow.’” (p 171, pa 3).

“Whichever city in a nation happens to be contributing most heavily to the international export trade is apt to be the city whose needs are best served by the national currency. The city with that edge probably gets cheaper foreign imports when its own economy can benefit from cheaper imports, and probably gets an automatic tariff and export subsidy (with respect to foreign trade only) just when it needs such help. If one city and its region gets an edge of that sort, even a small edge, we must expect that the advantage will make its economy more vigorous and more successful than that of other cities in the nation. The edge, once gained, must logically be self-intensifying and self-reinforcing because the more economically successful that city is, then the more heavily its production will weigh in the total national production and total foreign trade of the nation’s cities. The more heavily it weighs, the more closely the feedback from the national currency will suit that specific city. But it won’t coincide with other cities’ needs and the timing necessary and natural to them.” (p 172, pa 2).

“What I have just been presenting is a hypothesis. If it is correct, what we should expect to find in a nation with a large international trade in city goods is not a nation of many city regions – as one might offhand expect – but rather a nation with one overwhelmingly important city and city region, along with other cities that are feeble at generating regions of their own. And we should expect that with the passage of time the one ‘elephant’ city would become increasingly dominant economically, and the others increasingly passive and provincial.” (p 172, pa 3).

“It seems as though, in nations with very different histories, populations and geographical sizes, some force is bent upon transmuting multicity nations into something resembling city-states, that is, states overwhelmingly dominated by one city region and its city or cities. That force, if I am correct, is the faulty feedback exerted by the consolidated national currency.” (p 175, pa 2).

“A large nation transmuted into something resembling a city-state is a different matter [than a small nation]. The many cities that grow more inert and provincial as time passes don’t pull their weight economically. They don’t make good domestic customers for the dominant region. As other cities stagnate, the dominant city and region must subsidize them, and the subsidies, being unearned, don’t create self-generating growth, so the drain goes on interminably. Ultimately most of the nation becomes incapable of supporting itself, or can do so only badly.” (p 175-6, pa 4; 1).

“Cities within a nation get no feedback whatever from the national currency with respect to their trade with one another nor their other domestic trade either, for that matter. This means that in a country with very little international trade relative to domestic trade, cities get virtually no feedback. While this lack may not deaden them, neither does it help correct or rejuvenate them when they falter. A physical analogy would be an object in equilibrium on a hill. As long as its equilibrium goes undisturbed, it can get along without feedback, and maintain its position. But once it loses its equilibrium, even slightly, it’s downhill all the way. Just so, when the decline of a city getting no feedback does begin, the decline typically proceeds thereafter, uncorrected.” (p 176, pa 3).

“The most outstanding modern example of such a realm is the United States. After the tariff policy had overcome the initial feedback flaw that afflicted the country, the United States became a nation in which cities got almost no feedback from their currency on how their own trade was doing. The flourishing Northern cities proceeded to produce for one another and for the country’s regions lacking cities, and relatively little for the world outside. Most kinds of foreign imports that arrived were swiftly replaced with local production in this city or that one, and the reproductions, adaptations and improvements were sold as domestic products. The goods and services of their own devising that American cities cast up – often truly unprecedented goods and services, and often solving very important practical problems – went overwhelmingly into domestic trade, too. In time, to be sure, American-manufactured exports, along with services such as engineering and equipment installation, loomed large in some of the countries receiving them…, but they did not loom large in the total production and trade of American cities. As the American city burgeoned, the rural international exports which had once so threatened their economies became of little importance relative to total trade. American cities themselves became the chief markets of the country’s rural products…” (p 177-8, pa 3; 1).

“With no admonitory feedback from the national currency, American cities flourished mightily, but only up to a point. All cities tend to have their runs of bad economic times for many reasons, ranging from unavoidable hard luck to outright short-sightedness, folly and overspecialization. Furthermore, every city’s already established export work dwindles over the course of time owing to replacements in customer cities, transplants to distant regions, and obsolescence. A city that loses export work without compensating for the losses is a city doomed to decline. Such a city needs help and needs it fast, needs the automatic equivalents of tariffs and export subsidies. This no city can get in a country like the United States. Although American cities were able to build up their economies astonishingly with no feedback help (other than the tariffs that countermanded false feedback information), they have had no defenses, no means of self-correction, whenever they have seriously begun to lose important export work.” (p 178-9, pa 2; 1).

“Today so many American cities are stagnant and in economic decline that the stagnation and decline are acknowledged to be ‘national’ problems. But, taken individually, American cities have been stagnating for a long time now. The first of the major cities to stagnate decisively was probably Pittsburgh, at about the turn of the century.” (p 179, pa 2).

“In the meantime, the Sun Belt cities of the South and West have been rising, and this would be all to the good except that in large part their economic bases consist of military production, and of exports to backward client states like those exports to the Shah’s Iran that I have already described. Military production and international trade in sophisticated goods from advanced to backward countries are profoundly dead-end forms of economic activity… They are not so much expressions of development and expansion as they are means of trying to temporize with economic sluggishness.” (p 179, pa 3).

“American exports consist in part of ever more important rural international exports such as soybeans and wheat, while the manufactured exports go mainly to client states, in many cases on credit, and increasingly are military goods. The country’s imports largely consist of city-made goods with which American cities can no longer compete in quality or price… Thus it is not surprising that clamor grows for new tariffs or for negotiated quotas on foreign manufactured goods. But American cities are not suffering from the contradictory currency feedback that tariffs can countermand. They are suffering, rather, from the fact that they don’t correct their own economies, and as one after another has stagnated, they have been letting one another down. Tariffs are no remedy for that form of city failure. The little Northern cities of America’s infancy, weak and backward though they were, were not letting one another down by letting their own economies slump and become moribund; that is precisely why they could make successful use of tariffs.” (p 180, pa 1).

“One might say – except that it implies an undeserved censoriousness – that American cities have suffered badly from lack of economic discipline: the discipline imposed by currency fluctuations or, if we prefer, the opportunities presented by currency fluctuations. These can make it possible for a city’s faltering to be merely temporary. But if uncorrected, faltering becomes final, downhill all the way. The failure is not the fault of the cities, the government, or the American people. It is a structural flaw that comes with the territory. We must be grateful that world government and a world currency are still only dreams.” (p 180, pa 2).

I do not mean to imply that currency fluctuations are the only determinants of whether a city, and its region if it has developed one, can repeatedly replace imports and generate exports vigorously. The fact that we must inhale and exhale doesn’t mean we live on air alone. Other factors are important too. But it still remains that currency fluctuations are a powerful force, a potent form of feedback control, for good, for ill or for nil.” (p 180, pa 3).

“As far as I can see, there are no remedies at a city’s or a nation’s command, short of separations in the pattern of Singapore, for correcting the flaw I have hypothesized as leading to elephant cities while deadening others, and none for correcting the lack of feedback. But that doesn’t mean that nations don’t try to remedy, countermand or compensate for the exasperating stagnation of their cities and decline of their economies, they typically try hard and ingeniously to do just those things. But as we shall see, the efforts are worse than futile, for they only deepen and hasten widespread city stagnation and decline, unwittingly piling further structural economic flaws upon the built-in structural flaw of faulty or missing feedback to their cities.” (p 180-81, pa 4; 1).

Source: 

Jacobs, Jane. 1984. “Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life.” Chapter 11: Faulty Feedback to Cities. New York, NY: Random House, Inc.

[dattmavidson]

Of Colonies... Thoughts by Adam Smith

Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations hypothesis on economics was arguably as ground-shaking and revolutionary as the American rebellion it influenced. In his time, colonies were for extraction and their economies were heavily or wholly controlled by Imperial decree, so for as insightful as his posits were, he was equally as short-sided for not foresseing the ubiquitous evolution of colonies into nations and the subsequent implications of this transition. Smith’s perspective was stifled by a number of factors. Regardless, his words became theory; and from theory they became institutions and social systems that society is now propped up on. Perspective over the centuries has made clear that the effects of colonies has been economically consequential, aside from their original role. The same perspective also led to the realization that instead its Cities, not Nations, which actually create wealth. The point to draw from this, however, is that the current global economic system is based off of a false assumption and arbitrarily-set economic units.

from Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” on the affect of Colonies

“T[he] interest which occasioned the first settlement of the different European colonies in America and the West Indies, was not altogether so plain and distinct as that which directed the establishment of those of ancient Greece and Rome” (p. 406).

“…But, though the Roman colonies were in many respects different from the Greek ones, the interest which prompted to establish them was equally plain and distinct. Both institutions derived their origin either from irresistible necessity, or from clear and evident utility.

The establishment of the European colonies in America and the West Indies arose from no necessity: and though the utility which has resulted from them has been very great, it is not altogether so clear and evident. It was not understood at their first establishment, and was not the motive either of that establishment or of the discoveries which gave occasion to it; and the nature, extent, and limits of that utility are not, perhaps, well understood at this day” (p. 408-9; p. 525, actual book).

“In what way, therefore, has the policy of Europe contributed either to the first establishment, or to the present grandeur of the colonies of America? In one way, and in one way only, it has contributed a good deal. Magna virum Mater! It bred and formed the men who were capable of achieving such great actions, and of laying the foundation of so great an empire; and there is no other quarter of the world of which the policy is capable of forming, or has ever actually and in fact formed such men. The colonies owe to the policy of Europe the education and great views of their active and enterprising founders; and some of the greatest and most important of them, so far as concerns their internal government, owe to it scarce any thing else” (p. unknown; in actual book with footnotes 63-65 though).

Source:

Smith, Adam. 1776. “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” Chapter VII: Of Colonies. (Google E-book).

[dattmavidson]

Geology paper 3: a real "barnburner"

A Life without Minerals

Imagine a world without things you love, need, or want. Well then you have just imagined a world without minerals.  Minerals are what elements make up.  Everything in our lives is directly related to how we react and use minerals. Luckily for us, the occurrences in this paper are fictitious, because if minerals were to really disappear, then the world would be in a world of trouble.  In this paper I will delve into what our lives would be like without a certain mineral in everyday life.

You are on a boat, going to Puerto Rico to enjoy a week in a peaceful secluded bay.  There is a problem though.  Magnetite does not exist.  You do not know where north, south, east, and west is.  You are going to be selling the seas for a very long time, and then you will have no idea where you will be.  Also, trashed cars in an impound lot will not be able to be lifted. Because impound lots use electromagnets. Without those the cars will not be lifted.  How will we be able to trash cars?  We will not be able to.  Cars will stay around everywhere just rusting away to dust.  Do you like listening to music?  Well say goodbye to audio enjoyment as you know it.  Music cannot be transmitted through speakers, big or small. Speakers use magnetite to create impulses that make sound waves.  The thing the absence of magnetite would affect the most would be electronic memory storage.  Hard drives on computers use magnetite and its magnetic properties to store and recover millions of different pieces of information on computers, phones, and mp3 players.  So without magnetite, one could say that we would have no technological age as we do today.

Magnetite is not the only mineral that disappeared randomly.  It turns out that Gold, the most precious of all the minerals, is nowhere to be found. Women everywhere in the world freak out as there rings, necklaces, and other jewelry no longer exist.  Kids in art class can no longer make school projects fancy and colorful as there is no more gold leaf paper, which is a very thin sheet of gold that adheres to a surface.  Other than jewelry, Gold is the coinage system of the world.  Money represents how much gold you have metaphorically.  Back in the day, Gold itself was used as money.  From San Francisco to Timbuktu, Gold was used as the standard monetary unit. Besides those reason Gold has a very useful component.  It cinducts electricity very well, and it does not tarnish.  So you would not have your blackberry or iPod if it were not for Gold.  The circuits produce very low voltage currents that need Gold to operate. Therefore, without Gold, then there would be no entertainment.  Your teeth would also be very painful without Gold.  Gold is a very common material used to fill teeth or arch teeth.  The most important thing we use Gold for though is none of the previously mentioned aspects.  And without this, we would not know who the champions were.  I am talking about Gold medals or course.  We could only tell who came in third or second place, but first place would stay anonymous for the ages that follow.

The next mineral is the most important of all the minerals.  It is because of the properties of this mineral that there are continents and very stable surfaces for preparing dinner.  Obviously, I am talking about the mineral Granite.  Granite is a lot more dense the Basaltic Rock, which is the main rock of the ocean floor.  Because of this difference in density Granitic rock slides on top of the basaltic rock.  This causes a trench, or subduction zone, where the ocean floor goes underneath and melts into the mantle.  Without Granite, there would be no mountains, unless they were sedimentary, in which case they are not as cool as Granitic Mountains.  Back to the tables though, the use of granite as a table top has increased exponentially over the last decade.  Many people feel that it looks better, is more durable, and improves housing value better than tile, wood, or marble could ever dream of.

Everything is back to normal.  All the above minerals have come back.  Life is wonderful again.  But you realize something.  The battery life on your electronics is miniscule to what it used to be. Along with that, planes around the world are crashing with no warning at all.  This is all happening because of the loss of one mineral.  That mineral is Silver.  Silver is a big component in the making and using of batteries.  This is because Silver is the cathode, or negative side of the battery.  The reason for the planes crashing is because of a catastrophic failure in the rotors. The problem is that Silver is used in the ball bearings within the rotors of the engines.  Without Silver, the rotors cannot withstand the heat of the friction, and the ball bearings crack and stop working properly.  Along with those, we would never be able to tell who came in second place at the Olympics, or any event that uses Silver as the standard for second place.

The last mineral that I am going to discuss is one of the most classic and historical minerals in the history of man. Marble is the mineral that I am discussing.  Almost all the monuments from Antietam are made of marble.  Whether it being the Parthenon in Athens, Greece; or the the Capitol Building in Washington D.C.  Nothing says class and integrity like Marble.  It is a very durable mineral; however it does not hold up well to acidic environments.  That is why that if you have a marble countertop, you have to clean it after cutting tomatoes on it.  Otherwise it will become porous and rough.  Marble is also used for columns and fire mantles.

Obviously any minerals absence into nonexistence is going to be felt and thought as not a good thing.  However, that does not mean that all would be missed equally.   Every mineral has different uses and affect a human’s average life differently.  That is why I wrote this paper, along with other reasons.  The point of the paper is to inform the reader to be grateful for what is present on Earth, and to not take anything for Granite (yes, that was a pun!)

[dattmavidson]

Geology paper 2

Reed’s Gold Mine

Reed’s Gold Mine has great historical value to North Carolina and to the great nation of the United States of America.  The mine was founded by John Reed and his son Conrad.  Conrad found the first documented piece of gold in America.  It was 17 pounds.  It was used as a doorstop for three years, because nobody knew what it was.  Then in 1802, somebody saw it and informed the Reed family of their find.  The biggest amount of solid gold found at Reed’s Gold Mine was 28 pounds.  It was found on the first official mining of the land by a slave named Peter.  If it were to be found today, it would be worth $131,464.  That is how all the labor was supplied in the beginning. That also was when the mine was at its most profitable point.  The mine was very successful from the get go.  After just six weeks of surface mining, the Reed’s found themselves with a net gain of $16,000 to $20,000.  In 1831, mining underground had become the norm at Reed’s Gold Mine.

The Reed Gold mine has adits which are Linker, Morgan, Tunnel #3, and Sawmill.  Their lengths are 150 ft, 85 ft, 75 ft, and 65 ft respectively.  These adits are mostly composed of Milky Quartz.  The only mineral mined from the mine is Gold.  The price of gold over the years when the mine was in use affected the economic efficiency of the mine itself.  As the American economy grew, so did the prowess of the mine. The trend also worked when reversed, so when the economy took a downturn, so did the mine.  Although the mine would take a hit, it would not be as much as other industries because gold is such a stable value to barter or coin.

Today, Reed’s Gold Mine makes all of its money from entrance fees for groups looking for tours, and from small grants given out by the North Carolina State Government.  Gold is still mined at Reed’s, but not enough to substantially make a dent in somebody’s corporate wallet.  They give these tours because they want the citizens of North Carolina to know and respect their past, and understand where the state is heading. It is a good history lesson on the North Carolina economy and how it has changed over the last 300 years.  The majority of the groups that come to the cavern are high school and college students, or families that coincidentally come on the same day.

Research has been done in the grounds around Reed’s Gold Mine to determine if there could be some profit made on the other rocks in the area.  There is a substantial amount of granite, but politicians do not want to mine for two reasons.  One of those reasons is to not damage the historical landmark that is there.  They want North Carolina’s descendents to be able to share in the history of our state.  The second reason for not mining is the natural beauty of the area.  It is bad enough that there is a mine there already, but if a company is contracted to make a quarry, then the beauty and land value will fall drastically.  A profit would most likely be made though.

Gold is still mined from the ground at Reed’s Gold Mine.  Although not to the extent that it used to be, there is still gold to be had.  One day the mining will stop, but hopefully when t this occurs the mine will not stop getting visits from curious people.

[dattmavidson]

College Geology papers...

These is one of a few papers I had to write my Freshman year, Fall semester of college at UNC-Charlotte. Being 19 for the latter part of 2008, I wasn't the most diligent of mfers, but forgive me at least for my persistence near a deadline. During my first semester, I was in an 1200-level Geology class and an accompanying lab. The labs were early in the morning, either at 8 AM or 9:30. Needless to say, both of these should assumably be too early for me, so I was absent for some of them (the labs that is). A recourse specific for this lab, if you were to find yourself absent from a lab and therefore without a lab paper to turn in, was to write a paper, at least a page in length, having to deal with and involve Geology. At the end of the semester, I owed three such papers. What follows is the first of such papers, unedited from what I turned in at the time (bad grammar and misspellings in all). Two aren’t bad; two are filled with sarcasm. The other is pretty straightforward unfortunately. Go ahead and guess.

The Ubiquity of Geology

           Some people go through life, never wondering why things are or how, oddly enough, everything seems to be connected.  The fact of the matter is that everything, no matter how hard one tries to prove otherwise, is connected.  The processes that shape and form the Grand Canyon are the same exact forces that affect how the Empire State Building goes thru the rest of its free-standing life. The reason that we get oil out of wells deep within the earth are the same reasons moss and lichen grow on barren landscapes.  The thing that binds everything together on Earth is Geology.  Geology ties all the physiological forces on Earth into one unifying force.

The landscape is shaped by many different things.  Volcanoes, rivers, glaciers, coast lines, colliding continental plates, wind, and rain; all the things shape the world we see and interact with today.  Even though they do not all work ubiquitously and symbiotically, at one point in time everywhere on Earth, these things have occurred.  These processes shape the environment by moving, vanishing, or introducing rock from one area to another.  Not even man-made objects are free from the constant torment from these forces.

Probably the most talked about and interesting geological process, at least as a child, are volcanic forces.  Most prevalent on the Pacific Rim, or the Ring of Fire, volcanoes occur in two different geological places.  One of these places is on the edge of a continental plate that is adjacent to a subducting oceanic plate. The other location is at “Hot Spots.”  These occur where large magma plumes in the mantle are constantly centered due to convection currents within the mantle.  The most popular of these Hot Spots are the Hawaiian Islands, the Galapagos Islands, and Yellowstone National Park.  Volcanoes either erupt with felsic or mafic lava.  The type is determined by how much oxygen and silica is present.  As the amounts change, the volcanoes get more or less violent with their eruptions.  The type of lava also effects what kind of volcano shape is present. If the eruptions are not violent and are just flowing rivers of lava, then the mountain has a chance to get high, but they will have a very wide base.  Violent erupting volcanoes, over multiple eruption cycles, will get very high up, but they will have a much smaller base relatively.  They look more like tall mountains.

Another process that changes the landscapes is rivers.  They are the most powerful force on Earth.  Just look at the Grand Canyon.  All the majesty and awe of the canyon is created by a simple river, the Colorado River.  Rivers, over time, transport indefinite amounts of materials.  They transport sediment from two thousand miles upstream to deltas on the coast.  They cause high lying plateaus to be dug down into the ground and look scattered with dents. The way a river does this is by the forces weathering and deposition, or the total process of erosion.  A river picks up sediment and hurls it at the hard intact rock that dots the landscape that in winds through.  The tiny sediment being hurled, over thousands of years, grind down the hard rock farther back and down into its base.  Then the sediment that is created from grinding down that rock is then used downstream again, so the rock is recycled.  Why then do some valleys seem to be a lot bigger and deeper than others? That is because of two factors; time and elevation.  A river needs thousands of years to dig into the Earth’s crust.  That is obvious though.  Elevation is a factor because let’s say that a river is running through an open field.  After thousands of years, the field and the surrounding landscape has been uplifted by tectonic forces.  The river has the tendency to want to go back to its base level, which is sea level. So by the land rising, it actually caused the river to cut deeper into the Earth.  It is a law of water to try and go the easiest and fastest way to the coast.  Because of this, rivers, without outside interruption, will become straight if given enough time.  Obviously perfect straightness never occurs, but you can see the effects of the attempt at it by looking at the sides of rivers.  When flying an airplane over the length of a river, one would see lakes to the sides in the shapes of crescent moons.  These are called oxbow lakes.  The lakes are formed when a meandering river erodes enough sediment away on a curve that the sides meet; thus cutting off supply to the curvature part of the river.  This is clear evidence of rivers want to be straight.

Mountain ranges are big, beautiful, and majestic.  They cover vast areas and soar to heights that dwarf all of our manmade buildings and achievements.  It used to be thought that mountains formed randomly, and that there was no science behind it.  We now know that mountains are formed by the colliding of two continental plates. This is easy to see in the Himalayan Mountains in India, Tibet, China, and Nepal.  Here the Indian continental plate is colliding with the continental plate on which China and Russia call home.  These mountains will continue to get higher until the plates stop moving and start moving away from each other.  At that point the mountains will eventually be eroded into nothing, like what is happening to the Appalachian Mountains.  The reason that mountains form, and not volcanoes, is because when the rocks collide nothing is being melted.  When oceanic plates are subducted under continental plates mountains often due occur.  But they are not true mountains.  They are really volcanoes.  This is present in the Andes Mountains in Peru, Argentina, and other South American countries bordering the Pacific Ocean.  His is also seen in the Cascade Mountain Range in the Washington and Oregon in the United States; and British Columbia in Canada.  These are very volatile places to live and habituate in.

The last force I am going to talk about is glaciers.  Glaciers, when you get technical about it, are not geological processes.  The thing they affect, however, is completely geological. Glaciers sculpt and shape entire landscapes.  The Great Lakes are there because of glaciers.  The reason Scandinavia has so many miles of coast lines is because glaciers gouged out the fjords on the Atlantic Ocean and Bering Sea.  Water is a powerful force in nature, and water in it’s solid form is no different.

[dattmavidson]

George Washington's Farewell Address, Pertinent Quotes

“In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations. Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection…

Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it” (p 64-5).

“Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened” (p 66).

“As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payments of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate” (p 66-7).

“Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and it can be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.” (p 67) [While writing this, Pandora was playing “Violin Concerto No. 7 In A Minor” by Henri Vieuxtemps. Gut-wrenching stuff].

“In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave” (p 67).

“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at Liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them…” (p 68).

References

“George Washington’s Farewell Address.” Chapter 7. 1796. 61-69. In The Evolving Presidency: Landmark Documents, 1787-2008. 3rd ed.

[dattmavidson]

Creepiest thing I saw today was this, just now. She's evil, I'm pretty sure. Her dumb bro on the right incorrigibly does anything she does. I get this quasi- Pinky & the Brain vibe from them half the time. #cats #dynamicduo #dafuq #mutinyafoot

[dattmavidson]

Leias sticking on my comforter. Why are you so weird cat.

[dattmavidson]

My top 10 albums of all-time in order, from top to bottom. Dead Serious. #Classics #LifeAltering #ModernDayGospels #WhoTheHellApprovedMeToBuyThese #musiccollection #CDTowerofBabylon #ImDumb

[dattmavidson]

My 5 CD soundtrack collection straight up murders convention. Charlotte DJs better get on their game before I run em out of town. #DoubleBatman #Apocalypse #TeenAngst #TeenPregnancy #NewMTVShowPremise #SealAloneSeelsIt

[dattmavidson]

#catpaws channel the force. "These AREN'T the drones you're looking for. This neck and behind the ears ARE what you've been ordered to scratch. Star Wars puns never get old haha...

[dattmavidson]

[dattmavidson]

I was reading an article which led to another article, the ole snowball effect, until I fell into “15 Reasons Why Charlotte Is The Weirdest” by Carly Ledbetter (You can read it, follow the link). It’s a Huffington Post article from all the way back in March of this year, the 19th specifically. I live in Charlotte and feel like I’ve been here long enough to call it home, plus it legitimately feels like home to me. Although I got to the URL from a site at this point I don’t remember, with a title like that one and the quick insight into where I like to live, I jumped right into it.

Obviously it’s a list-type of article with “15 Reasons…” in the title, no duh. It was well-written grammatically, an easy read def. Some of what Carly says is in a positive tone, some are a tad bit negative. I’ll go through them and then…

1)      We call Our Downtown Uptown instead

In America, Futbol is Soccer, In Charlotte, Downtown is Uptown. Plus it’s on a hill. And back in the day when basically all of the city’s civic leaders were pious Presbyterians (don’t quote me on the denomination), they felt that they ought to call it up town because downtown is probably close to hell. My favorite rumor on it being called uptown stems from the fact that the first relatively major non-northern Europeans to migrate into Charlotte were from Greece. And they worked in the uptown area where all the businesses were. Feeling homesick, they started calling the area uptown, it was in English because were everywhere back then so why push the issue, they used uptown because what do they have in Athens? An Acropolis, or ‘City on a Hill.” The Greek one is wishful thinking though.

Plus you can literally just say downtown and everyone knows exactly what you’re talking about.

2)      Nobody that lives in Charlotte is from here

I’ve heard this a million times, and I get what she means, but if you ever meet someone from Concord, Matthews, Mint Hill, Rock Hill, Gastonia, Mooresville, Huntersville, etc. they are from Charlotte. They might say “no, I’m from Cabarrus County and yada yada, but if it weren’t for the economic output of Charlotte, then the chances that they themselves would’ve grown up in let’s say Pineville would have been drastically lower because parents, like people in general, would move to where there are more plentiful jobs.

Speaking just anecdotally, I couldn’t wait to get out of Raleigh when it was time for college. It didn’t matter to me what the city had to offer, so I assume that might be the case for others who went to a state school

3)      Celebrities? We only have three Michael Jordan, Ryan Lochte, and Cam Newton

If there are only 3 celebrities, then technically it would be harder to find them since there’s only 3 instead of ~1000 in LA (~1000000 in their own heads in LA). I bet that the number of “celebrities” in Charlotte skyrockets sometimes, but there’s no way to really predict that. When production companies schedule their shootings and get the hiring of extras lined up, there’s no way of knowing if celebrities are involved. Maybe they’re put in with CGI -_-.

Its claimed later that this is NASCAR country, and a LOT of people probably recognize racer’s faces in public, so the biggest population group of what in Charlotte you could reasonably consider celebrities isn’t acknowledged.

4)      Evangelical stuff is everywhere

Regardless of religious beliefs, this is the ‘bible belt,’ that said if you know how to read, then you don’t need a pastor to lecture. I want to rant more on this but I’m trying my best to be focused.

5)      The Big 3 is Bank of America, Red Ventures, and Wells Fargo, and that’s where everyone works

I chalk this one being included because everyone knows that the two banks employ a lotttt of people. Red Ventures does too, but they are Bank of America or Wells Fargo. Additionally, I don’t see how it’s weird for a lot of people to be employed by banks in a city known for banks.

6)      Buzz City Bobcats

Yea college basketball is in the triangle, and I like the hornets being back. Buzz City is clever, its stupid, but still I’m not hating on it. Honestly people can bash the bobcats and hornets all day. Because Buzz City is the home to ESPNU and the SEC Network anyway.

7)      The Bank of America mural in their lobby is ominous

If you’ve never seen the mural she’s talking about, it’s worth a trip to see it because it’s so absurdly creepy, and New World Ordery, and honestly, who gives the approval to start the work on something like it.

8)      The streets are always empty

The streets are pretty bare, except on those nights when a lot of people have the next day off. Like Fridays and Saturdays. There’s absolutely nobody out Sunday all day unless you count people that tailgate and then go to the bars to watch football.

By naming Ri Ra’s and Dandelion Market as busy on Friday’s I think its safe to assume that’s where she had friends working or was able to get discounts. Talking about foot traffic in Charlotte and not mentioning the Music Factory or Epicenter is like telling people about the good MBA programs in North Carolina and not mentioning the pride of Alamance County, Elon University haha.

There was an article I think in the Atlanta Journal or whatever their paper was talking about walking around Charlotte during the 1994 Final Fours hosted there. They called Charlotte the city that always sleeps except when there was basketball games to go to, In the current article, the CIAA tournament is mentioned instead. Probably just coincidental. People aren’t in the streets the week after CIAA ends, or are they? Oh, they are, I can’t remember the name of it but it’s the biggest St. Patty’s Day Bar Crawl in America the last few years running, or close to it.

9)      NASCAR!

NASCAR does kind of make Charlotte weird, but not necessarily to everyone. The industry in those towns up North are specific to Charlotte though, that could’ve been called weird. I bet our sitting President Barack Obama would praise the jobs it creates in the area that aren’t in the previously named Big3.

How do you not talk about the NASCAR Hall of Fame in this reason either? The weirdest thing about NASCAR in Charlotte was omitted.

10)   The light rail is a joke

Its so weird that a city would try to provide a way for its residents to get to work possibly faster, definitely cheaper, helps wean them off of cars and encourages land developers to employ people to build places that people will then live in or shop at in a location which allows them to utilize their money better because of not needing a car. The second leg of the line which connects UNCC to uptown will be an even bigger joke for sure. You can tell by how they fast-tracked its construction after the rail was exceeding many of even the liberal projections for ridership levels

If you want a light rail or mass transit that isn’t a joke, then go to Raleigh, or Charleston, or Asheville, or Greensboro, or insert southern city that didn’t have the benefit of not having transit infrastructure destroyed in the civil war and then if they wanted to rebuild, they had to go to capital resources in the North. How dare Charlotte try to improve its citizen’s lives? That’s really weird!

11)   The US National Whitewater Center

The problem with training year round for whitewater is that it gets really really cold and it takes you through dangerous environments where things are legit dangerous. Not to mention that why would you need to build a whitewater center anywhere in the world close to places that already have rapids. The only reasonable place to build a whitewater center is somewhere rapids are nowhere nearby, it’s in a temperate climate so nobody dies of pneumonia, and IDK maybe they like they idea of all1,000 CMC’s that dot the region. Put it near an airport with a lot of domestic and international direct flights, and hopefully a population of yuppies and dinks that will go spend their money (in a lot greater quantity than could be possible anywhere except Denver in Colorado, but then it gets back to them already having rapids there.

12)   Graveyards are ubiquitous

What do other cities do with dead bodies if it’s weird that Charlotte has graveyards?

13)   The BBQ thing is a thing

Michele said Charlotte was famous for its BBQ it never has. North Carolina is known for it. Especially Lexington, the capital of BBQ. BBQ wasn’t lusted after as much in Charlotte because in economics there’s a land-rent curve thingy and it made crazy arguments about how things that made more money like commercial and industrial activities were the types that could produce the income to pay the taxes to provide the services people like.

Raising pigs degrades the environment, can pollute rivers, and just aren’t what a lot of neighbors in a city want to see. So basically Charlotte is weird because it didn’t claim to be the home of or have the best of something it never claimed to be or have. But like one of the earlier reasons, people who live in Charlotte didn’t grow up in Charlotte so why would they have a predisposition and the urge to claim the title for a food nobody grew up on.

14)   Amelie’s is greater than America

Any allusion to French surrender is a OK with me

15)   Don’t go to Charlotte unless you have to, its like purgatory

Hater’s gunna hate, can’t stop it. She was hating hard

  This article got a lot of play in charlotte print media, otherwise I wouldn’t have found it. Using the word “weird” specifically I think allowed it to pick up more than it should have. The connotation of “Weird” seemed to morph unpredictably with each new reason. For example, Amelie’s being a good pastry place was obviously meant to be something that is a benefit to Charlotte, while the minimalist nature of the light rail post made her feelings bluntly apparent as it not being in the same light, tone or meaning as the former example. I’m assuming that since Red Ventures was mentioned, and that’s not something the average Charlottean would say if asked whose a big employer in Charlotte, then the author worked for them at one of there two campuses, both of which aren’t anywhere near a light rail stop.

Charlotte’s not for everyone though, and it is a weird place, but not for the generic and illogical reasons from this list. However it I just a list-type article from the Huffington Post so only it’s not meant to be taken seriously at all (unless it is meant to be, which if that’s the case then good luck).

[dattmavidson]

Charlotte needs to dry off

umbrella-ella

-ella-a-a-a-a-a

shit! its got a hole

[dattmavidson]

Talking with Canines

cheese is disturbing

naw, i'm wrong. they are the tits

where is limburger