/blog-gone

Only time will tell if January 30, 2005 will go down as one of the most important dates in modern history. I happen to believe it will. But between now and when the history books are written it was enough, at least for me, to stand by on a Sunday and marvel at the courage of people half a world away.

Well, here's my credo. I'm not a designer, but I love design. I love stores like Analogue, Magma, and Zakka. I enter them as reverently as Philip Larkin entered a church, removing his bicycle clips and doffing his hat. To me they're temples to human creativity, places dedicated to higher values, yes, even spiritual values. In a world that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, these stores and the curated, inspirational printed matter they contain reaffirm my belief that beauty really is elevating and that every 'creator' is a kind of god.

I am, after all, an atheist. That is, someone who seeks to locate spiritual value everywhere except in a monotheistic god.

Well, yesterday my new album came out in America. My new album – an album of radical paganism and fertility worship, an album advocating lostness rather than salvation and art rather than religion

Note the concluding words: faith, responsibility, family. This is the other side of Clinton's message: against the ugliness of state control, she wants to raise the banner of morality as well as freedom. Pro-choicers have tried this for 40 years, but they always run into a fatal objection: Abortion is so ugly that nobody who supports it can look moral. To earn real credibility, they'd have to admit it's bad. They often walk up to that line, but they always blink.

Not this time. Abortion is "a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women," said Clinton. Then she went further: "There is no reason why government cannot do more to educate and inform and provide assistance so that the choice guaranteed under our constitution either does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances."

Does not ever have to be exercised. I searched Google and Nexis for parts of that sentence tonight and got no hits. Is the press corps asleep? Hillary Clinton just endorsed a goal I've never heard a pro-choice leader endorse. Not safe, legal, and rare. Safe, legal, and never.

In the information age, education matters more. In an age in which education matters more, family matters more, because as James Coleman established decades ago, family status shapes educational achievement.

At the top end of society we have a mass upper-middle class. This is made up of highly educated people who move into highly educated neighborhoods and raise their kids in good schools with the children of other highly educated parents. These kids develop wonderful skills, get into good colleges (the median family income of a Harvard student is now $150,000), then go out and have their own children, who develop the same sorts of wonderful skills and who repeat the cycle all over again.

In this way these highly educated elites produce a paradox - a hereditary meritocratic class.

It becomes harder for middle-class kids to compete against members of the hypercharged educated class. Indeed, the middle-class areas become more socially isolated from the highly educated areas.

And this is not even to speak of the children who grow up in neighborhoods in which more boys go to jail than college, in which marriage is not the norm before child-rearing, in which homes are often unstable, in which long-range planning is absurd, in which the social skills you need to achieve are not even passed down...

Now, the upper class doesn't so much oppress the lower class. It just outperforms it generation after generation. Now the crucial inequality is not only finance capital, it's social capital.

Visitors will be able to freely explore the house, looking inside closets and chests and touching things, just like the heroines Satsuki and Mei did when they first arrived at the house. In addition, programs will be offered in which visitors can get a taste of life in the mid-1950s to the mid-60s (the Showa 30s)--what might be considered the "slow life" of the good old days, when people lived closer to nature that they do today.[Emph. added]

The American military took out Noriega, Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam with a minimum of effort, and what followed was far better for both the long-suffering victims and the world at large. The difficult postbellum reconstruction in Iraq is costly and heartbreaking, but so far after September 11 we have lost fewer troops in 3 years of fighting that we did in one day during the Bulge or at Normandy.

The Times writer has confused our love of comfort with softness, but in doing so he makes the mistake that Sauron made of the hobbits. We are comfortable, because it is sensible to prefer comfort to hardship when you can have it, but we are fierce fighters in a pinch. If needs must, we can still rouse ourselves to great deeds. [Emph. added]

One of Southern California's problems, noted Kyser during an interview last week in the LAEDC's 34th floor conference room, is the prevalence of "pod thinking." This, he said, causes local entities, be they governments, businesses or planning groups, to fail (or in many cases refuse) to look beyond their small communities. It results in NIMBYism (not in my backyard), BANANAs (build absolutely nothing near anybody) and on the political side, NIMTOOs (not in my term of office).[Emph. added]

The equation is broken down into seven variables: (W) weather, (D) debt, (d) monthly salary, (T) time since Christmas, (Q) time since failed quit attempt, (M) low motivational levels and (NA) the need to take action.

For the truth is that the US is in relentless relative decline as an economic power in the world. The years after the Second World War (the years of the Marshall Plan), when the economies of most of its competitors had been wrecked while its own was growing strongly — were the noontide of American muscle. The Cold War, because its central narrative was that of a mortal threat from a Soviet giant of equal power, diminished the appearance of American strength, but the narrative was false. The collapse of the rival giant has exaggerated America’s apparent strength because it has so much more economic muscle than any single rival.

But for many decades America’s share of the world’s economic output has been in decline. Think of a see-saw. America at one end is now easily outweighed by any substantial grouping at the other, and most of those powers are on friendly terms with each other. America’s modesty in 1945 understated its muscle, just as Bushite vanity overstates it today. He has over-reached. His country is overstretched, losing economic momentum, losing world leadership, and losing the philosophical plot. America is running into the sand.

The Angels were put into a demographic box. There are 300,000 people in Anaheim. There are three million in Orange County. There are 16 1/2 million in the metropolitan area. So when you look at marketing, you're saying, 'Have we identified ourselves with a particular market?'

We get half of what the Dodgers get in broadcast revenue. Why? Seattle's radio deal is three times ours. Why does Milwaukee have a better radio deal than we do? Why? Why are we 28th or 29th in the country in broadcast revenue? ...

The fact is, if you put people in a box, whether it's racial or economic or marketing-wise, you don't give them a chance to grow. [Emph. added]

... the article did not address the underlying housing shortage in places like California. Decades of slow-growth housing policies have created a widespread shortage in housing on the west coast, with the result that prices have shot up. While it is possible to remedy the shortage, and thus impact the pricing structure, there is zero evidence of that occurring.

We saw this coaching mentality at work twice in the last two weeks. It's not often we get to see a coach have the chance to profit from a compatriot's awful mistake, but that's what happened. San Diego's Marty Schottenheimer blew the wild-card game to the Jets because he refused to take a chance and move his field goal kicker closer than a 40-yard attempt. Which sailed wide.

Buoyed up by this memory, Jets coach Herman Edwards found himself in exactly the same position in Pittsburgh, the situation bearing a spooky resemblance to the Schottenheimer affair. Only this time the kick was from 43 yards. And the kicker, Doug Brien, had already missed a 47-yarder, when, as he described it, "the wind seemed to push the ball down." And this was in a stadium so tricky to kick in that the longest field goal ever accomplished within its confines was 46 yards.

Nevertheless Edwards chose to shut the book at the page that read, "field goal, 43 yards." Even worse, he had his quarterback kneel on third down, lengthening the distance by a yard, in some goofy attempt to run off two more seconds. And, of course, we know what happened. The Steelers, not the Jets, are in the AFC title game.

CHILDREN under the age of eight should not use mobile phones, parents were advised last night after an authoritative report linked heavy use to ear and brain tumours and concluded that the risks had been underestimated by most scientists.

The contest marks a bid by the privately owned L.A. Auto Show to drag itself out from the shadow of the better-known North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which opens just a few days later.

ALAN SCHWARZ: One thing that Eddie and Gary, you might not be aware of, is that a few years ago Voros came up with something called Defense Independent Pitching Stats, which . . .

EDDIE BANE: Alan, you said, "You guys may not be aware." That's one of the things we're battling. We are aware. I read these guys' stuff all the time.

ALAN SCHWARZ: I said, "May not be aware." Gary, have you ever heard of DIPS?

GARY HUGHES: No.

ALAN SCHWARZ: OK then! (Laughter)

EDDIE BANE: But I'm going to read everything I can, and on top of that have Gary Hughes in the ballpark to see what the guy does. We're trying to dispel these things. It's not like when we're drafting we spit tobacco at the board, and whatever name we hit is the guy we take. I've read this stuff.

Generation X and Generation Y workers, who are younger than 40, are more likely than boomers to say they put family before jobs.

Among the professionals profiled, I suspect that economics, not some sort of moral conversion, explains most of the trend. If you're a highly skilled, highly educated professional, you can make quite a good living these days without working terribly long hours or putting your work first. (You can, of course, make more if you work obsessively. But even the most rationalistic economist believes people maximize utility, not income.) And, contrary to widespread belief in places like LA, Washington, and New York, in most of the United States, a family can live a comfortable middle-class life on middle-class pay, in many cases on a single salary. [Emph. added]

A surge in the number of hybrid vehicles has left carpool lanes nearly as congested as the regular lanes they are intended to relieve, a Virginia transportation task force said yesterday.

The restrictions were cheered by hillside residents, who say one 42-by-2,000-foot retaining wall on Davies Drive off Benedict Canyon Drive is so big it can be seen for miles.

But some owners of canyon lots voiced fears that the new rules could make it impossible to develop their land.

The UN's children's agency, Unicef, warned that the disaster was the "perfect opportunity" for traffickers in Indonesia to sell youngsters into forced labour or sexual slavery in wealthy neighbouring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.

So if the primary question for [incumbent Mayor Jim] Hahn is "Can we trust you," there are two questions for [Antonio] Villaraigosa: Can you advance an agenda for Los Angeles that moves beyond the measures Hahn has taken that won him the endorsement of key labor unions that formerly backed you? And can we count on you, this time, to commit to a full term as mayor, after breaking your vow not to run?

For [Bernard] Parks, who continues to chide and to charm, voters will remind themselves that as police chief he opposed the LAPD consent decree and the shortened work week for officers, and railed against City Hall control over the police department. The question for him is, To what extent will you attempt to reverse the changes that have been made at the LAPD?

For [Bob]Hertzberg, perhaps the top question at this point is, "Who are you?" Is he the Jewish candidate, the business candidate, the Valley candidate, the policy-wonk candidate? He may be all of that, or none of it, but he has yet to distinguish himself from the rest of the pack. And voters don’t always have a very long attention span.

Then there is [Richard] Alarcón. Perhaps the best question for him is, "Are you for real?" He has excelled at the televised debates but has yet to be embraced by large numbers of backers with money and endorsements.

Moreno said he doesn't expect people to drive long distances, say from Pasadena or San Bernardino, to watch games. But he said neglecting the cache connected with the second-largest media market in the U.S. would be a mistake.[Emph added]

is not just more difficult and subtle than chess. It may be also be the world's oldest surviving game of pure mental skill.

We are six percent or less of the world's population, yet we give almost half. We are a very small number of people, relatively speaking, and we carry the weight of a dozen countries. Secondly, we maintain a military structure that keeps the peace of the world.....Who is in the Indian Ocean with the aircraft carriers, helicopters, skilled personnel? No one has the infrastructure in the world, we spend almost half a trillion dollars a year on our military structure, which is essentially the fire department of the planet and it is always at the disposal of people hit in a national disaster.....Incidentally on food aid, we give 60% of all the food aid in the world. It is simply irresponsible to talk about the U.S. as anything other than the most generous nation on the planet.

the key component that gets people to stay: a human-scaled, pedestrian streetscape that is the physical foundation for successful downtowns.

This name change will strengthen the Angels' long-term economic health by enhancing the marketability through this metropolitan area and beyond

This is a time for mourning, for hot passion, for being sorry that the human condition is such that these things happen. God mourns with us. He would not have us behave in such ways. He did not create us to be cut off from His loving, warning Father's voice. Skeptics want to ask a rude question at the wrong time and then mock our answers as insensitive.

Crichton does not, as some have alleged, criticize the science underlying global-warming alarmism. In fact, he argues from it; as well he should — science is what it is. Instead, it is the use to which the science is put that Crichton argues against most forcefully. The science, by itself, does not argue that the world must take certain actions now. Science can never be prescriptive. All it can do is raise issues for the world's attention. It is politics and economics that then decide what to do about them. People who argue that the science says we must do something are being disingenuous about their true motives. If those people are also scientists, then they are abusing science.