Unavoidable consumption of non-renewable resources… That God damn flipped statement in nearly every environmental impact statement. While a true statement, it always annoys me how flipped the language comes across when they use it. Environmental analysts might just be covering their asses but it’s an obnoxious statement on its face, especially if the document doesn’t propose any mitigation towards stopping to push our planet off the cliff, expanding more of our lands into dumping grounds, fouling the air and paving over our farms and forests.
Reading
Americaβs First Banned Book Really Ticked Off the Plymouth Puritans
Apparently, Thomas Morton didn’t get the memo. The English businessman arrived in Massachusetts in 1624 with the Puritans, but he wasn’t exactly on board with the strict, insular, and pious society they had hoped to build for themselves. “He was very much a dandy and a playboy,” says William Heath, a retired professor from Mount Saint Mary’s University who has published extensively on the Puritans. Looking back, Morton and his neighbors were bound to butt heads sooner or later.
I haven’t been doing enough reading lately
I haven’t been doing enough reading lately. It’s so easy to waste time in the evenings now with my unlimited phone plan and the Youtube, but I have ordered some books from the library for reading in the coming weeks:
Some books about local history and the Pine Bush (I am particularly interested in Paul Grodahl’s book for interviewing more of John Wolcott):
- Mayor Erastus Corning : Albany icon, Albany enigma / [by Paul Grondahl].
- Pine Bush : Albany’s last frontier / compiled and edited by Don Rittner.
Some homesteading/farming books:
- Living with goats : everything you need to know to raise your own backyard herd / Margaret Hathaway ; photographs by Karl Schatz.
- Storey’s illustrated breed guide to sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs / Carol Ekarius.
Been doing a lot of reading about large livestock, so I figure it’s good to learn now about smaller stock.
Now just to wait for these books to come in stock, and not forget about them while I wait. But once they are available, it’s just drive-thru at the library.
The Dictatorship of Data
McNamara epitomized the hyper-rational executive who relied on numbers rather than sentiments, and who could apply his quantitative skills to any industry he turned them to. In 1960 he was named president of Ford, a position he held for only a few weeks before being tapped to join President Kennedy’s cabinet as secretary of defense.
As the Vietnam conflict escalated and the United States sent more troops, it became clear that this was a war of wills, not of territory. America’s strategy was to pound the Viet Cong to the negotiation table. The way to measure progress, therefore, was by the number of enemy killed. The body count was published daily in the newspapers. To the war’s supporters it was proof of progress; to critics, evidence of its immorality. The body count was the data point that defined an era.
True Story of Winnie the Pooh | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine
In the main branch of the New York Public Library, there lives a group of wild animals that call the children’s section home. Together, in one cage, are a young pig, a donkey, a tiger, a kangaroo, and a bear known the world over as Winnie-the-Pooh. The bear is not the red-shirted “tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluffΘ found in cribs around the world, more a regular ole’ fuzzy variety, a simple knock-around bear. But he’s still Pooh, a bit matted down, a bit overly loved, but in great shape considering he’ll soon be 100 years old. The original Pooh is amazingly still alive, well into the 21st-century, in both literary and animated forms.
An Eyewitness Account Of MLK’s Final Days : NPR
20th century
The Twentieth Century is here, bellowing like a bull; but in quieter coves, families still make do with what they haveβor do without. It’s a big country, ours is. – Foxfire Book, Volume 1 Pg 134