Month: December 2007

 For cash-strapped consumers already beset by higher gasoline prices and escalating mortgage rates, the hits just keep on coming. This time, it’s food. The sharp rise in food prices seen in 2007 is expected to be followed by another higher-than-normal jump next year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said last week. And 2008’s punch will be to the breadbasket. Items made with wheat (breads and crackers) and soybean oil (cooking oil and fried foods) are expected to rise so much next year that they’ll boost the cost of cooking at home by up to 4.5 percent — half a percentage point more than predicted just a month ago.

Business & Technology | ’08 forecasts: food at least 3% higher; gas up 10.7%

Business & Technology | ’08 forecasts: food at least 3% higher; gas up 10.7%

Public housing used to mean fortress-like blocks and soulless rows of cheaply built townhouses. But now there’s a new model: privately developed homes and apartments that are well-designed, well-built and attractive enough to win over wary neighbors. A growing number of architects, from established stars to ambitious up-and-comers, are looking to such projects as an opportunity to do innovative work. (via High Design for Low-Income Housing – WSJ.com)

As our nation prepares to ring in the new year, the U.S. Census Bureau today projected the Jan. 1, 2008, population will be 303,146,284 — up 2,842,103 or 0.9 percent from New Year’s Day 2007. In January, the United States is expected to register one birth every eight seconds and one death every 11 seconds. Meanwhile, net international migration is expected to add one person every 30 seconds. The result is an increase in the total U.S. population of one person every 13 seconds.

Seoul was very alive and very, very different from anything I saw in North Korea. It’s simply amazing that a similar people divided by a political line drawn in the sand can grow so radically apart and change so fundamentally over the course of 60 years. We’ve seen this before in East and West Germany, but the differences in Korea are far more extreme. Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate this is a simple satellite photo of the Korean Peninsula at night which clearly shows a very dark North and a brightly lit South. (via Infiltrating North Korea Part 18: A Tale of Two Cities, Pyongyang vs. Seoul – Gadling)

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