Stan Taylor

I usually hang on pretty much everything Fred Clark says on his blog, but his recent post about suburban sprawl is the exception to this rule.His thesis is pretty simple: suburban living sucks. He throws out all the usual arguments: soulless cookie-cutter homes, long commutes, poor home quality, etc.
I see where Fred is coming from. Until about age 30, I felt the exact same way. In my case, my over-simplified view of the ‘burbs was born of ignorance. I grew up in the country, and then lived as a young adult in Europe and in older Austin neighborhoods around the UT campus.
Now that I’ve lived in the ‘burbs for a decade, I see the situation differently. I’m not saying that Fred’s accusations have no merit. Rather, I think he only sees one side of the story. Let’s take the issue of poor quality suburban home construction. I hate to tell him, but that’s been a fact of life in Austin since the first ‘burb opened up over 100 years ago–the neighborhood next to UT that I lived in during college, incidentally, that’s now an expensive, desirable urban neighborhood.
Another issue that isn’t so black and white is community. The stereotype is that suburbanites don’t know their neighbors. In our case, however, I know many more neighbors here in the ‘burbs than I did in the in-town neighborhoods we lived in. To large extent, I think you get the level of community that you expect, wherever you live. We made a conscious decision to put down roots in Pflugerville. Except for work, we live our lives here: home, schools, church, etc. As a result, for instance, we can’t ever go to the grocery store without running into someone we know. That certainly doesn’t feel like the soulless, anonymous suburbs that Fred and others imagine.
I agree 100% that suburban sprawl is not a viable long-term option, primarily due to the reliance on automobiles. And yes, I’m contributing to it. But the factors that led to our living where we do are many and complex. You just can’t reduce it to a few paragraphs of screed, as Fred has done.

This is Katie’s mother in 2003, when she was 70 years old. Not bad for the age.

This was not posed. We walked into Hannah’s room and found her lying there.

My aunt used to distribute a lot of urban legend emails, mostly conservative political and religious crap. And every time, I would look up the myth on snopes.com, and send out a reply-to-all email explaining that this particular email is an urban legend, and pleading with people to do some minimal amount of research before forwarding on such emails to everyone you know.
Now, some researchers believe such counter-efforts may not help as much as I thought:

The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.
This phenomenon may help explain why large numbers of Americans incorrectly think that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in planning the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi. While these beliefs likely arose because Bush administration officials have repeatedly tried to connect Iraq with Sept. 11, the experiments suggest that intelligence reports and other efforts to debunk this account may in fact help keep it alive.

How depressing.
Oh, and I no longer receive such emails from my aunt. I hope, though don’t really believe, that my efforts caused her to stop sending them. Most likely, she just removed me from the recipient list. I’m surprised I stayed on her list so long.

Journalist A. J. Jacobs recently published an article in Esquire about Radical Honesty. According to the web site, Radical Honesty is “a kind of communication that is direct, complete, open and expressive. Radical Honesty means you tell the people in your life what you’ve done or plan to do, what you think, and what you feel. It’s the kind of authentic sharing that creates the possibility of love and intimacy.”
Or from the article:

[Radical Honesty’s founder Brad Blanton] says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you’re having fantasies about your wife’s sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It’s the only path to authentic relationships. It’s the only way to smash through modernity’s soul-deadening alienation.

When Mr. Jacobs tried to practice radical honesty, here are some of the incidents he describes in his article. First the stepmother:

The next day, we get a visit from my wife’s dad and stepmom.
“Did you get the birthday gift I sent you?” asks her stepmom.
“Uh-huh,” I say.
She sent me a gift certificate to Saks Fifth Avenue.
“And? Did you like it?”
“Not really. I don’t like gift certificates. It’s like you’re giving me an errand to run.”
“Well, uh . . .”

And then the female business associate:

I have a business breakfast with an editor from Rachael Ray’s magazine. As we’re sitting together, I tell her that I remember what she wore the first time we met — a black shirt that revealed her shoulders in a provocative way. I say that I’d try to sleep with her if I were single. I confess to her that I just attempted (unsuccessfully) to look down her shirt during breakfast.

I regard my honesty as one of my most valued traits. In fact, some would say I already practice radical honesty! But ‘Radical Honesty’ is a step too far even for me. The incident with the business associate is the easiest to get out of the way. Even if Radical Honesty consists of “toss[ing] out the filters between our brains and our mouths,” there’s always the option of just keeping your damn mouth closed.
The interaction with Mr. Jacobs mother-in-law is a little trickier, since she directly asked him for his opinion. But her question and his response are only one small part in a larger cultural ritual that involves deciding what to give, giving it, receiving it–each step of which has ritualized responses. Mr. Jacobs abides by the conventions of the ritual until some arbitrary point, when he decides to throw convention out the window and practice Radical Honesty. I notice he didn’t mention that he offered to give the gift certificate back to his mother-in-law. It seems to me that if he really wanted to practice radical honesty, he would need to opt out of the entire cultural ritual. You can’t have it both ways.

Today’s Austin American-Statesman features several articles about emergent churches in Austin. The local congregations profiled in the articles are Vox Veniae, Mosaic, Journey IFC, and Oak Grove Abbey. It’s an interesting and well written set of articles.
What struck me most, though, was that one of these congregations seems significantly different than the others. Some of the members of Vox Venaie are trying to live their faith by moving from the safe suburbs into a poorer inner-city neighborhood, so that they can “share their resources by living among people who have less.” That’s a big step beyond just forming a non-traditional faith community.

I’ve seen the new diet drug alli promoted heavily at Walgreens. This blogger interprets the marketing hype for us: “A simplified medical description of the drug is that it’s a fat blocker. It stops your body from absorbing some of the fat in your diet. . . But here’s the most important thing the drug does: it makes you shit oil. Worse, it makes you shit your pants.”
My favorite part of the post is the blogger’s interpretation of the alli web site bullshit (aka WSBS):

WSBS: The excess fat that passes out of your body is not harmful. In fact, you may recognize it as something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza.
No BS: Oh dear god. Pizza is one of my favourite foods and these evil fucks have done their best to turn me off it for life. It will be very hard to look at a pizza again without wondering if someone on this drug has taken a shit on it.
WSBS: Eating a low-fat diet lowers the chance of these bowel changes. (my emphasis)
No BS: Even if you do cut back on fat, you’re still going to shit oil.
WSBS: …pick a day to begin taking alli, such as a weekend day so you can stay close to home if you experience a treatment effect.
No BS: Do not go out in public after taking this drug. You are going to shit yourself. Stay close to a toilet.
WSBS: If you’re getting ready to travel or attend a social event, hold off on starting with alli until the event is over.
No BS: Don’t say you weren’t warned. You are seriously going to shit yourself.
WSBS: You may not usually get gassy, but it’s a possibility when you take alli. The bathroom is really the best place to go when that happens.
No BS: You’re old life is over. Forget what you think you know about your body. You are going to fart uncontrollably. And there will be follow-through. This is not going to be something you want to share.
And my absolute favourite (which is to say, the part of the website that horrifies me most):
“You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work.”
Oh. My. Fucking. God. They are so sure you are going to shit your pants they are saying you should accept the inevitable. There is no way to avoid this. So wear dark pants to hide the liquid shit stains. And bring a change of clothes. Because your first set are going to get impregnated with liquid shit.

Today, AP has a story about a cat that predicts the death of nursing home patients:

Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.
…
Doctors say most of the people who get a visit from the sweet-faced, gray-and-white cat are so ill they probably don’t know he’s there, so patients aren’t aware he’s a harbinger of death. Most families are grateful for the advanced warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.

The AP reporter is missing the other obvious conclusion: the cat is sucking the life out of the patients. Everyone knows, after all, that cats can kill babies.

This article tops digg.com today. It is the same idea as the one I expressed in my previous post, just with more detail.

There’s an interesting commentary in the Washington Post that’s making the blog rounds today: “Stop Trying to ‘Save’ Africa.” The author’s aversion to a certain type of attitude in regard to Africa reminds me of my dislike of the slogan “Save the Earth.”
I’m pretty sure life on earth will continue on in some form for millions, if not billions, more years, even if we humans manage to make the environment inhospitable for our own species.
So, I think ‘Save the Earth’ really means: help to keep the environment in a state that will continue to support human life similar to the way it currently is.” That in itself is a worthy cause, but the hubris implied in ‘Save the Earth’ really rubs me the wrong way.