Housing bubble? This one really is

Jewish World Review ^ | June 28, 2005 | Howard Witt

[rockprof]

As for-sale listings go, this one is a real fixer-upper-a 10-bedroom, 5 ½-bath glass house situated in Arizona's Sonoran Desert.

The landscaping is lush, but it's a bit overgrown. (Truth be told, it's a real jungle.) There's a million-gallon pool, but the water is more than slightly brackish. The utility bills are a bear — about $1 million a year. And the place is infested with five species of cockroaches and overrun with voracious ants.

[rockprof]

Pretty funny, actually.

[prion]

Link to the article.

[Tax-chick]

the realtors who are marketing the facility tout its potential as a "spa and wellness center," a "corporate campus" or a "high security compound."

Oh, great. Just the thing for a polygamous cult, drug-smuggling headquarters, or terrorist training camp.

[sine_nomine]

Biosphere II proved that God is a pretty good property manager after all. Why curse the landlord when the renters do much worse when they take over?

[Tax-chick]

LOL! Excellent post.

[netmilsmom]

"Biosphere"

I saw that movie, with Pauly Shore. Lame.

[Maria S]

What a great article! Thanks for posting it.


I'm not sure why the classic "Lord of the Flies" comes to mind when reading the article...maybe it's the "typical human nature" thing.

[BlazingArizona]

Actually, the One Big Mistake in the design of Biosphere was the use of window glass instead of quartz. Window glass, even in the Arizona desert, does not pass the critical UV wavelengths that plants need to flourish. The sickly plants produced less oxygen than the people and animals consumed, and they ran out of air.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Yet Leigh, MacCallum and Poynter insist that Biosphere 2, for all of its problems, was a resounding scientific success. Valuable research was performed, they say, including important findings about the effects of global warming and the loss of oxygen in supposedly "closed" systems."

I agree. A great deal was learned from Biosphere II. It's too bad that a second iteration wasn't carried through (i.e. Biosphere III). We really need to develop the expertise.

[Voltage]

If they would just have thrown more money at it, maybe it would have taken longer to fail!

[leoncaruthers]

If you read the article, they also had a problem with the concrete foundation absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, throwing another wrench in the photosynthesis cycle.

[ELS]

"If we can't understand how an ecosystem works that is relatively simple and confined," MacCallum said, "how do we ever hope to understand how our Earth works?"

Ding, ding, ding! Please get your politically minded colleagues to be quiet about ideas like global warming until they get some serious scientific evidence to support their hypothesis.

[Bernard Marx]

You beat me to it. The same thought would apply to "planned" economies.

[sine_nomine]

Thanks. I borrowed the thought from Martin Luther.

As a gardener I am constantly astonished at how perfectly designed our created universe is. The tiniest creatures do His bidding to perfection.

In contrast, man cannot build a tiny mock-up of our world and have it work. Then add some people and they stop speaking to each other!

[Tax-chick]

Yes, it's very revealing - reminds us of who is really in charge.