Your Tax Bucks At Work

Shamelessly stolen from Argyle Sweater, who is taking over the spot vacated by The Far Side:

There may well be some truth in this. Last Friday, driving down Broadway, we encountered a resurfacing effort over a 2-mile stretch. This is the sort of thing where they put 1 to 2 inches of asphalt over the existing roadway, roll it flat, and paint new stripes.

Last year, this would have involved the usual collection of heavy equipment, one orange cone at each cross street, and two flag people, holding a sign marked "slow", one at each end. The drill is that you notice the flagman, and try to remember to look both ways before turning across the new asphalt so as to avoid becoming part of it under the roller.

This year there were no less than 4 flagmen.

I keep hoping that the principle might find application to the engineering field.

Meantime, the effects of revising the methodology in calculating the unemployment rate, firat applied in July, are now evident. Thanks to Innocent Bystanders for the graphic.
The result is to shift the curve downward about half a point. Unfortunately, it still looks like the apex is going to appear sometime around spring of next year. I hope everybody stashed enough acorns to make it that long.