Conundrum

Related.
Suppose you know someone who engages in boorish behavior; what kind of feedback can you give such a person, that'd be most likely to help them to recognize it, to see how others perceive it, and to stop it?
Particularly if they're wired to interpret criticism as insult.

Constructive answers only, with sample dialogue, please.
(if you make any other comments, save a copy, because it may get deleted.)

Bonus Q: how, as a society, can we most constructively integrate people who are "high dudgeon" addicts?

Knock knock: In Nevada County, it ain't the Avon Lady

... more like the ovine lady, or a portion thereof.

(this isn't news anymore, being 2 weeks old, but - particularly for city-folk who don't have a feel for our local culture - I did want to document it. Beware: photo below.)

News sources report that on the night of Oct 30, a severed sheep's head showed up on the doorstep of CA District 4 Democratic candidate Charlie Brown's campaign headquarters in Grass Valley.

Police were, of course, investigating.



Photo from Calitics (where it's a goat), story from The Union (where it's a sheep).


(And in other news, we have a new President-Elect. Good news: this one comes with a brain that isn't still shrink-wrapped - and is still attached.)

Jeff Pelline responds to Messenger story

Updated Nov 17; Nuke Brunswick responds in comments

Jeff Pelline's response, which I'd requested earlier today regarding the Mountain Messenger story:

I’m flattered this paper choose to write about me, but the fact that this paper wouldn’t contact me for a story about me says everything I need to know about The Mountain Messenger and this report’s credibility.
[Reporter's response here in comments - Ed.]
If I were going to write a story about the Editor of The Mountain Messenger, I would contact him or her directly. I received no messages from the paper: the first I heard of it was from blogger Anna Haynes. Also, who is reporter “Nuke Brunswick?” The name doesn’t appear on the list of staff members. When our reporter writes a story, we put our real names and contact information at the end of the story.

I also can state that the story is full of inaccuracies. If someone had called, I would have pointed out:

•Here’s the story about the Fire Safe Council that ran on The Union’s Web site about an hour after our meeting with them.

The article ran in the paper the next day as well — on the front page. So we didn’t “refuse to publish anything.” We published two stories: one on the Web and one in print.

The reason we had to abruptly end the Fire Safe Council meeting was to post the story on our Web site to match the press release that had been handed to our news competitors prior to our meeting. We were the first to inquire about this story, based on a tip we got, but the last to get the information. We compete in real time with a radio station, not on daily print newspaper cycle. Since this incident, we have run other stories about the Fire Safe Council’s efforts.

I also worry about being treated fairly by some local groups whose board members also happen to be owners of the competing radio station or other news outlets — something we encounter from time to time. For example, the Fire Safe Council also has board members who are owners of our competitors. I was assured this relationship — and potential conflict of interest — has no bearing on the timing of how news gets disseminated.

•As for the event at Miners Foundry, it was pitched as a communitywide, all inclusive media event. The Union, however, wasn’t invited. When we learned this, we met with the Miners Foundry and said we’d like to join as sponsors. They were happy to have us. We volunteered to help set up audio and video equipment, and donate $200 for food. We decided to back out of the event a day later after reading on the Democratic Party Web site that people of “like minds” were being invited to this so-called nonpartisan event. As it turned out, the GOP was holding an election party at Tailgaters. We wouldn’t sponsor that event either, for the same reasons. The “code of ethics” in our newsroom states we cannot sponsor partisan political events. I thought most news organizations, including the ones here, had such a policy.

As for the coverage of the Miners Foundry event (as distinct to sponsorship), we published a story in the paper promoting the party, and we published a large photo of the Miners Foundry party on the front page of the paper the day after the election showing the party-goers. I venture to say we gave it more publicity than anybody. We also received a thank you note from the Miners Foundry for covering the event. They also apologized for the misunderstanding. We also discussed some future coverage of Miners Foundry events. You’ll be reading plenty of news about the Miners Foundry, the Fire Safe Council and other groups in the future.

I hope this helps clarify matters. I suppose we’re obliged to show the article to a lawyer for a second opinion, but for now, we’ll just drop the matter. I’m surprised The Mountain Messenger would run an article like this.

Walled gardens with a vengeance? Jeff Pelline covered in Mountain Messenger article

Update: or not; Jeff P. responds (and Yubanet puts the Mountain Messenger story online)

Fear and Loathing in a One Newspaper Community?
NevadaCo Wrestles with Media Monopoly

Seems like it was only yesterday that I was praising The Union editor Jeff Pelline for breaching the paper's walled garden, by enabling RSS feeds for their on-site weblogs. But another day, another revision of the story (or not; see Jeff P.'s response): the Mountain Messenger reports that elsewhere in the garden, the walls have grown massive, heavily fortified, and topped with broken glass.

"Intimidation and retaliation tactics have long been seen as one of the paper's, and Pelline's, main ways of dealing with dissent in the community. ... waging a vendetta against radio station KNCO ... '[Pelline] wanted an exclusive story and when we told him that we had given it to KNCO as well, he said "The meeting is over" and he left the room'..."

"...not a further drop of ink about the Foundry would appear in print if the paper was not allowed to participate..."

I emailed Jeff Pelline asking for his response, since it doesn't appear that he was contacted for the story. (his response is here)

I'm trying to get the Mountain Messenger to start a blog, so they can put their Nevada County stories online.
(Some other Messenger articles (ballot, tourists, business) have appeared on Yubanet, but not this one, as of this writing.)


Related:
the inflammatory Haute Trash and Stuckey editor-vs.-public email exchanges from pre-Pelline years;
March 2007 'arrogance and censorship' NCFocus post;
my suggestion from back near the start of the Messenger-vs-Union conflict: "It seems to me the Mountain Messenger ought to...(un)cover Nevada County. Then The Union could retaliate... and it could escalate from there, and the 2 counties would benefit enormously...newspaper sales would skyrocket."

Introducing the Comment Purgatory

(Update & bug report: as displayed on NCVoices, the Purgatory's comment permalinks don't go where they should, and I don't have time to fix it now. Workaround: go to the sidebar of the Purgatory's home page (or here), and click on the comment from there.)

I don't know if there's a demand for this, and I do know I shouldn't have taken the time to create it, but - the Nevada County Comment Purgatory is now open for business. It sits over in the far right column of Nevada County Voices, and is a place for you to put your civil comments that got rejected locally.

It's an experiment.

The Union's blogs - soon on NCVoices

Next-day update: this isn't the whole story

It turns out The Union's blogs now have RSS feeds, which is excellent news (if not exactly new; when did they get them?). Kudos to Jeff Pelline for opening up the walled garden.
(and auxiliary kudos for recently taking Russ Steele to task for using his official position on the ERC as a soapbox for flat-earth preaching)

I'll be adding these blogs to Nevada County Voices soon.
(originally mistyped "Nevada County Vices", which frames our home turf in a different way...)

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.
---------------
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.