Amateur Ramblings

Self improvement

I listened to a couple of Podcasts recently that were so good I thought I'd share them with you here.

First up, EconTalk's 25th May offering. I must admit to finding a lot of the podcasts in this series quite boring, and I've stopped listening to them on a regular basis. But occasionally a subject is thrown up that grabs the attention. This was one of those occasions.

Russ Roberts' guest was Peter Leeson, who talked about the economics of 18th century pirates. He discussed how their behaviours were perfectly rational, and busted open a few pirate myths along the way.  Unexpectedly fascinating.

The second is a small nugget, almost an extra really, a bonus companion to the weekly Collings and Herrin podcast. Recorded as a warm-up to the recent live podcast recording in Brighton, Number65a lasts a little over ten minutes. It is an Andrew Collins' lecture (scroll down, it's still there), an introduction to the Mitford Sisters.

So brief and entertaining is the talk, that I urge you to download it and listen for yourself, immediately! And to encourage this, I refuse to recapitulate here the nuggets that are contained within.

Full Stop

As a direct result of the current recession, many of the building projects in Leeds have become delayed or postponed. The opening date for the new Trinity Shopping Centre (it's worth a look at the website, if only for the crazy shop names in the artists impressions) has been put back two years to 2012; Criterion Place has been cancelled, and Lumiere, which was to have been the tallest residential tower in Western Europe, has been put on hold (shortly before the developers went into administration).

And the project to improve the heavily used Neville Street underneath the train station has recently been held up, again due to the the main contractor going into administration in March. The Light Neville Street plan to improve this dark, noisy and ugly street, which is the main route into the city from all points south, includes the widening of the pavements, the fitting of new 'acoustic-managing' facades to the tunnel walls, and the inclusion of an light installation by Hans Peter Kuhn.

When the work came to a halt, most of the pavement widening on both sides of the road had been completed (although some dangerous abrupt edges and temporary filings have been left) and most of the metal brackets had been set in place. That was at the beginning of March. Last week, work commenced on the steel frames for the new walls. Hopefully the whole thing will soon be finished; I think it might look quite nice.

You can sometimes read about the progress of the works here.