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Montebello E-News

 May 31, 2010

When all men think alike, no one thinks very much. Walter Lippmann

What are the suppositions underlying Lippmann's statement? That the status quo could be improved? That it would be useful to think differently in order to improve the status quo? The comeback to that would be that the status quo were as good as it could get, meaning that thinking differently would serve no useful purpose. Would you agree with the comeback?

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A community meeting this week. With all the trees being planted around the world, there are still not enough being planted. I wonder whether the best use for the Montebello Hills would be to plant a very large grove of native trees, in order to create a large oxygen generator. (Does anyone disagree? Do we know for how many people one mature tree provides oxygen? And do we know that we in Montebello quickly cut down trees because they are inconvenient, without "balancing" by planting saplings?)  Anyway, the Montebello Hills Sierra Club Task Force will meet on June 2, 2010, the first Wednesday of the month, at 6:30 P.M. in the back dining room of the Carrow's Restaurant, 2501 Via Campo, Montebello, California 90640, to plan on how best to save our Montebello Hills. The restaurant is next to the Pomona Freeway, east of Wilcox. Everyone is welcome. For more information, savemontebellohills@gmail.com.

First-time homebuyer education class.  Please join Montebello-Commerce YMCA and Montebello Housing Development Corporation for a first-time homebuyer education class on Saturday June 5, 2010, from 9am to 5pm. Free lunch provided.  2000 West Beverly Boulevard, Montebello 90640. ... Please RSVP by [Tuesday, June 1, 2010] to Vera Morales at 323.722.3955 or e-mail her at morales.vera@yahoo.com.  

Ready to vote? The official voter guide for the June 2, 2010, California primary election has over seventy pages. While we have mentioned in E-News the usefulness of getting together with friends to have coffee and analyze, we probably have not done that yet. What is a fallback option if we do not have the time? Look at who is endorsing or opposing a ballot proposition. With that in mind, "yes" on 13 and "no" on all the others for me. Proposition 15 gave me pause, but I decided against it because (a) we need more radical reform and (b) the proposition does not advance environmental responsibility.

Important recycling day. In order to create a cleaner environment for our community, the Montebello Chamber of Commerce is hosting an electronic waste (e-waste) recycling collection event on Saturday and Sunday, June 12 and 13, in the parking lot of the Taylor Ranch Park, 737 North Montebello Boulevard, from 9:00 a.m. To 4:00 p.m. The event is a free service to city residents and businesses, allowing them to properly [legally] dispose of their old computers, and at the same time, help reduce improper and illegal dumping in our city and landfills. More importantly, the event helps protect our planet from various toxic materials polluting our soil and environment. ... For more detailed information on the event, or qualified e-products, please contact Salvatrice Cummo at the Montebello Chamber of Commerce, 323.721.1153. From Spotlight on Montebello, April, 2010. This is good, but do you know what would be better? Turning this into a contest for our schools, so that children urge parents and neighbors to dispose of e-waste at this event. Southern California Edison would make for an excellent sponsor, although, in that regard, the president of Edison has not replied to a letter dated February 27, 2010.

New housing in Montebello. ... The Olson Company would like to present "Rio Walk", a master planned residential community close to city parks, schools, restaurants and stores. Rio Walk is an affordable way to own a beautiful new home in one of Los Angeles' most convenient locales [corner of Washington Boulevard and Bluff Road, Montebello] ... For more information on the Rio Walk master planned community, please contact the [Montebello] Economic Development Department at 323.887.1390. From Spotlight on Montebello, April, 2010.

Some good news. Progress toward the Millennium Development Goals has seen far fewer deaths among children due to malnutrition, HIV and tuberculosis, according to a report published by the World Health Organization. Child mortality has improved in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique and Rwanda, though some countries may still struggle to meet the MDGs by the 2015 target. Annual deaths of children fell to 8.8 million in 2008, down 30% from 1990 levels. As abstracted in UN Wire, May 10, 2010, from a report by AlertNet.org/Reuters, May 10, 2010.

Some more good news. Bill of Bellflower brought this to my attention, and I am delighted: Everyday I plug in my laptop to work, to play, to manage my finances, and to stay connected to friends and family. I couldn't live without it, but someday it will finally break down and I will have to dispose of it; I will add to the fastest-growing part of the United States waste stream. I know not to just throw my laptop in the trash, where it will sit in the landfill leaching heavy metals into the groundwater, but I also don't want to give it to an e-waste recycler that will simply transfer my toxic load to a developing country. (Click [http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1870162,00.html] to see a stunning photo essay of China's electronic waste villages from Time Magazine.) I was pretty excited, therefore, to read about a new eco-label that will help me tell the good from the bad and find responsible e-waste recyclers: e-Stewards. E-Stewards is an independently audited certification program for e-waste recyclers based on standards set out by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ... http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/011163.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A
+worldchanging_fulltext+%28WorldChanging.com+Full+Text%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail You can go to http://e-stewards.org/ to learn where the nearest e-Stewards recycler is.

Are school tests measuring what should be measured? ...Stanovich, an adjunct professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, believes that the concept of intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, fails to capture key aspects of mental ability. But that doesn't mean he discounts the tests' credibility: "Readers might well expect me to say that IQ tests do not measure anything important, or that there are many kinds of intelligence, or that all people are intelligent in their own way," he writes. After all, theories about emotional and social intelligence — which weigh interpersonal skills, the ability to empathize, and other "supracognitive" characteristics — have gained popularity in recent years, in part by de-emphasizing the importance of IQ. Instead, Stanovich suggests that IQ tests focus on valuable qualities and capacities that are highly relevant to our daily lives. But he believes the tests would be far more effective if they took into account not only mental "brightness" but also rationality — including such abilities as "judicious decision making, efficient behavioral regulation, sensible goal prioritization ... [and] the proper calibration of evidence." Our understanding of intelligence, he writes, has been muddled by the discrepancy between the vague, comprehensive vernacular term, which encompasses all the functions and manifestations of "smarts," and the narrower theories that "confine the concept of intelligence to the set of mental abilities actually tested on extant IQ tests." The latter conceptualization allows intelligence to coexist with foolishness because IQ tests do not measure the rationality required to abstain from dumb decisions, according to the author. Casual observers, however, usually define intelligence broadly and are confused by inconsistencies: "Blatantly irrational acts committed by people of obvious intelligence ... shock and surprise us and call out for explanation." The author notes that because most people — even educators and psychologists — accept test-defined intelligence as a fair assessment of mental faculties, we tend to dismiss inconsistencies between a person's IQ scores and rationality as indicators of a disorder or learning disability. So persistent is that faulty logic that "we are almost obligated to create a new disability category when an important skill domain is found to be somewhat dissociated from intelligence." As long as we continue to worship IQ tests that do not assess rational thought processes, we will continue to misjudge our own and others' cognitive abilities, warns the scholar. In an earlier work, Stanovich coined his own term — dysrationalia — for "the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence." That "disorder," he suggests, might afflict some of the smartest people you know. ... http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=6pfm8ytzbg1p8n5p2vl4rrcmwvckp31x "Dysrationalia" is worth keeping in mind.

A magic bullet? Imagine that the neighborhood you are living in is covered with graffiti, litter, and unreturned shopping carts. Would this reality cause you to litter more, trespass, or even steal? A thesis known as the broken windows theory suggests that signs of disorderly and petty criminal behavior trigger more disorderly and petty criminal behavior, thus causing the behavior to spread. This may cause neighborhoods to decay and the quality of life of its inhabitants to deteriorate. For a city government, this may be a vital policy issue. But does disorder really spread in neighborhoods? So far there has not been strong empirical support, and it is not clear what constitutes disorder and what may make it spread. We generated hypotheses about the spread of disorder and tested them in six field experiments. We found that, when people observe that others violated a certain social norm or legitimate rule, they are more likely to violate other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread. ... http://www.cognitionandculture.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=366:experimental
-evidence-for-the-broken-window-theory&catid=52:nicolas-claidieres-blog&Itemid=34 Montebello would benefit from application of the "broken windows theory", but whence the money to set things right?

A new kind of brain drain? I vaguely remember a statistic that people in the country lived longer than people in the city. But that is not the end of it. ...Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so. ... http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/?s_campaign=8315

Will wonders never cease? The world's smallest snake, a prehistoric ant and microbes that may be 120,000 years old: These are just a few of the species revealed to the world in the last 12 months. With animals going extinct at rates unseen since the dinosaurs disappeared, it's nice to be reminded that some species haven't even been discovered. ... http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/multimedia/2008/12/YE8_organisms?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_
campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail

Do the British know something which we do not know? British Medical Association (BMA), "Our Principles".  The BMA is against the increasing commercialisation of patient care. We want to see the NHS restored as a public service working co-operatively for patients, not a market of commercial businesses competing with each other. That’s why we’re campaigning for an NHS which: 1. Provides high quality, comprehensive healthcare for all, free at the point of use; 2. Is publicly funded through central taxes, publicly provided and publicly accountable; 3. Significantly reduces commercial involvement; 4. Uses public money for quality healthcare, not profits for shareholders; 5. Cares for patients through co-operation, not competition; 6. Is led by medical professionals working in partnership with patients and the public; 7. Seeks value for money but puts the care of patients before financial targets; 8. Is fully committed to training future generations of medical professionals. http://www.lookafterournhs.org.uk/for-doctors/our-principles/ As printed in an e-newsletter by Don McCanne, MD, May 14, 2010.

Why is an insurer dropping a hospital network? An opinion. Comment: It is common to hear hospital administrators complain about low reimbursement rates from Medicare, yet how many terminate their participation in the Medicare program? And of course Medicare never unilaterally terminates a provider except when appropriate in cases of criminal fraud or incompetency that constitutes a hazard to patients. Yet what happens when a private insurer is the payer? The decision to terminate a contract is strictly a business decision made based on market conditions, having much less to do with the value, quality or necessity of the services being provided, but much more to do with the oligopolistic leverage that the insurer has in the market. The private insurer, based purely on a business decision, is quite willing to disrupt the continuity of health care services for its own customers. And WellPoint/Empire says that their profitability isn't relevant when it makes these decisions!? And what will the new reform legislation do to correct these blatant injustices? It will pour more taxpayer funds into the coffers of these intrusive middleman, providing them with even greater leverage in their negotiations with the health care delivery system. Do we want a health care financing system that is designed to benefit the money managers, or do we want a financing system designed to be sure that health care is there when patients need it? If we favor the latter, then we need to dump the private insurers and adopt an improved Medicare program that takes care of everyone. Don McCanne, MD, April 2, 2010. [Emphasis mine.]

Who would have guessed? But some services in the US healthcare industry cannot be outsourced beyond America's borders due to regulations. That’s one reason major Indian outsourcing firms have set up shop in the United States. In a twist, America's outsourcers are now outsourcing back to America.

From "Quote of the Day" by Don McCanne, MD., as summarized from http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0325/US-healthcare-reform-is-boon-for-India-outsourcing-companies

Have you ridden a bus lately? Montebello Bus Lines is pleased to announce the arrival of a shipment of 25 hybrid buses. The city deployed 15 new hybrids in October of 2008. ... The hybrids boast enhanced ergonomics and safety features, including heat guard passenger glass, next generation wheelchair ramp, a black box that records the bus' activity and an early detection system that alerts the bus operator when objects are too close to the bus. ... From Spotlight on Montebello, April, 2010. While this is good news, I believe that our bus lines would get a failing grade with regard to persuading people to take the bus.

Note these phone numbers. The Street Division of the City of Montebello is responsible for the maintenance and repairs of streets, alleys, sanitary sewers, storm drains, sidewalks, curbs and gutters. ... In addition, the Street Division administers and supervises the performance of special contracts for street sweeping, solid waste and residential and commercial recycling programs. ... Please contact the Street Division directly for assistance with flood damage, sidewalk repairs, repair and maintenance of storm drains and catch basins and street sweeping complaints. 323.887.4613. ... As for graffiti, 877.444.6044, 24 hours. Please leave your name, address and phone number with area code, as well as a detailed description of where the graffiti is located, i.e., curb, sidewalk, wall, etc. From Spotlight on Montebello, April, 2010.

A warning of things to come for California? UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked Central Asian countries to take action to halt the decline of the Aral Sea, which has been shrinking since Soviet planners used the water in the 1960s for cotton irrigation projects in Uzbekistan. Much of the bed of the world's fourth largest lake stands as deserts, and the people living around the Aral Sea have suffered from declining fish stocks and increased sandstorms. From Reuters, April 4, 2010, as abstracted in UN Wire, April 5, 2010.

Should we impose a Western view? Al-Masyr Al-Youm (an Egyptian news site) today carries a fascinating article on the unique challenges facing orphans born in a Muslim nation. While highlighting "Orphanage Day" (April 1)—created to remind Egyptians of the orphans in their midst—the article explains that none of Egypt’s estimated 50,000 orphans can expect the permanency of adoption. The best an Egyptian orphan can hope for is a temporary family, in an arrangement that the child, the family and the broader community all understand will typically not last beyond puberty. As the article describes, "Even when an orphan is lucky enough to be taken in by a loving family or orphanage, however, the time will come when he or she must inevitably face the world alone." ... http://ow.ly/1uj7g

The flip side of the coin. When it comes to mental health, the Internet gets a bad rap. There are countless studies that suggest regular access to the Internet is linked to stress, anxiety and addiction. But before you stop tweeting and toss out your iPhone, it turns out that spending time on the Web could actually be making you happier. A May 12 report by British researchers from the U.K.'s Chartered Institute of IT (known as BCS) have found a link between Internet access and well-being. But some benefit more than others from tapping into the information superhighway, including those with lower incomes or fewer qualifications, people living in the developing world and, perhaps most surprisingly, women. (See the 50 best websites of 2009.) Overall, the study found that access to the Internet leads people to feel better about their lives. "Put simply, people with IT access are more satisfied with life even when taking account of income," said Michael Willmott, the social scientist who authored the study, at a press conference. "Our analysis suggests that IT has an enabling and empowering role in people's lives, by increasing their sense of freedom and control, which has a positive impact on well-being or happiness." ... http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1989244,00.html?xid=rss-topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_
medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

A sign of things to come? An opportunity for entrepreneurs? The UN Environmental Programme predicts a shortage of specialty metals, which recycle slowly that they could become unavailable within 20 to 30 years -- an argument for recycling existing stocks of metal rather than seeking to mine more. Prices for metals such as neodymium and indium -- used for wind turbine magnets and liquid crystal displays, respectively -- could rise dramatically if greater effort is not taken to improve recycling for these materials. The UN withdrawal from the Democratic Republic of Congo could hamper existing mining efforts in the African country, a leading exporter of minerals used in high-tech displays. Reuters (5/13) , Bloomberg Businessweek (5/14) As abstracted in UN Wire, May 14, 2010.

The messy business of regulating immigration. Jamaica and the Bahamas have renewed immigration policies that restrict immigration from Haiti, despite earlier gestures of compassion after the Haitian earthquake. Haiti's neighbors have begun reinstating repatriation policies, noting that they have seen some of the immigrants attempting to land on their shores before the earthquake. Some repatriated Haitians hail from Haiti's north, which was not affected terribly by the earthquake, while other migrants turned away include suspected smugglers. The Miami Herald (free registration) (5/12) As abstracted in UN Wire, May 14, 2010.

Could the loss of so many species harm humans? Lizard species all over the world could go extinct as a result of global climate change, according to a report on carbon emissions and their effect on the environment. Some 5,000 lizard species could be rendered extinct by 2080 -- while 12% of lizard species in Mexico have already been killed off. Researchers from 12 countries have documented the disappearance of lizard species from five continents as a result of global warming and have charted the adverse effect of continued rising temperatures on lizards -- as well as the many species of animals who depend on them for food. USA TODAY (5/14) As abstracted in UN Wire, May 14, 2010.

Desert, semidesert, call it what you will. The point is that despite heroic efforts and many billions of dollars, all we have managed to do in the arid West is turn a Missouri-size section green--and that conversion has been wrought mainly with nonrenewable groundwater. But a goal of many westerners and of their federal archangels, the Bureau of Reclamation and Corps of Engineers, has long been to double, triple, quadruple the amount of desert that has been civilized and farmed, and now these same people say that the future of a hungry world depends on it, even if it means importing water from as far away as Alaska. What they seem not to understand is how difficult it will be just to hang on to the beachhead they have made. Such a surfeit of ambition stems, of course, from the remarkable record of success we have had in reclaiming the American desert. But the same could have been said about any number of desert civilizations throughout history--Assyria, Carthage, Mesopotamia, the Inca, the Aztec, the Hohokam--before they collapsed. // And it may not even have been drought that did them in. It may have been salt. ... From the book Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner, 1993.

For more inconvenient truths, click on "Other" at http://www.mymontebello.com/life_tc5#Other , then on "The Water Crisis". Note that "global warming" is not at issue here. We have a problem even if global warming were not occurring.

To learn about this newsletter, Montebello E-News, and the accompanying, growing Web site, “My Montebello”, visit www.mymontebello.com.  Also, you will find instructions and contact information for submitting announcements for publication in this newsletter, and for submitting stories to “Montebello Memories” at the Web site.