New Berlin is an upper middle class suburb where the population is 95% white (see http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/zip/53151 for the demographic information). In addition, the average home value is $164,200 and the average annual household income is $79,346. The emails sent to the mayor discuss how the people who live in New Berlin chose to do so because they wanted to be in a nice neighborhood away from crime and with “quality people”.

I can, in a way, understand these concerns. Nobody wants to hear gunshots and sirens all the time. And people want to believe that their homes and children are safe. Unfortunately, those kind of beliefs are often based on assumptions and the safety itself is just an illusion. Think of all the news stories about suburban kids using and selling recreational drugs (often the sum of excess free time and excess disposable income – the reasons the parents live in the ‘burbs to begin with) and how the parents always seem so surprised.

Let’s look at this another way. Let’s say you live in New Berlin (or a place like it) and have a teenager who has worked at a local retail store or fast food restaurant (common teen jobs) and is graduating from High School. Maybe your kid goes away to college and decides s/he wants to come back home to work and create a life. In general, entry-level jobs do not support living in this kind of a suburb – much less the kinds of entry level jobs recent college graduates are getting in this economy. So maybe your kid gets a job in town, but has to live 15-20 miles away, where housing is actually affordable and s/he can get a roommate. Then this person has to pay more in gas every day for a commute which could be unnecessary but for a community’s desire to maintain an image. This person has to pay a higher sales-tax rate (because in Milwaukee County, the sales tax is 5.6% versus the 5.1% in New Berlin), provided s/he shops near home. This person has to travel further to see family and enjoy many things in the hometown community. Wouldn’t you, as the parent, want your kid to be able to afford to live nearby? Wouldn’t you want your kids friends (even the ones who decided college wasn’t the way to go) to be able to stick around? What if your kid chose a worthwhile line of work with low pay (working for a non-profit or religious institution – or just teaching!)? Would you want these people to be included in your community or eliminated because the city is trying to maintain an image? Or would you want your community to consistently be infused with new people trying desperately to escape the city? Can it even be called a community if your children are economically forced out as young adults?

I think that dismissing an project that could really help enrich the community through racial, economic, and educational diversity is a mistake that no community can afford to make. The people that wrote the emails linked to above were acting in a selfishly snobby way. Racist? Maybe. But selfish and snobby? Definitely. That’s what the mayor should have called them out for. And the plan should go forward – at least until someone can come up with a valid, unselfish and un-snobby reason it shouldn’t.

Anyone out there who was a bit older than I am might remember an oil spill in 1979. Here Rachel Maddow compares that spill with our current situation. I can’t help but wonder why we haven’t learned or developed more effective ways of dealing with these problems.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now this is just creepy. A man has demonstrated human infection by a computer virus. While this may sound sci-fi to many of us, there are plenty of scientists devoted to studying the future and future technology. A quick skim of a book by one of the field’s most visible authors, Ray Kurzweil, will familiarize anyone with some more ideas that send chills up spines similarly.

Crackpots? You be the judge. I can understand predicting more economic troubles for America this year – it’s not like people are spending less and saving more on a wide scale. But these claims, including the collapse of the FDIC and martial law, sound incredibly far-fetched. I, personally, will believe it when I see it.

With Memorial Day behind us now, we might be ready to read about something other than our veterans and their contributions to our present state of being. I urge you, however, to read this article, written by a veteran, about what it means to be American and what our veterans fought to secure. It’s more the acknowledgment that we’re all human and we all deserve the same rights, but we seem to keep trying to deny rights to others. I’m guessing it’s all about power. When a group of people has more rights (or freedom) than another, it has a greater amount of power than the smaller group – maybe even power over that group. These things are not what America was meant to be.

We have plenty of reasons not to have children. There are medical conditions that we chance passing on to offspring. There’s the fact that we’re trying to end the cycle of abuse, and we can’t be certain of our ability to do that with children in our home. There’s the desire to give our potential children the best life that we can – stability, hard work, values, diverse interests, etc. There are the standard ideas that we can lessen the environmental impact of the world community by not contributing more Americans to it. There’s the fact that our siblings were born after we both entered double-digit ages, enabling us to experience firsthand the effort involved and the challenges faced in parenthood. There’s the recognition that so many children already exist in this world in abject poverty, parent-less, and disease-ridden. Those children need loving homes and guidance more than we need to continue our genetic makeup. And then there’s the fact that the medication I am on would definitely harm any fetus – and going through the process of pregnancy without my medication would be a harrowing experience at best.

With all these reasons not to have children (in addition to the others that I cannot recall at the moment), we see no need or reason to have children. From our perspective (on the outside, I understand) it seems that people have children for one of a very few reasons. These can be “wanting” them, accidental pregnancy, and meeting social expectations. I’m sure there are more, it’s just so hard to gauge people’s reasoning and even more difficult to ask them how they came to the conclusion that having children was the right choice. I can only imagine that from the parents’ perspective that question would seem as a direct challenge to their decisions.

Without wanting to challenge anyone one about their decisions to become parents, I am constantly seeking a reason to have children. And I don’t mean something like having someone to take care of us in our old-age or finding out what combining our genes would do. I’m seeking something concrete. For example, we just decided NOT to get a Blu-Ray player for a Christmas present this year. We used reason in coming to this decision. We looked at our DVD collection and assessed how often we actually watch the DVD’s that we own. We estimated how often we rent DVD’s vs renting video on demand. It turns out that we probably have absolutely no use for a Blu-Ray player, despite the fact that they are cool and we love new gadgets. That money would be more wisely spent elsewhere – or saved. Now that’s the kind of reasoning I’m looking for in making a decision to have children. Something that follows logic and makes sense. So, please, if you can think of a logical reason to have children, please let us know. Leave a comment, send an email, anything.

In the meantime, please enjoy reading this article explaining some additional reasons for choosing to be child-free.

Sick of reading boring news feeds?  Try Google’s new Fast Flip.  With an interface closer to that of an ebook reader, it makes looking at articles on the computer screen seem more natural.

It seems as though by cleaning yourself every morning under a stream of warm water, you might just be exposing yourself to bacteria that can make you sick.  Good to know, but I think I’ll chalk that one up to improving my immune system!

This graphic novel about a traumatic childhood seems like a touching tale with expressive visuals as accompaniment.  It might be worth taking a look at.

‘Tis all I have for today… make it a lovely one!

Here goes!

Read Economics is Not a Natural Science by Douglas Rushkoff for an interesting take on economics, the history of economies, and why we might just need to rethink everything.  I can say I learned a lot.

A Brave New (Non-Private) World explores some  media that addresses our society and its evolution regarding privacy issues.

I don’t care what the circumstances are, no one in America should have to cook and WASH with bottled water because the tap water is so polluted.  See this NYT article for more information.

I loved watching the shows on tv (The Science Channel?) about synaesthesia.  A BBC article reports on current research and new findings.

For people looking to acquire local food, one new option is VeggieTrader.  Though most of its current listings are focused on the west coast, I could find several locations within 100 miles of my house.  While that may not sound too local, it’s much better than the distance most of our food travels before reaching our plates.  But to improve the number of offerings everywhere, we should all join and list whatever we can!

For a resource that’s a little closer to home for my fellow Milwaukeeans, see this page at the Urban Ecology Center’s website.  And there’s always Growing Power.

And while we’re on the topic of food, please read Dan Barber’s article in The Nation about the importance of cooking and diversifying our diets.

I think that does it for today.  Thoughts, ideas, and comments are always welcome.  If you’re viewing this anywhere other than through my blog, you should visit the original post here: http://www.jen.jllocke.com/blog/2009/09/15/round-up/ to see all the links correctly.