Our New Hillside, and the usual political matters

First of all, tree trimmers have been near us for two days, trimming and potentially cutting down the eucalyptus trees on the hillside next to our house. This is welcome news because eucalyptus trees are fire-prone, and because a couple of the trees at the base of hill — the bottom of a property that faces Skyline Drive, above us — have blocked our view of the SF city skyline.

Here it was as they began yesterday:

And here it is so far today.

It looks *worse* today, but once they remove all the tree trunks, I hope what will be left is a nice, grassy hillside. Maybe with wildflowers.

Today’s topics:

  • Heather Cox Richardson on destroying the government, and suppressing the vote (of Democrats);
  • The nine principles of propaganda, which we’re familiar with from a recent example;
  • How Republicans love big government when it suits their purposes;
  • How gun rights amount to a war on youth;
  • What science says about what hurts and helps L.G.B.T.Q. youth Continue reading
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Zbigniew Preisner, and the Daily News

Some slow thoughtful music, to keep things in perspective, against the daily news. And then daily news about frightened old people using their guns.

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About New Books by Phil Plait and Jamie Green

  • Phil Plait’s Under Alien Skies
  • Jamie Green’s The Possibility of Life
  • And a Facebook cartoon about the cynicism of anti-intellectuals

Phil Plait on John Scalzi’s blog today, about his new book Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer’s Guide to the Universe, a book about what the universe would look like from various vantage points.
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A New Episode of The Most Beautiful Music in the World

This was an early Zbigniew Preisner score, for a Polish TV series Dekalog, with ten episodes released in 1989, each based on one of the Ten Commandments. I happened to listen to my YouTube bookmark of this as I wrote my previous post today.

The religious angle doesn’t bother me. The music is sublime.

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Making the Story Go Away

The big news today: Fox News has settled the case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. (Fox News had repeatedly implied that the 2020 election was somehow stolen via manipulation of the voting machines built by Dominion. Without an ounce of evidence. Which of course damaged the reputation of Dominion, who sued.) Did Fox lose by admitting it lied, or did it win by making the story go away?

CNN: Last-minute $787.5 million settlement in Dominion-Fox News case, subtitled “Some on-air claims about Dominion Voting Systems were false, Fox News acknowledges in statement after deal is announced”

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Drag, the Abortion Pill, Blue Cities in Red States

  • Why conservatives are so upset by drag;
  • The Comstock Law, an antiquated precedent conservatives use to justify things they don’t like, like the abortion pill;
  • And how people are fleeing blue states for red states — but into blue cities.

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They Have Always Been With Us

This is a clever graphic I saw two or three times on Facebook.

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A Day at the Bay

Today we did an afternoon walk, on a chilly, breezy, but sunny afternoon, around the Emeryville peninsula surrounding the marina there and ending with Emeryville Marina Park. We’ve done this walk before, perhaps three times; we park at the “Watergate Shopping center”, then walked to the end of peninsula, and back.

Today, no doubt part of the “superbloom” everyone is noticing in California and Arizona, we noticed these blooming plants.

These plants are “Pride of Madeira,” or Echium candicans, in full bloom. Note how different plants have slightly different colors:

Across the inlet is downtown Oakland.

Here’s a bird, just standing there, three feet from me.

And here’s one of at least a dozen remnants of trees on this little peninsula that were downed by the wind and rainstorms that hit the Bay Area over the past three months.

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Arguing Styles, Debates, and Winning vs. Being Right

I’ve mentioned the book RESPONDING TO THE RIGHT by Nathan J. Robinson a couple times before, and today I want to summarize the gist of the book.

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Conservative Ideology Over Evidence: The Abortion Pills

Several links today to articles on the same topic.

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