The only thing better than reading a good book is discussing it with other folks who've read it too. We invite you to join us for a lively conversation every month focused on a book. We're calling it All Over the Page because it can take you anywhere. What's great about this book club? The conversations will be facilitated by an expert who can help us go deeper into text. But academic, it's not! We promise a nice comfortable setting, refreshments, and a neighborly chat about a good book.

Canada has spent the last decade devising some new metrics to better answer the question "How are Canadians really doing?"

There is not a country on this planet that ignores GDP as a measure of economic health, but there is also an emerging consensus that, despite GDP’s celebrity status, its shortcomings are in need of a solution. For example, spending on tobacco, war, natural and human-made disasters – all of these activities make GDP go up. Yet if GDP were really a measure of progress, they would be subtracted. Meanwhile, beneficial activities like giving care to an ailing relative, unpaid housework, child care, volunteer work and leisure time would be added instead of ignored.

Thank you for contacting me in opposition to H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).  I always appreciate hearing from the people whom I represent in the Congress.
 
Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) introduced H.R. 3261 to modernize,

A little bit ago, I posted the video of Chad's TEDxKnoxville talk. Today, Tennessee Today posted an interview with Chad where he briefly talks about permaculture, energy, global oil, and cob.

UT Professor Explains How ‘Permaculture’ Can Help us Help Ourselves.

The article doesn't mention the cob wall structure he built in our backyard as a barrier to the alley (The foundation was salvaged from piles of junk left in the empty lot of Standard Knitting Mill during the I-40 SmartFix project.)

or the wall at the Parkridge Community Garden where Knoxville Permaculture members had a workday and learned to build with cob.

We hope to get some projects up and going this spring. You can find events at the Knoxville Permaculture Guild.

The people of Wisconsin gathered more than a million signatures toward the effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker. They targeted all 72 counties "to show that the anti-Walker fever wasn't just concentrated in the state's big urban areas of Madison and Milwaukee".

The recall process has only begun.

Go Wisconsin!

In honor of MLK Day, DemocracyNow is featuring - in their near-entirety - two of MLK's last and most radical speeches: Beyond Vietnam (April 1967) and I've Been to the Mountain Top (April 1968). Worth the listen ...

From CNN ...

"When he was out of school, he was well. When he was in school, he became ill," Asselin said.

Researchers and others who follow the issue say school air problems have probably been exacerbated in recent years by funding cutbacks that have resulted in less money for building upkeep and maintenance.

Children are particularly at risk because their bodies are still developing and they breathe in more air, pound for pound, than adults.

"Schools are more densely occupied than office buildings, and children aren't little adults. They're uniquely vulnerable," said Claire Barnett, founder and executive director of the Healthy Schools Network, a nonprofit group focused on environmental health in schools.

Article

Healthy Schools Network

I gave a Kindle Touch to a young friend as a Christmas gift. Today I discovered that the screen had failed by constantly displaying the screen saver over 2/3 of the screen's surface. Resetting it did not help.

The customer service horror story below the fold.

He's Silvio Berlusconi without the whimsy

Doesn't matter as the "Jesus is a Broncos fan" crowd is hard for my main man Rick Santorum.

Claim about wealthy and Congress

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/jan/15/community-guest-columnist-mark-...

Snark Bites on Lame Excuses for extra pay

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/jan/15/snark-bites-malfunctioning-rati...

Yay! No more fishing around the web for St. Petersburg's Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact.com.

Starting today, it looks like Politifact will examine issues of express interest to Tennessee's News Sentinel (and Commercial Appeal) readers.

Catch their pithy analyses--and their "Truth-o-meter" measuring the veracity of government officials' more fiery utterances--starting today at the KNS site.

Don't you just love it?! I do!

This morning I opened up my email to find Sen. Corker's weekly disconnect with reality. One of his screeds this week is that Tennesseans should not pay for the irresponsible borrowing of people and specifically targets California and New York.

“Reducing the principal on home loans for borrowers who put no money down amounts to a massive wealth transfer from places like Tennessee, where most homeowners have borrowed responsibly, to places like California and New York, where exotic mortgages were widely used to finance a speculative housing boom,” Corker said. “It is absolutely egregious that the Federal Reserve would insert itself in this manner and ask people in Tennessee who played by the rules to bail out reckless borrowers in other parts of the country.

Let me inject a little reality here.

A recent report shows that home purchasers in New York and California put down far more than home purchasers in Tennessee. New Yorkers put down an average of 13.51% and Californians put down an average of 13.25%. Home purchasers in these states rank 3rd and 5th for purchasers with the highest down payment.

Compare that to the average Tennesseans put down, 11.70%. Out of 50 states, Tennessee ranks 47 with one of the lowest down payments on a home purchase.

The map from Lending Tree is very interesting (not sure how to get it into the blog post, so please jump over and take a look)

Sen. Corker is one of the Washington elite that is pushing for a 20% down payment for homeowners. In all honesty, the NAR (National Association of Realtors) is fighting the large down payment, because the majority of people cannot afford a 20% down payment these days, and there is plenty of information to back that up. Does that mean these people that put a lower than 20% down payment on their home purchase borrowed irresponsibly? Absolutely not!

Thanks to a California Highway Patrol random inspection, a truck load of Dual Ridge Metal Boutique Tissue Holders were found to be radioactive.

According to the CHP, the boxes contained Cobalt-60, and were emitting very low levels of radioactivity -- not enough to pose a serious health threat, but enough to set off an alarm at a CHP inspection station.

According to the company’s statement, the holders were made in India and have been sold in Bed Bath & Beyond stores since July.

If the radioactive level was so low it doesn't pose a threat, how come they recalled the tissue holders?
Is it unusual to have low levels of radiation in home products? Is it possible to ask for no levels of radiation in most products?

Varney is having some trouble working out the details over at Lakeshore.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/jan/13/pam-strickland-lakeshore-still-...

(Couldn't get the hotline to work. Purely an operator error on the smart phone that's smarter than me.)

Click image for bigger...

From our temporary office location this AM.