CNN.com - Exurb growth challenges U.S. cities

theboxtank: a weblog focusing on big-box retailing.
[Similarly, check out the new urbanist...]

[via Boing Boing]

I love the assumption that lab technicians, who provide relatively useful information for doctors, and cleaners, who are supposed to protect us all from MRSA, are not 'frontline health professionals'. But then obviously neither are all the white-collar staff who make the wheels of the NHS edifice turn, however slowly.

Obviously the nurses should do the lab tests and doctors should wash the floors. [via the Adam Smith Institute's blog, which seems to have an even smaller collective iq than the Telegraph does...]

The Archbishop of Canterbury opines thusly:

And why would one find any of this surprising?? Is this not the experience of modern life? His point that we increasingly live in a scape-goat society where we are quick to blame others for our ills, is undoubtedly true to some degree, but there is also a growing unwillingness to engage in/with wider issues, which increasingly divorces us from issues that in turn affect us. If one was cynical enough you could apply exactly the same arguments to the Anglican church, which certainly seems to be riven by toxic brew of self-doubt, over-analysis and artificial/doctrinal crises.

We live in a modern world. This is not a safe state of affairs. The hallmark of modern life is the contradiction [if not outright war] between constant social and economic change and a desire for stability in a world where all that is solid melts into air. The pace of life has changed forever over the last century, and with it the differences and understanding between generations. [A couple of days ago I referenced some of Grant McCracken's thoughts on the impact of change on different generations.]

But why shouldn't we resent limits? Many limits on us are placed upon us for good reason: a growing number though are arbitrary and capricious. Why shouldn't we resent the passage of time? Is there anyone who does not look back on things they wish they'd done, have things they wish to do but doubt they'll ever have time for?

And why shouldn't we fear growing old? Is not this part and parcel of our mortality, the recognition that we will be unable to do many of the things we currently do, perhaps the things we most take for granted? Are we to be in denial of the precarious nature of the UK pension system? Are we to be unconcerned by the raising of the retirement age? Should we be unconcerned about trusting our care to younger generations with whom we may share little in the way of cultural and social values??

Blur said it best: Modern life is rubbish.

You just can't emphasise enough just how broken the music industry's distribution model is. The average UK consumer, apparently the most voracious music buyer in the world, still only buys 3 albums a year. But the singles market, once the mainstay of the pop music industry, has all but collapsed. Who in their right mind would pay £4 for a single?

The music industry is one that believes that theirs is a premium product when the reality is that it's a disposable one.

Combine this with the structural changes inherent in the emergence of the internet - and lord knows we don't understand them at all, and combine them with the recognition of existence of the market's 'Long Tail'...

What we have here, if we're honest, is the conflation of technological developments [with the rise of P2P] and a widespread consumer dissatisfaction with the music industry [that was suppressed by the lack of viable alternatives that is a prescription for a cultural and economic train wreck.

Peer-to-peer [P2P] systems aren't going away - after all billionaire Mark Cuban is going to pay for Grokster's defense of P2P systems before the US Supreme Court tomorrow - and all these issues about access to goods and services [including access to unavailable goods, because much of what we want we can't get, and unaffordable goods, where we're not willing to pay the prices the industry sets] are going to be recurring themes in economics [and society, for that matter] for much of the remainder of this decade.

An inevitable collapse of an economy based on consumer spending and low interest rates... sounds increasingly like like that of the UK, doesn't it?? [via Marginal Revolution]

See also:

Polly Toynbee on "the torture of unassisted death".

See also Sex, not money, buys happiness, study says

Shops in Edinburgh have been caught selling foods banned during last month’s Sudan 1 cancer dye scare.

As seems usual in the UK these days, store owners have been 'warned' when they should have been 'prosecuted'.

There are only two ways to crack down on plagiarism: failure and expulsion. As long as you don't make students pay, and believe me students know exactly what they can get away with - this is not 'ignorance', most this is straight out cheating - they will always play the system.

Once you start expelling students [or making them repeat the whole academic year, after paying a hefty re-registration fee] then they'll stop cheating.

The point that these articles repeatedly miss is that refusing to deal with cheating [which is effectively what this institution is doing] is most harmful to the students who actually do their work. And to the institutions themselves - a University which doesn't take plagiarism seriously isn't worthy of the name.

In other news, water still wet, sunshine still causing shadows.

For some reason [call me cynical... or illogical...] I am not convinced that the former necessarily leads to the latter.

Call for big pension rise for "top" civil servants

If senior civil servants think they deserve private-sector size pensions, then they should go and work for the private sector, if they can.

Very simple solution, that.

Dunne apologises, pays undisclosed amount to Condit

I've never understood the reverence certain parts of the US media have for Vanity Fair writer and professional talking head Dominic Dunne - particularly after he made a complete arse of himself over the OJ Simpson trial, claiming to be able to predict what the jury was thinking and then being proved a complete charlatan when OJ was aquitted.

Our friend didn't learn his lesson though [nor did the East-coast media], and resurfaced during the Gary Condit scandal, when Chandra Levy, a former intern of the US congressman, disappeared and Condit - her former boss/lover - was seen by many, including our mutual friend, as the [probable] murderer. [Funnily enough, Condit, in those post-Monica Lewinsky times, didn't seem too proud of having had an affair with an intern...]

Once again Dunne was busy pronouncing from on high, claiming to have insights gleaned from his usual 'authoritative' sources, or so it appeared. But as before, it turned out that Dunne was completely wrong, that Levy was the victim of a serial killer, and our mutual friend got himself sued by the alleged murderer.

Ah yes, says the man who resents having to tell the, ahem, 'barista' that he wants a latte without foam, because as we all know a latte with foam is a cappuccino...

Creationists take their fight to the really big screen

James Cameron, the director of 'Aliens of the Deep', put it best:

It's one thing to aim for the lowest common denominator, but this is setting the bar pretty low.

Speaking of making things worse, it's pretty obvious that the Guardian article is a just a bloody poor re-write of the NY Times story.

as a free iPod

Just like with Bill Clinton, the definition of abstinence apparently depends on a very particular definition of sex...

Common denominator here? Lots of low paid workers. I would bet there's a v. strong correlation between your income, the size of your employer's contribution, and the likelihood of you being in a pension scheme...

Need a Building? Just Add Water

Ah, the joys of living in Scotland...

Produce to the People!

A San Francisco/West Oakland non-profit uses a 'Mobile Market' [aka a grocery store on wheels] to serve people who have little access to cheap nutrituous foodstuffs [i.e. they suffer from 'food insecurity'] due to a lack of inexpensive and/or convenient food stores.

Banana farmers in the Windwards face economic ruin

Ah, the humble banana. My grandfather used to grow bananas, and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the yellow tubers we buy in the UK are just absolute rubbish.

Come to think of it, most of the fruit you get over here is flavourless rubbish.

This is not limited to children: I think that increasingly Britons care deeply about those very close to us and very little about everyone else, with the notable exceptions of celebrities and unless our heart-strings are being tugged by Comic Relief et al..

Labour MSPs battle change in vote system

Under the current system, 73 of Scotland's MSPs are directly elected as traditional constituency MSPs, and another 56 are "elected" [well, appointed] from regional 'top-up' lists in an allocation system that tries to ensure that each political party’s total number of MSPs reflects its share of the vote.

So if you're a thoroughly unpopular political party [like the Tories - Tories say winning one seat would be a success], and unlikely to win seats under a first past the post system, you'll still get some MSPs.

The thing is, voters have nothing to do with the election of this second tranche of "representatives": political parties are given/allocated a number of seats, and they then give them to whomever they want. So while normal politicians have to have at least some measure of popularity, 'list' MSPs suffer no such burden.

[This often means that the leader of a political party can ensure that they sit in parliament, even if local electors have had the temerity to decline to endorse/elect same.]

But if Scotland switches to STV [the Single Transferable Vote], then parties will lose a considerable measure of their political power, and people will be far more able to elect who they want [although the Greens and the Scottish Socialist Party are all against it, probably for good reason...], particularly the more awkward party members who speak their minds and/or otherwise fail to toe the party line.

In a democracy, anything that weakens the power of the party system is a good thing.

Boy who raped teacher given life

Alleged sentence: life.
Actual sentence: a minimum of 21 months.

For the fourth [and, sayeth the punditry, the last] time Kevin Keegan has quit a manager's job.

Given that he was at a club with no money, huge debts and only one star player, who may yet leave this summer anyway, with nothing left to play for and the club unlikely to be relegated, was there any real reason for him to stay?

And in other news, the ethically challenged Bruce Grobbelaar has been fired from a coaching job for the second time this season.

[It's from the bottom letter on the page, btw...]

Its new name, Tshwane, means 'we are the same'.

File that under: Not surprised. [Both the shortage of people who are willing to get shot at and the increasing chatter about some form of draft, which right-wingers can now talk about now that the US election's over...]

Mr Li... called for an end to the EU's arms embargo, but said

Excellent news - no need to drop the embargo then is there?

You can't help but wonder who on earth was dumb enough to put that much money into a football club, particularly a [no offense CC fans...] small lower division club, with no marquee players, a ramshackle stadium and [to put it mildly] a bit of a hooligan problem.

But things may all get turned around once they start to build a new stadium with associated retail developments, but for some strange reason I won't be a bit surprised if the club ends up having to transfer them to a property company... owned by the club chairman, of course...

Could there be a more potent symbol of the problems in the NHS than this? Decades of underfunding, systematic inefficiencies that neither party seems to be able to address...

This is the modern face of health care rationing. And who pays? The kids, and the nurses, who have been asked to take a £5/hour pay cut.

Not exactly a shining example of Labour competence, is it??

The Observer: Charles shelters in Oz as legal wrangle threatens wedding

Proof positive that it is high time we had a serious chat about the role/place of the monarchy in the 21st century. Why should you not be allowed a civil marriage simply because of who your parents are? More to the point, why should you by law be banned from marrying people of a particular religion [i.e. catholics] ??

I think the second most important women in Britain [assuming for the sake of argument that she's not actually number one, which she almost definitely is] is Cherie Blair...

Ah, the hagiography of Diana continues... as does this rather bizarre fantasy about the "institution of marriage" and the role of the monarchy in the UK. The "institution" of marriage historically exists for one single purpose: to attempt to regulate procreation in order to regulate/govern/direct the inheritance of property.

Everything else that allegedly goes with marriage [love, happiness etc.] is little more than a combination of 19th and 20th century fantasies [and with a rather large dollop of 'courtly love' and rose tinted-glasses] grafted ontop of the 'historic' "institution".

As for undermining the monarchy, it is rather strange that we should be so entranced by the semi-random behavior of a single upper-class family... this is of course a generational thing: much of British society regards the Royal Family as a sideshow. The Royal Family as an institution is doomed, and while some of that is because its members do seem to have a rather well-developed self-destructive streak, mostly this is because the UK media regard it as an asset to be ruthlessly mined for the media's own profit... and as we all know, all mines are eventually exhausted.

It's not that food labels aren't accurate, it's the degree to which they're allowed to be wrong...

Wow.

While we do (should) know that AIDS is a serious problem in sub-saharan Africa, none of the numbers I've seen come close to the impact of this simple chart:

via Crooked Timber

If the percentage with no bank account is from the Scottish Household Survey, then that's actually 9% of households with no account, so the real number of adults with no accounts will be somewhat higher...