Culture: The Flavors of Philadelphia Life

At a recent meeting of the Right Angle Club, Stephen C. Bennett an administrator, and Alix Esposito a social worker, kindly addressed the club about the Veterans Hospital where they work. The federal government pushes its mass produced products into every city, but gradually a local flavor starts to creep in; how this process works is illustrated by the fact that Steve's grandfather Claude was once the manager of the Bellevue Stratford Hotel. The VA hospital may be a piece of http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1598.htm The Missouri Compromise

William Bingham

Louisiana Purchase took place in 1804. Napoleon insisted on payment in gold, which the United States government didn't have. William Bingham of 3rd and Spruce Street graciously supplied the necessary gold as a loan, eventually repaid around the time of the Civil War, long after Bingham had died. It's an interesting question whether Nicholas Biddle might have been involved in the financing of the Louisiana Purchase, too. He was part of the American diplomatic mission in France and definitely had a hand in thehttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/674.htm What's a Derivative?

The intention of the next few sections is to sort out some of the confusing components of the credit crunch of 2007, in which novel financial instruments called derivatives played a central part. Before we get into that, let's try to answer the question just posed: why did the monetary authorities respond to a surplus of cheap credit by apparently making it worse, flooding the economy with still more cheap credit? The sudden return to normal interest levels, it would appear, posed a threat of recession so severe it seemed necessary to make inflation worse in order to combat the impending deflation. The Federal Reserve may of course be planning only a brief inflationary move, or a sharp inflationary move soon followed by a sharp deflationary reversal. Its purpose appears to be, to prevent an impending wave of mortgage foreclosures by holding interest rates down, disregarding the abnormally low long-term interest spreads which had recently seemed such a problem. Whathttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1395.htm Membership and Fellowship in the College

The College, I fear, has allowed itself to resemble the Board certification process, where a great deal of effort is put into attaining the honor, but once attained, there is not a great deal to do. I believe this is the main reason we see so many Fellows stop paying dues after a few years. Last year, I believe it was said there were 90 drop-outs from all causes.

My suggestion is that we contemplate a more formal subdivision by specialty, linked to local specialty societies, and ultimately to the national specialty societies -- especially when they hold their annual conventions in Philadelphia. We already have a small number of specialty societies who use our facilities, and it would be important to learn their feelings about what I propose before doing anything that might upset them.

I am proposing more than just renting the hall. My proposal is that we explore offering College membership (not fellowship) to every physician active in a specialty socihttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1559.htm Merging Cities With Their Suburbs

Philadelphia 1854

When the City of Philadelphia turned into the County of Philadelphia (or vice versa) in 1854, the area had about 150,000 residents in 1850 but 500,000 in 1860. It qualified as one of the largest cities in America at the time, but what we today call middle-sized cities are about that same size. As a generalization, when a thriving American city approaches a size of about half a million, the business community often gets the idea that the city should expand its limits by annexing the neighboring districts. And, as a further genehttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1570.htm A Single International Currency?

$100 bill

After three hundred years of fumbling experiments, and now twenty years of satisfactory testing, maybe America has stumbled upon a currency system that works. Resting on the fact that most Americans are either debtors or creditors, and the rest don't care, the quantity and value of American dollars grow out of negotiated agreement between banking and government. All banks want higher interest rates, and all governments, perpetually in debt, want lower ones. Other creditors trust http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/825.htm CNBC Exposed

This series of videos is the best insight into America's financial reporting you will ever find.

http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1016.htm Franklin's Public Pledge to Braddock

Ihappened to say I thought it was a pity they had not been landed rather in Pennsylvania, as in that country almost every farmer had his wagon. The general eagerly laid hold of my words, and said, "Then you, sir, who are a man of interest there, can probably procure them for us; and I beg you will undertake it." I ask'd what terms were to be offer'd the owners of the waggons; and I was desir'd to put on paper the terms that appeared to me necessary. This I did, and they were agreed to, and a commission and instructions accordingly prepar'd immediately. What those terms were will appear in the advertisement I publish'd as soon as I arriv'd at Lancaster, which being, from the great and sudden effect it produc'd, a piece of some curiosity, I shall insert it at length, as follows:

http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/531.htm State Capitol Think Tanks

{top quote}
States rights will be neglected as long as state governments remain so second-rate. {bottom quote}

Setting aside one's political party preferences, it is hard to deny the considerable increase of new and sophisticated ideas generated by the Republican party in the past twenty years. For fifty years before the Reagahttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/857.htm Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen

Hans' website is here: http://www.gapminder.org/

His presentation software has been taken over by Google: Motion Chart

http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1458.htm Human Rights

The Founding Fathers, mindful of Cromwell and the English Civil War, were strongly concerned that majority rule might turn into a tyranny over minorities, and searched for some way to protect minorities. Since everyone could imagine being in a minority on some dispute, it was a universal concern. In those strongly religious days, it seemed self-evident that minorities had certain "divine" rights, conferred by God, which mere legislatures must not violate. As dissenting minorities became increasingly secular, the language shifted to "natural" rights, enshrined by purely logical analysis: there exist some rights anyone would give to others in order to preserve them for himself. In more contemporary language, the demand is now for "human" rights, whose source and authority lie mostly in the intensity with which they are demanded, to a point where some believers actually devote their lives to achieving them. Underneath all this semantic wrestling, one essential of any http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1554.htm Madison in Philadelphia

There is a phrase much used in diplomacy and politics, sometimes attributed to Lord Palmerston, sometimes to Cicero.

In politics, there are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only accommodations.

Regardless of who coined the adage, it is difficult to imagine stone-faced George Washington uttering it, or even listening with approval. It is nevertheless generally held to be the central truth of modern politics, and James Madison was our first modern politician. The only American scholar of politics and political history available to Washington who therefore depended on him for advice, Madison eventually evolved into a practicing politician. An evolution in the core beliefs of both these men, based on their new political experiences seems to explain the slow transformation of the original friendship of these two allied Virginia plantation owners, into coolness bordering on hostility. On one level, their disagreements may be seen as respohttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1548.htm Right Angle Club 2008, Address to the 2008 Presidenthttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1542.htm Detroit Makes, Philadelphia Takes

Junk Yard

Let's look at the economics of a junkyard in a business-school way. Derelict auto bodies worth $80 a ton at current prices can be profitably converted into $235 worth of scrap metal, provided the cost of doing so can be kept below $155 a ton. The Camden Iron and Metal company is able to do so for $115 in expenses, and so reaps a profit of $40 a ton . That's not to mention the relief the owner of a useless car feels when the derelict hulk is taken off his hands, or the relief the City feels in ridding itself of thousands of vehicles abandoned in various alleys and public places. Or the worth to the steel mills of being able to produce new metal at a reduced price compared with starting with iron ore and limestone. Or the benefit to our balance of trade from being ahttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1338.htm OUR NICE HOUSING BOOM COLLAPSES

Three Basic concepts at work:

Steep yield curves (the normal situation) are good for banks; inverted curves (a rarity) are not. The 2006 inversion was caused by the bond market accepting abnormally low long-term interest rates, so the "spread" between risky loans and safe ones displayed a diminished "risk premium".
The Federal Reserve then lowered short-term rates by printing more currency.
This caused an inverted yield curve to return to its normal shape, but the 2006 problem was caused by too much(Chinese) money and this action added to it. The banks were rescued, but the currency was inflated.
This innovative response will probably become a standard readjustment.
But it only keeps the ship from tipping over after a sudden wave; it doesn't address the approaching storm.

http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1331.htmFanny Kemble Takes the Train South, in 1838

Alps

The "Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839" raised strong feelings against slavery, particularly in Frances Anne Kemble's native England. At the outset of her book, Fanny Kemble describes what it was like to travel on American railroads in 1838.

On Friday morning December 21, 1838, we started from Philadelphia, by railroad, for Baltimore. It is a curious fact enough, that half the routes that are traveled in America are either temporary or unfinished -- one reason, among several, for the multitudinous accidents which befall wayfarers.At the very outset of our journey, and within scarce a mile ofhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/934.htm USA: Chapter One

I didn't mind picking up David at the airport. What ticked me off was driving in a blinding rainstorm in my day-old car, a car that twenty minutes ago turned into an instant sauna when the air conditioner suddenly blew hot air. So much for technology and cars with automatic everything.

The Philly International terminal wasn't much more comfortable, but at least the rain had slowed some as I was parking the car. According to the arrival's board his flight was on time, which was the first thing to go right today. As I approached the gate the British Air passengers were just starting to file through.

His long flight and our heat and humidity aside, David Nesbitt looked like most people picture an affluent London banker, which he is; mid-sixties, steel gray hair and van-dyke beard, well over six feet tall without an ounce of fat and, as always, impeccably tailored. Walking ram-rod straight he obviously takes great pride in his appearance.<http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1197.htm Rescuing International Finance?

Let's begin this discussion of international finance by relating the story of how the United States solved the same problem in 1913. This wasn't a ho-hum bit of history, it set the pattern the world is now about to adopt or reject. Remember, our current lame duck President comes from Texas.

In 1913, the Federal Reserve system was created. It had various purposes, but it essentially stripped the state governments of the ability to adjust interest rates, and placed that power in Washington DC. The appointment process to the Fed board was tinkered with to achieve as much independence from politics as possible, although it was unrealistic to think politics would be totally excluded. Politicians never give up power voluntarily, but in this case they also escaped blame for the unpleasant things a central bank is occasionally called on to do, so it was a deal. The remaining uncertainty thus became the question of whether the states would yield to federal authority http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1531.htm The Third Pennamite War (1784)

{Wyoming massacre}

Wyoming massacre

And so, after the Revolution was finally over, there was a third war between Pennsylvanians and the Connecticut born settlers of the Wyoming Valley. This time, the disputes were focused on, not the land grants of King Charles but the 1771 land sales by Penn family, most of which conflicted with land sales to the Connecticut settlers by the Susquehanna Company. The Connecticut settlers felt they had paid for the land in good faith, and had certainly suffered to defend it against the common enemy. The Pennsylvanians were composed of speculators (mostly in Philadelphia) and settlers (mostly Scotch-Irish from Lancaster County). Between them, these thttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/689.htm Malpractice Epidemic?

{top quote}
The best way to avoid malpractice suits is to avoid committing malpractice in the first place {bottom quote}
The Tort Bar

Plaintiff lawyers, responding to increasingly effective attacks by the medical profession, retort the best way to avoid malpractice suhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/808.htm New Jersey Ponders a Rising Sea Level

A certain gentleman in a professional position to dominate conversations about rising sea levels, is afraid of being sued, and requests his name be withheld from the following. Let's just call it hearsay, suitable only for conversational banter.

If the icecap now sitting atop Greenland should melt, it can rather easily be calculated that sea level would rise to the point where the Delaware River would be 83 feet deep. The Army Corps of Engineers would then probably have more urgent matters to attend to, but at least they would no longer have to cope with deepening the channel to 40 feet. If the Antarctic ice cap should then melt on top of it, the sea level would rise an additional 220 feet, resulting in a Delaware River 300 feet deep. There might be some dry real estate on top of Blue Mountain, but not much else on the Atlantic seaboard would be dry, so there would likely be the additional problem of keeping other people from climbing up to sit in your phttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1516.htm Estate Planning Tool

{top quote}
It's complicated: a CRUT in a FF, administered by a DAF, and purchasing life insurance in an ILIT. {bottom quote}

Life insurance escapes estate tax, but only when owned by an irrevocable life insurance trust. The amount of life insurance is limited by the money available for prehttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1161.htm SHAKSPERE SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA OCTOBER 8, 2003

MEETING OF THE SHAKSPERE SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA AT THE FRANKLIN INN CLUB ON OCTOBER 8, 2003

Secretary Peck in the chair. Other members present: Ake, Bartlett, Bornemann, Cheston, Cramer, Fallon, Fisher, Friedman, Frye, Green, Griffin, Lehmann, Mabry, Madeira, O'Malley, Wheeler. Mr. Schmalzbach joined us as we began our reading of Macbeth.

Members joined in hearty praise of the Falstaffian Bard's birthday feast of last April hosted by Messrs. Friedman, Madeira, and Pope. Our hats are off to you, gentlemen!

The secretary has received two new email addresses from members; any others to be reported? Please let me know promptly if so. A reminder that notices of forthcoming meetings will be sent out only by email. If you wish to receive a telephone call as a reminder, please inform me: I will be happy to comply. Minutes too will be sent by email to those who are electronically up to date, and by regular mail to members who are still ensnarehttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1412.htm Shakspere Society November 7, 2001

MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF THE SHAKSPERE SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA AT THE FRANKLIN INN CLUB, NOVEMBER 7. 2001:

Dean Wagner in the chair. Other members attending: Ake, Bornemann, Di Stefano, Dobson, Dunn, Fallon, Fisher, Green, Griffin, Madeira, Peck, Pickering, Pope, Simmons, Warden, Wheeler. Guest: J. Goldstein.

The Dean announced the happy news that Messrs. Green, Dunn, and Cramer have volunteered to host the 2002 annual dinner of the Society in honor of the Bard's birthday. We were concerned to hear that Matt Dupee has had to undergo a heart catheterization procedure, but "heartened" to know that all has gone well. An up-to date directory of the membership is included with these minutes, courtesy of our indefatigable Secretary for Meetings. As we prepared to read after dinner, we welcomed to our midst the current president of the Franklin Inn Club, Jonathan Goldstein.

We began our reading with Act Three, Scene Two of Anhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1369.htm Shakspere Society April 2,2003

MEETING OF THE SHAKSPERE SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA AT THE FRANKLIN INN CLUB, APRIL 2, 2003

Dean emeritus Hopkinson in the chair. Other members present: Bartlett, Bornemann, Cramer, Di Stefano, Dobson, Fallon, Friedman, Griffin, Lehmann, Mabry, Madeira, O'Malley, Peck, Pickering, Schmalzbach, Warden, Wheeler.

Mr. Friedman presented those present with careful directions, in large font, to the Awbury Arboretum in Germantown, where we will gather at the Francis Cope House for the annual Birthday Dinner on April 23. Our collective thanks again to our industrious hosts, Messrs. Friedman, Madeira and Pope. Members who wish to attend and have not yet responded to Mr. Pope are urged to do so with dispatch�and gusto! Spouses and partners are again welcome; there is an additional cost, of course.

We had a vigorous discussion of the last act of The Taming of the Shrew. The Vice Dean reminded us that herhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1380.htm After Six months
Phase One: An early recession, with ominous signs of inflation. (Six months of blind man's buff. Stocks down 8-10%, signs of inflation, moderate foreclosures, house prices decline around 10%, increased unemployment, consumer confidence down, oil and gold up, dollar down.)

Phase Two: Government attempts to put out fires. Priorities are set by emergencies as they arise. So far, lowered interest rates, $600 per person stimulus package, offers to substitute government bonds for securitized debt, expand Fannie Mae. The critical need is to abandon these approaches quickly, unless they somehow correct the underlying problem and assist in long-term reforms.

Phase three: Long term reform. Task forces, gathering ideas from all sources, seek to identify the critical issues that caused this problem and keep it from happening again. Dangers: politics (D v R), conflict between East (mainly concernhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1418.htm Trader's Option
Let's make this as succinct as we can: The Trader's Option is this: what risks will the trader likely take with his employer's money, when he is placed in the position of getting half of any winnings, but when he fails, he only gets fired. Almost any newspaper reports the millions and millions commonly available to lucky traders. There are indeed some timid souls who refuse to take risks of this sort, but on Wall Street no one wants to hire them. Wall Street wants buccaneers, unafraid of risks. Make your pile as big as you can, take your lumps when you stumble, goodbye. Most of the time, someone else will hire you after six or ten months. No one will ask whether your failures were due to lack of skill or lack of luck. Napoleon once summed it up. He didn't hate unlucky generals, he just fired them.

The odds for the trader are not bad:http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1468.htm Shakspere Society, January 23, 2008
MEETING OF THE SHAKSPERE SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA AT THE FRANKLIN INN CLUB, JANUARY 23, 2008:

Dean Wagner in the chair. Other members present: Ake, Bartlett, Binnion, Bornemann, Bovaird, Di Stefano, Fallon, Fisher, Griffin, Hopkinson, King, Mabry, Madeira, O'Malley, Peck, Pope, and Warden. We welcomed Mr. Madeira's guest Jacob Eden. Jacob was enthusiastic about his annual visits to the Oregon Shakspere Festival in Ashland (an appealing small town in the foothills of the mountains near the California border). The Secretary spent a week there with a lively Yale group last summer and strongly concurs with Jacob's praise of Ashland productions of plays both Bardish and contemporary.

Rudi has advised the Dean that the price of dinner must rise by three dollars a meal henceforth. It is our first increase in price in three years.

The April 23 annual meeting and dinner of the Society, hosted by Messrs. Cheston, Ingersoll and Wheeler, will behttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1366.htm SHAKSPERE SOCIETY January 22, 2003MEETING OF THE SHAKSPERE SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA AT THE FRANKLIN INN CLUB, JANUARY 22, 2003

Vice Dean Fallon in the chair. Other members present: Ake, Bartlett, Binnion, Bornemann, Cramer, Friedman, Griffin, Lehmann, Madeira, Peck, Warden, Wheeler.

We remind all members of the Society that at our next meeting on February 5, a vote will be taken on whether to admit women to membership in the Society. Members who cannot be present may vote by indicating their preference to the Dean or the Secretary, by email, snail mail or telephone, before that dinner meeting. Women will be eligible for membership if three-quarters of the votes cast are in the affirmative. We will discuss other membership issues at future meetings, based on recommendations by the "Bartlett Commission.".

The Secretary wishes to thank Mr. Ingersoll, on behalf of all the members, for rediscovering a treasure trove of Society books and memorabilia in the library of the Philadelphia Cluhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1376.htm USA: Chapter Eight
I took my copy of David's papers home with me to see if I could make sense of his coded notes. Mrs. Tomasello had left a chicken pot pie and a tomato and onion salad for my dinner. I zapped the pie, grabbed a cold Becks and sat at the kitchen table scanning pages from David's binder while I ate.

The coded entries intrigued me. Flipping through the copies I found only six pages that contained the margin notes. Maybe they meant nothing, but, if so, why had David felt it necessary to create a code? Was he concerned that somebody would see his notebook, or was there a more sinister reason? Each notation consisted of two letters followed by sets of one or two numbers separated by slashes or dashes. The notations were also of different lengths. I grabbed a pencil and paper and copied the sets of numbers and letters. Being a word game nut it struck me that maybe all David did was substitute letters for numbers and vice-versa, about as simplistic as a code chttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1209.htm Editing HTML with PHP scripts
When creating scripts that allow a user to edit HTML, you have to ensure that the browser doesn't confuse the input with HTML to be rendered. I struggled with this long and hard and throughout the utilities section of this website are various hacks that I created with brute force. They work, but they are mostly ugly and all were time consuming.

Well, guess what? The PHP manual has a section on this subject and the solution is really rather elegant. Chaper 56. PHP and HTML. It's worth reading, but the essential bits are reproduced below:

Example 56-1. A hidden HTML form element <?php echo "<input type='hidden' value='" . htmlspecialchars($data) . "' />\n"; ?> Example 56-2. Data to be edited by the user <?php echo "<textarea name='mydata'>\n"; echo htmlspecialchars($data)."\n"; echo "</textarea>"; ?> Example 56-3. In a URL <?php echttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1123.htm USA: Chapter Two
When I awoke the next morning the sun was shining and a light breeze was fluttering the birch tree outside my window. Mrs. Tomasello, my housekeeper, would undoubtedly suggest we turn off the air conditioning, as she usually did whenever there was more than a breath of air.

She didn't disappoint me. After I showered, shaved and dressed, I was pouring myself a cup of coffee when she came in from the rear yard, a bunch of fresh picked flowers in her hand. "Buon giorno," she said, "it's a beautiful day. The weather has changed, it's much cooler than yesterday and there's no humidity. Please turn off the air conditioning so I can open the windows. I love a breeze through the house."

"Consider it done," I said, smiling to myself. "By the way, I won't be home until late tonight, so please don't fix dinner for me."

"Mi scusi, you don't eat enough, and you're getting too thin," she said, scolding me with a wagging fingerhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1198.htm Canada's Southern Port

train

When American railroading fell apart in 1970, the remnants were gathered into a financially failing passenger network, Amtrak, and a prospering freight division, Conrail. Although prosperous enough, Conrail has remained largely invisible, often moving trains only at night so the tracks could be used for passengers during the day. When Conrail got efficient enough, it was sold off in pieces, then largely ignored and forgotten. But Philadelphia ended up with two freight railroads owned by Canadians displaying a great deal of imagination and vigor, investing huge amounthttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/725.htm Authors, Writers, Poets, Reporters and Publishers in Laurel Hill
Boker, George Henry, (1824-1890), Section A, Lot 91. Poet and dramatist. Helped led its Civil War propaganda Activities.

Bradford, Andrew Section W, Lot 231 Andrew Bradford (1688-1742) published Philadelphia's first newpaper.

Brown, Charles Brockden, (January 17, 1771 - February 22, 1810), an American novelist, historian, and editor of the Early National period, is generally regarded by scholars as the most ambitious and accomplished US novelist before James Fenimore Cooper.

Bullitt, John Christian,(1824-1902)Section P, Lot 52. Lawyer and author of the Philadelphia City Charter.

http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1401.htm Slum Creation and Urban Sprawl

North Philly

Slum creation, while occasionally deliberate, is most typically caused by an area's abandonment by previous owners, at lower prices, to bargain hunters. When a large employer moves or closes, the employees seek work elsewhere and sell their houses for what they can get. When the influx of new ethnic groups threatens to weaken real estate prices, panic may be created that waiting too long to sell may find the property worthless; nobody wants to be the last one out the door. During the 20th Century, the driving force in Philadelphia was the flight to the suburbs by people who found better value in suburbanhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1001.htm Parsing name-value pair attributes in an HTML tag

Not only do the attributes in an HTML tag come in random order but many are optional

Here's a regex solution:

<?php function tagAttr($matches) {print_r($matches);} $string = '<img src="/images/picture.jpg" width="300" class="left" alt="alt keywords" />'; $foo = preg_replace_callback( '/<img\b(?>\s+(?:alt="([^"]*)"|class="([^"]*)"|style="([^"]*)"|src="([^"]*)"|height="([^"]*)"|width="([^"]*)")|[^\s>]+|\s+)*>/i', "tagAttr", $string); ?>

Produces the following:

Array ( [0] => <img src="/images/picture.jpg" width="300" class="left" alt="alt keywords" /> [1] => alt keywords [2] => left [3] => [4] => /images/picture.jpg [5] => [6] => 300 )

The regex is a series of alternating sequences; so, add http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1350.htm Buying Corporate America with Cheap Money
In the summer of 2008 Philadelphia was astonished to read that the rock of Gibralter, our family controlled Rohm and Haas had been sold to Dow Chemical company for $15.4 billion; corporate control will shift to Michigan. A week later, the Hercules Powder Company of Wilmington was sold, and then Budweiser Beer was sold for $56billion to a Belgian firm. The big old philanthropic families were cashing out.

While it may be true that taxes and philanthropic inclinations will lead this cash mountain to be transferred to non-profit foundations of benefit to the local communities, these sales are all a blow to the prestige and vitality of the cities which were once power centers of the world. Worse still, these prominent families with access to expert investment opinion may have reached the conclusion that it was better to have the cash than the business, or better to have the flexibility to shift the cash to more promising investment opportunities. Maybe they seek http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1493.htm Sanctuaria Mariposa

Mexico

When they leave us, all the shad go to the Bay of Fundy. When Monarch butterflies leave us, they head for a thousand-acre spot in the mountains of Mexico, every single one. The butterfly performance is more remarkable, since a butterfly can't make it from Philadelphia to Mexico City in one lifetime. The caterpillar that hatches in Pennsylvania knows where to go, and somehow tells his grandchildren how to get there. Coming back North is somewhat easier; successive generations of butterflies follow the scent of milkweed plants, which is all they will eat.
This remarkable information was provided to us by thehttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1009.htm Georgetown Returns Day

Georgetown

Early in November, two days after each election, Georgetown Delaware puts on a festival called Returns Day. About two hundred years ago, there was a law that all ballots had to be cast in person at the courthouse in the county seat (Lewes, at that time), and it took two days to count the votes. Everyone, candidates included, would hang around at the courthouse to learn who had won. After a few elections, except in wartime when the ceremony was temporarily skipped, the popular tradition has continued even though of course the election resulhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/757.htm Rising (China and) Developing Nations
.
http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1491.htm The Richest Men in America

Robert Morris

Charles Peterson developed the idea but was unsuccessful in popularizing it, that Spruce Street in central Philadelphia might be regarded as an architectural museum. It stretches from river to river, but has no bridge or ferry landing at either end, so traffic is less. The house near the Delaware River was built in 1702, with each house just a little older as you progress toward Broad (14th) Street where houses were built around 1880, and then on into the early Twentieth Century as you cross Broad Street and go toward the Schuyylkill. For a century or more Spruce Street was the place where doctors had their offices, much like Harley Street in London, which it somewhat resembles. A numbehttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1087.htm Charitable Immunity: An Underestimated Revolution

Percent

Until 1939, there was a legal doctrine of Charitable Immunity, which universally shielded hospitals and other charitable institutions from negligence lawsuits. No doubt the underlying reasoning was that charities possess limited funds for unlimited demands, and must be forgiven for imperfect compromises in the face of scarcity. To threaten them in court for falling short of perfection might drive charitable efforts away entirely. Since many professionals donated their services to the common effort, there was some spill-over protection for individual professionals, but this centuries old doctrine applied to institutions more than individuals. Therhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/812.htm Financing a Research University

Harvard

Fifty years ago, only three American universities, Harvard, Yale and Princeton, were considered world-class. The benchmarks for them were Oxford and Cambridge Universities; both British universities had long history and great prestige. Making allowance for wartime disruption, it was also considered pretty classy to study at the Sorbonne, or Humboldt University in Berlin. Sweden, Vienna, Rome were right up there in prestige.
http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/470.htmConvention Center

Convention Center

A substantial grant from the Pew Foundation initially funded The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation but expected other more permanent funding sources to materialize by the end of three years. The funding source turned out to be a 1% tax on hotel rooms, since hotels were rather easily convinced that an increase of tourism to Philadelphia would benefit them. There is every reason to think the whole idea was a good one, effectively implemented. However, it probably was not completehttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1096.htm Germantown After 1730

German Quaker Home

The early settlers of Germantown were Dutch or German-speaking Quakers. They were proudly of the craftsman class but, unfortunately, that made them rather poor subsistence farmers. With a whole continent stretching beyond them, professional farmers would not likely choose to settle on a stony hilltop, two hours away from Philadelphia. Germantown's future lay in religious congregation, in paper making, textile manufacture, publishing, printing and newspapers. Plenty of stones were lying around, so stone houses soon replaced the early woodenhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/877.htm Early Germantown-Music

German Brass Band

What we now call Germany was a collection of small principalities until Bismarck unified the country in the Nineteenth Century. That probably accounts for the several different traditions of German Music, ranging from Oom-pa-pa brass bands to Wagnerian Opera. In addition, there were several waves of German immigration into Pennsylvania, each one of which had ithttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1022.htm Most Popular Images http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1454.htm Pictures III
Pictures I
Pictures II
Pictures III
Pictures IV
Pictures V

<html> <head> <script type="text/javascript"> /* javascript function called by the radio buttons to submit the form when clicked */ function formSubmit() { document.getElementById("form_x").submit() } </script> </head> <body> <form name="form_x" id="form_x" action="some_routine.php" target="newIMGwin" method="post" style="whatever"> <fieldset> <legend>legend surrounding the form</legend> <input type="radio" name="key" value="1269" onclick="formSubmit()" /> &http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1346.htm Gardening Survives

Adam Levine, the author of a new book about the Philadelphia public garden scene was recently the featured guest speaker at the Franklin Inn. He's a charming person, and has given us a great book.

He draws to our attention that the Philadelphia region is pre-eminent in the garden world, and has been so for several centuries. While it is true that Philadelphia has a mild enough climate to be suitable to two climate zones, the early settlers came from a region of middle England that has been a garden center since Roman times. And they were Quakers, uncomfortable with outward show in buildings and furnishings, but flowers were innocent instruments of display. Although Chanticleer was created by a Pennsylvania German family, the great centers of public gardens are mostly traceable to the influence of Quakers, and the du Pont family. Since one or two years of neglect will ruin almost any garden, the essence of great gardens lies in the ability to survive.

http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1297.htm Web Standards Validation

There are two primary aspects of a website that need validation:

1. (X)HTML

You can use the W3C's QA Markup Validation Service.
The URL to test the main page of Philadelphia Reflections is http://validator.w3.org/

Firefox has several useful add-ons for (X)HTML validation; one that uses Tidy is here: Html Validator

2. CSS

The W3C has a validation service for CSS, too.
For Philadelphia Reflections, the following URL checks all the CSS definitions in the main page: http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1189.htm Healthcare Reform: Looking Ahead (2)

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health care

The Industrial Revolution crowded people together into smoky, draughty unhealthy places to live and work, and thus created ideal conditions for the spread of smallpox, tuberculosis, plague, poliomyelitis and many other infectious diseases. With better sanitation and hygiene, those diseases declined steadily for two centuries. Meanwhile, medicalhttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1284.htm Picking Up the Usual Suspects

The federal government directly controls about half of health care spending, and makes rules affecting most of the rest.

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Claude Rain

Every group or business which receives some of this money is alert not to lose it. Many other groups are alert for openings to get more of it. All employ sentries in Washington. False alarms are frequent, stealth attacks are a constant threat, constituents paying the bills demand immediate reassurances. Members of Congress seldom initiate a disturbance unless someone from inside an industry brings it to them. Consequently, when proposals do surface, and seem to be serious, the question to be immediately answehttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1265.htm Put Down That Lid!

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Emily Post

Indoor plumbing, which the British call the loo, has been around for a couple of centuries without stirring up much dissension. Recently, however, attention has been drawn to the outrageousness of the male habit of leaving the lid up. Popular television or something similar has put it about that walking away from the loo requires some statement of etiquette on the point of leaving the lid up or down, depending on knowing the gender of the next person in line for the facility and courteously anticipating the correct up-or-down requirements. Apparently, it's like holding a door open for someone who follows you (rather than lehttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1177.htm Sixth and Walnut to Broad and Samson

{top quote}
In 1751, the Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Spruce was 'way out in the country. Now it is in the center of a city, but the area remains dominated by medical institutions. {bottom quote}
Dr. Fisher

As you emerge from the http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1222.htm Insuring the Uninsured is Not Entirely a Health Issue

James Madison

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James Madison

shrewdly observed that people could and would restrain state taxation by moving to a neighboring state. The founding fathers never contemplated health insurance or Medicaid, of course, but the same principle applies there in reverse. If one state gets too generous with health and welfare benefits, people in neighboring states will nowadays hear of it and get on a bus to relocate advantageously. A flood of new low-income citizens may or may not be what a particular state wants, depending on local economic conditions.

Fohttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1180.htm Five Macroeconomic Myths

{top quote}
It's a myth that Government debt is a burden on our grandchildren {bottom quote}
Wall Street Journal

Myth No. 5: Government debt is a burden on our grandchildren. There's no better way to get people worked up about something than to call on their sympathies for their beloved grandkids. The last thing that I want tohttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1160.htm Politics of the French and Indian War

{Isaac Sharpless}

Isaac Sharpless

In the European view, the French and Indian War was a mere skirmish in the many-year conflict between France and England. But the Atlantic is a wide ocean. The local Pennsylvania politics of that war concern the land-hungry settlers striving for Indian lands, the Quaker Assembly doing its best to maintain William Penn's formula for peace ("No settlements without first buying the land from the Indians."), and William Penn's far-from-idealistic Episcopalian sons, focused on profit from a land rush. Western Pennsylvania belonged to the Delaware tribe, but the Delawares were subject to the http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/795.htm Znote: Japan and Philadelphia

We need to photograph and then write a blog of the Japanese pavilion in Fairmont Park.

876: Germantown and French and Indian War: extract the last paragraph, perhaps bridge and context it, rename as new blog for this Topic only.

848:Making Money (5): extract anecdote

840: Paying Bills electronically: extract anecdote

http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1110.htm Did Tax Cuts Invert the Yield Curve?

For those who just came in, let's explain an inverted yield curve. In plain English, it means that interest on short-term bonds (set by the Federal Reserve) is larger than interest on long-term bonds (set by the public in the bond market.) That's the opposite of the normal situation, and regarded as an ominous signal of impending economic troubles. But suppose it doesn't have much to do with economic forecasting at all. Suppose it just reflects tax cuts.

After all, when federal taxes are reduced, you eventually approach the point where bond interest is essentially tax-exempt. Everyone knows tax-exempt bonds pay less interest than taxable ones. For this purpose, it doesn't much matter whether income tax, capital gains tax, or dividend taxes are reduced. This creates a small problem for the argument, because several taxes have been cut by differing amounts and thus it isn't possible to calculate the precise level by which interest rates on government bonds shohttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/827.htm Medical Tort Reform

The U.S. House of Representatives will soon consider a medical malpractice reform (limiting awards for pain and suffering to $250.000) which it adopted seven times in the last ten years. Following almost certain House passage, the proposal will then confront the Senate,

cartoon malpractice

where it has failed seven times. The politics of the two chambers are not chief concerns of this paper, which strongly advocates passage. The paper contends that unwise incentives for patients to bring suit are important causes of present difficulty, and reducing such incentives offers a comparatively simple opportunihttp://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/767.htm Send a KML file from disk using PHP

Sending a kml or kmz disk file is as easy as clicking on it. But different browsers react differently, some asking you which program to use others storing the file on your desk top, etc. Preprocessing the file through PHP can reduce some of these annoyances.

 <?php // // reads and sends a kml or kmz file // located in /whatever/kml/ // // calling protocol: // this-program.php?file=somefile.kml // // read the input and check that it's a kmz or kml file // .................................................... $kml_file	= $_GET['file']; if (($kml_file === NULL) or ($kml_file == "")) {exit ("error message");} if ((substr($kml_file, -4) != ".kmz") AND (substr($kml_file, -4) != ".kml")) { exit ("error message"); } // prepend the file path information to the file name and check that it exists // ........................................................................... $kml_file_name = "/whatever/kml/" . $kml_file; if http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/blog/1328.htm