Great article. The history of holidays is always fascinating. I love how there actually is much more deep-rooted tradition in our holidays (especially Christmas, Halloween, Easter, and Thanksgiving) than it seems on the surface.

Great graphic. And, of course, great news. It’s interesting how the spread is greater among states where support for same-sex marriage is higher (25 pts at the bottom, 35 pts at the top)

Morgan Clendaniel wrote: “Devil’s advocate: If an animal will eat anything, even things that kill it, isn’t that just natural selection at work?” Yeah, but that makes it sound like humans know what they are doing when they, say, create an incredible waste stream from throw-away plastic containers that are polluting and destroying the planet. Birds eating plastic was not what we intended but rather a consequence of our thoughtless actions (believing that the planet’s resources are infinite and that we can just keep trashing and wasting everything). And as it turns out, we are intimately connected to many other species, so to have us just assuming that each species we wipe out won’t affect us is displaying incredible ignorance and self-centeredness … not to mention we’ll eventually wipe ourselves out if we keep up this “natural selection” process. And though the birds that eat plastic may not have the self-awareness to realize their own mortality let alone that of their species, we humans do have this capability and hence must confront the fact that our actions cause unintended consequences that eventually come back to bite us in the butt.

“It is high time that industrialized nations, lead by the United States, recognize the fact that we’ve already caused a lot of damage—expensive damage—and that it’s only going to get worse.” Here, here. However, it’s not just carbon –> global warming that we need to be worrying about. The one thing I don’t like about all the global warming talk is that it only emphasizes part of the problem. It isn’t just the carbon that we produce, but all the many other forms of toxic pollution and the destruction of habitat and species. Even if we solve global warming and are, say, able to get all our energy from renewable sources, we will still have major environmental problems if we all don’t learn to live sustainably. So be careful not to like carbon and global warming dominate your thinking. Our problems are much more complicated and deeply embedded in every wasteful and materialistic aspect of our lives ….

Nope, line break didn’t work.

Can you fix the formatting in the comment box so that line breaks show up? Actually, maybe you’ve fixed that, so I’ll try one here and let’s see what happens …Was there a blank line? Also, regarding the login, I think the little pop-up window is a little annoying and would prefer something on the page itself, say at the top (especially since my browser will remember my login info that way).

Here’s my thing: I don’t believe in any of the major religions (I’d consider myself agnostic), but you gotta respect them. And that doesn’t mean you have to say that everything they have done or are doing is good or that they don’t deserve criticism. But rather, you have to respectful of their influence throughout history and how interconnected they are with our culture. Hating on religion is the cultural equivalent of hating on your parents: you may not agree with them, but they did play a huge role in who you are and you have to respect that and acknowledge it. Another analogy: as a Senator or Representative, you may not like the President, but out of civility you treat him or her respectfully. Same goes for religion: you may not like it or agree with it, but you should be respectful of it since 1) it is deeply embedded in our culture, and 2) many people find comfort from life’s existential questions in it, so why be disrespectful of another fellow human just trying to find peace in this short life? Though I believe it’s hard for the modern mind to accept the major religions without allowing some flaw in basic rationality, I also believe that as long as we are taking care of each other, then to each his own. Further, the crazy thing about science is that it has shattered the reasons given by the major religions for our existence, but it has given us nothing to replace them! Instead, according to science, the universe is just a cold place following a set of principles, and we humans are essentially meaningless. Unfortunately, humans evolved not believing that (since we didn’t have science to explain everything) and I believe religion, or rather, having myths to explain our reason for being, was part of our evolutionary psyche. Take that away and who knows what kinds of complications you bring on. So that is what concerns me about modern society: we are so confident that advancing science is the right thing to do, but by destroying all the cultural institutions we have evolved over millenia (or longer) like religion and now the environment too, we are getting ourselves into a bind that may be worse off in the end. So again, I just believe you need to be respectful of religion because it may just be that it fills a void in our very being that nothing else can fill, or at least not easily and not without hard work and societal agreement that we do need to fill it. Oh, and I thought the graphic was good, though as someone pointed out, you can’t assume that just because people don’t believe in the major religions that they are atheists (though atheism is on the rise, your graphic doesn’t prove that).

Andrew: good points. I obviously don’t know exactly “how much nature” it takes to soothe our souls; more research should be done on this to try and quantify it better. But in the meantime, we definitely know that we don’t have enough green space, so we should always be working towards more. I believe that we, especially in the West, have gotten wrapped up in technology and have been pushing it just for its own sake will almost completely neglecting the fact that it is changing our lives so fast that we aren’t adapting our social institutions and behavior. Or rather, we aren’t trying to understand how technology affects us. Our motto is: if we can, we should. If we can take a car that will get us there faster, then let’s do it. If we can make more consumer electronics that provide us more “pleasure”, then let’s do it. Etc., etc. In the meantime, our souls are suffering: our planet is being destroyed, we are growing more depressed, crime is increasing and we need more laws to “tell” people what to do because nobody cars about each other to just do the right thing in the first place, our health is declining (in the sense that, though we may be living longer, the quality is worse since we are mostly obese and malnourished (even though we have enough food … again, thank technology for pushing the Green Agricultural Revolution which has made processed and mostly corn-based foods cheap rather than health foods like fruits and vegetables)), and I would argue our level of happiness is declining. Technology has taken us away from our natural roots and most people are not trying to understand this. But here’s my point: one part of technology which we as a society place on a pedestal and would never question as being anything other than necessary — the car — is destroying our planet, our health, and our urban culture and connectedness in so many ways, and simply by no longer designing our cities around cars (not that we can’t have them at all, just that we stop prioritizing them), I believe we could affect massive positive change. I believe that it will reconnect us with each other, protect our environment, and yes, soothe our souls.

Portland, SF, and Vancouver are obvious given their good weather and progressive attitudes (and hats off to them). But as somebody else said, seeing such high numbers for cities who get hammered in the winter, such as Minneapolis and Toronto is impressive. I think there should be an X-Prize for the first major city to reach double digits! The city that wins should get a huge chunk of money to fund more bike projects.

Yep: a car’s engine is tuned for optimal efficiency somewhere around 50 mph (though it varies by car). This Consumer Reports blog from September (http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2009/09/tested-speed-vs-fuel-economy.html) gives a more quantitative idea of how your fuel economy declines as you go faster, using several cars where the results were actually measured. In these examples, cars lost about 5 mpg for every 10 mph over 55 mph.Of course, if we all just drove less, we’d have much more of an effect on reducing fuel consumption ….

Great article. The history of holidays is always fascinating. I love how there actually is much more deep-rooted tradition in our holidays (especially Christmas, Halloween, Easter, and Thanksgiving) than it seems on the surface.

Great graphic. And, of course, great news. It’s interesting how the spread is greater among states where support for same-sex marriage is higher (25 pts at the bottom, 35 pts at the top)

Morgan Clendaniel wrote: “Devil’s advocate: If an animal will eat anything, even things that kill it, isn’t that just natural selection at work?” Yeah, but that makes it sound like humans know what they are doing when they, say, create an incredible waste stream from throw-away plastic containers that are polluting and destroying the planet. Birds eating plastic was not what we intended but rather a consequence of our thoughtless actions (believing that the planet’s resources are infinite and that we can just keep trashing and wasting everything). And as it turns out, we are intimately connected to many other species, so to have us just assuming that each species we wipe out won’t affect us is displaying incredible ignorance and self-centeredness … not to mention we’ll eventually wipe ourselves out if we keep up this “natural selection” process. And though the birds that eat plastic may not have the self-awareness to realize their own mortality let alone that of their species, we humans do have this capability and hence must confront the fact that our actions cause unintended consequences that eventually come back to bite us in the butt.

“It is high time that industrialized nations, lead by the United States, recognize the fact that we’ve already caused a lot of damage—expensive damage—and that it’s only going to get worse.” Here, here. However, it’s not just carbon –> global warming that we need to be worrying about. The one thing I don’t like about all the global warming talk is that it only emphasizes part of the problem. It isn’t just the carbon that we produce, but all the many other forms of toxic pollution and the destruction of habitat and species. Even if we solve global warming and are, say, able to get all our energy from renewable sources, we will still have major environmental problems if we all don’t learn to live sustainably. So be careful not to like carbon and global warming dominate your thinking. Our problems are much more complicated and deeply embedded in every wasteful and materialistic aspect of our lives ….

Nope, line break didn’t work.

Can you fix the formatting in the comment box so that line breaks show up? Actually, maybe you’ve fixed that, so I’ll try one here and let’s see what happens …Was there a blank line? Also, regarding the login, I think the little pop-up window is a little annoying and would prefer something on the page itself, say at the top (especially since my browser will remember my login info that way).

Here’s my thing: I don’t believe in any of the major religions (I’d consider myself agnostic), but you gotta respect them. And that doesn’t mean you have to say that everything they have done or are doing is good or that they don’t deserve criticism. But rather, you have to respectful of their influence throughout history and how interconnected they are with our culture. Hating on religion is the cultural equivalent of hating on your parents: you may not agree with them, but they did play a huge role in who you are and you have to respect that and acknowledge it. Another analogy: as a Senator or Representative, you may not like the President, but out of civility you treat him or her respectfully. Same goes for religion: you may not like it or agree with it, but you should be respectful of it since 1) it is deeply embedded in our culture, and 2) many people find comfort from life’s existential questions in it, so why be disrespectful of another fellow human just trying to find peace in this short life? Though I believe it’s hard for the modern mind to accept the major religions without allowing some flaw in basic rationality, I also believe that as long as we are taking care of each other, then to each his own. Further, the crazy thing about science is that it has shattered the reasons given by the major religions for our existence, but it has given us nothing to replace them! Instead, according to science, the universe is just a cold place following a set of principles, and we humans are essentially meaningless. Unfortunately, humans evolved not believing that (since we didn’t have science to explain everything) and I believe religion, or rather, having myths to explain our reason for being, was part of our evolutionary psyche. Take that away and who knows what kinds of complications you bring on. So that is what concerns me about modern society: we are so confident that advancing science is the right thing to do, but by destroying all the cultural institutions we have evolved over millenia (or longer) like religion and now the environment too, we are getting ourselves into a bind that may be worse off in the end. So again, I just believe you need to be respectful of religion because it may just be that it fills a void in our very being that nothing else can fill, or at least not easily and not without hard work and societal agreement that we do need to fill it. Oh, and I thought the graphic was good, though as someone pointed out, you can’t assume that just because people don’t believe in the major religions that they are atheists (though atheism is on the rise, your graphic doesn’t prove that).

Andrew: good points. I obviously don’t know exactly “how much nature” it takes to soothe our souls; more research should be done on this to try and quantify it better. But in the meantime, we definitely know that we don’t have enough green space, so we should always be working towards more. I believe that we, especially in the West, have gotten wrapped up in technology and have been pushing it just for its own sake will almost completely neglecting the fact that it is changing our lives so fast that we aren’t adapting our social institutions and behavior. Or rather, we aren’t trying to understand how technology affects us. Our motto is: if we can, we should. If we can take a car that will get us there faster, then let’s do it. If we can make more consumer electronics that provide us more “pleasure”, then let’s do it. Etc., etc. In the meantime, our souls are suffering: our planet is being destroyed, we are growing more depressed, crime is increasing and we need more laws to “tell” people what to do because nobody cars about each other to just do the right thing in the first place, our health is declining (in the sense that, though we may be living longer, the quality is worse since we are mostly obese and malnourished (even though we have enough food … again, thank technology for pushing the Green Agricultural Revolution which has made processed and mostly corn-based foods cheap rather than health foods like fruits and vegetables)), and I would argue our level of happiness is declining. Technology has taken us away from our natural roots and most people are not trying to understand this. But here’s my point: one part of technology which we as a society place on a pedestal and would never question as being anything other than necessary — the car — is destroying our planet, our health, and our urban culture and connectedness in so many ways, and simply by no longer designing our cities around cars (not that we can’t have them at all, just that we stop prioritizing them), I believe we could affect massive positive change. I believe that it will reconnect us with each other, protect our environment, and yes, soothe our souls.

Portland, SF, and Vancouver are obvious given their good weather and progressive attitudes (and hats off to them). But as somebody else said, seeing such high numbers for cities who get hammered in the winter, such as Minneapolis and Toronto is impressive. I think there should be an X-Prize for the first major city to reach double digits! The city that wins should get a huge chunk of money to fund more bike projects.

Yep: a car’s engine is tuned for optimal efficiency somewhere around 50 mph (though it varies by car). This Consumer Reports blog from September (http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2009/09/tested-speed-vs-fuel-economy.html) gives a more quantitative idea of how your fuel economy declines as you go faster, using several cars where the results were actually measured. In these examples, cars lost about 5 mpg for every 10 mph over 55 mph.Of course, if we all just drove less, we’d have much more of an effect on reducing fuel consumption ….