We really haven't been smart enough in regulating our water use, we assume that because there is plenty (there's really not) of fresh potable water now there will always be in the future, not so. See: The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century by Alex Prud'homme.

It's a difficult thing, and I think rightly so in a pluralistic society like ours, to say one would never vote for a candidate do to some demographic characteristic. While this would not be the case for me 99% of the time, I'd have no trouble voting for a homosexual, Muslim or atheist, I don't know if I could ever vote for a Scientologist. Where prejudice meets discernment is difficult to say. I can't say that a persons mostly deeply held convictions about the nature of the universe don't matter when judging their fitness for office, though I think most people holding and seeking public office in this country are reasonably good at keeping there policy and religious spheres separate (not to say there's not room for improvement on this front). While 'anti-Mormon prejudice' is not a good thing and supposedly liberal people are often hypocritical on this issue, its still a question of exclusion by belief rather then exclusion by genetics (race, gender, and in most cases sexual preference) and is thusly a lesser prejudice then those that dominated American culture not so long ago.

Knowledge workers and manual works are really in the same boat, this bad economy is affecting everyone with the exceptions of big cooperate muckaty-mucks and some people in the skilled professions like medicine (though I know a lot of lawyers are having a hard time finding work). Underemployed college graduates seem to make up the majority of the Occupy Wall street protesters, I think the unions and blue collar folk are yet to make much of a mark on it. And I disagree with David, yes the corporations are playing by the rules the politicians implemented, but it was the corporations who bought the politicians and got them to implement those rules, the politicians are mostly just dopes.

Hermin Cain basing his 999 tax plan on SimCity is not without precedent, Reagan's agriculture policy was based on Q*bert.

A friend of mine wrote this story.

Arnold Friberg: 1913-2010

Arnold Friberg recently died, this 'ancient' artist has for good or for ill had an enormous impact on LDS 'art'. It sometimes seems like nearly every active LDS household has at least one of his pictures in it. Anyway here are some links:

Wikipedia entry

Friberg Fine Art - Note mixture of the religous and the patriotic.

Some pictures

Truth & Conviction: The Helmuth Hubener Story (2002)

Helmuth Hubener was a teenaged German Latter-day Saint from Hamburg, who with the assistance of two fellow young Mormons from his branch, was a surprisingly accomplished anti-Nazi pamphleteer. Though once an apparently contended Hitler Youth, Hubener became convinced of the evils of Naziism by observing their treatment of the Jews and listening to forbidden British radio broadcasts. Recruiting two of his friends to assist him, Hubener composed dozens of anti-Nazi pamphlets which they distributed in fair numbers throughout the Hamburg area. Hubener and his friends were eventually captured by the Nazi’s and Hubener executed, though his compatriots lived to tell his tale.

I admit to being somewhat ill disposed to this story at first, feeling Hubener's tale to have been overplayed within LDS circles in recent years. I can’t help but feel hyping Hubeners story is a way some Latter-day Saints have come to retroactively insert themselves, and their faith into the understandably popular historical narrative of anti-Nazi resistance (in other words, we want in on the righteous indignation too). Truth is most of the relatively small group of Mormons in Germany at that time, like their fellow country men, made no active attempts to resist the Nazi movement. Also some Mormons were Nazi’s themselves, and I’m glade that this documentary addressed that issue. This being said I found Helmuth’s story more interesting that I thought I would, and found him to be a truly impressive individual who showed an unusual amount of courage and conviction, especially given his age. Helmuth’s is not a story of a particularly ‘Mormon’ kind of resistance, but rather of a kind of courage that sets apart valiant individuals from all backgrounds and creeds. Grade: B.

Soon to be a 'major motion picture' with Haley Joel Osment.