turf-war or push th’ little daisies

The always brilliant Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBlog thoughtfully and considered directs our attention to yet another insult to ecology and our rampant encroachment not only on the pristine but now for what has already learnt to live with us:
the craze for zero- maintenance “permanent botanicals” are canvasing over gardens, yards and campuses, replacing what little plots there are left with artificial grass. Oh England’s green and pleasant land, where will the rain water go, and without worms to churn the soil, I imagine things might get pretty musty rather quickly, and without worms, there’d be no birds? And so on, and so on… I hope that this is a passing craze and new tenants rip all that out, like so much shag carpeting.

ticker-tape

The always interesting Public Domain Review shows us that the isolating, estranging effects of technology were Zeitgeisty (yes, I said Zeitgeisty having heard it uttered by a BBC Radio 4 correspondent—the language we pick up…) back in 1906 Britain, as Punch magazine—which I never realised that Punch was subtitled the London Charivari—lampoons. Though this forecast for the state of affairs of the upcoming year is in jest, the man and woman fixated on their telegraph-feed rather than each other or their surroundings is pretty prescient and shows that concerns about socially authentic cohesion is not the exclusive bailiwick of our age.

royal jelly

Happily those insect motels of straw and cinder-blocks are getting as popular and common as bird houses, but there’s no reason, as the fabulous Everlasting Blört informs, to skimp on luxury for our apian friends. To underscore their appreciation for these pollinators for supplying their fruits and vegetables, a storied and posh Yorkshire emporium has teamed up with Kew Botanical Gardens to prove their swarms lavish lodging in the Grand Beedapest Hotel. Read all about the project and urban bee-keeping at the link.

narcotráfico

Incredibly with little notice but overwhelmingly positive results, the government of Portugal decriminalised (not legalised but offenses are addressed as a matter of public-health resulting in a referral to counselling services but not incarceration) all drugs—fifteen years ago.
Usage has not skyrocketed (as some opponents to the change feared and use vociferously as an argument against reform in other countries presently) and moreover, deaths from over-dose or infections spread by using dirty needles have plummeted to essentially zero as has gang activity, and probably just as significantly, there’s far less of a problem in Portuguese cities with novel synthetic experimental substances or ones that skirt the pharmacological standards as legalish highs. There are of course probably other systemic problems, like political corruption and inequalities in sentencing that has been reduced as well. I should think that if Portugal’s long-running experiment was the success that it appears to be, other countries would have been emulating it for a long time. The places, however, with the biggest drug and crime problems also reinforce the most wrong-headed understanding of abuse and addiction, I think, treating dependency as a sin or some kind of moral-failing and treating it almost exclusively with the corrective measures, penance, that held that other ailments where a curse that the sufferer brought upon himself. What do you think? No other disease diagnosis questions moral fiber or attributes a relapse to a lack of willpower.  Do we expect the addict to take the retribution that he had coming like we did lepers and other outcasts not so long ago?