Crossed a LINE?

Dude, how is this not some sort of fraud?

"In January, the committee of New York lawyers that reviews applications for admission to the bar interviewed Mr. Bowman, studied his history and the debt he had amassed, and called his persistence remarkable. It recommended his approval.

But a group of five state appellate judges decided this spring that his student loans were too big and his efforts to repay them too meager for him to be a lawyer.

“Applicant has not made any substantial payments on the loans,” the judges wrote in a terse decision and an unusual rejection of the committee’s recommendation. “Applicant has not presently established the character and general fitness requisite for an attorney and counselor-at-law.”

Mr. Bowman, 47, appears to have crossed some unspoken line with his $400,000 in student debt and penalties, accumulated over many years."

I accumulated $50,000 getting a PhD. That included no undergraduate debt. That debt will cost me $130,000 by the time I pay it off in 2032 when I turn 65. This is relatively cheap when you consider the lifetime boost to my earnings, and the fact that it allows me entree into a set of jobs where a PhD is a bright line.

I cannot IMAGINE what 400K would be like to pay off. I pay (currently) $266 a month toward my government loans. It just went up $14.00 because it is staggered like that over my lifetime, following an assumed upward trajectory in earning power which has so far been borne out (in the main, I have my ups and downs like everyone).

$400,000 is eight times what I took out (and I used it to pay for tuition, mostly, which then 'reimbursed' me through teaching assistantships, which I then lived off of). He's paying nearly $2500 a month in student loans. That is our mortgage!

I think they cannot prove intent, but what the bar is saying is, in effect, that's fraud, yo. He never could have had any intention of paying that back OR he's delusional. Either way, not fit to practice.

Best of Breed

I've been meaning to do this for awhile - lift some of the best ideas I excerpted for Anthrofans, and post them here, perhaps with followups. These are all things I think worth emulating in our lives, homes, communities, etc:

GARDENING

Low water organic gardening with huge results

PAT MARFISI carries bales of alfalfa hay and straw into the center aisle of his Hollywood Hills vegetable garden and begins tearing off pieces of the stuff. He doesn't have any animals to feed, just his "no-dig" landscape: raised beds using lasagna-like layers of fodder, bone and blood meal and compost -- and remarkably little water... Since he began gardening in this fashion, he says, he has been "inundated" with food. With the exception of some recent losses to raccoons drawn to the soil's abundant grubs and earthworms, Marfisi's garden is thriving with beets, collard greens, chard, celery, tomatoes, chives, peppers, basil, chives, lettuces and leeks. He estimates he grows enough food to feed three people daily. When asked how much he waters, Marfisi shoves his hand deep beside some Swiss chard and pulls out moist, decomposed soil laced with remnants of straw. "I haven't watered in 10 days," he says. "This is what I want people to know: You can have beauty and abundance without a lot of water."

http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-nodig12-2008jun12,0,55177.story

Guerrilla Gardeners

"Ava 949, from San Diego, told me how she had "seed-bombed" a 10-mile (16km) stretch of Imperial Avenue by lobbing fertile projectiles from her car window. Lucy 579, a London artist and self-proclaimed "fairy spreading magic dust", targets waste ground near Hither Green railway station, scattering wildflower seeds with abandon. She describes her station now as "Dog Daisy Heaven", a place where she can pick a flower for her hair in the morning before the commuter crush. Thomas 347, from Davenport in Delaware County, has lined the road that passes through his town with daylilies. In Crewkerne, Somerset, Ben 2676 grew maize in a shabby planter right outside the entrance of his local supermarket, with the help of his young daughters Lily 2677 and Noor 2678"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/25/activists.conservation

Step in the right direction

http://www.safelawns.org/

Urban orchards

"Small-scale home orchards were common before World War II, according to Karen Tillou, who manages the demonstration orchard of the Home Orchard Society, a group in Portland, Ore., that promotes growing fruit at home. “If you drive around the old, historically ethnic areas of Portland, especially Italian neighborhoods, there are old plum, fig and quince trees on every block,” Ms. Tillou said. “But then there was a postwar generation gap where people said, oh, my, we can buy fruit from supermarkets.” Ms. Tillou said that when she joined the society’s staff five years ago, she mainly fielded questions from retirees or “people with large rural lots who had the time and money to putter as a hobby.” But she is now beginning to hear from young urbanites turning away from frozen and shipped produce. “I see it most in my peer group — early 30s, young couples with their first home and kids, in tune with the concept of eating more locally,” she said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/garden/13orchyarding.html

Feed the bugs

Native species need each other to thrive and survive: "It’s hard work, but the Tallamys love being outside. And they share a vision, an imperative, really, that Mr. Tallamy lays out in a book, “Bringing Nature Home” (Timber Press, $27.95), published in November. They are struggling to plant the native species that are needed for insects and animals to flourish. As exotic ornamentals leap the garden fence and out-compete the native plants, many creatures are starving to death because they did not evolve with the exotics and simply can’t eat them."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/garden/06garden.html

Natural A/C for your backyard

"Cool it, naturally: The oldest remedy, Mother Nature herself, can still get the heat-beating job done. Landscaping can shave 9 degrees off outside temps, claims the California Energy Commission. Trees and broad bushes are your best bet, but make sure not to block the path of prevailing winds, advises Santa Monica landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power. She recommends sycamores, big-leaf maple, California alder and coast live oak. She also suggests installing a fountain or water trough wherever you get a breeze. "As the wind comes across, it drops the temperature," she says. For quick-growing shade trees, the Armstrong Garden Center's Bent Petersen recommends fruitless mulberry and camphor trees ("a nice, rounded, bushy tree"). Though not as fast-growing, "carrotwood would be great for cooling off the backyard," he adds. "They have a spreading growth pattern and are very drought-tolerant." He suggests placing the trees on the south and west side of your property so shade covers the yard around 3 p.m., the hottest time of the day."

It's not that complicated

I have written the Los Angeles Times querying their policy of encouraging reader comments on some stories and not on others. Obviously, the blogs they run look for participation, but so do some features and op-eds. Why they haven't taken a page from the much smaller Press Enterprise and simply made all reportage open to commentary is beyond me. Regardless of the quality of reader response, it never fails to engage, even if it just enrages.

This is probably the sharpest distinction I can see in the mentalities of 'old' vs 'new' media. Old media want to control, shape, and dominate 'their' story, even unto the Letters to the Editor. New media are dialogic, mining the culture to extend the interest in a story. I have regularly seen commentary that is better written, funnier, or more incisive than the original piece, and New Media gets to use that talent for free!

Back from Mexico

Clicking on the article above takes you to a story illuminating what I found perhaps most fascinating about being in Mexico - the State as rapacious capitalist. Banamex, Pemex, TelCel, nearly every major infrastructural pillar to society is state-owned (TelCel was privatized, but remains as monopololistic as ever.)

The lack of competition is a major barrier to economic and social development, as people seem to be finally waking up to. Gee, what's a small businessman, farmer, what have you to do when their competition is the very entity they also need to seek support from? I am woefully underinformed as to the specifics of the Mexican economy, but it does not take an expert to see that you really shouldn't have your people trundling down major toll highways with loads of kerosene, water, and firewood perched upon makeshift pedicabs.

Srsly?

Remember how I wrote the other day ("Baconian Science") that businesses often fail to fully fund the research they need? I was writing in support of the idea that the collective (government) subsidizes certain skill sets that the private sector cannot or will not bear. Oops. Here is the government costing us ungodly amounts of money, since they won't invest in basic research to determine outcomes of drug treatment centers than have become cash cows - leeching off the public teat:

"L.A. County, like most other jurisdictions, doesn't keep track of what happens in cases like Yebio's. It is considered too expensive, treatment experts said. Public funding of the treatment industry has largely been a product of tradition: Treatment centers with contracts tend to get more contracts, interviews and records show.Each typically runs for two or three years and, as long as money is available, renewal is almost a given...The county routinely conducts audits to monitor how money is being spent. But the incomes of Tarzana executives have not been questioned."

Incomes in the millions. For a quote-unquote non-profit.

High times on the High Line

I have been following news about this project for quite some time. What a wonderful conclusion to this story!

"A subtle play between contemporary and historical design, industrial decay and natural beauty sets the tone. The surface of the deck, for example, is made of concrete planks meant to echo the linearity of the old tracks. The path slips left and right as it advances, so that at some points you are right up against the edge of the railing and at others you are enveloped in the gardens. And those gardens have a wild, ragged look that echoes the character of the old abandoned track bed when it was covered with weeds, just a few years ago. Wildflowers and prairie grasses mix with Amelanchier bushes, their branches speckled with red berries. Mr. Corner designed planters to hold the taller trees, and the Gansevoort entry is marked by a cluster of birches. On Saturday the gardens were swarming with bees, butterflies and birds. I half expected to see Bambi."

Gleaning

NY Times does an article on the nascent movement of harvesting neighborhood fruit, and using, selling, or swapping it. This is brilliant, it is exactly the sort of thing I have tried to encourage in my students. I have a neighbor who is explicitly doing this for us and the food banks, and we've talked about what she can take from my yard (not about hoarding, more about, what is safe to eat). I currently have:

Eating now:

strawberries
corn
lettuce
zucchini
carrots
green beans
peppers
sunflower seeds
Nasturtium leaves and flowers
rosemary
mint(s)
basil
cilantro

Eating soon:

onions
plums
tomatoes
tangerines
meyer lemons
chamomile

Eating ???

Eggplant
cucumbers
watermelon
apples

In addition to all of this, is the stuff I did not plant, or maybe don't even want, but that is edible. Dandelion leaves, natal plums, and elderberry (cooked! otherwise poisonous). Rose petals, lavender.

Just in coming up with this one list, about my own yard I kept adding things, stuff I have genuinely eaten out of my yard. So if I can forget that much stuff while consciously assembling a list, how much bounty might be around your community?