Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
A fool and his money are eventually parted
171 Cognewaugh has sold for $3.7 million. I'm doubtful on resale, but it started at $4.985 million a year ago, so it apparently looked like a bargain to the buyer.
The builder paid just a million for the land in 2013, so despite carrying costs since then, he made out well here.
Former Australian CEO of Queensland Bank's Stuart Grimshaw, now CEO of Texas-based pawn shop chain EZ Corp, has listed 21 Hurlingham Drive at $8.950 million, a significant mark-up from the $8 million he paid for it last year.
It has, or had, when James Moss of Blackstone Group owned it, a hockey rink, which doesn't sound like a selling point, and is "magazine ready" according to its listing. Does that mean it's got racks of assault rifles by the doors and windows, ready to be loaded, or something else? Beats me.
Given the dismal track record of Conyers Farm sales over the past decade, especially those, like this one, that sprawl across the New York border, I'm guessing that Mr. Grimshaw will be disappointed at his return on investment in this property.
7 Knollwood, asking $4.750 million, reports a pending sale after just 19 days on the market, which I assume means it will be selling for close to that price. That seems a tad high, to me, but the sellers paid $5.650 for it in 2009 and put quite a bit of money into renovations, so i suppose these buyers looked upon it as bargain.
I've always found Knollwood to be an unattractive, dark street, but tastes do differ.
19 Bailiwick Road
19 Bailiwick. askimg $2.875 million; started at $3.850 back in May, 2016.
There must be something nice about Bailiwick (in fact, there is), that keeps persuading owners who live there to overvalue their homes. The previous iteration of this house, pre-renovation, was originally priced at $3.495 in 2007, and finally sold for $2.025 in 2009.
I think its appeal, besides its architecture so reminiscent of their homes across the border, is that Westchester County residents can move here to escape that state's taxes while remaining close to their friends.
It's certainly not the convenience to town that's the draw, nor the ever-present Merritt Parkway noise.
The sellers have promised to take this chandelier with them when they go — with some hard negotiating, they might be persuaded to remove all the lighting fixtures
So weaker apart? God speed.
Planned Parenthood relied on the support of the Republican majority to contest SEIU's organization bid. NLRB Democrat board member Lauren McFerran rejected the abortion provider's argument. She said the Colorado-specific vote was "reasonably" determined and that PPRM's request to include clinic workers in Nevada "could be prohibitive" given the distance between the clinics.
The Resistance eats its young.
First come the accusations of hate, then, or course, comes the hate.
I do like this particular Tweet: at first, I thought it depicted the Taliban throwing a gay man off a roof but then I remembered that it's not the Taliban who does such things, or if they do, it's merely a matter of a different culture which must be honored. Instead, it's TRUMP who's doing it — I'm sure you've read about that.
Worst predictions of earth scientists from that happy era:
Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970:
"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." — Harvard biologist George Wald
"We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." — Washington University biologist Barry Commoner
"Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." — New York Times editorial
"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
"Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s."— Paul Ehrlich
"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation," — Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day
"Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter
"In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution… by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." — Life magazine
"At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
"Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone."— Paul Ehrlich
"By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate… that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
"[One] theory assumes that the earth's cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." — Newsweek magazine
"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." — Kenneth Watt
Quotes from "Earth Day, Then and Now," by Ronald Bailey, Reason.com. May 1, 2000.
I'm a web-prowler, always looking for articles that might interest me or, better yet, readers of this blog. Increasingly, especially since January of this year, I'm kept out of news sites by cash walls (the Daily News just implemented one, which I encountered today and which prompted this post).
It costs money to pay reporters and, though few remain, editors, so of course newspapers want to recoup those costs — if they don't, they'll go out of business, and that will be the end of that. Major papers offer enough value to entice some readers to pay several hundred dollars a year for their content. I won't pay a dime to the NYT or WaPo, but, until last week, I forked over the dough for the WSJ, but I'm not willing to subscribe to an obscure Iowa paper, at $99 a year, or the Bangor Daily News, or anything called "the Sentinel" anywhere in the country, just to read a single article.
So here's my suggestion: (someone) sell a passport where, for some price: $50? $100?, per year, readers would be allowed a gate through these cash walls. News outlets that signed up for the program wouldn't get their desired $99 revenue, but they'd receive some payment for their individual articles, and something is better than nothing. As it is, they get nothing: internet visitors hit the pay wall and click forward to the next site.
I'm no business man, sadly, but I think there's a business model that could make this work, maybe.
You geniuses out there, have at it. Please.
Television star/NY Gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon:
“It’s time to treat the Earth as our shared home where no one will worry that their air, water, or land is being polluted by poison dug up from the ground,” the former “Sex and the City” star said during a speech about environmental policy at the Rockaway YMCA in Queens.
Message to Miss Nixon and the millions of her intellectual peers who support this nonsense: Your unicorn energy is dependent on things like cobalt, mined by child slaves in Congo, and lithium. mined in and ruining Tibet. Just check your freaking facts, would you? Hybrid cars, Teslas, iPhones: basically everything that powers a millennial's life is derived from poison ripped from the ground, by humans, under horrid conditions.
The resulting pollution's a bummer, too.
Major: Post-Feminist, Transgender Studies, and Victimhood
Two dozen student activists crashed an alumni event at Duke University on Saturday, using a megaphone to make their demands and drown out the speaker, Duke President Vincent Price. The students were surprised to discover that their interruption had irritated many alumni in the audience, some of whom heckled the activists and turned their backs while the demands were read.
Now Duke's administration is considering whether to discipline the students, whose behavior unquestionably violates university policy. That doesn't sit well with them: Protest leader Gino Nuzzolillo accused administrators of aggravating the mental health problems of student activists. The administration's letters informing students that they are under investigation have had the effect of "exacerbating any pre-existing mental health conditions," Nuzzolillo told The Duke Chronicle.
The protest happened during an alumni event reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Silent Vigil at Duke, a series of student-led sit-ins on campus. Nuzzolillo and his comrades sought to channel the spirit of the Silent Vigil, although their protest was anything but silent. About 25 students stormed the stage inside Page Auditorium while Price was speaking and chanted, "President Price get off the stage," and "Whose university? Our university," until they had command of the room. Then they read a list of demands, which included raising the university's minimum wage to $15 an hour, hiring more faculty members of color, and spending more money on counseling services.
The Duke Chronicle reported that some in the audience supported the students, while others did not:
The protesters received mixed reactions from the alumni in the audience. Some alumni did nothing while others booed loudly or clapped in support. Many alumni stood up and turned their backs to the stage, some shouting vulgarities—the protesters reported hearing racial epithets.
The protesters noted that they were surprised by the extent of the alumni's negative reactions. [Student organizer Bryce] Cracknell added that he was disappointed that the administrators focused more on stopping the students than angry alumni, Cracknell said.
"Instead of actually going to the alumni and saying 'that's not appropriate' or removing them from the space, they were more worried about us," Cracknell said.
This was not an uncommon opinion among the protest's leaders. Nuzzolillo expressed disappointment that the adults "whose job it is to care for us" failed to do so.
Cost of tuition at Duke (per year): $72,544.00
UPDATE: Okay, this is cruel, but I looked up young Master Nuzzolillo's Linked In profile and found these "work experiences". I hope he got a full-ride scholarship on those tuition expenses, or payback's gonna be a bitch.
That would be "bus boy", no? And then this:
Pooper scooper.
RELATED: Cory Booker "wants to consider" lowering voting age to 16. Senator Booker, Yale Law, is a walking, talking argument against affirmative action.
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