Bob Morris @ Mar 5th 2007 07:06 - Category: Unfiled ;
Consider these news items
a) Britney: “I’m the Antichrist”
b) “An arch-conservative cardinal chosen by the Pope to deliver this year’s Lenten meditations to the Vatican hierarchy has caused consternation by giving warning of an Antichrist who is ‘a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist‘”.
I’m not sure which one is loonier, Britney or the cardinal…
Bob Morris @ Mar 5th 2007 06:37 - Category: Uncategorized Tags: Armenian genocide;
Turkish nationalist, leader of the Turkish Labor Party Dogu Perincek will stand trial in Switzerland. The legal proceedings launched over violation of Swiss anti-racist law on the Armenian Genocide denial may cause tension in the Swiss-Turkish relations.
Bob Morris @ Mar 5th 2007 00:15 - Category: Climate change, Socialism ;
Life of Riley has a highly useful post of leftist views on the environment and climate change, including podcasts and background material. It’s titled Environmentally aware blogging and podcasting from a determined left perspective. Check it out.
Greenie treehugger sites are great (and indeed, Treehugger itself is indispensable) but most of them either barely mention politics or think that asking Congress to act is what’s needed. What the hard left brings to the discussion is an analysis of the major role capitalism and imperialism play in climate change and how new political structures, specifically socialism, will be needed as we work towards ending global warming.
A top-down worldwide solution is needed, something nearly impossible to do under capitalism. Also, the underpinning of capitalism, the profit motive, currently overrides everything other concern, and that must change. We need to put the long-term health of the planet before the short-term profit making of capitalism.
Bob Morris @ Mar 5th 2007 00:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
A UCLA anthropologist studied the use of garages and lawns by dual-income middle class southern California families and found that garages were so stuffed with clutter that cars couldn’t fit in them and the carefully maintained yards were practically never used for leisure.
Trapped in an energy-draining work-and-spend cycle, many young dual-earner families seem to fuel their stress and frustration by buying more possessions than their homes can absorb, adding to their debt and routinely conscripting crowded garage spaces to function as chaotic storage rooms.
Running faster and faster to stay in the same place with no time to enjoy it? How sad. The real driving force here is the steep SoCal real estate prices. Just keeping up with the mortgage generally requires that more than one person works. Then there’s the commutes. When Sue was doing her 90 minute drive each way to get to a client 17 miles away in LA, she didn’t have time or energy to do much of anything after she got home. No doubt millions of others in LA are the same.
So, not only does the garage get cluttered with toys, it’s cluttered because no one has time to clean it out or even to enjoy the yard (if they’re lucky enough to have one.) These are among the reasons Sue and I moved to Connecticut last week. I’m looking out the window at the wooded backyard from our house where the basement alone is bigger than many tract homes in LA and we bought it for what you can’t get a 1 bdr condo in the San Fernando Valley for. And we’ll have time to enjoy it all because the mortgage is tiny and the commutes mercifully uncrowded.
Interesting, isn’t it, how financial considerations can influence so many facets of one’s life? In LA, if you have a steep mortage or rent, you may be forced to drive long distances just to pay for it all, whereas in areas with saner housing prices, things are quite a lot more relaxed.
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