In which we get cranky about leaf blowers

Please, if you pay a yard care service to keep your homestead up to snuff, be aware that your yard and driveway might not need an entire hour of leafblowing every morning - 5 minutes would be more like it - and for the additional 55 minutes squandered in toying with the leaves, sending them hither and yon, your kind, sweet neighbors' teeth are being set on edge (which, if you're a dentist, might be lucrative - please disregard this)

So... waste of money, waste of gas, needless exhaust emissions, increasingly fragile neighborhood sanity...

you can google leafblower emissions for more information.

Censored blog comments here, please

Update II: created a blog for this instead; it's the Nevada County Comment Purgatory, and is located in the far right column of Nevada County Voices. (Yes, this was probably a great waste of time.)

Update: mea culpa, false alarm, looks like I got fooled by paginated comments (and broken permalinks) and perhaps also page cacheing . I'll leave this post up though; it may come in handy in future as a "deleted comments" repository, since local bloggers do sometimes do this.
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Comments might be getting deleted over at Russ Steele's blog, particularly on his recent Transportation Commission Talking Points post (wherein The Union editor Jeff Pelline takes Mr. Steele to task for irking the Economic Resource Council with his global warming denialism, and I offer (still in vain) to pay Russ if he'll meet me for coffee and intellectually honest discussion on global warming, and Steven Frisch rolls his eyes at the flat-earthers...)

If you've submitted a comment over there - or on any other local blog - that didn't survive moderation despite civil wording (and you're someone who's willing to talk to me in person - i.e., reasonable people only, please), I hope you will resubmit it as a comment below. Enquiring minds want to know...

Voting on propositions

Yes, I know, you already voted. But if not - Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, who studies these things, has his choices here.

The journal Nature endorses Obama - from values of scientific enquiry

For you nonscience folks - Nature is the most important journal in science.

The values of scientific enquiry, rather than any particular policy positions on science, suggest a preference for one US presidential candidate over the other.
...
[S]cience is bound by, and committed to, a set of normative values — ... [such as] placing a disinterested view of the world as it is ahead of our views of how it should be; recognizing that ideas should be tested in as systematic a way as possible; appreciating that there are experts whose views and criticisms need to be taken seriously: these are all attributes of good science that can be usefully applied when making decisions about the world...
On a range of topics, science included, Obama has surrounded himself with a wider and more able cadre of advisers than McCain...tends to seek a range of opinions and analyses ... also exhibits pragmatism...
[McCain] fails to educate himself on crucial matters ... frequently makes decisions that seem capricious or erratic. ...
[A] commitment to seeking good advice and taking seriously the findings of disinterested enquiry seems an attractive attribute for a chief executive. ...
[If this journal had a vote] ... it would cast its vote for Barack Obama.

Here's the link (pdf)

N.C. citizen journalism project needs your discerning eye

Greetings dear reader, and apologies - I've been away from this blog (and from most other blogs, and from any Nevada County focus whatsoever) - been working on a nonlocal story.

But while researching it I've run across some intriguing Nevada County material in the UCSF Tobacco Documents Archive.
(which is addictive, a wealth of diversions, an impediment to sleep and to unidirectional progress on anything, it's Google as an n-dimensional electron microscope...)

You might think that those in the tobacco industry wouldn't trouble themselves about events in our little county, but they did. And we can see this, because they kept records, which - thanks to the anti-tobacco attorneys - are available, to you, online.

And in those records, you'll see some local names, and, potentially, see what they were doing.

But I can't decipher all the handwriting, and I need to return to my main project - so I'm hoping to enlist your help:

Can you decipher the handwriting in this May 8 1991 memo from "RCM"?
(confidential to RCM: please work on your penmanship, which has been - accurately - labeled 'illegible'.)

Here's what I think I could make out; please submit any additions & corrections in the comments to this post.

"Call to Todd Juvinall, Supervisor
Left ? message, wish to discuss Nev ? ord, ques & suggestions,
as a followup to his ? of 04/04/91. Req'd that he
call us back when in (prob Thursday), and discuss same.
Gave our toll free 800# for return call.

? present ?
2) disc'd NC issue w/ both ? & ?...
They agreed w/pay initial ?
use N/C as a "reasonable" model, a la Colfax

3? D/R to contact Greg Cook @ F/Tucks's disc Nev City ? N/C
? with him.
Then will disc further options, ie - send D/R(?) up to N/C for on-site activities.
-RCM"

Extra credit, if you can guess who D/R might be.

(Note for newcomers to the tobacco PR world - this background article will help you get a feel for the lay of the land;
or if you prefer aquatic metaphors, read Paul Graham's The Submarine to discover how much of your information intake comes from PR; including, for decades, concerted efforts to deny the reality and cloud the urgency of global climate disruption.

"People have simply no idea how serious this issue is. ...[If we don't fix it,] you can give up on civilization as we know it."
)

E Clampus Vitus in the New York Times

That's something I never expected to see.

Promoting Offbeat History Between the Drinks.

Mishaps mark John McCain's record as naval aviator

Does everyone already know about this? It was news to me.

LA Times article; Rolling Stone ("disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty").

via Barry Sussman at Nieman Watchdog

Another thought on why we bury the lede

We bury the lede (aka take our time in getting to the point, aka circumlocute) because that's what we've been socialized to do in conversation, where if we don't, we get tagged with less-than-favorable labels.

The NCFocus staff seems to be averaging one thought a year on this topic; here's last year's.

We lost Russell Towle

Dutch Flat environmentalist, author Towle dies in auto accident - back in early August.

I hadn't known about his blog, North Fork Trails.

What a tragedy.


And it's the 2nd case I know of in 6 months where an elderly driver has inadvertently caused bodily harm to a member of his family. Watch out, folks.

Small town journalism, etc

This is interesting - Sharon Dunwoody explains and compares small vs. large community newspaper coverage of the same story.

I think in the past I have been rather naive.

( Note to fellow techno-luddites: the cognoscenti would put a mini-post like this into a TumbleLog on their sidebar, or just tag it with del.icio.us. )


But since this is growing into more than a mini-post, something else I've been meaning to put up:

Someone recently asked my thoughts on "the strange bedfellows that are being created to promote blogging vs. MSM"; I answered:

In brief, to the extent it's a "vs.": it's exactly akin to the strange bedfellows (students and imams) that joined together to overthrow the Shah of Iran.

It didn't turn out so well for the students.

The trick is to avoid the "vs.", to create a chimaera that takes advantage of the strengths of both. This would require trust - and more importantly, behavior to earn that trust - from both.

(I believe we were both using "bloggers" as shorthand for "people who aren't journalists by training, who have blogs and may do some citizen journalism [and who criticize newspaper coverage...]")

Best of John Mashey, on climate and other science

Update - I've put these into a section at the bottom of Mashey's wikipedia page; so add more links there, not here.

• Aug 2008, How to learn about science (Deltoid)
• Oct 2007, What to do about poor science reporting (Deltoid)
• Oct 2007, History of AGW Consensus (In It for the Gold)

---

Other relevant links -

• Tactic - the Gish gallop (hat tip: Int. J. Inact.)
• Tim Lambert's So what's wrong with Lomborg?

Update on Russ Steele, who says no funding from WFA

Update, a day later: I've asked Russ to come over and submit a comment setting the record straight, if any of this is incorrect.

Update, 4 days later: And I've now also asked Russ to come over and submit a comment saying that this is correct, since I haven't heard from him in response.
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Upon reading this IJI post on The Way of the Astroturf, after watching the new Naomi Oreskes talk on the Western Fuels Association, and after being rebuffed by local denier Russ Steele when I sought to talk to him in person about why our views on climate differ, I called him just now at his home and asked,

"Have you ever received direct or indirect compensation, directly or indirectly, from the Western Fuels Association?"

Russ responded "I haven't received any funding or anything from anybody" - not for his blog, not for his public speaking on climate, or any other such action. And he reported that to his knowledge, the Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation (ncfocus coverage) is only funded by its three board members, except for some donations "which go exclusively to college scholarships for local high school students", and that to his knowledge, the board members don't receive any outside funding that's subsequently funneled through them to SESF.

(Russ, if I got any of this wrong, please set it straight in the comments below. And to be 100% clear, "indirect compensation" includes compensation of any sort - including past and expected future - to family members.)

of course, now I'm thinking of additional questions that I should have asked, but didn't think to. Anyone else have suggestions, put them in the comments...

Why does [name][hyperbolic emotion verb] Hospice?

2012-01-09 update - post removed because it stooped to ad hom personality issues.  My apologies. 

Amy Goodman in Java Johns this morning; am still kicking myself

So Reinette Senum and I were both in Java John's getting our respective caffeine fixes an hour or so ago, and Reinette says "there's Amy Goodman" - and lo, there's Amy Goodman, who spoke in Grass Valley last night. And who comes in, and who Reinette approaches, telling her "You've been an inspiration to me... I'm now running for City Council."

And your silver tongued correspondent chimes in with the oh so informative "yeah, she's going to win"; but do I think to mention, say, Reinette's having put on the community Peak Oil forum? the community Climate Change forum? her role in Step It Up 2007, or in last year's Climate Cafes? her & Kelly's column in The Union? The upcoming weekly Nevada City Saturday morning farmers' market? PowerUp-NC? last December's lightbulb exchange?

and that's probably just scratching the surface.

conundrum

(which has nothing to do with blogging)
How do you go about apologizing to someone for something that they probably didn't even notice, and that - if they didn't - you'd really rather they continued not to notice?