Today’s lunchtime news chum builds a chain: each news chum item has a connecting theme to the next one. This, of course, is just a clever diversion to move from one link to the next, but just go with it…
- Notable Deaths. Let’s start with two notable deaths. The first is folk legend Bert Jansch, who was part of Pentangle and did a very famous album with John Renbourn. Perhaps even more notable is the death of A. C. Nielsen Jr., who built the Neisen Rating Service.
- I’m Watching You. Neilsen was famous for tracking people and identifying who watches what. Privacy is a big concern for those of us who use digital devices, and the LA Times has a nice article on how we are under constant digital surveillance. GPS-aware devices track where we are; our Wi-Fi devices record the hot-spots we’ve seen; Facebook constantly tracks us; and even our grocery and rewards cards track us… and this is all relayed to for-profit companies where our information is the product that they sell. This makes me think of a recent Planet Money on how money got weird: where we stopped actually making things to make money, and began manipulating money and risk to make money. We’re doing it again, folks.. we no longer provide services to make money on the services, but to make money on the information we gather about who uses the services and where, and selling that information.
- Short Term Rentals. GM and On-Star are one of the companies using this collected information. Specifically, these companies looked at the fact that cars sit idle most of the day, and that they could remotely start and stop them… and said: Why don’t we put those idle hours to use and allow people to rent their cars when they are using them? So that’s what they are doing: GM, OnStar, and a San Francisco-based company are permitting short term rentals of private automobiles.
- The Bully Pulpit. Of course, all the information is being collected, and cars are being rented, and money is being manipulated, because of greed. CNN has an article about how this is the last taboo: Preachers are reluctant to preach about the dangers of unmitigated greed, because it might cause their congregants to give less. This makes me think about a line from the musical Tenderloin, where the preacher character bemoans the fact that his congregants don’t want him to preach on the dangers of sin and depravity because it upsets them too much; they would rather have a travelogue on the Holy Land. Me? I believe in what Rabbi Sherwood always said — that the job of clergy is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.
- Green Building Materials. Now preachers preach in a house of God, and houses are made of wood. Guess what? According to the US Forest Service, wood is the greenest building material. According to the report, wood in building products yielded fewer greenhouse gases than other common building materials, such as concrete and steel. According to the report, which analyzed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific studies, 2.1 tons of greenhouse gases were saved for each ton of carbon in wood products versus non-wood materials. According to the Ag Secretary, the use of wood provides substantial environmental benefits, provides incentives for private landowners to maintain forest land, and provides a critical source of jobs in rural America. No report from the three little pigs regarding their opinion of straw as a building material.
- Little Boxes. Talking about houses brings us to Irvine, where there is breaking news that homes in some color other than beige have been approved. Mind you, this is a city where proposed mottos have included “Irvine: We Have 62 Different Words for Beige”, “Where Bland is in Demand”, “Sixteen Zip Codes, Six Floor Plans”, and “Sorry, I Thought This Was My House”. A newly approved community, FivePoint, is embracing Craftsman, Folk Victorian, Traditional Monterey, American Classic and Cottage styles in its residences, the first phase of which should hit the market in 2013. The community will test the relevance of visual appearances with its diverse residential styles, which will variously employ stone veneers, asphalt shingles, wood shutters, lap siding, decorative columns, brick facades, wraparound porches and, notably, colors that don’t resemble sand. Only in Irvine.
- Ghost Houses. Of course, the unanswered question about the new houses is whether anyone can afford them. Many can’t, and many have lost their houses to foreclosure. But that’s not the end of the story. The WSJ has a story about how even though the house may be gone, the debt might linger on. In particular, if the lender has a short sale, they can still come back to the original owner to make up what they bank lost. And you wonder why people are upset with bankers.
- License to Steal. No, I’m not talking about the bankers. Houses have garages, and in garages we keep our collections. Our last story concerns a resident of Afton, MO, who is a license plate collector. He has more than 1,300 plates to his name. Most of his plates are from the United States and a few from foreign countries. In neat rows they line his garage walls, his family room and closets in the basement. He has complete sets from Missouri and Indiana, starting from 1911. He has all but the first 1910 Illinois plate. When not collecting, he volunteers as a trolley driver at the St. Louis County Museum of Transportation. His only rule? No vanity plates.
