The Up Side of a Recession ...

... is that snooty yuppies have lately stopped bitching about urban sprawl. As the Washington Post reports:

Once the dominant topic in regional politics, taming residential development has largely been eclipsed by the fiscal woes created by the slowdown. Rising construction costs, plummeting property assessments, soaring foreclosures and high gas prices have local officials debating how to craft budgets with limited resources instead of arguing over new subdivisions.

It's a fiscal scenario affecting fast-growing areas across the country. In Collier County, Fla. (Naples), Sacramento County, Calif. (Sacramento), and Maricopa County, Ariz. (Phoenix), for example, strained income sources -- including impact fees for new construction and sales and property taxes -- means officials are debating a mix of deferring capital improvements, freezing hiring and scaling back services.

"Counties are getting hit right, left and sideways," said Jacqueline Byers, director of research for the National Association of Counties.

And of course this has sprawl fighters delighted:

Slow-growth advocates say the downturn will allow localities to "take a breather" and focus on improving existing communities rather than trying to keep up with the impact of booming growth.

It would have been nice if the Post writer had put two and two together and realized that this recession is what the anti-sprawl movement is basically about: ending economic growth because that's somehow better for us.

Dumb Celebrity Quote

HT to TheAgitator for the link to the article. The quote:

"My favorite thing about Bhutan is they measure their country's wealth, not based on dollar amount but on gross national happines," [actress Cameron] Diaz said.

That's "GNH" for you less 3rd-world-happiness-savvy readers. The full context is here. From elsewhere in the same article:

Bhutan, a country that received particular praise from Diaz for its environmental policies, has one of the highest infant mortality rates (103 infant deaths per 1,000 live births) and lowest life expectancies (54 years) in the world.

True, this doesn't necessarily correlate with happiness. But it's enough to make me (and I assume Diaz, too) hesitate to pack my bags and move for the sake of the clean air.

At the bottom of that article's page, there was a link to this one. The title: "Environmentalist Laments Introduction of Electricity." Yes, it's every bit as bad as it sounds. I can't do it justice by pulling a clip, so check out the whole thing (it's short).

If You Want a 4 Day Work Week, Become a Nurse

I'm sympathetic to working less. I try to do that everyday. Wasting time online reading newspapers, visiting various political blogs, and trolling craigslist for anonymous sex. Everyone does it. But at least we pretend to work for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Don't fuck around with my system of coping with mundane office life by advocating switching to a 4 day work week.

And I love this anti-consumerist nut job who wrote the piece:

Reason #15 The 4 Day Work Week would provide time for a transition into the informal economy

There are a lot of reasons why consumer culture is bad for us. It focuses not on people and their relationships to one another but instead on things, on stuff, on cheap plastic crap from Mal-Wart. It’s worth pointing out that not only is our habit of consuming mass quantities of junk toxifying our lives and our environment with all sorts of chemicals and pollution, it’s also using up a number of nonrenewable resources at an alarming rate. It seems reasonable to assume that we can’t continue on this ride of infinite growth for a whole lot longer...

No, actually we can continue this infinate growth for a whole lot longer.

Sheryl Crow's Reasoning Stinks Worse Than She Does

In order to save the environment while she rides around on her bio-diesel tour bus, Sheryl Crow joked to People (a dead-tree mag last I checked) she'd only shower once each week. It gets worse (or funnier, so long as you're not on the bus with her). [Carbon-neutral emphasis mine.]

I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming. Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating. One of my favorites is in the area of forest conservation which we heavily rely on for oxygen. I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.

She's a Botox ban away from obscurity. Not that I want to rob any law-abiding American of her God-given rights, but I think we are industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one Botox injection per doctor's visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.