A story in which my own experience in a black neighborhood convinced me that the hope for reconciliation is not dead It was late February, and I was on my way to a men’s retreat in Malibu, California. And I […]
California
On the Urbanist Classic, “Crabgrass Frontier,” by Kenneth T. Jackson
One of the classic books on the history of suburbia is Kenneth Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier. It came out in 1985, two years before my personal favorite, Bourgeois Utopias, by Robert Fishman. This book notice discusses Crabgrass Frontier in view of […]
Coronavirus and the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755
Many of us are trying to figure out what God is trying to do by allowing this Coronavirus plague to circulate around the world so dramatically. As I thought about this, I was reminded of a passage in Luke’s Gospel […]
A Recent History of ‘Skinny Fat’ or How Fit Were People in the Old Days?
Recently in an airport, I saw and bought a rather provocative issue of Scientific American. The cover declared that humans ‘evolved’ to exercise, while the most similar forms of life – chimpanzees and bonobos – function very well as couch potatoes, according to […]
Thoughts About Safe Encampments for the Homeless
Sometimes we are inclined to overlook the economically homeless who actually have, or could have, jobs. We may not be able to afford to get them all under a roof, but I think at the very least they deserve encampments […]
Proposition 47 and the $950 Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card
Proposition 47, which was adopted by Californians in 2014, has been described as a ballot initiative with ‘unintended results galore‘. It was based on a laudable desire to reduce the number of people in California’s overcrowded prisons who don’t necessarily, […]
Unease about Self-Driving Cars
Just recently, Arizona [a more progressive state than California, in the non-political sense] experienced its first pedestrian death at the hands [pardon the expression] of a driverless car. My unease was thereby justified. Computers and machines, for all their […]
Tim Draper’s Latest ‘Three Californias’ Plan is not Acceptable
Tim Draper, the Silicon Valley tycoon who gave us the ‘Six Californias’ plan a couple of years ago, has come up now with a ‘Three Californias’ plan. It is not acceptable in its current form. The main point of dividing […]
Several Suggestions for the Democratic Party of California
The Democratic Party of California has reason for complacency. It is the only state level political party of significance. It unites the majority communities of color with the creative class portion of the still powerful non-Hispanic white minority. The tensions in […]
California’s Trump-like Moment, 22 Years Before Trump: The Adventures of Pete Wilson
The United States on the whole has seen a rather sudden pivot, or so it seemed, of ‘conservatism’ from a coalition of religious or moral conservatives, economic conservatives [the latter were split into ever lower taxes fiscal ‘conservatives’, and deficit […]