The Dirty Northwest

Interesting thoughts in a (rather brief) story on a Nissan exec and the fading car culture globally.

I think he’s right on — and a little late to the party, actually. Younger folks (like me?) are more interested in gadgetry, travel and art than they are flashy wheels. Driving the latest hot car is a sign poor money management or some need to compensate for some anatomical shortcoming. We GenXers are a bit more cynical — especially of marketing. And all Automotive has these days is marketing. Products are for the most part dull and when you have a success like the Prius, the Detroit pundits chalk it up to a fad.

My peers are more turned on by something vintage and practical than the latest hot hatchback thing. Especially in a market like portland. If someone’s going to spend the time under the hood of something, it’s an old porshe, volvo, VW or muscle car.

As Jonno put it “you can tell who’s from out of town by the farty exhaust”.

From Nature Neuroscience Vol. 10, Number 10, October 2007 :

Political scientists and psychologists have noted that, on
average, conservatives show more structured and persistent
cognitive styles, whereas liberals are more responsive to
informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty. We tested the
hypothesis that these profiles relate to differences in general
neurocognitive functioning using event-related potentials, and
found that greater liberalism was associated with stronger
conflict-related anterior cingulate activity, suggesting greater
neurocognitive sensitivity to cues for altering a habitual
response pattern.

A loyal TDNW reader (and former Wheatnick?) brought to my attention Misquoting Jesus by a fellow Wheaton alum.

Fresh Air nicely summarizes the book here and I dare say me interest be piqued!

Ehrman says the modern Bible was shaped by mistakes and intentional alterations that were made by early scribes who copied the texts. In the introduction to Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman writes that when he came to understand this process 30 years ago, it shifted his way of thinking about the Bible. He had been raised as an Evangelical Christian.

“Errors in transcription” (either deliberate or accidental) is a common criticism of the Bible. The Evangelicals’ counter argument — as it is for all things rationale which undermine the veracity — is faith*.

This book should prove an interesting read.

* Ah, faith. The ol’ “f” word. The ace up the sleeve. They’ll argue with you on rationale grounds. They’ll let you back them into a corner. But when you declare checkmate, they knock the board over, spilling the pieces, and say “yeah, you have to take in on faith.”

I suppose I should explain that I’m required to notify Homeland Security of any IP address that clicks this link. (via) If you’re on their list anyway, check it out. It’s the reason the world loves YouTube.

Sprawling suburbs are more than just a visual blight and a provoker of a culture of isolation. They are also a tax on resources. Single-family homes are less energy efficient and poor urban planning leads to greater infrastructure costs as roads and utilities must be stretched to serve outlying developments.

There’s also the problem of increased driving from these areas. And increased driving means increased oil consumption and increased air pollution.

Regulators in California’s Central Valley have passed a rule requiring developers to make efforts to reduce air pollution or pay a fine.

NPR has the full story.

I took the day off in honor of Festmas and Festivus. Most of my last minute errands were accomplished on foot, but I did have to drive across town for a quick business meeting (I know – working on my day off sets a bad precedent).

Fortunately I caught this week’s must listen from NPR: Ray Kurweil giving us the rundown on what the next 15 years will hold.

My mind feels very small right now.

Seriously — listen to it.

… for the abstenance-only crowd:

A 15-year-old girl with a peanut allergy died after kissing her boyfriend, who had just eaten a peanut butter snack, hospital officials said Monday.

Of course the logical response is: “15 year-olds shouldn’t be kissing”, but liberals like me confuse the issue and think that peanut allergies need better treatment.

Then again, The Dirty Northwest is supported by a large grant from Snickers, so don’t listen to me.

The right-wing war on science is all too often easily identified as a war on women.

A new report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office shows that the FDA had some “irregularities” in their decision to keep the contraceptive, Plan B, from being available over the counter. What were these irregularities? For one, the decision by President Bush’s administration to keep Plan B prescription-only was made before the scientists had finished their evaluation.

Critics of Plan B claim that easy access to the contraceptive could encourage young women to have unsafe sex (sound familiar?).

W stands for women.

Oh for Heaven’s sake.

Does anybody really take Robertson seriously anymore?

While the Dem’s did have some solid electoral wins this week (and pundits on both side alternatively downplay and celebrate the importance of those wins) the honest-to-goodness good news isn’t poll related:

Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives abandoned, at least temporarily, a drive to open Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling after concluding on Wednesday the initiative was threatening passage of a huge bill to cut spending.

The key here is the reason. Again: “the initiative was threatening passage of a huge bill to cut spending.” Never mind that the spending cut will be followed by a tax cut and our deficit problem will have taken two steps back – there are two great things about this development.

First, the minority party and advocacy groups actually succeeded in keeping the Republican juggernaut from getting absolutely everything they wanted. If they learn from this win, perhaps there are techniques they can repeat.

The second, and more obvious one, is that a refuge – any refuge – won’t be destroyed to increase our production by a tiny percentage over 20 plus years. After the Republican noise machine spent so much time painting the ANWR as an uninhabitable frozen wasteland, the American public still understood that we live in an ecosystem and that when one part of a system is destroyed, the rest of that system is affected.

However, there are those who believe that Elijah will be blowing his horn and calling them home in the next 10 years, and who therefore don’t give a shit about anything lasting beyond that. But they’re apparently still in the minority. Which is more good news, I suppose.