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Ideas, issues and life in nevada county CA
it's a weblogBelaboring the obvious since 2003
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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...) |
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