Scrolling around...October 30, 2012

What Google Street View Reveals About Why Women Don't Want to Stay Home
Yesterday I looked up my house on Google Street View. I was curious to see how many stray tricycles and scooters would be strewn across our front porch in the image, and I had a lot of work to do and therefore wanted to procrastinate.

Not particularly eager to get back to my to-do list, I ended up clicking around to take a tour of my entire neighborhood. I virtually meandered in and out of familiar streets, turning around in cul de sacs, stopping to admire some of the beautifully manicured yards of my neighbors. I kept admonishing myself that this was a waste of time and I needed to go do something else, but something kept pulling me back -- and it wasn't just my desire to procrastinate. Seeing my neighborhood through my computer screen, in this odd format in which it was entirely the same yet entirely different than what I'm used to seeing in real life, gave me a new perspective on the place where I live. There was something about it, something disconcerting that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then, as I turned down yet another long street and looked at the rows of houses that stretched before me, it clicked:

Where are all the people?...

Egypt: Choice of new Coptic pope is between two bishops and a monk
Two bishops and a monk have been voted into the final round of elections for the choice of the Coptic Church’s new pope, due next Sunday in St. Mark’s Cathedral, in Cairo’s Abbasiya neighbourhood. This is the result of the election held yesterday in the same Cathedral and announced yesterday evening...

Northeast Awakes to Huge Damage in Storm’s Path; Millions Without Power
...The storm was the most destructive in the 108-year history of New York’s subway system, said Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, in an early morning statement.

“We are assessing the extent of the damage and beginning the process of recovery,” he said, but did not provide a timetable for restoring transit service to a paralyzed city.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey called the damage to his state “incalculable” and said the Jersey Shore had been “devastated.” As he spoke on a series of morning talk shows on Tuesday, rescue teams were rushing to the aid of those stranded in Atlantic City and in areas of Bergen County where he said tidal waters had overwhelmed a protective natural berm... image

Sandy leaves death, damp and darkness in wake
As superstorm Sandy marched slowly inland, millions along the East Coast awoke Tuesday without power or mass transit, with huge swaths of the nation's largest city unusually vacant and dark.

New York was among the hardest hit, with its financial heart in Lower Manhattan shuttered for a second day and seawater cascading into the still-gaping construction pit at the World Trade Center. President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in the city and Long Island...

Huge fire in Sandy's wake destroys dozens of NYC homes
A huge fire that erupted as Sandy ripped through New York City with near-hurricane force winds on Monday night destroyed dozens of homes in one of the city's most remote neighborhoods, officials said...

Moscow police 'discover brothel on monastery premises'
Moscow police have discovered a brothel on the premises of a monastery whose abbot is thought to be President Vladimir Putin's spiritual adviser...

Giving 13-year-olds contraceptive implants is a policy straight out of Brave New World
Girls from the age of 13 have been provided with contraception in schools, particularly the long-lasting type of contraception given by injection, without their parents' knowledge. It reminds me of Aldous Huxley’s dystopia Brave New World, in which all females are fitted with the “Malthusian belt”, an infallible method of contraception which allowed them to be permanently sexually available but without fear of pregnancy. A licence for licentiousness, so to speak.

To say that this policy sends out “contradictory signals” regarding society’s attitudes and policies towards the sexual behaviour of young people is putting it mildly...

NPR: Recognizing The Right Of Plants To Evolve
...Writing in The New York Times recently, Michael Marder, author of the forthcoming Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life, calls for "plant liberation." Plant stress, Marder points out, does not reach the same intensity, nor does it express itself in the same ways, as animal suffering. This fact, he adds, should be reflected in our practical ethics.

But, he continues, "the commendable desire to ameliorate the condition of animals, currently treated as though they were meat-generating machines, does not justify strategic argumentation in favor of the indiscriminate consumption of plants. The same logic ultimately submits to total instrumentalization the bodies of plants, animals and humans by setting them over and against an abstract and rational mind."

Therefore, he concludes, "the struggles for the emancipation of all instrumentalized living beings should be fought on a common front."... (comments are hysterical!-PD)