Tag: Washington DC

  • Spike House for Sale — Only $1.5 Million

    People who manage property consolidations refer to a single landowner who resists all purchasing offers as a “spike.” The lone holdout can sometimes spike a complicated deal single-handedly to the detriment of surrounding landowners hoping to profit, and developers trying to assemble a large enough parcel to justify an apartment building, office complex or shopping…

  • Virtual Traffic Circle

    Traffic circles or roundabouts are a common design that circulates traffic safely and efficiently through intersections. They are a primary choice in many parts of the world. Nonetheless, they are much less common in the United States. Many American drivers tremble in fear when encountering one. That is the exact situation experienced this week by…

  • Playing Both Sides of the Street

    Dinosaur that I am, I still get a print copy of the newspaper each morning. We’ve laughed about that before. However, it’s an old-school habit I’ll likely not break until the publisher itself gives up on the media. I’m no Luddite and I’ve left behind a huge digital wake as I’ve cruised the Intertubes. Nonetheless…

  • Charting the Split

    I recently recorded a question of amazing specificity, what I’d call a hyper-local geographic oddity that’s probably of interest only to a handful of people. Fortunately I’m one of those very few souls and maybe you are too. I’ll tie it in with a little history to widen the audience just a bit, so stick…

  • Enough With the Snow Already

    Well, here we go again. The Washington, DC area is experience its second “epic” snowstorm this season. Our previous snow in December 2009 brought about sixteen inches by the time it finished. We were already up to sixteen inches this morning at 8:00 am. Then I took this photograph: You’ll notice a little stick extending…

  • After the Snow Fell

    The snow finally halted after an entire day of heavy accumulation. We can call the Washington, DC “Blizzard of 2009” officially over. Now it’s time to dig out the sidewalk. Then we can get the kids over to the sledding hill, and venture through a snowbound neighborhood before the onset of cabin fever. It looks…

  • Let it Snow!

    It’s snowing here in the Washington, DC area today. Already they’re calling it the snowpocalypse, the snownami, and of course “The Blizzard of 2009”. People around here tend to overreact when it snows because we don’t generally get large accumulations. Naturally everyone stripped the grocery stores bare of milk, bread, and toilet paper as it…

  • Glorious Day for Flying

    I got so excited about my walk through Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood that I got a little ahead of myself in the story. I should probably back up a bit. Let’s start with the airline flight that brought me to this wonderful spot along the Charles River. A nor’easter blew through last week bringing bitter…

  • The Danger of a Small Sample Size

    Fair warning, little geographic content makes it onto Twelve Mile Circle today. Mostly I’ll focus on statistics. No, no, don’t go running for the door quite yet. It will be fun and actually the statistical slant will be relatively mild, grossly overly simplified with sweeping generalizations and involve no actual mathematics. I went to a…

  • American Meridian

    The international community recognizes a prime meridian that runs through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in southeast London, England. It serves as a reference point for universal time and distance. However, that has not always been the case. Latitude is easy. The equator divides the planet into northern and southern hemispheres quite logically. Longitude is…