I think the strength of suburbia lies in its potential to serve as the substrate for something *entirely different* from suburbia, but located where suburbia currently stands.

Also, I don't generally read the comments on blog posts, so thanks Benjamin for pointing out this amazing comment on the leaf blower piece I posted a few days ago: Confessions of a Blower Boy. He correctly blames the French royalty for inventing the modern lawn fetish, and then whips out this paragraph:

So in truth I hate what I do. Except when I'm strapped into my giant kazoo. To them, it's an unnecessary annoyance and convenient excuse to administer abuse, but to me, it's the weapon of their eventual undoing. It's surprising how powerful these things really are. With just one of them, you can hit a brand new Hummer with a rock from about 100 feet away. You can blow blinding dust clouds into busy intersections where everyone is simultaneously exercising their 'right of way'. You can press leaves and debris deep into the workings of any machinery you see. But most of all, you can push millions of seeds into the cracks and crevices of the very foundations of their constructed superficiality.

November 8. (permalink) After the American election, it's tempting to write a fiery rant calling the voters every name in the English language for lack of intelligence. I'm looking specifically at the initiatives and referendums in my state, Washington. We're a "blue" state that hasn't gone Republican for president since 1984. And yet, voters overwhelmingly rejected taxes and spending: 65-35% to require a nearly impossible two thirds majority of the legislature to raise taxes, 65-35% against an income tax on the very rich, 62-38% to repeal a sin tax on candy and soda, and 55-45% against going into debt to make schools more energy efficient.

And yet, when asked whether the government should stop doing any particular thing, they said no, rejecting two initiatives to get the state out of the liquor business, and one to privatize workers' compensation. Basically the voters have combined the foolishess of the left and right: they want the government to be Santa Claus, but they don't want to pay for it. And here's something even more troubling: by a massive majority, 85-15%, they approved a resolution to allow people not convicted of any crime to be held in prison indefinitely. Of course, the state phrased this as denying bail for violent predators. And yet, voters rejected the income tax on the rich, for fear it would trickle down to everyone, and it never occurred to them that the police state could trickle down to everyone.

It will. The people have decided to use their votes to destroy the only system in which they have votes. Eventually the government will be stripped down to little more than police and prisons, which will enforce the interests of corporations.

My favorite election commentary is by Sharon Astyk: The election is over - Now what do we do with all the fear? I agree: the voters are not really idiots -- they are cowards, and using their human brainpower to convince themselves of fantasies that defy both reason and observation: that the government can dispense benefits without collecting taxes; that an economy based on exponential growth can continue on a planet of fixed size; that we can have utopia merely by filling the slots in the present system with different people. What they're afraid of is reality: that the government, the economy, the planet, cannot continue to give more than they get, that all the stuff we've been getting, we're going to stop getting.

Astyk thinks that eventually the people will be ready for leaders who call for self-sacrifice. I'm not that optimistic. After they lose their toys, the people will be hungry for leaders who call for the sacrifice of others, and I mean sacrifice in the literal sense: the ritual mass-murder of scapegoats. When there are piles of bodies in the streets, only then, from the sane fringes, will new and better systems grow to fill the dead spots. Eventually those systems will become top-heavy and blind, and the whole story will repeat, again and again, until humans either go extinct or become smarter, by which I mean dumber -- less skilled at telling ourselves lies.

Sometimes, when they came down from the cirrus levels to catch a better wind, they would find themselves among the flocks of cumulus -- huge towers of modelled vapour, looking as white as Monday's washing and as solid as meringues. Perhaps one of these piled-up blossoms of the sky, these snow-white droppings of a gigantic Pegasus, would lie before them several miles away. They would set their course toward it, seeing it grow bigger silently and imperceptibly, a motionless growth -- and then, when they were at it, when they were about to bang their noses with a shock against its seeming solid mass, the sun would dim. Wraiths of mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air would coil about them for a second. Grey damp would be around them, and the sun, a copper penny, would fade away. The wings next to their own wings would shade into vacancy, until each bird was a lonely sound in cold annihilation, a presence after uncreation. And there they would hang in chartless nothing, seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom, until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed and the serpents writhed. Then, in a moment of time, they would be in the jewelled world once more -- a sea under them like turquoise and all the gorgeous palaces of heaven new created, with the dew of Eden not yet dry.

October 30. So we have an American election in a few days. A common argument against voting is that it trains you to think that working within the system is the best or only way to make a better world. My answer is: could you set the bar for yourself any lower? That's like not watching any commercials because then you won't be able to stop yourself from buying the product. If you don't think you can vote while keeping a healthy mental distance, now would be an excellent time to learn. Your vote is not a precious flower to be given only to the one you love; it is a cold tactical decision, and collectively, it does make a difference.

You are in a giant building that's on fire. The Democratic party is saying, "Yes, there was a small fire, but it's mostly under control now. We spent eleven cents on squirt guns and a trillion dollars building some higher floors. Remain calm and go about your business."

The Republican party is saying, "You are in a giant building that's on FIRE! Those people are to blame, and those people, and those people! KILL them! Kill them ALL!! And to put out the fire, we will use gasoline, and white phosphorus! YEEEEEE-HAAAAAAA!!!!"

Now, if you are trying to get safely out of the building, who would you rather have in charge?

...the scholars at the conference invariably assumed that "gifts" do not really exist: Scratch deep enough behind any human action, and you'll always discover some selfish, calculating strategy. Even more oddly, they assumed that this selfish strategy was always, necessarily, the real truth of the matter; that it was more real somehow than any other motive in which it might be entangled. It was as if to be scientific, to be "objective" meant to be completely cynical. Why?

This is the kind of question that everyone needs to ask all the time: stepping back until assumptions once taken for granted become puzzling. Anyway, Graeber examines a theory blaming Christianity, but I blame materialism, the philosophical idea that matter, not mind, is the fundamental reality. If the whole universe is just lifeless particles and waves going through clockwork motions, then it's much easier to project selfishness on those motions, than love.

Next, an inspiring Wired article about Elon Musk and Tesla Motors. Of course, shifting the entire American car system from gasoline to electric is impossible, and high tech is not going to reverse the ongoing collapse. But just look at the human energy and creativity behind technological innovation, and it's clear that this stuff is going to stick around in some form. In 50 years, there could be millions of electric vehicles driving around on tires and frames engineered for the crumbling highways.

False claims, lies caught on tape at farmers markets. Basically, many vendors at farmers markets are just picking up produce at warehouses and marking it up. The general principle here is exploitation of human inattention. When postindustrial farmers markets first started up, they were on the fringe, and you can't even get to the fringe unless you're paying attention. Then, farmers markets became cool. The more fashionable any behavior is, the easier it is to perform that behavior in a zombie-like trance. Now that people who live without critical thinking are going to farmers markets, the people who feed on them are following.

And via cryptogon, a book called Earthing, arguing that you get great health benefits by walking or sleeping on the ground. I'll echo what Kevin said: instead of making a snap judgment on this, experiment with it yourself and see what happens.