I saw The Golden Compass yesterday and enjoyed it for the most part.  One scene was very good, very creepy.  Little kids are being kidnapped for unknown (but nefarious) purposes by a totalitarian regime called The Magisterium.  The scene takes place where the children are being held, in a Jules Vernish fortress in the middle of freezing fucking nowhere.  The kids are shown in a room writing letters to their parents and a very creepy nurse is instructing one of the boys to write something or his parents won’t get a letter (which the watchers know they are never going to get anyway).  It’s effective, chilling, and doesn’t treat viewers as stupid, showing the nature of the place and the regime holding the kids in an oblique but powerful way. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up until…until I saw the chairs. 

This is supposed to be an alternate Earth (yes, the standard sci fi interpretation of the “many dimensions” aspect of physics, but I like it so don’t care if it’s been used before).  Apparently on this alternate Earth where people’s souls live outside their bodies as animal manifestations that talk, they also have a Design within Reach.  Must be right next door to the Magisterium HQ!  The creepy kid torture factory was filled with Eames plastic molded chairs.  If you’re going to make a fantasy film, DON’T use a well known design object in it, it’s destracting!  For God’s sake people didn’t you have 60 million dollars or something–design your own friggin chairs!  I know you’re busy and all but I didn’t see any Globus chairs in Lord of the Rings.

I got an ITouch for Christmas and it is the most delightful and intuitive piece of hardware joy I’ve ever had.  Thank you Apple.

I have a strong belief in the strength of human ingenuity, so I’m convinced that we will eventually develop a totally green car.  One you can plug into your high efficiency home solar grid every night and charge, or a safe and practical hydrogen car, or etc.. etc.. Once we do this, will that mean people won’t want to live in walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods anymore?  Will they want to go back to sprawling homes on huge lots separated from their neighbors, because as the developers (and libertarians for some reason) have been crowing for the past twenty or so years: this is what the market wants!  People won’t buy anything else, families don’t want walkable neighborhoods they want an acre of grass! (the fact that it’s the cheapest and easiest way to develop neighborhoods of course has nothing to do with it right?).  And if gas prices and pollution aren’t a concern anymore, people will want to drive for every single little thing so they don’t have to see their neighbors. Ever.

The answer to the titular question is without a doubt, no.  The fact is: I hate driving and I hate time sucking traffic jams and so do most other people (at least the traffic jam part).  Green cars won’t solve that problem. When I talk to my neighbors and ask them why they chose to move to our new urbanist neighborhood, most people say they liked the style of homes in here, they wanted to be able to drive less if they wanted to, and they wanted a real community where neighbors are friendly and social.  When I ask most people if they are concerned about their carbon footprint most are after some fashion, but it’s not the reason they bought here.   People like to walk, it’s enjoyable and great exercise and makes the neighborhood energetic and vital all the time.  I don’t think most people walk because it’s greener (although I’m sure some do, or they at least consider that a benefit), they walk because they like to, and new urbanist communities are very pleasant places to do it.  

Me: God I had awful nightmares last night about [our kid] getting lost

My Husband: I had a nightmare too

Me: Really?

My Husband: You got served an undercooked steak in a restaurant

Three years ago when I first moved down to Denver, I went looking for a dentist as I hadn’t been in some time.  I looked up the providers my dental insurance covered and picked a female dentist that practiced close to my home.  I went to this dentist who told me I needed 3 new crowns, and 7 fillings.  She said it would take around 6 hours to do all that work and said she could offer me sedation for the long time it would take.  I was upset when I came home from that appointment, but I was also something else: skeptical. 

One of the crowns this dentist said I needed was a replacement for a crown I’d had put in two years prior,  so I looked it up (which I do with EVERYTHING).  Dr. Google said crowns usually last at least 10 years, and can last a lifetime.  This got me thinking: how do I know anything she told me is actually the case?  She could make up whatever she wanted about my teeth and just assume I would trust it since she was the trained dentist and I wasn’t.  With me of course, this is dead, dead wrong–I require proof for everything.  So I made an appointment with my old, trusted dentist in Fort Collins and drove up there to have him take a look at my teeth.  Guess what he said?  I didn’t need any work.  None. At. All.

This turn of events deeply shocked and depressed me.  What was more concerning however, was the fact that this dishonest dentist had her wall lined with pictures of the Medicaid kids she treated: how many of those kids got dental work they didn’t need so she could make a buck?  I reported her to the American Dental Association, but I’m sure they didn’t do anything about it.  I haven’t been back to a dentist since.

Recently a new dentist opened in my neighborhood.  Their office is a 5 minute walk from my home.  Multiple neighbors have gone and all have spoken highly of this dentist, so I decided to make an appointment.  When I was on the phone with the receptionist, I gave her my name and we were working out the details of the appointment when she said “Oh, hold on a second, he wants to speak to you”.  The dentist then got on the line. “Hi, I’m Dr. “X” and I recognized your name from [my neighborhood’s] internet board, I just wanted to introduce myself”.  I thought this was really nice and thoughtful, but I also realized something else: this person knows I know everyone in my neighborhood.  They also therefore know if they try to pull any crap like the last dentist I visited that I will tell everyone in my neighborhood and they will lose significant business.  I currently don’t have dental insurance so will be paying cash, but the social capital in my neighborhood is covering something much more important to me: piece of mind.