Reuters:

Americans leery of bicycles despite gas price jump. “This is the U.S. and people will kill you out there riding your bike ... [snip] ... I would not take my life in my hands and ride a bike.” Sad, but this quote is quite representative of exactly why many won’t consider bicycling.  Automobile drivers don’t consider bikes ‘vehicles’ and legitimate users of the roadways.  When a bicyclist is picked off by an automobile, the legal ramifications are frankly astonishing.  The driver can be completely at fault, taking a legal walk while the bicyclist resides in pieces in a tomb.  Start at the Miller case, and read the next page or so.  Bicyclists are widely considered to be ‘asking for it’, and it is an attitude that needs to be harshly reversed through Federal, State and local legislation.

Inside Higher Ed:

The Bachelor’s Degree Is Obsolete? “I keep looking for the Justice Department officials — the Nicholas Katzenbach, the John Doar, the Burke Marshall — or someone who will stand up for equality and against a federal system that allocates tens of thousands of federal dollars in tax benefits and other subsidies to students at Yale and Williams and Harvard while arcane rules and impenetrable paperwork prevent a student working two jobs at a community college from receiving a $4,000 federal Pell Grant.” Hear, hear.

NY Times Home & Garden:

The promise of green paint. Soon as I read that, I got the shivers.  I still get the horrors over the avocado-green appliances, flooring and glossy paints of the ‘70’s.  But no, this is about lower- or no-VOC paints.  In areas that tend to attract mildew, the use of natural paints is a problem yet to be solved.  Everywhere else, they’re wonderful, IMHO.  We’re lucky to have BioShield right here in Santa Fe.  Water cleanup, no smell - so you can paint in the dead of winter with windows closed - what’s there to complain about?

NY Times Home & Garden:

Making Their Own Limits in a Spiritual Partnership. “You are in each other’s faces 24 hours a day. [snip] You must deal with your anger or your jealousy.”

Later: Dizzy, at MeFi, has the bottom line on this.

NY Times:

A City Cooler and Dimmer, and, Oh, Proving a Point.

I have to digress, given some of the statements in the above article. For indoor architectural photo shoots, I now must be prepared for really challenging in-situ lighting.  Everyone seems to have an unholy mix of CFL and incandescent in their homes.  Added to natural outdoor light through windows and skylights, this mix of lighting spectrums makes color balancing interiors a real nightmare.  CFLs can pop certain colors, and darken others in what may seem illogical manners (reds go black, greens glow).  Once photographed with this mix, interiors can look very otherworldly.

One has to have lamps lit in interiors. Pack a lot of screw-in alternatives to CFLs.  Predictable-color-response ones.  I may move to screw-in strobes.

CNN Money:

Foreclosure filings hit record in April. Up 65% from previous year.  “Plunging home values reduce the money that cities, villages and towns collect in property taxes.” So infrastructure suffers too.  All Obama really need do is pull a ‘Reagan’: “We’ve had a Republican in the Executive Office for the past eight years.  Ask yourself a question ... are you better off now than you were eight years ago?  Is America better off?” Seems like a slam-dunk, overall.

Gas station down the block …

is advertising high-octane at $4.03/gallon.

Washington Post:

Gas prices knock bicycle sales, repairs into higher gear. One might want to revisit spring seats again.  Oil prices are going to be enough of a pain in the rear end, without a bad bike seat adding to it ...

CNet News.com:

Citi: solar prices to sink rapidly in looming shakeout. “… Citi said it believes that the silicon shortage will become a silicon over-supply, which will start to push down prices next year and then accelerate further in 2010.”

Bloomberg:

Countrywide Rating Cut to `Junk’ By Standard & Poor’s.

The Economist:

Bernanke’s bind, and Too soon to relax. “Oh Lord, let us stop cutting interest rates, but not yet.”

The Atlantic.com:

Where Mother Saw Best. “Alice Friedman’s Women and the Making of the Modern House and Colin Davies’s Key Houses of the Twentieth Century probe aspects of the complex relationship between modernism— the dominant architectural style of the 20th century—and domesticity.”

NY Times Business:

Good news, though ... As Gas Costs Soar, Buyers Flock to Small Cars. The Fit’s a particularly practical car (room + economy). 

NY Times Business:

Fed Takes Steps to Add Liquidity. Still, banks need to loosen the purse strings before anything recovers.

Washington Post:

Clipping, Scrimping, Saving. Yeah, we’re all doing it.  It’s about time the media mentioned it.

SF New Mexican:

Council OKs Railyard parking plan. The major point is, one doesn’t have to pay to park at REI in Albuquerque, nor does one have to pay to park at Borders over on Zafarano. 

SF New Mexican:

Affordable housing: Stopping the exodus. With increasing energy costs, this is going to pinch the capitol city even harder over time.

The Economist:

Gulf economies look at how to spend all the oil revenue. US concern in the ‘70’s, was how much armament they were purchasing.  No such concern mentioned here.

I saw this

in the RealGoods catalog that arrived the other day.  They don’t have it in their online catalog, but I found it in another place: SolarSheat. Self-contained forced-air solar heating, can be mounted on wall or roof.  Great option to heat a garage or other space.

NY Times World Business:

“Experts expect prices above $4 a gallon this summer, and one analyst recently predicted that gasoline could reach $7 in the next four years.” Let’s hope that one analyst is over-generous in his theorizing.

NY Times:

Consumer Confidence Slips as Home Prices Drop. “In the 12 months ended in February, the Case-Shiller home price index, which measures the value of single-family homes in 10 major metropolitan regions, fell 13.6 percent, the worst decline since records began in 1987. A broader 20-city index dropped 12.7 percent.  The slump in home prices was more severe than the worst point of the recession of the 1990s, the last time values fell so far, so quickly.”

Related: Countrywide posts $893 million loss. “Some 9.3 percent of the loans in Countrywide’s mortgage servicing portfolio were delinquent as of March 31, up from 4.9 percent a year earlier. About 4.8 percent were 90 days or more behind in payments ...”

BusinessWeek:

Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?

Sad …

to see our collective reaction to news is one of consistent fear and panic. Helped along by a willing media. The rice ‘rationing’ issue at Costco hit the news media a day or two ago, now it’s headlining Reuters, with little background info.  From what I’ve read, the US exports 50% of its rice, and we’re the #12 producer of the grain.  Keep an even keel, we have large domestic supplies. 

In the bigger picture, global warming is making itself felt again.  But there are other factors.  Go back to April 17, NY Times, and learn of the Australian drought. On top of untoward nature, “… Australia’s total rice capacity has declined by about a third because many farmers have permanently sold water rights, mostly for grape production. And production last year was far lower because of a severe shortage of water; rice farmers received one-eighth of the water they are usually promised by the government.” Wine or rice?  Your choice. 

Don’t be fooled by the panics of the last 24 hours.  The issue’s complex, as most are.  I’m not trying to come off as the arbiter of fact ... just insisting on folks Googling modern muddled media misinformation.

SF New Mexican:

A lighter footprint: The debate over buying carbon credits. I remain skeptical, certainly.

Telegraph.UK:

Career women work longer hours than men. Work longer as an aggregate; not necessarily at their career.  We men need to step up to the [dirty dinner] plate more. I include myself in that condemnation.