Saturday, September 06, 2008

Funniest Lines Today:

"We were able to build most of it in about two months - two adults, a 14 year old and a 10 year old plus the help of a three year old."

This is from a long post at Sugar Mountain Farm, explaining the construction of earth air tubes and the "tiny cottage". (Not that I have any personal experience with 3-year olds, but "help of a ..." sounds like an oxymoron to me.)

Friday, September 05, 2008

Locavores Rejoice--A Local Dairy for Chicago?

Not local, perhaps, since it's the other side of the state, but at least a lot closer than California. The Blog for Rural America has the story(a big dairy applying for permits in Jo Daviess County, IL.)

(Yes, my tongue is in my cheek. My father's dairy milked 12 cows, I don't like a 12,000 cow farm. And neither does BRA.) But it's an example of the complexities of the current discourse. I'm assuming this move would get milk production closer to more people, cutting transportation costs and energy usage, reducing the carbon footprint, providing fresher milk, etc. But it's to be accomplished by a huge operation, non-organic and a CAFO. So what trade-offs do we accept? When is NIMBYism justified? Do we ever cap the size of business enterprises? Do we break up Microsoft or Google?

You'll note I'm good with questions, not so much with answers.

One Bureaucracy, Two Countries

Dirk Beauregard again offers insights into how differently France is run than the U.S., bureaucratically speaking. But a uniform bureaucracy doesn't mean uniformity of culture:
"France may be one country on paper, but the regional diversies and differenes are so great, that this is several countries in one. We speak one common tongue, share one basic set of republican ideals, but north and ssouth are almost two seperate countries.[sic to all errors--Dirk never bothers to spell correctly]
Maybe our differences are as great, but I don't hear anyone talking of two countries (except maybe the Alaskan Independence Party).

Thursday, September 04, 2008

The Role of Fear in Politics

At Grist there's a dispute over the role of fear. Glen Hurowitz summarizes and posts in defense of fear, using the reasoning that fear overcomes apathy. He winds up by saying, first you scare people then you give them hope.

I understand the logic, and maybe even agree on an individual basis--emotions seem to serve the role of overcoming inertia: fear, love, hate, jealousy--they all counteract our tendencies to stay in ruts (particularly strong for me).

As a matter of fact, it's almost the same formula as revivalists use, you scare people with hell, with reminders of their own wickedness, loneliness, whatever, then you offer them hope with the grace of God. It's been working for centuries.

But on a social level I resist. Glen's formula can be generalized; politicians strive to stir emotion (whether it's mocking rivals or disrespecting them, as can be seen this week, and last week)
then offer hope. So it's the way the world works, and environmentalists have as much right to do this as anyone else.

I dislike conflict, which means I dislike emotion, which means I seek refuge in the Progressive's dream (actually the culmination of the Enlightenment) that reason can dissolve all conflicts and create the millennium. That's one reason why computers/software are/were so attractive to me; I have the idea that the proper system design can satisfy everyone. (And fail to remember the law of 2 out of 3: software can be cheap, good, or quickly done.)

So should we worry about vanishing ice? Yes. Should we act? Yes. But humans are going to muddle through for a while longer, even if we don't do exactly what activists want.

English Should Be the Official Language?

June Lloyd shows the surprising persistence of other languages at Universal York.

Losing Ice in the Arctic

Reports like this don't make me feel good. Sort of ties to another post I'm working on--the role of fear in politics.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Falling Property Values

My little corner of Reston is rather diverse. We had an African-American family down the court--they bought in 2006. I use the past tense because they moved out this weekend, presumably having been foreclosed on. The prior owner bought in 1999 for $98,500; he sold in 2006 for $365,000.

A Kludge, at Long Last a Kludge

That's what this sounds like: a piece of equipment/system from DHS to enable first responders to cross-communicate, or a kludge:

The program, which DHS will test in the District of Columbia, integrates land mobile radio networks that police, firemen and emergency medical service workers use with cell phone broadband networks and wireless Internet devices, including laptops and personal digital assistants.

With the new technology, a public safety official can communicate with personnel in the field using a cell phone, land radio or computer all on the same network. The technology also allows them to contact colleagues in different departments or nearby municipalities without reprogramming their radios or having a dispatcher connect them.

It's long overdue. If I weren't lazy I'd go back a couple years and find my argument for one. But trust me (I was from the government) on this.

Monday, September 01, 2008

GOP Government Produces Results

Hat tip to Understanding Government's Edward Hodgman, who notes the White House site pushing government results: Results.gov has not been updated for a year and a half.

As a confirmed Dem, I'd love to say this just reflects the fact that Bush's government hasn't done anything positive in 18 months. (And I just did.) But the reality, I suspect, is somewhat different. Sometime back in the recesses of time, someone in the White House got this great idea: "let's have a website devoted just to highlighting the good things that are going on." Others in the hierarchy nodded wisely and said: "Oh yes, that sounds great, you go ahead and do it, here's some money to get it up and running." So, the site was put together and put on the net. And two things happened:

  1. the original sponsor of the idea decided to leave for greener pastures, perhaps located along K Street in Washington, leaving no one behind who had really bought into the idea.
  2. it turned out the site was just a pimple on the body politic, just a haphazard extrusion which didn't really tie into any institution or ongoing effort.
Results.gov is really no different than the millions of blogs that have been started and abandoned.