Food contamination scares, global warming worries, and rising transportation costs are making people think about where exactly their produce comes from. More Americans are now deciding to get it straight from the farmer — not by going to a farmer’s market, but through a kind of farm “subscription” system known as a CSA.
Of Firearms and Fieros
In the wake of Thursday’s Supreme Court decision on gun rights, it seems more likely that America will never have a policy that can control the unchecked spread of guns and the tens of thousands of deaths they cause every year. But the decision could actually be an opportunity to greatly reduce gun violence — if it’s taken advantage of in the right way.
That’s because the opinion specifically said that guns could still be regulated — it’s just a question how. Banning guns in certain cities wasn’t doing the job anyway, because there are so many places where there are virtually no limits on gun ownership. That is what must change, and it can be done with an idea that rings of common sense: treat guns like cars. Both are loved by their owners, but they can both be deadly.
Here’s how it would work:
Just as everyone must have a license to drive a car, everyone must have a license to own a gun. The licensing exam would test gun safety knowledge to help reduce accidents, which are extremely common. The licensing process would also help officials weed out those who should not be allowed to purchase guns, such as felons and the mentally unstable. Like drivers licenses, gun licenses would have to be renewed every few years, and could be suspended for violations.
Once you have your gun license, you’re all set: just like buying cars, you can go out and get as many guns as you like. But, just as cars must be registered to a person, so must each individual firearm be registered to an individual, complete with a title of ownership. If a person — any person — wants to sell his or her gun to someone else, that’s no problem. Just as with selling your car, you check the license of the buyer, transfer the title of ownership, and go on your merry way. The process would be the same whether the transaction is at a gun shop, a gun show, or your front yard.
Yes, there could be phony licenses — but this would still be a great improvement over what we have now, which is nothing. And if the government can come up with a super-sophisticated ID card in the name of fighting illegal immigration, surely they could do it for this as well.
But what if people don’t want to follow the rules? That’s where tracing and accountability comes in. When people are held accountable, they are far less likely to act recklessly, like when gun dealers sell guns to straw-man buyers.
Every vehicle in America has a Vehicle Identification Number engraved on various parts. The VIN is very difficult to get rid of. In fact, a VIN found on the axel of the truck blown up in the 1993 World Trade Center attack helped lead the FBI to the terrorists responsible.
Guns have serial numbers, but they can be easily filed off (and often are). To remedy this, gun manufacturers would have to implement mircostamping in their guns, which basically lets police match a recovered bullet to the gun that fired it. California will require microstamping beginning in 2010, and congress is considering a bill to make the requirement national. Microstamping is not a perfect technology, but it would be a huge improvement over today’s limited ballistics databases.
The NRA opposes gun registration, saying it will lead to the government taking away people’s guns. But in light of the high court’s decision, that now seems impossible — so what are they still afraid of? After all, every car is registered, and those seem pretty safe from government designs.
Manufacturers will complain about the cost of new safety features, just as automakers did when they were required to make seatbelts standard. Indeed, this system would cost a lot of money — but the human and economic costs of doing nothing are far greater.
U.S. Teens Having Less Fun
“US teens are having less sex, doing fewer drugs and smoking fewer cigarettes than those who grew up in the 1990s, a study released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found. - AFP “
Real Estate History Repeats Itself, Again and Again
I found this old article about gentrification in the New York Times archive. Check out this excerpt, then click the link to see when it’s from and where it’s about. It all just sounds so eerily familiar. (I scrubbed the text a bit to keep the mystery alive):
“When Susan Kelley looks out her window she sees a beginning. ”There are so many young professionals sitting on the stoops, ties undone, just talking,” said the 24-year-old Wall Street real-estate broker as she surveyed her street, where she has lived for two years. ”There’s a feeling of togetherness, of movement. A feeling that things are different every day.”
When Barbara Shaum looks out her window she sees an end. ”I see them walking down the street in identical blue suits with their briefcases and I think, ‘There goes the neighborhood,’ ” said the leathercrafts maker who has lived in a loft behind her studio for 21 years. ”Why are all these people coming here, where they’re so riotously out of place? I don’t want my neighborhood to change.”
How you see the neighborhood seems to depend on where you stand. It is one of contrasts and contradictions. The chrome and glass facade of a newly renovated co-op is a block away from a corner known for prostitution. There is a sushi bar across the street from an abandoned warehouse and a neoned art gallery stands across from a restaurant closed by spiraling rents after 32 years. On the top floor of a weather-worn walkup is a white-walled, slate-floored loft. Some windows frame ”For Sale” signs, others hold posters warning ”Speculators, Hands Off.”
There are perhaps as many reactions to the changes as there are people who call the area home. Some of the disputes are over the physical - such as the mayor’s plan to sell city-owned abandoned buildings to private developers for a mixture of low-income and market-rate housing.
”It’s called ‘cross-subsidy,’ ” said Joseph Shuldiner, deputy commissioner of the city’s Office of Property Management, ”because we are selling some things to generate money for other projects.”
”We’ve named it ‘double-cross subsidy,’ ” said Frances Goldin, vice chairman of the CS Development Committee, which is fighting gentrification. ”I think the Mayor, more than anything, wants to turn the neighborhood over to the developers.”
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D01E7DA1038F931A3575AC0A962948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
Sick wall animation done in what looks like Buenos Aires. Thanks to Marc for sending this along.
If Sex and the City were running for president, women would vote for it
On the entertainment section of the Daily News website, there is a whole section just for the Sex & the City movie — as in “Movies, TV/Radio, Arts, Music, Sex and the City.” For reals:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/index.html
As for other newspapers, here are some highlights from Manohla Dargis’ uber-bitchy New York Times review (spoiler alert! the movie is a cosmo-swilling piece of crap… a crapatini, if you will):
“A little Botox goes a long way in ‘Sex and the City,’ but a little decent writing would have gone even further… I wish Ms. Parker had let that bee in her bonnet go silent, because the movie that she and Mr. King have come up with is the pits, a vulgar, shrill, deeply shallow — and, at 2 hours and 22 turgid minutes, overlong — addendum to a show that had, over the years, evolved and expanded in surprising ways.”
Maybe Manohla is just pissed because her name is so similar to “Manolos,” and once the show made them so popular she never heard the end of it.
