"This is an important insight as we look at right wing victimology — it's based upon old fashioned notions of honor that still characterizes certain corners of southern culture, but which has been incorporated into American conservative thinking at large as it adopted these regional folkways as its tribal norms. (The book Southern Honor by Bertram Wyatt Brown explains the whole "honor" mystique in great depth and it's probably as good a guide to the victimization reflex as anything.)"

"One item in the Transition tool kit is “reskilling” – reviving energy-frugal skills that past generations took for granted, such as how to repair something rather than buying new and how to grow and preserve food. Says Proulx-Lough, who has spent time in Totnes twice this year: “A workshop on darning socks – that’s practical action, and an excuse to do things together!”
Among other Transition activities:

• Planting nut trees on street corners and orchards in the city.

• Signing up 50 people to buy solar hot-water heaters so the units can be purchased at a discount.

• Interviewing seniors who recall what living a low-energy life was like.

• Holding bicycle-repair workshops"

"The purpose of the committee is presumably to ensure that the company doesn't waste money. And yet the result is that the company pays 10 times as much."

Time for a competitor to steal eBay's alienated seller population wholesale… and leave the wholesale sellers to eBay.