One Day We’ll Look At Statements Like These And Cringe

But until then, hey, it’s pretty cool to have another beer garden to patronize:

“We want this to be a summer camp for adults.”

This Tree Kills Cockroaches

The problem with using “the latest scientific data” to guide public policy comes when assumptions might have been faulty to begin with. Over and over during the mayor’s big push to plant hundreds of thousands of trees across the city it was claimed that trees “reduce the pollutants that trigger asthma attacks and exacerbate other respiratory diseases” (which is actually a little more modest than how they tended to sell it in the past). Then some initial studies showed that cockroaches may be to blame. Now there’s further research with similar conclusions:

[A] new study by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health [. . .] finds that higher exposure to cockroach dust may explain why some New York City children have asthma while others, who grow up just blocks away, do not.

. . .

Other studies have shown a link between cockroach exposure and asthma. But the Columbia study, published online in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, is the first to show that children in high-asthma neighborhoods have been more exposed to cockroaches than those in adjacent low-asthma neighborhoods, Matthew Perzanowski, senior author of the study, said Tuesday.

The study may help explain, he said, why the prevalence of asthma among children entering school varies greatly by neighborhood, from 3 percent in Flushing, Queens, to almost 19 percent, in East Harlem.

You Live In The Absolute Best Place In The World, And Things Are About To Get That Much More Awesome

Lead paragraph of the day from the Brooklyn Paper:

The only bad thing about our borough’s roads is that there’s no place to sit and have a meal.

I Think I Already Miss Governor Paterson

And he’s not even gone yet:

“Before we hear from the governor-elect, we will hear from the governor-eject.”

Overeducated Contrarianism Or Viral Sears Campaign?

It’s never too soon to reconsider vinyl siding:

To Mr. Canfield, replacing vinyl siding that is in good shape, as some homebuyers do as soon as they have the deed, is like carelessly restoring antiques that came over on the Mayflower. He views vinyl siding facades as the key to preserving Williamsburg’s working-class traditions, which arguably has become its own facade.

“It’s not the most beautiful thing, but it’s real,” he said. “It’s authentic. It’s tied to the history of the neighborhood.”

See also: Aluminum and Vinyl Siding of Greenpoint.