7 billion people, but population growth rate is slowing

Yes the world is getting more crowded, but the growth rate is starting to slow down. Hope the rate slows down fast enough so the earth doesn't turn into a sardine can. Feminism and other changes in societies around the world are working.

Halloween is a stay local celebration

Happy Halloween. A holiday that people tend to celebrate locally, rather than Christmas and Thanksgiving where people travel long distances to be with families. Celebrate in your own community.

Some creative signs from Occupy Wall Street protest in Bellingham

* Compiled from some of my earlier blog posts

Good message about rebooting our country's operating system, held at Magnolia and Cornwall October 14.

So many issues interrelate. People often ask what Occupy Wall Street is about. I'm not even sure I'm a hundred percent "sold out" fan of Occupy Wall Street, but there is a whole "raft" of interrelated issues being discussed.

I see it as just another part of our cultural "paradigm shift."

Seeking an economy that's better than what we have now. An economy that's more sustainable, in terms of the planet and our own well being. An economy that's more fair, in terms of distribution of income in society.

The income distribution graph, in USA, has gotten out of balance over the past few decades. Continued below.

Also Occupy Bellingham (the only one I've experienced) is kind of fun. Interesting people. A chance to see friends I haven't run into for a long time.

It's community building that is face to face.

Networking.

The process of culture that's an alternative to other uses of time. Other uses such as shopping, watching TV, fighting traffic and yes, I do spend some of my time at work. I still have a job. I'm not just watching folks on the street playing bongo drums all the time.

Sometimes folks play bongo drums in front of the building my job is in, but that's another story. It's living in Bellingham, our "blue state" (for the most part) city.

Someone on NPR interviewed an employee who works inside a Wall Street firm in New York City. They ask what people's reaction, inside Wall Street, was to the protests on the outside.

Basically, that person said he thought folks were angry at the wrong thing. Rather than Wall Street, they should be angry at the Federal Reserve for printing too much money and devaluing the dollar, he said.

Federal Reserve has been trying to keep the economy going in face of high unemployment. Also to keep the government debt financed so Uncle Sam "appears" solvent, at least.

One can't really blame them for that.

Seems like the blame can just go round and round which is why I see this as a cultural issue.

It's a "paradigm shift" kind of thing.

In that blog post, I suggested other strategies to deal with unemployment, like job sharing and better distribution of the wealth. Maybe that's considered "spreading the misery," but really, we might do better, as a culture, if we used a bit less. If we had a bit less waste.

A somewhat more austere culture could continue to move forward, since new technology is always coming into the picture anyway. We could still progress toward more of a sense of prosperity.

Prosperity can be defined in different ways.

Much of our new technology points us in the direction of "smaller can be better." A big stereo system from the 1960s isn't necessarily better than an Ipod of 2011, just because it's larger. Smaller is sometimes just as good, if not better.

We need paradigm shifts toward an economy that's better than we've got now. Better, but not necessarily larger or more consuming. An economy that offers a fairer deal to more than just it's top people.

Much of it is about our overall sense of well being.

We may not all define our well being in the same way, but there can be some new consensus about what our priorities are.

Some signs from Occupy Wall Street protest in Bellingham, October 14 2011.

Below is compilation from some of my posts about the Occupy Movement. I am consolidating blog entries.

One would think folks with savings accounts would march on banks to protest low interest rates

Protest in front of Bank Of America, Bellingham branch October 14 2011.

One would think savers should be marching on the banks demanding better return on savings; rather than just worrying about a $5 per month debit card fee. Maybe the fee is just a tipping point. People are mad at banks.

When I was a kid, banks often paid 5 1/4 interest on savings. Now, interest rates are rock bottom. Bad for savings, but cheap for borrowing; too cheap.

Of course it isn't really the fault of individual banks, it's the world banking system, and things like the Federal Reserve that set overall interest rates.

Part of the reason for the current financial crisis has been interest rates that are too low. When borrowing becomes too cheap, bubbles, such as the housing bubble, get inflated beyond what the normal economy can sustain. There's a disconnect if jobs don't pay much more then $10 per hour while single family homes sell for well over a quarter million.

Video taste of a People's Mike in Bellingham



Segment a bit over 2 minutes.

I see Occupy Wall Street as just another step in the evolution of society

Occupy Wall Street is not necessarily pivotal in the evolution/revolution of our society. It's just another part of the long term paradigm shift toward what can hopefully be a more equitable economy. Also a more sustainable economy.

Important steps, however.

It's good to see so many folks taking interest in the political process and the well being of the community as a whole. Not just personal profits and shortsighted self interests.

Maybe some key congressional races in 2012 will be another step.

It says People's Bank, but the people are protesting

Another rally of Occupy Bellingham protesters. November 4Th at corner of Magnolia and Cornwall. Rallies have been weekly for the past few weeks.

Walking can be a pleasure in Autumn and other times of the year

Where a trail crosses between Barkley Village and Alabama Hill neighborhoods.

Democracy might come easier in Libya than in Egypt, but hopefully can come to both

Glad the old Libyan dictatorship has been overthrown. Libya has less population than Egypt so it may be easier to get the economy going again. Less people to feed plus there is a fairly easy source of revenue once the oil flows again. Hopefully this can also help Egypt since there have been a lot of Egyptian workers in the Libyan oil industry that sent money home to Egypt. Oil revenue can help in the near future, at least.

In the long run, it would be nice if the world were less dependent on the oil industry, but that's "down the road," so to speak. The road needs to turn into something more like a transit line and bike path.

Oil industry can be a corrupting force since so many oil exporting countries have been dictatorial societies, but this doesn't always have to be the case. Canada is a shining example of an open and multicultural society which exports a lot of oil. In fact Canada is the biggest oil exporting nation to the USA.

I wish both Libya and Egypt good fortune as they hopefully progress toward more democratic societies.

The world is changing.

New house construction

Rare to see new house construction, but not that rare. With all the news about housing in the toilet, there's always been quite a trickle still around Bellingham. This one by Lake Samish. I'm surprised there's still any build able lakefront lots there.

Or, maybe they tore a house down to build this newer one?

There's construction here and there. Seems like usually folks building their retirement home. Probably not enough to employ all the idled contractors, realtors and other job seekers around.

That's the problem. Anemic recovery and if the recovery does pick up steam, here is the question. Is there enough land, not to mention ideal "lakefront" land, to allow for a robust recovery without people grumbling again about turning the lake into a toilet?

And now think about gas prices. When the economy picks up steam, they go up due to limited supply and demand.

That's why we need some major paradigm shifts. We need new ways to grow and improve the economy in sustainable ways.

People often say that they thought New York City couldn't grow any larger than it was in the late 1800s because there was an "absolute limit" to urban growth, due to the horse manure it generated.

We'll, we made it past that, but we had to be open to change.

Missed the boat that is sinking

At times I felt like I missed the boat since I don't make enough money at my fairly pleasant job to be a homeowner in this market. Not enough money for the monthly mortgage payments to be figured as 1/3 of my income, given responsible banking practices at least.

Too bad, but now, I feel like I missed the boat that is sinking. That's not so bad. Who wants to be on the boat that's sinking?

Crosswalk etiquette and inertia

When the crosswalk sign starts flashing don't walk, I hear on the radio that one is supposed to not start walking across the street. However the reality is different. Right after the light turns green and the walk sign says walk, there's often a cue of cars that were stopped at the red light. This cue can now go forward and there's a few cars in the cue that are making the free right turn across the crosswalk. Since they don't always stop when making that turn (even though they should) the crosswalk can be full of cars rounding the corner. There's often more traffic across the crosswalk when the walk sign says walk than there is after the walk sign starts flashing don't walk. When the walk sign is flashing don't walk and the cue of cars has passed, the intersection is often empty. That's when I often run across the street.

Bellingham is now installing some flashing crosswalks in areas where there are busy walks with no traffic light. Just push the button and the crosswalk starts flashing. At these crosswalks, I try to be polite and see what's happening with the traffic before I press the button. If cars are just about at the walk, I try to wait till they go past so they don't have to slam on the breaks. Remember, flashing crosswalks don't have a "green, yellow, red" traffic signal. I assume cars are expected to stop as soon as the walk starts flashing. There's no "yellow about to turn red" warning, like there is at intersections with regular stoplights. Keeping this in mind, I try and let the cars that are almost at the walk go on by before I press the button. Then I push the button so cars that are farther back (which are often speeding anyways) have a warning and start to slow down. By the time those cars get to the walk, I've often just finished crossing. Sometimes I jog across the street so as not to hold up traffic for very long at least.

One time I accidentally pushed the flashing crosswalk button right as a large truck was about to cross the walk. The truck stopped and I noticed smoke from the tires. Trucks have a lot of inertia so they are often harder to stop on short notice and also it takes more fuel to get going again.

I didn't see if the driver was upset or not, but later I had a discussion on Facebook with a friend of mine who is a former truck driver. I ask him if the driver would have been upset and his response was, good drivers realize "it comes with the territory." We do the best we can and there usually isn't much point in snarling about things. If more people took that attitude, the world would flow a lot easier.

Fancy Bellingham crosswalks that didn't work out well in the long run.

Occupy Wall Street is in Bellingham also

Even though there isn't a street named Wall Street in Bellingham, Occupy Wall Street is here.

There's a rally planned for corner of Magnolia and Cornwall, Old Federal Building corner, Friday October 7 at 4 to 7 pm.

Someone handed me a flyer that says "all peaceful people and families welcome."

Old Federal Building has been the site of Friday peace vigils for years, since the late 1960s and more recently the location of Food Not Bombs, a free community food table.

Looks like there's going to be quite a turnout in Bellingham as well as other cities all across the nation as people are getting more frustrated with things like long term unemployment, growing disparity between super wealthy and the rest of society, decline of the middle class, cost of the state of war that never seems to end and looming threats of more budget cuts, lack of safety net and other things that folks can add to this list.

On Facebook, I saw an insightful cartoon showing Wall Street executives deciding to "occupy Main Street." On Main Street they found closed businesses, foreclosed houses and high unemployment so they said, "Well, now we know why they have all that free time."

The cartoon brilliantly cuts both ways addressing criticism that "protesters have a lot of time since they don't have to go to work." When unemployment goes up, people are likely to have more time for things like protests and civil disobedience. Executives, be advised.

Above: In front of Bank Of America on Thursday at Holly and Cornwall.
Below: At Holly and State.


I cut it out of picture accidentally, but it's www.costofwar.com.

Below from a slightly later post.


Newly awakened.