Thomas Friedman’s now famous book The World is Flat laid out a gloomy future for American workers. According to Friedman, technology has leveled the playing field at both ends of the labor market. For high-tech, high-skill American workers, outsourcing to India will change their ideas of job security as engineering, computer programming and the like are moved to cheaper, equally skilled Indian workers. At the other end of the labor market, relatively low-skilled American manufacturing workers are being undercut by cheap Chinese workers.

The Bush Translator--President George Bush interrupted prime time last Monday. He had on his red “don’t f*#@ with me” tie and looked very dapper.

While Albuquerque frets about its dwindling aquifer, Terry McMains is trying to get the world, or at least the state, to listen to his solution: rainwater harvesting. McMains is not a rain farmer—he doesn’t plow through puddles, nor does he collect water in buckets. Instead, he installs high-tech rainwater harvesting systems with the company he founded, Aqua Harvest, Inc. The idea for the company was birthed when Rancho Viejo, Santa Fe’s first master-planned community with a rainwater harvesting system, was built in the late ’90s. McMains was a contractor for the project and thought he could create a company that could help alter the course of New Mexico’s water plight. Last week, he found some time to sit down with the Alibi for a chat.

In 1956, Albuquerque was outfitted with a new drainage system—one that has remained largely unchanged ever since.

Local mobile home park residents are, or at least should be, keeping an eye on developments at the Del Rey Mobile Home Park. Their future may depend on it.

I’m sitting in on the Robert Vigil trial. In a room full of blue suits and starched collars, the image that comes to mind is the glow of a colonoscopy monitor. Watching the tracks of dirty money in the guts of a corrupt state government isn’t much different from watching a barium enema work its way through the tail end of the human digestive system.

Dateline: England--A homeowner in the southwestern town of Treovis has been cited by local police for “placing a garden gnome with intent to cause harassment.” BBC News reports that Gordon MacKillop was woken just before midnight by two officers who warned him that the gnome was offensive to his neighbors. Apparently, MacKillop’s neighbor, former policeman John McLean, had complained that the statue is placed in an “annoying position” and is upsetting to potential buyers viewing his home. The statue in question is just under two feet tall and features a gnome dressed as a police officer, standing between a German shepherd and a flashlight-sized nightlight. Mr. MacKillop told the BBC he bought the lighted gnome to deter criminals after his motorcycle was stolen from his driveway. “I’m not having the police tell me what type of garden gnome I can have in my garden,” said MacKillop. “This is a standard gnome I bought from a retail store. If they are considered to be harassing, they should be withdrawn from sale.”

[RE: News Feature, “Quiet the Trains,” Sept. 14-20] Transportation, industry and commerce—not to mention romance. What is there that doesn't love a train? Only that which doesn't have a soul. Ahem.