Your post about ruins brought to mind a book I've heard about — The World Without Us — and have thought about reading. Here is a similar interesing article.

Thanks for the reading material. I've also just become interested in the aftermath of Chernobyl, so this falls in nicely with that.

beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I've gotten yelled at by my hosts when I go to speak in other countries and foreign cities because they say I only take pictures of the "bad side" to their homeland. In reality, I too am intrigued by the ruins left over by not only classical man, but his modern, capitalist polar opposite.

I happened to see this on digg today about abandoned places - http://www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com/