Green problems [March 22]

House Bill 239 was the great green hope of 2008: Signed into law by Governor Tim Kaine on March 4, the young law expands the definition of what makes a building "energy efficient" to include a number of different government-sponsored systems of evaluation, and offers the tantalizing possibility of tax breaks for any building that  […]

I'm just a bill

Well, here we are again: stumbling to the end of yet another incoherent legislative session, with little to show for it but a busted deadline and a budget deficit the size of Eliot Spitzer’s “travel” expenses. This is certainly one for the Richmond record books: No agreement on fixing Virginia’s massively underfunded transportation system (that’ll […]

The answer lies in the grave

Dear Ace: I was down by City Hall the other day and noticed statues of three presidents sculpted into the building. Somewhat disconcerting to me was the size of James Madison; he was a pretty short guy, no? In the sculpture, he isn’t. Why?—Constance Tooshun Constance: It isn’t simply that James Madison was a “pretty short […]

Nonfiction, with pulp

Despite all the button-busting, broad-chested swagger of the steeled human sculptures that form the skyline of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay—the Orson Welles drive to destroy something immense like a planet or a media structure, or the Harry Houdini pairing of ingenuity and stubbornness, superpowers grappling with human […]

All Greek to you

Most people no longer expect much from a transcontinental flight: a movie, a snack, maybe a little deep vein thrombosis. But Peter Russell, the hero of James Collins’ Beginner’s Greek, is a romantic—he expects to meet “the perfect woman” on his New York-to-L.A. flight. Improbably, he does. His seatmate, Holly, thinks he’s pretty nice, too, […]