night class

I learned two things tonight.

1. Young rabbits that run out into the road will freeze rather than run when faced with oncoming headlights; so you the driver should swerve, rather than jamming on your brakes.

2. I did not and do not have the courage to do the compassionate thing, and run over it a second time.

Update: anyone with half a brain would have realized that there were alternatives - like letting it breathe exhaust from the tailpipe - feel free to draw the obvious inference.

Of course, if you _do_ swerve, that will probably turn out to be the wrong thing to do too. Damage to automobile, driver and passenger(s) is a real possibility.

Weblog population explosion in Nevada County!

[Reader, this is what's known as "hyperbole"]

Not only is The Union fearlessly getting ready to commence to begin dipping its toe into the future of journalism, but it also turns out (via above column) that earlier this month Nevada County acquired a new blogger, Russ Steele, proprietor of NC Transportation Infrastructure and NC Media Watch. He uses mostly the same terms I would, to describe goals and methods - "modest growth", truth, accuracy...but somehow ends up in a very different place. I still have enormous trouble understanding how this works.

Welcome to the local blogging fold, Russ and soon Rich.

Also NCTV now has a blog.

Sadly, the explosion has bypassed Yubanet - nothing new on their weblogs page. And Eric, Booktown is looking awfully stale.

[complaint deleted]

Machiavelli

I have been reading Machiavelli (The Prince and The Discourses), the former being the Strunk and White of power politics. Nevada County politics could be worse, at present it is still not common practice to "extinguish" (Machiavelli's euphemism, or his translator's) deposed rulers and their entire families.

Many passages jumped out, landing here:

...a general rule that never fails: a prince who is not wise himself cannot be wisely counseled, unless by chance he should have a sole counselor by whom he is ruled in all matters. There could be such a situation, but it would not last long, for the counselor would soon deprive the prince of his state. An unwise prince, having to consider the advice of several counselors, would never receive concordant opinions, and he would not be able to reconcile them on his own. His counselors would pursue their own interests and he would know neither how to rule them nor how to understand them...

...as all history proves by a multitude of examples, whoever organizes a state and establishes its laws must assume that all men are wicked and will act wickedly whenever they have the chance to do so....

there was never anyone who ordained new and unusual laws among a people without having recourse to God, for they would not otherwise have been accepted. This is so because prudent men know of many beneficial things which, having no persuasive evidence for them, they cannot get others to accept. Consequently, wise men who wish to avoid this difficulty resort to divine authority.

For example, the advent of general anaesthesia -

Religious traditionalists held that mothers ought to fulfil the "edict of bringing forth children in sorrow" as laid down in the Holy Bible.... One clergyman saw the new chloroform anaesthesia as "a decoy from Satan, apparently offering to bless woman; but, in the end, it will harden society and rob God of the deep earnest cries, which arise in time of trouble for help."... mutterings that infants delivered painlessly should be denied the sacrament...
[But then an anaesthesia advocate] cited Genesis 2:21: "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof". Casting God in the role of The Great Anaesthetist ... the suggestion that God Himself employed anaesthesia helped carry the day...

Differences between the conduct of the multitude and the conduct of princes do not derive from differences in their nature, that being the same in both (though if there be some superiority either way, it will be found on the side of the people)...

it is not without reason that the voice of the people has been likened to the voice of God, for popular opinion is amazingly reliable in its prognostications, so much so that the people would seem to have hidden powers by which to foresee their future ills and triumphs...*

Steve Kurson, somewhere in Brad DeLong's comments -

• When are [crowds of people thinking independently] wise?
  When the crowd is diverse, and when members are making their decisions relatively independently of each other. Again, book is full of work demonstrating the value of diversity and the perils of what Surowiecki [author of The Wisdom of Crowds] calls dependent decision-making.
  
• Why are they wise?
  In part, it's because a larger group of people can simply draw on more information, is more likely to have diverse perspectives. But as Surowiecki explains early on, the core of the idea is actually a simple mathematical truism: if the group of problem-solvers is diverse, the errors they make in solving a problem will not be correlated. Therefore, those errors will cancel themselves out, allowing the information that's in the group to surface. This is a simple answer, but it is the answer.

A rather different perspective on the amazing reliability of popular opinion, from Bill Bonner of the Daily Reckoning:

A man on his own, driving down the road, will usually make the right decisions and more often than not end up where he intends to go. But put him in the great mass of voters or investors, and all his good sense seems to disappear out the window like a cigarette butt. All of a sudden he presses down the accelerator and heads for the nearest brick wall.

(in which case, he'll want to be driving the Mini Cooper)

Although given Mr. Bonner's credibility of late - pretending to believe that GWBush is pretending to be stupid, scoffing at global warming ("Global warming is just a hypothesis. Yet it is taught in school as though it were fact.") ...somebody's mouth might be bigger than his brain. [Note: Mr. B. did subsequently print in full(?) an expert's aghast response to his offhand dismissal of global warming - so I retract the anatomical comparison.]

* Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds had not yet been published

the discovered country

In Very Far Away From Anywhere Else by Ursula LeGuin (written very long ago), teenage protagonist Owen dreams up a country:

Thorn was a very small country, on an island in the South Atlantic...The wind blew all the time in Thorn. The coasts were high and rocky...steep cliffs over the sea...wind blowing over the long sheep pastures...the city...built of granite and cedarwood, looking out over the windy cliffs...

Thorn didn't have much government in the usual sense, but they had some institutions...one of them was called the Scholary. It was built part way up one of the highest mountains...had a huge library, and laboratories and basic science equipment and lots of rooms and studies. People could go there and take classes and teach classes...At night they all met, if they felt like it, in a big hall with several fireplaces, and talked about genetics and history and sleep research and polymers and the age of the Universe. If you didn't like the conversation at one fireplace, you could go to another one...

No, at the time this was written Thorn had not yet acquired an institution called the Demagoguery, or the Comment Spammery or the Trollery or the Pornery, but otherwise it does seem strangely familiar.

tangential, from a LeGuin interview -

There isn't much to watch on American TV now... Did you know that most of the laugh tracks they use are so old that the people you hear laughing at the sitcom are mostly dead?

Special New Age issue

Added Oct 25: Jeff Sharlet puts forth the thesis that George W. Bush is a New Ager; nice piece, including this comparison:

New Age religions are, literally, reactionary, responses to what’s been called the disenchantment of the world....Christian fundamentalism, meanwhile, is the child of the Enlightenment, a functionalist view of faith that’s metaphorically "scientific." It's scripture as read by a cranky engineer who just wants to know how God works...

As ye ask, so shall ye receive...Johann Hari grills the Dalai Lama, with tasty results: (via)

...criticisms...Tibet...romanticized...was a slave-owning feudal theocracy...Does he ever worry that he made a massive concession [rescinding Tibet's claims to independence] and got nothing in return?...are disabled children being punished for sins in a past life?....
"Yes, it [massive inequalities of wealth in the West] is wrong," he says as he smiles. "Why do the rich need so much? We each only have one stomach. Well, not you," he says, looking at my belly. "You appear to have two."

Littlewood's Law of Miracles -

Littlewood...defined a miracle as an event that has special significance when it occurs, but occurs with a probability of one in a million. This definition agrees with our common-sense understanding of the word "miracle."

Littlewood's Law of Miracles states that in the course of any normal person's life, miracles happen at a rate of roughly one per month.

interesting observation -

One fact that emerges clearly...is that paranormal events occur, if they occur at all, only when people are under stress and experiencing strong emotion.

which makes them hard to study...or rather, hard to get the studies past the ethics committee.

Speaking of which, here's Johann Hari again, this time on animal rights -("Slowly it became clear how shallow it was to dismiss an entire movement because of the rantings of its thickest and most aggressive members...")

Cultural anthropology from a bicultural New Age skeptic (via) -

How did a card-carrying, aura-wearing, chakra-toting leader of the New Age become able to understand and eventually embrace the skeptical culture?

In my [new age] culture, you can't openly attack anyone or their character, and you can't use truly focused skepticism. In my culture...both the emotions and the intellect are considered troublesome areas of the psyche that do very little but keep one away from the (supposedly) true and meaningful realm of spirit...

Blue-green algae, one hell of a health supplement - Dietary neurotoxin linked to Alzheimer's

Neurotoxins from blue-green algae present in certain foods or water can accumulate in proteins and might cause brain diseases like Alzheimer's after many years, suggests a new study....[blue-green algae] are common in freshwaters and seas worldwide, and thrive in polluted, nutrient-rich waters.

Off-topic (more relevant to Old Age than New):
There are worse things than having your water polluted with bluegreen algae though - try backflow from a mortuary.

added Sept 23:

Clifford Pickover's ESP Experiment

Interview with a crop circle artist

No health benefit from prayer [on behalf of the unwell or infertile]; Chris Mooney has the story

On the other hand, there is evidence for the efficacy of acupuncture and aromatherapy (sorry, no URL here yet; saw it on the web though, so it's true. :-)

Added Oct 17: What the bleep were they trying to pull on us? From the [Ebert site] Answer Man's inbox:

While the film "What the [bleep] Do We Know!?" parades itself as a tell-all about quantum physics, it turns out that it's actually a 111-minute infomercial for ... that's right, the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. In fact, the three filmmakers, [William] Arntz, [Betsy] Chasse and [Mark] Vicente, are all devotees of Ramtha.

There's little to no accurate science in the film, and, as a physicist pointed out recently in your Answer Man column, the individuals who are quoted are pretty far from qualified experts on the field of quantum mechanics. Case in point: One of the persons expounding on causality and quantum physics (Dispenza) is a chiropractor. The film's sole purpose appears to be to promote the ideology of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. A quick browse through their Web site will clearly demonstrate that the film's pseudoscientific nonsense comes straight from the teachings of the RSE.

Not only that, but Ramtha channeler JZ Knight has copyrighted him. Fear not, capitalism is alive and well in the New Age.

[Oct 18:] The ability to see auras is likely to be due to synesthesia:

Synaesthesia is a condition found in 1 in 2000 people in which stimulation of one sense produces a response in one or more of the other senses. For example, people with synaesthesia may experience shapes with tastes or smells with sounds. It is thought to originate in the brain and some scientists believe it might be caused by a cross-wiring in the brain, for example between centres involved in emotional processing and smell perception...

Special Economics And Financial Doom issue

Aug 11- added more quotes. More to come.

Guardian interview with Quantum fund co-founder (with George Soros) Jim Rogers -

The American dollar is a flawed currency and will collapse in value before the end of the decade, taking with it the prosperity of the American nation. Investors should be buying commodities - platinum, lead, wheat, sugar, oil, the sort of assets that haven't been fashionable for a quarter of a century or more. While you're at it, teach your children to speak Mandarin, the coming language of the 21st century. And don't encourage them to do an MBA: Tell them to be a farmer and do a real job.

The irreplaceable, intractable, irascible, irredeemable Mogambo Guru, without whose voice(s) the literary economic world would be a much calmer and duller place -

...for every dude and dudette in the country that has a non-farm job, all 131 million of us swinging our Roy Rogers lunchboxes on our way to work where we slave all day at a job we hate, surrounded by morons, working for chump change, and I can't even leave my lunch in the refrigerator like everyone else because they put stuff in my sandwich when I am not looking, this increase in debt [in a single year] comes to $20,865 each. Each! This is just the damn increase!
...
What to do? What to do? I suggest that we all run around screaming how the sky is falling, and how we should all be loading up with large-caliber weapons and running for our lives because we are all doomed, doomed, doomed, as that is what I typically do. But Mr. Buckler [Bill Buckler of The Privateer newsletter] has also looked at things, as I have, and has concluded, as I have, that there is nothing that CAN be done, except running around screaming that the sky is falling and that we are all, as I alluded to earlier, doomed, doomed, doomed. As I am too busy wailing and cramming boxes of ammunition into a backpack to continue right now, I will leave it to the clever Mr. Buckley to come up with a simile to beautifully sum it all up. Rising to the challenge, he writes, "There is no 'solution' to this dilemma, just as there is no 'solution' for a man who finds himself in a barrel on the lip of Niagara Falls."

Pimco bond guru Bill Gross agrees, after a fashion -

...bad things can happen in a levered economy. Think of two garages - one with two cars and an immaculately swept floor and the other filled with boxes, newspapers, paint cans and numerous oily rags. Which one do you think has the better chance of going up in flames if a [geopolitical or policy] match or a faulty electrical wire creates Fahrenheit 451? That is an apt metaphor in economic terms when comparing a healthy non-debt ladened economy to one thriving on the creation of paper and artificially low interest rates.

...everything is as it should be. The Asians produce, we consume. The Asians save, we spend. The Asians export, we import. The Asians lend, we borrow.

'This symbiotic relationship has gone on for a long time,' wrote an inquiring Daily Reckoning sufferer. 'Why would it have to come to an end now?'

...U.S consumers have become like a giant leech, sucking up 80% of the world's savings. At some point, we keep warning, the foreigners are going to want to dump on a little salt to get rid of us.

and, veering off toward miscellany...

The Oldman passes judgement upon press coverage of the housing bubble, and finds it wanting.

Brad DeLong summarizes the current U.S. economic state:

It is hard to stress enough the extraordinary contrast in this business cycle between the (lousy) labor market situation and the (good) output growth situation and the (fantastic) productivity growth situation.

from BDL comments -

"Don't worry, your money has not been destroyed. It is only owned by somebody else."

Via Andrew Tobias -

"In finance, decay is more colorful than probity, and the prevailing direction of change in the past generation has only enriched the content of the narrative."

-- James Grant, Money Of The Mind

PQuincy in BDL comments -

perhaps we need to get used to the idea that we can't stay _much_ richer than everyone else forever. And since the overall wealth of the planet is not increasing all that fast, the most likely way we will stop being much richer is not that everyone else will catch up to us (the free trader's model), but that average prosperity in the US will decline.

It may not feel good, but it's hard to argue that this is entirely unfair. Nor does this mean that the average US consumer will be impoverished: but not as many will be able to keep affording big houses and 3 cars and so forth.

Daily Reckoning soundbites -

Apparently, we Americans are not buying quite as many things we don't need with the money we don't have.

and

Unlike business, which borrows to increase capital investment and employment, nearly every penny a consumer borrows is thrown away; he buys a hot tub for his back yard and ends up poorer and more vulnerable than before.

A veritable plethora of doom-mongering is on offer at Fiend's SuperBear Page.

moving right along, into utter irrelevance -
Armchair analysis of the economies of Middle Earth -

Lord of the Rings...[hobbits'] economic system...is essentially an idealised pastoralism, the middle ages minus disease and famine.

I'll concede though that the economic life of the elves is a mystery. They seem to spend most of their time poncing (sic) around in forests without any visible means of support. Perhaps as the immortal elder children they were all given substantial annuities before going to Middle Earth. Which raises an interesting issue, how do you value an annuity for an immortal being with an average existence of at least 10,000 years?

if you're not recognized as a genius when your work comes out, be patient: (via)

Dr. Tolkien has little skill at narrative and no instinct for literary form. ... Now, how is it that these long-winded volumes of what looks to this reviewer like balderdash have elicited such [glowing] tributes...? The answer is, I believe, that certain people - especially, perhaps, in Britain - have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash.

John Holbo in here -

Tolkien is so true to himself that he simply can't be untrue to anyone or anything else.

Denial is a river in Egypt

Real world depicted here. Anyone who thinks incompetent government (which begets incompetent oversight) doesn't matter needs to read it.

U.S. military officials tell NBC News, the unreleased images, show American soldiers severely beating one Iraqi prisoner to near death; apparently, raping an Iraqi female prisoner; acting inappropriately with a dead body; and Iraqi guards apparently videotaped by U.S. soldiers raping young boys.

Those "God Forgive America" bumperstickers are looking more and more appropriate.


As for me, I'll stay here and talk about real estate and hide my head in the sand, thank you very much. Hey,  I'm an American.


So, about that economy...

SF Chronicle says Sayonara, housing bubble (with nice summary at bottom)

Contrarian? time-shifted? extraplanetary? view from The Union AP article in last week or two, "experts say now's the time to buy"

The Daily Reckoning's advice (?!) on how to Make Money Fast:

See how easy it is, dear reader? You don't have to save, or work, or come up with a new invention or write a hit song. All you have to do is buy a house. And you don't need a penny to do it. Nor even much of an income.

Another gem from the Daily Reckoning -

Having gone deeper into debt to purchase McMansions and SUVs in recent years, how do baby boomers intend to spend their golden years? I predict that we baby boomers will turn our McMansions into bed and breakfasts for the increasing number of Chinese and Indian tourists who will be visiting our shores in the next fifty years. And we will provide complimentary shuttle services to our guests with our SUVs.

...as tourism becomes an ever more important segment of Nevada County's economy...

Salon on great big green monster mansions -

Environmentally correct housing has never been more popular. But even the most eco-friendly home may do more harm than good when it is super-sized.

Sarah Susanka and the Not-So-Big House here and here-

When someone buys a Mercedes Benz or Jaguar, they look for quality, comfort, and detail. Size has nothing to do with the appeal of these cars. If you wanted nothing but space, you could buy a truck. Why is it, then, that some people feel compelled to buy huge houses with empty, cathedral-like spaces that offer few comforts of home
...
We seek with square footage and ever-taller ceilings our notion of home, when in fact the feel we're looking for has almost nothing to do with size. Instead, it resides in a sense of comfort
...
Owners, saddled with impersonal, cavernous spaces, sometimes wonder what went wrong - why they feel so profoundly disaffected from the very place that is supposed to nurture and satisfy: home.

and

The current pattern of building big to allow for quantities of furniture with still more room to spare is more akin to wearing a sack than a tailored suit.

Union article on Hunter Black's rammed earth house out on the San Juan Ridge - hands down the most wonderful house I've ever met. I saw it shortly after seeing a house whose designers followed the "we'll make it TWICE as big!" philosophy. The contrast was huge too.

Not the greatest planning - apartments in the middle of nowhere (think Kingsbury Circle out in Alta Sierra?)

PZ Myers' hometown disappears-

Hometown? Kent, Washington. It was a nice little town when I was young, but visibly transformed during my teenage years into a desert of parking lots, banks, and gas stations. Now it's little more than a congested blot in the north-south traffic corridor to Seattle. In a sense my hometown doesn't exist anymore.

Brad DeLong still says "buy more house than you need" - a commenter responds:

I thought capital was supposed to move at the speed of light these days. I'm a little disappointed to hear that in order to maximize my investments I have to be chained to a big wad of matter whether I want it or not. I find it disturbing to think of orchards being uprooted as Americans who just wanted a little house leverage themselves out to the max...

Facing the ordeal of downsizing, with helpful hints on where to put the plasma TV now that you have a meager 1700 sq ft. Talk about deprivation...

Ah, that country air...breathe deep... ("Foothill roads likely laced with asbestos" - analysis of Placer County gravel roads from airplane show serpentine-rich roads, serpentine tends to? often? always? contains asbestos)

Identifying the region's serpentine-covered roads raises residents' awareness of the potential hazard but may not necessarily prompt paving or other measures to cut the risk. Virtually all of the roads identified are private roads, meaning it's solely up to property owners to maintain them, county officials said.

Today's Sisyphus doesn't roll rocks; instead, he faces an eternity of remodeling. Or perhaps moving -

We have always been moving. We will never do anything else. The remaining stuff that's yet to be moved will keep expanding to fill an infinite number of boxes, an unending succession of U-Haul trucks. Only we will change, gradually growing older and more battered and decrepit, until finally we're used up entirely. When this happens we'll be propped up in front of the yard railing, on offer [to] any passersby who think they have some use for our remains.

Another perspective on housing is here. Followed by some lovely examples of comment spam. If there is an afterlife, the people who spew this stuff will be taking the down elevator.

more from the Daily Reactionaryckoning -

We drove by one subdivision after another, the houses getting bigger and bigger. Each one had a grand entrance and a bucolic address. Usually the place was announced with curved brick walls, iron gates, and an Anglican name such as 'Heathmont Downs.' You feel as though you might be entering the grounds of a private lunatic asylum.
...
"Some of these places are 6,000 square feet and more," explained a cousin. "And some of them are lived in by older couples without children. They don't really need the space. But it's a way to leverage the housing boom. A lot of people think they should buy the biggest, most expensive house they can...

truth? from fiction -

Many citizens set out to buy a house because of an indistinct yearning for which an actual house was never the right solution to begin with, and may be only a quick fix that briefly anchors and stabilizes them but never touches the deeper need, all the while managing to put them in the poorhouse.

Slate on consequences of Calif's Prop. 13

This creates some perverse effects, similar to those of rent control. People stay in big houses they no longer need because moving to a smaller place will mean a huge property tax hit. With these houses off the market, people who do need a bigger place have fewer to choose from and must pay more to get one.

It's always a good sign when you can still remember your password

It's been too long. The links are piling up. Here are some fluffy, inoffensive and friendly ones (if you don't have a Tuscan deck house in Orange County) -

Human nature hasn't changed much. Via Andrew Tobias some time back, possibly a rerun here too -

The poor man cries before your house, and you pay no attention... you stand there, confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering.
-- St. Ambrose of Milan (339-397)

One of many choice quotes from Harvey Skunklove -

[on TV home makeover shows that are] "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" only with a house instead of a person. Nine times out of ten people want their homes to look like Tuscany. How the hell are you going to make a deck house in Orange County look like Tuscany? I mean besides using hallucinogenics.

I know we can do better. I know we can, for the same cost that we are spending on these urban main street malls, build places that aren't wearing a plastic Italian mask.

and he had the greatest idea... wish I was in a position to implement it -

something I've always wanted to do: work on a rural greenfield project far off in the mountains and, hidden among the Oak Lanes, Crestline Boulevards, and Winter Creek Roads, name a street 'East 237th'. To keep people on their toes and all.

Introducing their readers to weblogs,
Time magazine (Meet Joe Blog) and the Dallas Morning News

very cool demo on making streets pedestrian-friendly (via)

on hiatus

Rebecca Goldstein:

It had been a narrow escape. I hadn't realized at the time the dangers with which I was flirting, the precarious nature of the world of property ownership we had almost entered: that world of intimate, complicated, aggravating relationships with painters, plumbers, carpenters, gardeners, and electricians. Much of the conversation at diinner parties was devoted to the intricacies of these relationships, the degree of sensitivity they required. And although they were always amusing tales, told with the lightness and gaiety suitable to the occasion, I could glimpse the soul suffering that lay behind...

William Levitt:

No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist, he has too much to do.

I'll be back.

Citizens and Journalism

Blogging as Citizen Journalism. This is the future. Read it:

Jeff Jarvis is blogging the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention - here on what it's like to be civilian blogging the talks - "I'm accustomed to live-blogging conferences filled with bloggers who are doing the same. This was the first time I blogged a -- what should I call it? -- civilian event..." - here he covers Ethics and the News, reporting what points were made by whom, e.g.

[Michael Josephson] "Is a profession dedicated to asking others questions and demanding credible answers willing to do the same with respect to assertions and assumptions concerning traditional newsroom assumptions?"

On Rumsfield's talk -

He says news organizations are criticized by many. "But interestingly, my sense is that you're not regularly criticized by each other."

Traditional journalists as bloggers. Dan Gillmor says they're getting the form, but slower to get the culture:

Journalists are beginning to get it. For the first three years of its existence, my blog was one of a few lonely outposts in newspaper journalism. No longer. High-profile blogs have appeared at some of the biggest news organizations, and I've been hearing from more and more colleagues at other organizations, all wondering if it's time to launch staff blogs -- and if so, how best to do it.

I'm still not convinced, though, that Big Journalism is doing the most important thing: listening. We are still in a top-down mode and don't realize that the conversation is more the point than our pronouncements. I see progress, but not enough.

Recently seen in The Union

Letters to the Editor akin to the specimens of yore - [anti-]Iraq war crybabies and Enviro-fascists strike again

(one can understand why the Editor would wish to flee on a yearly basis, but this escape is not kind to those who remain)

On the Wildwood West Drive easement controversy - Union article "Neighbors' fear of growth leaves a family feeling isolated" and editorial "Neighbors need to find a solution" ("The actions of a few homeowners...Afraid..., the group seems to be using the road closure as a form of blackmail to impose a restrictive easement on its neighbor."); response by a resident, "Facts left out of story on road dispute"
Nov. 10: It appears that we may owe someone an apology.

The Woolly-Thinker's Guide to Rhetoric

The above WW West Dr. triad pretty much speaks for itself (if you read them), even without the other recent "private road" news -

Last week, a 9-year-old boy riding a motorcycle on another private road in the county (this is legal, according to The Union, which is insane, according to your correspondent) collided with an SUV and died; his father has indicated he will sue the driver ("retained the services of an attorney") if the CHP investigation finds negligence on the driver's part. ("How much is a child's life worth?" the attorney asks...). Wanting to keep private road traffic to a minimum - particularly if you really can't keep young children from riding motorcycles on it - isn't just a pesky neighbors issue, it's also about safety and financial liability.

Encyclopedias were different then

Lawrence of Arabia on guerilla warfare, in the original Brittanica. Long, relevant.
(via)

News flash

Don't go canceling your subscription to The Union, Richard Somerville is out of town. It would appear that bloggers aren't the only writers who need editors.

Pining for the fjords

[have not been dead, just taxing.]

via Pure Land Mountain, Christian Science Monitor on critical thinking ("...a remarkable paucity of critical thinking taught at the undergraduate level - even though the need for such skills seems more urgent than ever...")

Recent Christian Science Monitor article on rural sprawl in the West, older (March 2001) article on us.

The bad old days -
On Poynter, looking at modes of coverage of environmental news in the American West:

...large majority of Western dailies rely heavily on the same two story formats to convey information and explain its significance. Just two formats - the same two, over and over. One is the Inverted Pyramid....

The other dominant story format on the West's environment beat is the Battleground Framework. No matter how revealing the issue's history or how relevant the freshest peer-reviewed science, most Western newspapers make a habit of reducing the story's central theme to conflict.

..In many Western newsrooms, the preference is for confrontational quotes. The more venom the better. We contend that this "quick-hit" approach runs the risk of slighting or omitting story elements that have the most usefulness for the audiences.

Objectivity and the press

This one was new to me. With the obvious error corrected, it reads as follows:

Two boys in Boston were playing basketball when one of them was attacked by a rabid Rottweiler.

Thinking quickly, the other boy ripped a board off a nearby fence, wedged it into the dog's collar and twisted it, breaking the dog's neck.

A newspaper reporter from the Boston HeraldGlobe witnessed the incident and rushed over to interview the boy. The reporter began entering data into his laptop, beginning with the headline: "Brave Young Celtics Fan Saves Friend From Jaws Of Vicious Animal."

"But I'm not a Celtics fan," the little hero interjected. "Sorry," replied the reporter. "But since we're in Boston I just assumed you were."

Hitting the delete key, the reporter began again: "John Kerry Fan rescues Friend From Horrific Dog Attack." "But I'm not a Kerry fan either," the boy responds.

The reporter says, "I assumed everybody in this state was either for the Celtics or Kerry or Kennedy. "What team or person do you like? "

"I'm a Houston Rockets fan and I really like George W. Bush," the boy says.

Hitting the delete key, the reporter writes: "Arrogant Little Conservative Bastard Kills Beloved Family Pet."