Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Thoughts on the news

I wanted to share a story I read today in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08anasazi.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5087&em&en=07f38adb0ae2d1a4&ex=1207886400

It's about a group of cliff dwelling Indians out west who suddenly left their homes in the late 1200s and never returned. Nobody knows why. For years, the speculation was a drought or colder weather or the combination of the two driving them away. Now, the experts are looking deeper and theorizing it might have been ... religion. Interesting on more than one level, but to me, another sign that the scientific community is beginning to take faith more seriously.

Yesterday, the NYTimes had a story about inflation in Asia driving up the cost of cheap imports. The angle of the story was that this was a bad thing for Americans ... but is it? Wouldn't it be wonderfully green if all that stuff from China and Viet Nam became so expensive that we had to buy mindfully and take care of our possessions? Wouldn't it be great not to be choking on so much stuff? And not to get too deliriously carried away with wild dreams, but what if the combination of rising fuel prices, a falling dollar and inflation in Asia meant it made sense to reopen our factories in this country ... and employ Americans at good wages ... and ship goods only a few miles ... Or maybe if not factories, home-based cottage industries owned by ordinary people ... wealth dispersed among all of us ...

Am I crazy?

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