hypochondriac society

These are the new values of our enlightened post-embodiment hypochondriac society as set by the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health:

Masks carry both physical and psychological benefits, said Dr. Julio Frenk, former health minister of Mexico and current dean of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Masks are a "reminder to people that they should avoid close contact with other persons," he said. "They also have this effect of isolating people and reminding them that they should not be kissing people, shaking hands, things like that."

not just the American picket fence dream anymore

A massive (and massively costly) fence is going up along the border near San Diego to certain environmental detriment. I hardly want to know what the ancient American Indians would have had to say about our recent wave of anti-immigration sentiments. Had they built fences, would we be here to lock others out today?

"Lantos had assumed his committee chairmanship [of the House Foreign Affairs Committee] just a year [ago], when Democrats retook control of Congress. He said then that in a sense his whole life had been a preparation for the job." A sad time for our representative Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, to pass away of cancer.

Am I just too old-fashioned or hippie? Some of these "money-saving" suggestions from NYT are great; others make me sad. Desert local retailers? Is this how globalization has trickled down to the average American?

The TSA needs a copyeditor if it's started its own blog and can't figure out the difference between Everyday and Every Day.

The average American spends about 47 hours per year stuck in traffic. Yet with all the discussion of how to combat an ever growing number of cars on the road by ever constructing more thoroughfares, public transportation is not considered.

Remember when Michael Moore shared with us in Stupid White Men that he feels nervous being flown by commercial pilots who make less than the kid at Taco Bell? I don't feel any safer that so many underpaid and undertrained security guards protect our likeliest terrorist targets. How about quality rather than quantity in paranoia? How much training and pay do our favorite friendly folk at the TSA receive, I wonder?

If only people would band together to raise money for causes more worthy than buying $26,000 worth of peanuts in order to get to veg out in front of another season of Jericho.

thanksgiving makes me sad

Maybe you don't really want to know why.

The most common reactions to my decision to be vegetarian are "Don't you miss meat? I cannot live without it!" and "Why?" My primary reason is that it cuts my environmental footprint drastically. Page 7 of this admittedly propagandic PETA postcard gives some of the statistics that lead my conscience to eschew meat: Livestock meant for our plates consume vast amounts of grain that could have provided much less expensive food for the hungry; more than half of the water used in the US goes to livestock intended for people's plates; raising animals uses a third of American energy resources; and the meat industry creates more water pollution than all other industries combined, to name a few.

Our society has developed remarkable systems to hide the environmental consequences of all we do from our daily lives. Only if garbage pickup stopped would we realize how much waste we create; only if animals were raised and slaughtered in the city would we be widely aware of their mistreatment; only if the pollution emitted by power plants was blown into our own homes would we realize how horrible it is to waste energy. Our world is modern, efficient, clean, civilized, and... deceptive.

palm problem

I have a problem with palm trees in California. I love stereotypical images of palms at the beach, and in fact have created a couple of mock-retro ones that I'll try to post if I ever get around to turning on my internal/external hard drive. I have a purse and a bikini with palms, and it's totally for that Cali look. But I never liked the look of palms poking up all over California. They absolutely don't belong in San Francisco, although they line Herb Caen Boulevard and struggle by the new tracks in Visitacion Valley to survive the fog, and they hardly belong in SoCal. Our climate is temperate, but not tropical.

And it looks tacky.

For the first time, I've found people who agree. "'They don't provide the same benefits as the other, more leafy trees,' says Paula Daniels, a Board of Public Works commissioner who is heading up the planting effort. Their tall, bare trunks make them inferior when it comes to providing shade, Daniels said, and some experts believe their scant leaves make them less effective at trapping air pollution. And while sun-dappled palms lining a freeway may look good in the movies or on a postcard, Dunlap said people standing beside them can feel as if they are next to a telephone pole." So she's not worried about re-foresting SoCal with palms when plenty of native species are available.

According to one CS grad alum, the mega palms lining the main driveway into Stanford University cost about $100,000 to maintain each year.