New Orleans        I’m scratching my head trying to figure out what kind of sand platform applications around food delivery are built on.  The workers are hardly paid, precarious and unhappy.  The restaurants are complaining and organizing for protection in some cities, and trying to figure out how to make money on the promise of […]

New Orleans        DoorDash allowed sources to whisper to the Wall Street Journal that they were preparing to go public and cash in from investors despite losing money in its business.  They need to hurry, because reality is starting to catch up with all of these predatory food delivery operations.  Their workers are organizing in […]

New Orleans       Traveling in other cities both in the United States and around the world, it sometimes seems like food delivery workers are everywhere on either scooters or bicycles.  The soft box on their backs or the hard one behind their seats to hold containers of food and keep it all warm until they […]

New Orleans   The headlines are breaking, and the stock market is tanking.  The coronavirus is coming to the United States, and the Center for Disease Control says there’s no way to stop it from spreading through our open borders and diverse population.  President Trump, whupping it up with another autocratic buddy, this time Prime Minister […]

New Orleans        Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday is THE tourist and local extravaganza in New Orleans.  The noblesse oblige historic parade krewes with the old white kings and young debutante queens throwing beads to the masses is a hard swallow even as the parades have become more ubiquitous and even somewhat more democratic in […]

New Orleans      There was a time when families followed a careful rule.  When gathering with the blood, avoid talking about religion or politics. Only part of that rule still holds, as America becomes more and more secular, despite the hardcore pockets of evangelicals around the country.  You can talk about religion all you want.  […]

Kansas City     Flying in and out of the Kansas City International airport is like a snapshot back in another time, more specifically a time when automobiles and the convenience of local customers dominated planning and performance.   Airports, and some train stations like the new ones in German cities like London, Berlin and Dusseldorf, are […]

Kansas City      I can still remember my third grade teacher walking us through the duck-and-cover exercise and announcing as we prepared to march to the corner single file that she would be standing on the asphalt covered playground where she intended to mark an X, because she wanted no part of surviving a nuclear […]

New Orleans         We don’t have a major league baseball team in New Orleans.  Our closest team is a bit more than five hours away in Houston.  In the vast majority of the last several decades, we would drive over with the kids so that they could watch one or two Astros games during the […]

New Orleans        A reporter, Jed Kolko, with the New York Times seems to be connecting the dots in an interesting and important way.  In a recent article about some of the unintended consequences of geographic inequality being concentrated in certain cities, he pointed out several things.  First, that the level of economic activity concentrated […]