Whenever possible, patronize local businesses and avoid shipping profits out-of-town and out-of-state.

I enjoy eating at locally based Choochai Thai Cuisine for many reasons.

First, the food is great. But also due to the fact that I was introduced by good friend Harsha Gangadharbatla.

We had some great conversations over vegetarian pad thai at Choochai, and that trend continued today.

Their sign illustrates the fading power of the West Texas Sun. But this eatery is a patch of color on the economic landscape nonetheless.

Notable exceptions aside, many of our species’ greatest travesties owe their genesis to good intentions.

The road to hell, and what not.

Suburbia – more specifically urban sprawl – represents one of America’s greatest unintended failures.

Walkable cities

Two family members live in a mid-sized European city close to the city center. Although I’ve neither been there nor inquired about the rent, I’ll wager that the apartment is both small and pricey compared to the average American suburban tract home.

However, there’s one key difference: six different bakeries lie within walking distance. SIX!

And with the bakeries come every other sort of small merchandiser.

You don’t need a vehicle to subsist.

In America – even in relatively contained Lubbock – that does not exist. Even here, roofs stretch to the horizon. Land is plentiful in West Texas (and a neighborhood near you), so we grow horizontally rather than vertically.

We insist on everything cheaper, so nothing is local, and everything stretches farther away into an even bigger Big Box.

Sustainability

The trouble is that suburbia is among the least sustainable endeavors undertaken by this species.

Remove cheap energy (i.e., oil), and suburbia transforms to a ghost town.

As a lark, I walked to the nearest grocery store – a Wal-Mart.

This sojourn drips with sick irony, as Wal-Mart burned out our city centers like economic napalm.

In the name of a cheaper toaster, your small to mid-sized town no longer has an economic center.

I digress.

Suburban hiking

No sidewalk makes the entire trip to Wal-Mart. So one contends with either vehicular traffic, or on this particular day, the muddy remnants of a winter snowstorm. Not exactly a pleasant shopping trip.

This is also the nearest place to catch public transit. Hence, should I decide to park the vehicle in lieu of mass transit, this would be the daily commute.

Rain, infrequent snow, or omnipresent wind included.

It’s my fault that I live in suburbia. Its siren’s song lured my family like so much of America. Now we’re trapped, and energy prices are poised to resume their northward climb.

So we’ll cling to our faux-country homes at the far fringes of our gutted cities that are anything but walkable – woefully prepared for a world post cheap oil.

But that’s a story and a photo for another day.

Today was spent building this second garage shelf. Ten hours when you count cleaning and reorganizing garage and a trip to Lowe’s.

No time for photography.

Both vehicles don’t fit, so it’s my job to make them fit.

I spent the entire day organizing the junk and building the first shelf and a contraption to make the yard tools behave.

The shelving idea came from here. In comparison, mine suck and are still lacking finish trim.

The yard tool contraption is an unnecessarily more complicated version of the one shown in this video.

I apparently learned a thing or two from my dad over the years, and I had a great helper in Chloé, 9.

This work is prominent for two reasons.

First, the photography is symbolic. As a graduation present to me, her dissertation advisor, Wendy Maxian bought me a copy of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism and Human Emotions. Notoriously absent-minded, I promptly misplaced it in August.

This morning I begged my wife to find it, which she did. Hence, as I walked by Tornado of Ideas today looking for the right angle, this title, Existential Cognition, jumped out.

Technologically, it’s the first Project 365 photo taken with an actual camera. I checked out one of the college’s Canon EOS Rebel XS cameras for the weekend.

This allowed me to use aperture priority mode to shoot it at f/5.6, which is as wide open as this 18-55mm lens would go. This allowed a shallower depth of field, making the hideously ugly library building behind to me maximally blurred.

In terms of cropping, the shot was limited due to the blinding sun immediately behind the center of the statue. Finally, the shot was retouched with Photoshop’s Auto Levels adjustment.

Counting on the stock market for your future is increasingly risky these days.

Market volatility drives consumers to safer investments, including precious metals. If General Motors goes out-of-business, your stock is worthless. But gold is still gold, and it has an intrinsic value.

Being a professor, I cannot afford gold. The current up-to-the-moment spot price on gold is $1,130.10 per ounce.

Ouch.

The spot price for silver is $18.25 per ounce at this moment. That I can afford. Hence, this silver eagle and this Buffalo nickle-inspired round represent my initial investment. These “generic” one ounce .999 silver rounds were purchased for $1.50 and $2 above spot. If I can cull together $1,000, it’s sales tax free in Texas!

Check out silver spot prices at Kitco.