Odds and ends, 9/28/07

And you thought it was bad enough watching their defense:

CINCINNATI (AP) — Paul Brown Stadium officials want permission to shoot down pigeons that are pooping on Bengals fans’ heads — and in their food and beer — during games.

Eric Brown, managing director of the stadium, sent a letter asking the city to allow stadium employees to kill the birds with an air-powered pellet rifle.

Brown says no shooting would take place on game days.

Bengals officials say fan noise used to drive pigeons away during games but apparently the birds have adapted. Pigeon poop is becoming a big problem throughout the NFL, but no one has come up with a foolproof solution yet.

Team officials say they’re looking into other ideas to get rid of the birds, including the use of strobe lights, noise makers, fake owls and netting.

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I'm not an economist, so I have no way of knowing whether this writer for Time magazine knows what he's talking about.

The gist of his piece: China, Japan, the gulf states and others have pegged their currencies to the dollar. Because of imbalance of trade in their favor, they have more dollars than they know what to do with. As the dollar's value falls in relation to other western currencies -- for whatever reason -- these countries may soon be forced to dump their dollars, which could lead to inflation, stock market drops, bank failures and other problems similar to those of the 1970s here in the USA.

It's something for people like us to think about as we judge where to put the vast wealth we have set aside for retirement.

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All this talk about how the housing market is cooling down:

Shouldn't we have expected it to cool down sometime? For one thing, housing construction can't continue on an upward curve forever. Second, prices for existing houses were increasing faster than people's incomes. Third, sooner or later, people will discover that some older houses can be more attractive than the McMansions that are going up.

Problem, yes. End of the world and totally unexpected? No.

I'm nowhere near the brightest guy in the world (he probably lives in Charleston), but even I can see you can't sustain an upward growth curve indefinitely. So stop acting all surprised when that curve flattens out a little.

But what do I know? I invest my gloom-and-doom thinking into other endeavors.

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One more thing.

Here are some population numbers for Huntington.

2000: 51,475
1950: 86,353
1920: 50,177
1910: 31,161
1900: 11,923
1890: 10,108
1880: 3,174

So if Huntington's present population is hovering around 50,000, what happens if present trends continue? How far will the population fall before economic and social trends start forcing it back up?