Must Mention:
17 June 2010
Matins
¶ Chronicle of a crash foretold: Greece’s Olympic ruins. (WSJ; via  The Morning News)
The vacant venues, several of which dominate parts of the city’s renovated Aegean coastline, have become some of the most visible reminders of Greece’s age of excessive spending. Sites range from a softball stadium and kayaking facility to a beach volleyball stadium and a sailing marina.
As Greece sifts through the wreckage wrought by its enormous public debt, which sent tremors through world finance in recent months, the Athens Games are once again unifying this nation—this time as a target of criticism. They cost an estimated $7.4 billion to $14 billion, minor in light of the more than $370 billion of public debt, but that hasn’t mitigated the resentment.
While We’re Away
¶ The only solution is to sell you car and move into a densely-populated urban neighborhood, like ours for example. The conundrum? Whether or not to buy gasoline at pumps that Brtish Petroleum doesn’t actually own. (The Awl)
Okay so, sarcasm aside… over the last couple years, BP closed down all its company-owned stations, laying off nearly 12,000 people in 2009 alone across the organization in total. Their annual report phrased this as “the transfer of our US convenience retail sites to a franchise model.” So all of the 11,000 or so BP stations in the U.S. are essentially franchises now—and they actually do represent a not-at-all-huge part of the company’s income. But things get tricky when you let CNN explain this to you, in the very small words they like to use.
Have a Look
¶ Fooling around with Loren Ipsum. (PhiloSophistry)
¶ Software to ease the distortions of wide-angle and panorama photography: the Panini Projection. (New Scientist)
¶ Menus from the restaurants of Old Colorado — well, not that old. Our parents could have ordered for us from one or two of them. Oddly, though, no souvenirs from the Brown Palace. (Colorado College; via  MetaFilter)