What We Don't Know about Sprawl

I have been reading a lot in the rhetoric of the debate over "urban sprawl" and "smart growth", with a particular angle. I am interested in the question of whether and to what extent people can be said to choose sprawl.

If the rhetoric (pro and con) is any guide, then the question comes down to this: Is sprawl the true and highest expression of human freedom, as individuals pursue their own preferences in a free market, or are people coerced into building and living in the sprawlscape by political and economic forces beyond their control?

As far as I can tell, this way of framing the debate is all but worthless. That's not what I wanted to write about, though.

The Obscure and the Profound

An old idea came back to me last night, shaken loose while I was watching Lost on TV.

I’ve sometimes noticed that people mistake the obscure for the profound: it must be deep, they seem to say, because I can’t really understand it.

No, sorry. Sometimes things are obscure simply because they are obscure, even if they are as shallow as a mud puddle or as thin as a paper bag.

In the case of Lost, of course, the obscurity is deliberate, and its creators are counting on the conflation of obscurity and profundity to keep stringing viewers along and raking in the ad revenue.

I keep watching, even though it has come to feel like a chore, in part just to see what kind of hooey they try to foist on us next.

(For another example of the obscure-profound conflation, consider any song by the Indigo Girls.)

Newton's Third Law of Politics

I am currently reading Sprawl: A Compact History by Robert Bruegmann, and with each page I grow more annoyed. The very premise of the book is a logical fallacy for which there may not yet be a name. I would like to suggest one, but I can't decide between "The Fox News Fallacy" and "The Air America Fallacy."

Another Tragedy, Another Miracle

Yesterday a small plane, apparently piloted by New York Yankee's pitcher Cory Lidle, crashed into the 30th floor of an apartment building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and fell, burning, to the pavement.

In the course of recounting the story this morning on NPR, a reporter hit both of my pet peeves about the use of language. While people first feared that the crash was a terrorist attack, the reporter intoned, it quickly turned into a story of "personal tragedy." Meanwhile, the two people who were in the apartment that was struck "miraculously" escaped unharmed.

Noodles

I came across a nice bit of satire, aimed at the argument for Intelligent. Its form is basically that of a reductio ad absurdum.

Advocates for Intelligent Design maintain that their account of the origins of life on Earth should be taught in the science classroom, in part because it is supposed to fill in "holes" in the theory of evolution, in part because ID is itself supposed to be a scientific theory backed by evidence . . . of some sort.

Well, if they are correct, then the science classroom should be open to any account of the origins of life on Earth that has as much or more actual scientific validity as ID, including the theory that life on Earth began when the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) strecthed out His Noodly Appendage . . .

Goodbye, Err America

I found out yesterday that Air America Radio will be losing its Atlanta outlet soon. Someone recently bought the station - 1690AM - and will be converting it to some sort of music format, keeping only the Al Franken show for the afternoon drive time.

I'm only a little bit conflicted about this. As I've written before (here), listening to Air America Radio is at best a mild guilty pleasure. Most of the time, it's just annoying.

66(Oh?)6

Is he here yet? Is he here yet?

No?

Didn't think so.

Oh, well. Better luck in 2106 . . . or maybe in 2999.

A Convenient Fabrication?

I heard about this yesterday on the NPR show "Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!", and looked it up online today. Here is the full story, as it appears on the Washington Post website, with the source given as Philly.com:

Greenpeace Just Kidding About Armageddon
Friday, June 2, 2006; Page A17
The environmental activist group Greenpeace wanted to be prepared to counter President Bush's visit last week to Pennsylvania to promote his nuclear energy policy.

Civic Energies

Within a few hours of my last posting I started to wonder what the heck I was thinking of. I was half tempted to delete the entry altogether.

Now that Chris has commented on it though, I suppose I ought to think it through a bit. What do I mean by "civic energies"?

Worn Out?

These days, a passage from Rousseau's Social Contract keeps coming to mind.

Although a people can make itself free while it is still uncivilized, it cannot do so when its civil energies are worn out. Disturbances may then destroy a civil society without a revolution being able to restore it, so that as soon as the chains are broken, the state falls apart and exists no longer; then what is needed is a master, not a liberator. Free peoples, remember this maxim: liberty can be gained, but never regained.