*We* are The Economy

I had a great discussion with a friend about David Orr’s essay, “Loving Children: a Design Problem“. She concluded that the breakdown of education is one of the many results of an unfettered capitalistic economic system. It sounded like the end of our conversation, because, you know, The Economy: what can I do about that? …

The War of Consumption and What to Say to Friends about “the Good Life”

Yesterday one of the headlines in Google was “Economy Contracts as Consumers Retreat“. There is a nice rhythm to that phrase, don’t you think? And, also like a good line of poetry, it says a lot in the most subtle of ways. The bellicosity of this phrase reveals what we all really know about consumption …

Gotta Get, no MAKE Us One of Those!

Have you seen the small CNN documentary video about the Dervaes Urban Homesteaders (of Path to Freedom fame)? If you’ve followed the Urban Homesteaders, it won’t show you much that is new, except for that toilet/sin (approx. 2/3 into the video)! The lid of the toilet water tank has been converted into a small sink. …

Big Screen TV and Beads

We were on the phone with my parents-in-law and I or DH made a passing reference to watching movies on a big screen tv when at our friends’ place in New York. Amie had been eating her O’s peacefully (more or less), but when she heard that, she piped up: “We’re gonna need a big …

“Dimming the Sun”

Complacency  I probably shouldn’t have watched “Dimming the Sun” on NOVA/PBS yesterday. Did you see it?  I stumbled upon the last half hour of the program by accident and by the time it was over, all the old feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and inadequacy made their comeback. And of course, whenever they do that, they are worse …

Making Children Cry

I don’t know what to think of these (scroll down on the page to the 3 YouTube videos).  They are trailers for a program on Belgian television called “Blocks,” a popular trivia and tretris combination game for adults. The message at the end translates to: “Life without blocks is not worth living”. The channel they were made …

Young Children and Television

(Thanks to a lead from Aaron at Powering Down) 90% of 2-year-olds watch 1.5 hours of television daily Frederick Zimmerman and colleagues Christakis and Meltzoff did a telephone survey of 1009 parents (in Minnesota and Washington) of children aged 2 to 24 months. And they found some disturbing facts: By 3 months of age, about 40% …