08.21.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:20 pm by lael
The worm has turned, and boy is it ugly. “Sobig” describes the F-ing pain in my can’t-touch-this.
My usual 130-150 messages per day has become 1227.
Ggrrkklllkkn!
I apparently still need penile enlargment, viagra, to increase my size by 2 cup-sizes, and to lose 30 pound is 15 minutes.
But at least they are now saying “thank you,” and they’ve “approved” my “application” to go to “that movie.”
I got to go visit the Traveler today to try to help them check their e-mail. Their slower access through DSL, combined with the fact that their e-mail server is being hammered by Sobig.F, make it so that their e-mail server times out before the accounts finish logging in.
From here I can check their accounts. From there I cannot. From there I can check every other account that I have POP access to. I cannot check their accounts.
I’ve told them this. I’ve showed them how to use their webmail client to get their mail. But my diagnosis still smells like bullshit to me.
The best part of the trip is that I got to use the phrase, “smells like bullshit to me.”
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08.19.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:15 pm by lael
Monday afternoon on Talk of the nation, there was segment on suburbia. It put me in mind of my posting about Ian Jukes.
The depopulation that Ian Jukes warns of is represented in the decay of the suburbs. Population leaves. Infrastructure decays. Facilities are built to match the resources available from a given population. When that population declines, the resources that the population represent decline.
My supposed understanding of the history of Fargo, ND and how it related to urbanization.
When I lived in Fargo, I was fascinated by the parks. The city called itself “the city of parks.” (or was it “a city of parks?”) Fargo is a renaissance city and their parks are representative of that spirit. The parks of Fargo/Moorhead are along the Red River of the North, through the downtowns. Once upon a time, Fargo was named because it was the furthest navigable point on the Red River. It was a “far go,” don’t ya’ know? Moorhead, across the river, was named for the same reason.
The city became wealthy because much of the trade for the north-central US and for south-central Canada went through the town. The people built right next to the river. It was the source of their wealth, and cartage was expensively labor intensive in these days before internal combustion, or even steam for that matter. This was a city packed up against the river. And it was washed away by the river every year. But the rewards of being on the river made the crushing inconvenience worthwhile.
Then came the trains.
The dangerous, mucking river was abandoned and the businesses moved to the rail yards. As the population fled from the river, the structures along the river were abandoned. They were annually destroyed by the spring floods and people stopped re-building them. They fell into impossible disrepair. They became enormous piles of tinder. Many of these structures burned out in massive conflagrations. Finally the city decided to tear them down. It was in their self-interest.
As riverside structures were torn down, the river front was a scar through the middle of town. As the affluence of the city increased, and as people moved back to fill the empty spaces, the scar was cleaned up and turned into parkland. Parkland could survive the annual floods.
The exodus went from the river to the rail-yards to the interstate highways.
Behind the apartment complex we lived in in south Fargo, there was a large parkway. It was 100 yards wide and stretching from beyond the edge of town and extending deep into the city. I understood that the park was an abandoned rail line. It’s used in the winter as a snowmobile highway into the city. Saturday night we’d have the whine of snowmobiles until the wee hours of the morning.
There is a cyclic nature to this pattern of creation, decay, destruction and renewal. Amanda and I happened to be in Fargo at a time of stability - of prosperity. We were there when the resources were available to heal these old wounds. One of the most important resources for this kind of healing is the will of the people. The folks in Fargo are industrious, energetic and enthusiastic. Winter camping in -40°F weather will do that to a person.
Or make you crazy.
That sort of stress is available from extreme weather conditions, but economic woes can produced extreme conditions. I agree that we need to live at a sustainable level. There are two ways to get there. One is by dying-off the population until those that are left can reap the lilies of the field. The other is to figure out how to grow more lilies.
The sad thing is that if we die-off of enough people, there won’t be anyone who remembers how to build the reapers. The sadder thing is that then we’ll need even more population to reap by hand.
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08.18.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:53 pm by lael
(Apologies to Charles Schulz.)
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08.14.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:04 pm by lael
Yesterday the school district had a speaker. Here’s the press release as it appeared in the Courier. story
Ian Jukes makes the claim that his job is “not to educate you but to irritate you.” He presents information about trends and thinking, to try to prepare educators and business for the next generation of thinking.
He talks of “infowhelm,” the obsolescence of knowledge, and the challenges of teaching students to deal with sciences and technologies that haven’t been invented yet.
He also talked about the fact that in a negative population growth environment, people who leave the workplace have fewer resources available to them. The number one resource consumed by retirees is labor.
The implications of negative population growth on the rest of the economy are stunning.
Strangely, negative resource growth was more compelling than carniculture, nanotech, and anti-gravity.
www.ianjukes.com
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08.06.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:59 am by lael
This last weekend we celebrated our normal family get-together for Gladys Clark’s ninety-first birthday, the first celebration after her death.
A good time was had by all, especially Avery. In addition to being with her favorite cousin, Skyler, she also made a new friend.
PUMPKIN
[ There used to be a picture here of Avery and a kitten named Pumpkin. I lost it. I’m sad. - Lael ]
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