DAVIS, Calif. — They are unlikely revolutionaries. Bearing walkers and canes, a veritable Merck Manual of ailments among them, the 12 old friends average age 80 looked as though they should have been sitting down to a game of Scrabble, not pioneering a new kind of commune. Opting for old age on their own terms, they were starting a new chapter in their lives as residents of Glacier Circle, the country’s first self-planned housing development for the elderly a community they had conceived and designed themselves, right down to its purple gutters. Over the past five years, the residents of Glacier Circle have found and bought land together, hired an architect together, ironed out insurance together, lobbied for a zoning change together and existentially probed togetherness together. “Here you get to pick your family instead of being born into it,” said Peggy Northup-Dawson, 79, a retired family therapist and mother of six who is legally blind. “We recognized that when you’re physically closer to each other, you pay more attention, look in on each other. The idea was to share care.” The four couples, two widows and two who are now living […]
Essential services could collapse in the Palestinian territories if the international community carries out its threat to stop financial help once the militant Islamic group Hamas forms a new government, a Palestinian minister has told the BBC. Eighty per cent of the hospitals and clinics in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are state-run. But the government will probably not be able to pay the salaries of doctors, nurses and other civil servants without receiving tens of millions of dollars in budget support every month. Last year the Palestinians received more than $1bn in assistance from the international community, of which more than a third went directly to the government. And this year the government will be even more dependent on foreign aid because the Israelis have announced they are going to stop handing over tax and customs revenue collected on behalf of the Palestinians, worth at least $50m a month. “The message we’re telling [the international community] is to look at the Somali scenario,” said Deputy Finance Minister Jihad Alwazir. “When the Somali government failed in the 1990s it took the international community close to 15 or 16 years to try to stabilise […]
President Bush’s popularity ratings have plummeted, but why, asks Justin Webb, is it that the opposition, the Democrats, are not surfing the opinion polls, capitalising on the Republicans’ misfortunes and preparing to take over Congress when the election comes in the autumn? In any list of America’s greatest contributions to world culture – the kazoo, the electric guitar, drive-in fast food etc – space should be found, in my view, for an invention deeply ingrained in the life of this nation. An invention on show to almost all Americans, every day. That invention is the car bumper sticker. And, in case you think you have seen them elsewhere in the world, let me just tell you that you have not. At least not on the scale, and not of the sophistication of the American model. Bumper stickers are a treasure trove of American free speech, expressing opinions of every stripe, on every subject. Political message Some are just plain weird. A perfectly normal looking Chrysler in front of me the other day had “cops smell funny” emblazoned on the boot. The stickers which have caught my attention and which I […]
Large-scale capture of wind and solar energy requires the management of significant areas of land, and – if the market for renewable energy continues to grow at the current rate – farmers will occupy a strategic position within the energy market within two decades. According to CarbonFree, a Cambridge UK based research company that has recently completed a study of the farmed renewable energy market, while incumbent energy producers are starting to look beyond oil and petroleum, farmers need to look beyond ethanol and start to build comprehensive energy supply businesses. According to Peter Kruger, Analyst with CarbonFree, farmed renewable energy conforms to an energy generation model that NextGen energy producers find attractive. For several decades the energy market has been dominated by a handful of companies and closed to new entrants. Advocates of a distributed energy generation model, the so called ‘Internet of Energy’, are particularly interested in farmed renewable energy – in the main because this source of power is readily available and is a good fit with their plans for a reformed energy market. Much, however, will depend on the agricultural sector’s ability to organise itself and provide a comprehensive range of energy products and […]
WASHINGTON President Bush declared Friday that the Iraqi people faced a “moment of choosing” as his administration weighed whether its policies and the U.S. military are sufficient to avert a weak ally’s descent into civil war. In a somber speech to military veterans, Bush said the coming days would be “difficult and exhausting” because of the sectarian fury unleashed by the bombing of a Shiite shrine. But he insisted that the situation holds reason for optimism because Iraqis “want their freedom.” Although Iraq appeared to be calmer Friday under a strict curfew, administration officials and outside analysts said the upheaval had demonstrated the dearth of options and limits on American power there. The violence made it clear that the Americans’ ultimate tool U.S. military forces would be of little value in the event of all-out civil war because of the difficulty of using Americans to separate Shiites and Sunnis in a battle. “When it’s a fight of Iraqi Shia on Sunnis, our guys can’t get in the middle,” said one senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment. “It would all be up to the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
