"Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful."- G. K. Chesterton

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