The passing of William F Buckley
If you love ideas and their power, you must love William F. Buckley.
You need not agree with every his idea to have affection for his style and integrity. He would grant you that same respect while attempting to shred your argument.
This was a man of civilization, a man of a higher order who believed that we should come together in openness to the marketplace of ideas and dialogue in the fullest faith.
It is with his death this weekend that I consider what breaks my heart the most about the downfall of public discourse in America. Here was a man of thousands of newspaper articles, television programs, and dozens of books produced with civility as a cardinal value.
May we follow in his footsteps and take pains to regain such civility in this nation.
Garland
The future of fundamentalism? IRAN’s government is now paying for sex changes.
So, it’s not transgenderism that bothers the mullahs, but people acting outside of one or two defined roles.
If the Iranians pay for sex changes, that says a lot about the future of public health, the Middle East, and fundamentalism.
By golly though, I may need a couple of beers before I can really figure out what it says..
-Garland
Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic makes first jet flight powered by biofuels
Man, there is so much stuff going on right now, it’s hard to know where to start. We’ve got Castro
stepping down, bionic contact lenses, air powered cars that get 100 mpg, and a skinny African American dude with a weird name who’s up in the polls for president.
Something is up - it’s like we’re going to take quantum leap on a few levels.
Check this out: Virgin Atlantic just made its first cross-Atlantic flight using coconut oil-based biofuels. It is evidently the first flight made on "renewable" fuels. So, that’s cool, right?
Apparently the old-school environmentalists are deriding this as greenwashing and a publicity stunt, and they are right - to a point. Yes, biofuels tend to drive up the cost of food and have just as high a carbon footprint as regular jet fuel. This is still a major step - global businesses are taking sustainability more seriously than in the past, and are making moves to change their practices. Of course the firs
t step isn’t perfect, but it’s better than just sitting back and burning coal dust or whatever.
Besides, what happens when researchers get the cost of large-scale algae biofuel production plants to the point of competing with fossil fuels? We’ll be glad there was a market established well in advance, making further advances possible and profitable.
Serious implications for the housing bubble - The Future of the Suburban Slum
As my regular readers know, the housing bubble in America has been one of my my frequent topics. After all, the advent of $700,000 condo has been the kind of event that portends all kinds of economic shocks to the future. 
That’s why this week’s must read is from The Atlantic Monthly entitled "The Next Slum." It seems that many of the exurban developments on the outskirts of New York City, Charlotte, NC, and other communities were being built on the rickety foundation of subprime loans. Now that foreclosures are taking out as many as 66% of the residents, terrible things are befalling these new communities.
Crackhouses are springing up. Vandalism abounds. Pirates are busting in to strip out copper wiring to sell on the black market. (Chinese construction has driven the cost of basic minerals through the roof!) All this is the suburbs, the supposed home of safe, bland living.
Remember the riots in Paris a few years ago? They started in the suburbs, which are the centers of European poverty. The inner cities command the highest rents and the best development, while the suburbs have become teeming hives of socio-economic unrest.
As demand for urban conveniences increase, could the suburbs be the dangerous neighborhoods of the future? It seems increasingly likely.
-Garland
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