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occasional commentary on ideas, issues and life in nevada county CA.
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Monday, March 31, 2003
short one tonightfavorite Jonathan Winters line --"I love to go to the library after lunch and listen to the readers digest". a digest it is, packed with brevity.War links:
Sunday, March 30, 2003
local influence(s) on lyme diseaseThis released 3/27: Forest fragmentation may increase Lyme disease risk:Patchy woods—common in cities and suburbia, and even in rural areas—may have more Lyme disease-carrying ticks, which could increase risk of the disease in these forest remnants...The researchers found that smaller forest fragments had more infected ticks... The study was done in the northeast, and I don't know much about how our lyme spreads (deer? mice?) (in NE they said it was mice) but given that deer are also "edge" species, ie do best with patchy habitat, I'd expect their result to be applicable here too. This is older, but presumably still true: [Western Fence] Lizard May Act As Lyme Disease Panacea (contact with the lizards' blood killed the lyme spirochaetes in the feeding ticks) back from salt mineswell it does not look as though the war is going to end in the proverbial week or two, and my work which was not under control is now in much better shape, and it was either blog or clean the house, so...hello.I am still not writing about the war. You should still go to The Agonist for that. I keep thinking about Burke's (and others') disparaging of "me too" blogs, which seem/feel like the most natural kind to write, his point being that reading multiple weblogs that all pretty much point to the same old (or new) stuff - without adding significant value via original commentary - is a poor use of the reader's time. And a whole lot of that does go on - which hearkens back to Who's your audience / What's the point of your weblog - if your blog is to be a summary of the most worthwhile web reading you've run across lately, there'll be a whole lot of commonality between weblogs. And since you don't (necessarily) know what else your reader is reading, you hate to omit these links. Plus weblog aggregators like Daypop or Technorati(?) are creating a new function of weblogs, as a gauge of popular opinion, which makes putting the links up on your weblog a form of "voting" for what you consider to be the important news of the day. (a function which will presumably soon be exploited and ruined by the morally challenged, who don't care what value they destroy if they can benefit) And yet you do not wish to waste your multiple-blog-reader's time. I think the solution is to still include those links but not to devote a lot of time or page space to them, or to quoting them at length, unless you have something new to say-- or if you have particular reason to believe that your readers have not seen it before. With that said, here's my roundup for a mix of best and least-propagated of the web for a while --
must stop now. filth and squalor are calling. Friday, March 21, 2003
time offI'm going to hold off on blogging for a week or two, it seems intellectually and emotionally dishonest to focus on stuff other than the war, and I don't have anything original to contribute there. The Agonist is doing a superb job of providing up-to-date news.Tuesday, March 18, 2003
moron humor(see previous (next) posts for context)was talking with someone the other day, and the subject of British humor came up, and he recounted having a conversation where he tossed off something about "dry british humor" and was corrected -- "it's not dry, it's mean." Introspection (as to, like, what's funny) suggests that this is probably true. supercilious hypocrites r usOn a metafilter thread at lunch today I ran across this wonderful bit of textBush sets in motion 48-hour timeline for Saddam and sons to flee the country. Then, Saddam Defies Bush Deadline and suggests that Bush himself resign. Wait a minute, I think I see a diplomatic solution here that is in the best interests of BOTH nations... and the first impulse was of course "must - put - in - blog"... then came a genuine thought, regarding my original noble intentions for this weblog - "If you have an open mind and are interested in dialog, in learning from and discussing with others, in exploring ideas and viewpoints that may not match your own, civility is good..".... under which I would count not using quotes like the metafilter one above. or frodo. :-( So, it's one of those moments... And the impulse is to say "yes but...this one's funny & should be shared" but it's not going to be funny to everybody, and, again, it comes back to "who's your audience?". I am regretfully coming to the conclusion that political jokes are not appropriate in mixed company. even if I am the one telling them. this is difficult, because I want to tell them, it feels much more natural to want to inhibit others than myself. The struggle is a good thing: it fosters understanding, to find that I have the urge to become what I look down on. speaking of moronic...(see previous (next) post for context)Good commentary from Slacktivist on the Dixie Chicks brouhaha - We have apparently reached the point where any public criticism of the president demands an apology. Can't remember who linked to this Jan. 2001 The Onion article on Bush, and it's probably a little unfair, yet eerily prescient... speaking of moronic...(the problem with blogs' being in reverse chronological order is that time runs backwards)It's inappropriate. it's lame. everyone in the blogging world has already seen it. I loved what to do in an emergency (everyone's also seen Frodo has failed) weighing inI've said nothing about the upcoming war because I don't know what to saythat hasn't already been said elsewhere, plus I've been on the fence for a long time and in some ways am still there. I don't think sanctions will work but I really wish we had a competent president in charge. Torturing people is a really bad idea for a democracy. Abandoning a country after conquering its ruler(s) is also unwise. Giving up our freedoms to protect the land of the free seems oxymoronic. or just delete that "oxy" part Contest! enter now, you'll probably win!...fat lot of good it will do you personally.ok - no web bugs, no referer logs, no trackbacks, but still some curiosity... so here's the deal: if you are the first person to send me an email with subject line "I win", containing one or more criticisms of this blog (preferably valid ones), I will contribute $50 to the nonprofit organization of your choice. Restrictions: 1. I get veto power; e.g. don't bother suggesting the NRA or irs.gov or you'll have to choose again 2. The org can't be too obscure 2. Family, coworkers, friends and Yubanet staff need not apply. And if you belong to one of these groups, please do not attempt to sway the results. 3. Contest is only open for as long as this post stays up (or until we have a winner) Thank you for playing. (ed. note: as of 10pm PST, still no winner...) Monday, March 17, 2003
our privacy policyhere at ncfocus we take your privacy seriously. that and sheer laziness (plus fear of discovering the truth) combine to ensure that we won't have the faintest idea you were here.Sunday, March 16, 2003
war blogsSalam Pax's Where is Raed? weblog from Baghdad brings to mind Bob Werman's posts from Israel (sorry, can't find most of them) at the time of the 1991 Gulf war. This post of his in particular seems timeless:From the very beginning the war reporting has failed the - and, for comic relief - [A war] anecdote: following a kidney transplant operation, the Off-road bloggingI'm a sucker for eloquence.Took an evening off to go exploring, & found a couple of weblogs off the beaten track that I like very much--from Oregon, Notes on the Atrocities, of which its creator states: The nature of politics is one of balance between public good and personal gain. Politician, federal agency, state, citizen--all must work to create just law from individual need. What results is either a well-organized polity or a looting. It covers current political events like many blogs but does so particularly well; no soundbites to quote though, so go read it yourself. And De Spectaculis ("throwing myself to the lions"), whose creator speaks of him?self as follows: and has put up a Conflict Impact Analysis Primer online. Excerpt from his Powerful Rhetoric post: Rhetoric is an art not to be dismissed. It can move mountains thought securely rooted, it can light fires best left unkindled, and it can stir up souls thought long dead. The very best rhetoric speaks the honest truth and speaks it in a way that truth passes through the ears and into the heart, moving men and women at their core and then moving them in the world. Saturday, March 15, 2003
welcome to lovely scenic sodden nevada county(oops, it got garbled when it Published. cleaned it up some, removed more over-the-top material, ie cheated and edited the post. not that you are likely to care.)well I was going to just post this -
but I can't now or you'll think I'm a whore. No slut though, no sirree, I only link to the top stuff. Mostly because as Brad points out it is so hard to find the the rest. (ed. note--not really, just hard to find the rest that hasn't already been blogrolled to death) well while you're here, since you obviously didn't take my advice, a couple of questions for you and some links-- first the questions-- I'm up in smalltown/rural Nevada County CA where politics is a contact sport - and there was quite a battle last year for control of the Board of Supervisors, which the so-called conservatives won by 20 votes with the aid of $28k in mystery money (from 21st Century Insurance Group ? (la times, name and pw imahogg)) Fortunately we have the dedicated team at Yubanet for the county scoop online (The Union has had some good reporting on growth issues lately, but historically it has tended to be less informative), and KVMR news if you'd rather hear than read it, but it feels awfully lonely. Are there other communities going through these struggles and getting the word out with online news 'papers'? if so where are they? please email me if you know of any. Thanks... 2nd question - I keep vaguely remembering articles that I'd forgotten to save links to, and some of them are ones you'd need to search for by concept rather than by keyword (for ex. George Lakoff's metaphor of liberal vs conservative as family roles), so they stay lost for a long time or forever. Is there a metafilter-equivalent out there for the memory-impaired, where when we're being tormented by a lost link we can post a description of the page/article/post & get the URL from someone who knows? links:
hey, thanks for visiting. Thursday, March 13, 2003
our animal friendsDavid now has a bear and a bobcat, and fewer chickens than before. Perished pet poultry plus peripatetic predators produces a pioneer perspective. As in a fervent desire to kill the buggers.speaking of buggers, there was one hanging out in the kitchen doorway waiting for me when I got home tonight. It was a widder man, not a widder woman (smaller, no hourglass figure) - but a widder nonetheless. It makes you look at your clothes differently, & wish that see-through sleeves and legs were In, so you could determine who else was by visual rather than tactile means. been working like a dog. would have something to say, maybe, but brain is dead, too tired, not enough sleep lately. recommendation - if you try Provigil, skip the caffeine that day, else you may be sorry late that night, and the next day. Here. Go read Burke's crazy taxi piece - What grips me is the sense that an extraordinary compound mistake is about to be made, the kind that shifts the forward motion of history onto a new track. It is like being a passenger in a car driven too quickly and erratically by someone who won’t listen to anyone else in the car. Even when you want to get to the same destination as the driver, you can’t help but feel that there’s a way to go there which doesn’t carry the same risk of flying through the guardrails and off a cliff. Wednesday, March 12, 2003
small, tasteful rant on email abominationsactually it is not my rant, it is the work of a revered technology pundit -Unless I have specifically asked for an attachment, don't send one... Why do I say this? ...They're unsafe. File attachments have become the preferred virus carrier for the jerks who like to pollute people's computers. (note that this is merely a prophylactic rant - you, gentle reader, have sent me nothing whatsoever.) Tuesday, March 11, 2003
idea for new weekend tourist attractantNevada City's always looking for an excuse to throw a party/parade, especially in wintertime when business is slow, so maybe we should put out a call for volunteers to star in our own unstirring rendition of Frozen Dead Guy Days?(found via Dave Barry's weblog) Motto of the MonthDavid Weinberger's weblog, aka Joho the Blog, is
Conservative psychology and politics IIAnother possible reason for why conservative politics are dirtier (see previous post) - maybe the average conservative is more reasonable than the average liberal...The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. ...which would leave a power vacuum in conservative politics, which would be filled by individuals with more personal motivations. In fact I have data supporting this hypothesis (i.e. I read it on metafilter and didn't write it myself) -- ...One thing I like about being more liberal is that liberals I have been involved with tend to take personal action on behalf of their beliefs; they get involved...The conservatives I know (I have many friends who...oh, never mind) are perfectly happy to let other people take those actions for them; their activism is in agreement. another reason to keep your website up to dateSomeone might visit your website in order to get an email address.Someone might read on said website that email to said address would go to a person who was an acquaintance. Someone might send email to said acquaintance at said address, and when a reply was not immediately forthcoming, send another with a subject line like "Excuse me, are you sentient?" It would be unfortunate if the recipient of the two emails turned out to be someone else entirely. note: this post could also be entitled "another reason to look before you leap" Monday, March 10, 2003
Conservative psychology and politicsIt seems a lot of people lately have been noticing a pattern of fundamental differences between liberal and conservative politics--that the conservative faction is far more often the one that, for example, cheats on polls and refuses interviews and debates, argues using fists, jams the Democratic "get out the vote" calls, harasses the opposition by eviscerating cats and hammering nails into tires, has hypocritical pundits, etc. Yet as individuals, certainly the conservatives I know are just as ethical as the liberals, so how does this imbalance emerge?A few of us were talking about it in the bar Friday night while ingesting the usual epiphanogenic (merlot) and it came to us, it doesn't stem from ideology it stems from psychology, and ratchets, and discrimination or lack thereof. Conservatives seem to have, or need, certainty, absolutes--they're not the ones driving around town sporting the "I could be wrong" bumperstickers, they tend to expound rather than query. This is correlated with a tendency to see things in black and white--either you're with us or you're against us, either you're good or you're evil--there's no desire to see or weigh shades of gray. (For ex. I've been told by a (conservative) coworker that I have no business expressing the belief that driving an SUV is more harmful to the environment, because I also harm the environment by driving, period--in other words only those who are 100% pure should make judgements, everyone else shouldn't). Given that politics by its nature does not reward candid behavior, a certain amount of deception is inevitable, which leads black-and-whiters to say "all politicians are sleazy" and newspaper editorials to say "both sides are equally to blame". And if you can't/won't make distinctions, you won't be turned off by additional sleazy behavior on your side, so there's no force acting to restrain the flowering of sleaze in your faction. I do not know how we could go about improving this situation--perhaps more merlot next week will reveal the solution... (disclaimer: this is obviously a generalization, will not apply in all instances. "pattern" and "generalization" seem to be synonymous...) Friday, March 07, 2003
heroesVia Sisyphus Shrugged -"We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say 'It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.' Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes." And most heroic are those who come forward when others would fear to. Terry McAteer is a hero. So too, for other reasons, is Bill Drake. Wednesday, March 05, 2003
talk about obvious...That "Belaboring the obvious" tagline doesn't seem to be very original. Slacktivist has been Stating the obvious since June 2002, and stickybuffalo.com has been belaboring the obvious since 2001. Guess that makes us an obvious triumvirate...Don't miss Slacktivist's series on daily devotions with our president ("Once again, let's read along with President Bush in his daily devotional of choice, My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers...") e.g. March 4, March 5. From 3/4: ...Chambers' theme is the sovereignty of God. This same theme is expressed in the old gag about summarizing the Old Testament in five words: "God is God. You're not." weblog browse strategies and resultsHow do you find the good stuff on (or via) weblogs?You read a few good ones (ideally ones with plenty of outbound links), and you check the Daypop Top 40 ("a list of links that are currently popular with webloggers from around the world") for anything else big that you've missed. confession: the authority here is but a single step ahead of the reader(s), today was my first visit to Daypop. The reward was Joel on Building [online] Communities with Software - In software, as in architecture, design decisions are just as important to the type of community that develops or fails to develop. When you make something easy, people do it more often. When you make something hard, people do it less often. In this way you can gently encourage people to behave in certain ways which determine the character and quality of the community. Will it feel friendly? Is there thick conversation, a European salon full of intellectuals with interesting ideas? Or is the place deserted, with a few dirty advertising leaflets lying around on the floor that nobody has bothered to pick up?Nice comparison of different online communities, their character, what design decisions led them there. Good lessons. now we're evenFrom Lance Knobel last week -According to The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire (subscribers only), Michael Drosnin, author of the ludicrous hoax The Bible Code, "gets meetings with Pentagon's top intelligence officer and CIA's No. 3, on his theory that bin Laden's hideaway is revealed in the Old Testament's ancient Hebrew". From BBC News, Nov. 2001 article on Dr Bashir Mehmood, past director of the the Khushab nuclear reactor in Pakistan - In the 1980s he was ridiculed for putting forward a method for calculating the temperature of hell and for suggesting that genies could be controlled and their energy harnessed. improving childrens' educationJust ran across this retrospectively obvious idea (as in, fascinating but makes you feel dumb not to have thought of it) on Amitai Etzioni's Personal and Communitarian Reflections weblog (via Lance Knobel) -Small town America still sometimes comes up with ideas all should consider. Pass on the word: The Lebanon, Pennsylvania school district plans to include evaluations of parental involvement with student report cards. The evaluations may include sections on whether the parent attends parent-teacher conferences, returns forms that have to be signed, and whether the child comes to school healthy and properly dressed. Those who receive negative evaluations would be offered suggestions and their child could be assigned a mentor (e.g., community volunteers or high school students). (Harrisburg Patriot, 2/11/03) Tuesday, March 04, 2003
more journalism linksThe Coming Plague author Laurie Garrett goes to Davos as reporter for Newsday, fires off candid email about her perceptions to her friends, which propagates all over the net, much to her dismay. Scott Rosenberg has the story -...I think what irked a lot of people on the Net was the feeling they got that the story she told her friends was very different from the one she was likely to tell readers of her "official" work. Great lazy journalism example - this excerpt doesn't do it justice - ..."The point this study makes," says McKenna, "is that when given a choice, more voters prefer investing regional transportation dollars in a new monorail system...." name that tuneThe Yubanet link (here) re the Preserving the American Dream (anti-smart growth) Conference led me to this other report, with quotations. See if any of this sounds familiar -The emerging assault on smart growth does not appear to have the laudable aim of getting planning to function more intelligently and effectively. Instead, it appears aimed at discrediting the entire notion of using government to promote beneficial development patterns. Monday, March 03, 2003
Responsible Journalism IIThe Union published the results of last week's online "poll" today, and sure enough, it showed 70% were in favor of impeaching Gray Davis. So the interesting thing to do now is to randomly survey Nevada County households and see how the "online" and "random" percentages compare. In other words, quantify the amount, if any, of online "poll" bias (which could be an artifact, or could be deliberate) & the direction in which it is skewing the results. This would be news.I've emailed Richard Somerville the editor suggesting that they do the story. another Blogger lesson learnedCompose your posts somewhere off in a text editor, then copy and paste them into Blogger. If you compose within Blogger, and you make a minor mistake (for example, you hit the Post button when no longer online) you may find your post is gone for good.and perhaps, depending on what was in it, it is good. Generally it will not make you happy though. I hate thisHell is a place where you have to make phone calls to hostile strangers for eternity....which I was going to do tonight. but I lost my nerve, or rather was mistaken in believing I possessed it in the first place. could pick up phone but could not dial etc. It was a grand plan though. Too bad we are only graded on the implementation. Sunday, March 02, 2003
how would *you* explain the internet?From Net tech saving the world, a metafilter threadtalking about bringing pedal powered wireless access to rural Laos and digressing to an African village - At the time, we explained the Internet to them (I had to explain what I did for a living). In the end, we settled for describing it as a system whereby you could ask any question, and get ten answers back. You didn't know whether the answers were right - or whether any of them were right. But you'd get answers. Blogger tipsToday I helped Eric set up his Booktown radio show's blog using Blogger; he was using Netscape on a Mac, and while it worked ok there was a hitch, namely the "Post" and "PostAndPublish" buttons were invisibly "offscreen" to the right, and in order to see them he needed to type in a long line of text (which could be just all spaces) that caused the frame to scroll itself leftwards. So if you're doing things on Mac and/or with Netscape and you can't see these buttons you may need to do likewise.Also you might not be able to use Blogger if you've set your security settings to be more stringent than the defaults (disabled cookies maybe?)--if so, you won't ever get to the "edit your blog" page, it'll just keep redirecting you to log on (without saying why). If this happens, reset your security settings to default then try again. And if you've turned off image loading, you won't see the tabs. you will feel that something is missing; you will be right.(ed.) And don't start your post with curly brackets, which I think was my original sin. Special characters in general can be dangerous. (I am in a position to know, having written code that barfed on them myself) If you publish your post but it doesn't show up on your webpage, click on the "Options" button on "Edit this Post" and see if it's posting to the future. Sometimes it decides to do this, for no reason that I can see. BTW (which BTW stands for "by the way") putting up a weblog costs you nothing if you stay with normal blogger (ie not Blogger Pro) and you host it on blogspot.com--there'll be an ad on the page but as you can see it's tasteful, or for $15 you can make the ad go away. So we are not talking a big (or any) investment of money here. Just time... Saturday, March 01, 2003
your weblog's target audienceIf you write a weblog, it'll have very different content depending on who you're writing it for--and, if it's a "one size fits all" blog, it'll have the usual problem of not fitting anyone well. As I see it these are your possible (and possibly overlapping) target audiences--
And all of this I guess brings up a question...who are you? I'm curious...for all I know you're nobody (note absence of web counter on page) but if not, feel free to drop me a one-line answer. |
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