3-27-09

3-27-09—The Europeans say they have no need for further stimulus right now because their social safety nets, derided in good times by free market disciples as sclerotic impediments to growth, are automatically providing the spending programs that the US Congress has to legislate. NYT A9
--[In Lecco Italy] each morning, about 250 students travel along 17 school bus routes to 10 elementary schools ... In 2003, to confront the triple threats of childhood obesity, local traffic jams and—most important—a raise in global greenhouse gases abetted by car emissions, an environmental group here proposed a retro-radical concept: children should walk to school. They set up a piedibus (literally foot-bus in Italian)—a bus route with a driver bus no vehicle. Each morning a mix of paid staff members and parental volunteers in flourescent yellow vests leads lines of walking students along Lecco’s testing streets to the schools’ gates....NYT A5
--On Sunday, the 180,000 people of Mayotte will decide whether they would like to become the 101st department of France. They live on a tropical island in the Indian Ocean, they are almost all Sunni Muslims, and their cultural heritage is overwhelmingly African and Arab. They could become independent just by ticking the right box—but they will vote instead to become fully, irrevocably French...Gwynne Dyer, SBT B5-
-...Bay Ridge, both in its friendly small-town feel and its subject matter—food is not taken lightly in this historically Italian-American enclave. NYT A19—pardon me, but we also used to celebrate Norwegian Independence Day there...