Consensus

Discover Magazine’s December issue (not yet up on the web) includes a social psychology article referring to the work of Lee Ross and others at Stanford on the “False Consensus Effect” - the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.

Maybe I’m not as affected by this as most people are. I’m pretty sure most people disagree with me about a lot of things. That makes me rather more determined to change their minds. While I admire some people who boldly express extreme positions, I find I have more success influencing people when I start from a place where we share some common belief – however close to the edge that place may be.

Many bloggers are shrilly preaching to their own choirs. This may rally support among those who already agree, but it doesn’t change minds. Granted there’s no reasoning with some people (i.e. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh) but most of us can be open minded if our own positions are respected and the people speaking are offering objective information.

The False Consensus Effect may have lulled Democrats into complacency in the recent past. It’s important to listen to people, to question them, to discover their opinions and the rationale underlying those opinions.

Changing Minds has a common sense, if cynical, take on false consensus: “Build rapport by assuming their behavior, attitudes and beliefs. Other people are very often taken in by such false empathy as they see it as normal that you are like them.” Take a look at this site for more ideas about creating change.

Election results

My inbox is full of congratulations this morning. I'm happy to report that I've just become a Town of Dryden Councilman. I'm not implying gender change, but I don't think the Board has accepted the extra syllable in Councilperson yet. I am now the only Democrat and the only woman on the Board. And I couldn't be happier.

Spellcheck

I was copying some old posts into a Word document this morning to archive when I realized how many typos and outright spelling errors there were. Clearly I'm doing this wrong. I should be writing them in Word. I don't know why I don't use spellcheck all the time. It usually gives me a laugh. This morning it wanted me to consider changing Whitehouse to outhouse.

The weather’s been delightfully sunny and warm for November. The house seems to have stabilized at around 61 degrees – a little less in the morning, a little more in the afternoon. The west wing is about four degrees colder. I’m surprised how easily I’ve adapted to it. Socks, an extra shirt, a fire at dinnertime and I’m doing fine. Still, it reminds me of Maslowe’s hierarchy. When I’m cold I just can’t think of anything else. In fact, it makes it harder to get up and start the fire.

Then I start debating with myself. That wood is a lot of work. Maybe I should start the furnace and save the wood 'til it gets really cold. But, you know, the price of gas... Maybe I should start the ETS heaters. But, no. I've been doing so well cutting down the electric bill.

Then I get a bit of insight into energy conservation. If I put on a sweater I can put off starting the fire for a while and save a few sticks of wood. I know exactly how much work went into cutting, splitting and stacking the wood - not to mention growing it. I probably worked just as hard to earn the money that buys the gas. But there's no connection. It's not like you wake up in the morning and say, "I think I'll go out and earn the money for some gas today."

All the news ...

Thanks to Lance Manion for the link to Unpartisan. I try to keep up with divergent viewpoints but it's hard to find rational ones. Unipartisan provides links to news articles, left-wing commentary and right-wing commentary.

I agree with Nance at nancynall.com who clings (figuratively) to print newspapers for the surprise element. "There's always something there that I didn't know I was interested in, and it turned out I was." Radio's even better for this. And you can have your hands free while you listen. A few years ago NPR did an article about the narrowing of news. When you read a print paper, you scan the headlines and skip the articles that don't look promising. On the internet it's even worse - in seconds you search for only the articles you're interested in. But on the radio, you're going to have to listen to pretty much everything they're saying. And if you're doing, say, the housework while you're listening (or you're trapped in your car in traffic) you're not going to resent the time it takes to listen and you're probably going to hear something you didn't know you'd be interested in.

From Unpartisan's links to news about the Senate's approval of the budget
bill including the ammendment to open ANWR to oil drilling, I got drawn into
commenting on Say Anything where Rob says:

What I don’t understand about Democrats is, while they’re very concerned with America’s dependence on foreign oil, they’re not willing to allow for the exploitation of domestic petroleum resources.

By the way, I like the comment format at Say Anything a lot. Tags are very easy to use. It shows a preview simultaneously with the html. And you can subscribe to comments posted after yours.

Typos corrected.

Barnes & Noble

I buy books from Barnes & Noble, partly 'cause I love the "People who bought this..." links. In the process of putting up the link in the sidebar to Voyage of the Beagle" I found this:

People who bought this book also bought:
•The Oresteia: Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides
Aeschylus, George Thomson (Translator), Richard
Seaford (Introduction)
•Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle and Martyrdom of St.
Polycarp, the Fragments of Papias, the Epistle of Diognetus Walter J. Burghardt (Editor), T. C. Lawler (Editor), J. Quasten (Editor)
•Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge To
Evolution Michael J. Behe
•The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected
Essays Albert Camus
•Notes from Underground Richard
Pevear (Translator), Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I think that blows the mind of even the most eclectic reader.

South Woods

Another nice day gave us a chance to tour the south woods. The highlight of this walk is usually the creek. This upstream view shows the remnants of the earthen dam that formed the mill pond used to cut the lumber that built Bill's house and others in the neighborhood in the early 19th century. Wideboard American Chestnut was used for siding. I've watched this area mature for thirty years. What used to be primarily huge white pines is now giving way to maple and oak. Still it's hard to imagine how the three foot diameter Chestnuts must have looked. Or how someone decided "I think I'll pile up this dirt to build a mill and cut these chestnuts (with an axe) and build a house.


Here's a poplar that's surviving insect infestations and the resulting Woodpecker work. When I see woodpecker holes like this, I always hope they're providing Chickadee nests. I've never noticed holes healing over like the bottom one in this picture.

Finally, on the home front, these fall crocuses are blooming. Here's a bumble bee scrounging for a last taste of nectar.

North Woods

Bill and I took advantage of this lovely day to look around the north woods. This powerline right-of-way has given us a few headaches over the years. But it does provide a good edge for birds who like that sort of thing.

There's been some talk around town about developing powerline right-of-ways into pedestran trails. I was horrified when I first heard about it. Then I thought about how much I've enjoyed the Shug Trail around Dryden Lake. It occured to me that developing a pedestrian trail might not be so bad if it meant the town would enforce a prohibition against vehicles. We have a continuing battle to remind people with snowmobiles and ATVs that, despite the powerline, the land belongs to us and we do not allow anyone without permission to use it and we do not allow vehicles period.

Then again I realized that, although this powerline is well out of sight of my house, it crosses several properties right through the yard. You just can't expect people to welcome the public that way.

The patterns in the leaves are fascinating to me. I couldn't resist picking up a few dozen to use for decoration around the house.

Circus of the Spineless and Alito

I always think "Circus of the Spineless" should be about the people in the White House. But I'm glad it's not. Milkriver emailed me to remind me of the latest edition now up at Snail's Tales. Even if you think you're not interested in invertebrates, take a look at this cool carnival format with links to interesting people, great photos and stories. In the comments there's a little tempest in a teapot regarding Aydin's exclusion of a submission based on his blog policy of not linking to any creationist sites.

And thanks to Coturnix at Science and Politics for this timely roundup of links to info about the Alito nomination.

Seasons

I admit defeat. Apparently I cannot slow the advance of the season by continuing to wear sandals and refusing to turn on the furnace. Bill's first frost, at South Five Wells, across the street (and maybe 5 feet lower) was a couple of weeks ago. He had already turned on his furnace and started wearing boots.

Maybe my first failure was after Labor Day when I stopped wearing white . Then I demonstrated my lack of faith by bringing in the porch plants yesterday.

Anyway, last night we had a frost here at North Five Wells. Today the Black Walnut trees are dumping their leaves all at once, as they always do when the temperature hits 31.9F. I once caught this in a movie. It's pretty dramatic.

I'm not a narcissist or a control freak. It's sheer denial that makes me ignore the obvious signs that winter is coming. It's been so rainy I haven't been able to enjoy fall as much as I usually do. There are some things about winter that I enjoy. It's just that it's soooo loooong. If only it could hold off a few more weeks... If only the computer screen could provide the sunlight we northerners so desperately need...

Raingauge Runneth Over

Welcome to new readers from Feministe, Philobiblon and Science and Sarcasm. So many thoughts, so little time. I'm having trouble adapting to the change of season. It looks like we'll have to depend on the Hickories for color this fall. Maples and Oaks haven't really chimed in yet. And it's raining, raining, raining. There are a few important outdoor chores to do. Lots of indoor chores have piled up over the summer. I can't believe the cobwebs, pet hair and dust bunnies everywhere. I just don't notice it in the summer when I'm outdoors most daylight hours. And if I don't get some ironing done soon I won't be able to go out in public at all.

But the big adjustment problem is heating. The house was designed before I had kids. Kid #1 was on the way as construction began and I made my first huge concession to kids - I added electricity to the design. Here in the country we need electricity to have running water and I couldn't picture toilet training with an outhouse. As it turned out that would have been one of the simplest parts of family life. The washing machine and refrigerator have been the most important electric appliances. But the house was heated delightfully with the wood cookstove and ingenious convection for circulation.

Kid #1 was on his feet (and on the tractor, on the ladders and up the trees) when we moved into the house and Kid #2 arrived. By the time she was walking I realized that the original 24'x32' design was really ideal for one person, or two people who really liked each other. But with kids we were going to need more space. So construction of "the west wing" began, doubling the square footage of the house. That wing has always been hard to heat with the fireplace, so we reluctantly added some supplementary electric thermal storage heat.

Finally a few years ago, living solo and working full time away from home to help put Maggy through college, I splurged on a small gas furnace. The magic thermostat on the wall was my best friend for a year - at least my favorite mechanical device. But now, with no kids for tax exemptions, I'm back to my original tax protest - keeping my income low enough to avoid paying taxes. That means keeping expenses to a minimum, too. So, I'm retreating into the original part of the house for now, hoping that will eliminate the need for the electric heat and minimize the need for gas heat. I'm home full time now so I'll be keeping the home fire burning.

Wild Apples

Last spring Bill and I walked up toward the northwest corner of our woods - a walk we've taken regularly for more than thirty years. But that morning there was a strong floral scent in the air. I kept looking around for the source 'til we spied a gorgeous, full-grown apple tree in full bloom. How could it be that we'd never seen it before? It's just a little off the trail - far enough from home that we're usually deep in thought or conversation. We wouldn't have noticed it this time except for the fragrance. Apparently in thirty years we've never happened to walk by on the right day - the peak bloom day. Today we picked ten pounds of delicious, crisp tart apples!

More on Rural Internet Access

I enjoyed reading the first few entries in the new Carnival of Feminists up at Philobiblon this morning. Go look at it. Really. There's something for everyone.

Then Maggy sent me a link to this great Salon article on Broadband Internet Access. Among other things, the article reports on a Bill introduced to the house by Congressman Sessions (R Texas) to prohibit local governments from developing improved internet access. I this another example of Republican support of Free Markets? I did a little research, wrote another letter to Boehlert and posted about it again on Dryden Democrats.

Once again, I'm way over my allotted time for blogging.

Tomorrow...

Frivolous Lawsuits

Sometimes even CSPAN drives me nuts. It's not their fault, they broadcast the House and the Senate live. The straw that breaks the camel's back this morning is James Sensenbrenner (R Wis) introducing the "Personal responsibility in food consumption act," limiting the right of obese people to sue food companies - I kid you not.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for personal responsibility in lots of areas. But, in the true Republican spirit of free markets, why can't we count on lawyers simply to decline to take frivolous cases? Don't bother trying to explain this to me. I really do get it already. But where is the logic that informs Republicans it's a good idea to limit liability for doctors, gun manufacturers, food companies but not to restrict the amount of toxic waste they pour into the air and water? Or the amount of critical habitat they can pave?

Who thinks Congress should spend their time on frivolous lawsuits when they could be considering solutions to health care issues, poverty, world peace, better education? Ah, maybe there's the key... education standards for national leaders.

Rural Internet Access

When I teased Coturnix, at Science and Politics, about time management and being interested in so many things at the same time, he replied that he writes his blog posts in his head, then takes about 20 minutes to post them. That made me think about what a handicap my modem is. I'm used to it and I take it for granted (like I take hand-washing dishes for granted). But it means my internet reading, not to mention blog writing, probably takes ten times as long as it would with broadband access.

It's not that I'm personally technologically challenged. I was programming with COBOL on a mainframe Univac in the early seventies. Does anyone here remember "do not fold, staple or mutilate" punch cards and 12" reel-to-reel data tapes? And it's not that I'm stupid or stubborn. It's that, in my rural neighborhood, the only high speed access available to me is satellite. And it's simply not worth the price.

I'm affected by the digital divide because I choose to live in the country. I wonder how many of my friends in the "ecology" section of my bookmark list are similarly affected. We may be among the last of the underrepresented minorities.

My Congressman, Sherwood Boehlert (whose Congressional page loads in seven seconds), is on the House Science Committee. I've sent him the following message.

I would like to bring your attention to the problem of internet access in rural New York. In the Town of Dryden, where I am running for Town Board, Time Warner provides broadband access to any area which has twenty or more house per mile. My mile-long road has 17 houses (if you count the subdivision with its own dead-end side road). So, I continue to rely on my modem.

It takes 5 to 15 seconds to load a page of your House website. Clicking on "Contact Your Congressman" on your sidebar takes me to the House Contact page (http://www.house.gov/writerep/) where I have to look up my representative's name, 'though I already know it's you. After I fill in my name and address and click "continue" I come to the House "Write Your Representative" page (where, incidentally, "useful" has been misspelled since the page was designed years ago.) So, I'm about two minutes into it before I begin to write my message.

In a search of FirstGov for "rural internet access" seven of the first ten articles reference North Carolina, already a leader in rural technology. If I'm having this much trouble in Tompkins County, what must it be like in the Adirondaks? The digital divide is affecting a large number of your constituents, not because we're poor, but because of the population density of our neighborhoods. Perhaps New York could follow North Carolina's lead in making rural internet access a priority.

Following a two minute and fifteen second wait for the New York State homepage to open, a search for "rural internet access" returned no matches at all.

I'm way beyond the amount of time I had alloted for blogging this morning. I'll cross post this at Dryden Democrats and get on with my Town Board campaign.

Books

I'm really going to have to commit to a book a week! I picked up the following 22 books at the Friends of the Library Sale for about $40.

Non-fiction:

• Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Political Issues, McKenna and Feingold
• The Choice: How Clinton Won, Bob Woodward
• Talking it Through: Puzzles of American Democracy, Robert Bennett
• Public Education, Democracy and the Common Good, ed. Donovan Walling
• The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Means of Ascent, Robert Caro
• Sketches From A Life, George F Kennan,
• Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton, David Gergen
• All Politics Is Local, tip O'Neill
• The Vantage Point, Lyndon B Johnson
• Heavens on Earth: Utopian communities in America 1680-1880, Mark Holloway
• The House on Beartown Road, A Memoir of Learning and Forgetting, Elizabeth Cohen

Fiction

• The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
• The Liar, Stephen Fry
• China Court, Rumer Godden
• The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall
• Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson
• The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi, Jacqueline Park
• The Country Girls Trilogy and epilogue, Edna O'Brien
• The Reader, Bernhard Schlink
• The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Melissa Bank
• Isle of Woman and Shame of Man, Piers Anthony

Add to these the uncounted things already lined up, waiting, on the shelf and the ten upcoming bookclub selections.

If you're near Ithaca, don't miss the last weekend of the Booksale. You'll be amazed how many good books are left and priced at .25 or .10. And Monday, a grocery bag full for $1.00! Finally, Tuesday books are free for teachers, homeschoolers and not-for-profit organization. The Booksale is truly one of Tompkins County's greatest institutions. More than 300,000 books in what seems like a lending library with no due date.

Pictures

The blog's been short of pictures lately 'cause my downstairs office, with the serious photo software, is cold. I'm using the upstairs computer so I can delay starting the fire for a few hours. I don't know if I can count this as energy conservation or sheer laziness. But it amounts to the same thing.

Coming home from the store yesterday, the clouds were just gorgeous. Thanks to Maggy for coming with me to take pictures from the top of Mt Pleasant.

This is the Cornell Observatory. I don't know what the guys with the telescopes were looking for in daylight. But I must remember to go there at night. My house is surrounded by trees, so I don't get much of a look at stars and such.

And this is the "rural character" of the Town of Dryden that I blog about at Dryden Democrats.

Words

Coturnix has posted on the Ethics session of the ConvergeSouth blogger conference:

The session was actually quite tense and contentious, struggling over the ageless question of who has, or deserves, more trust: professional journalists or bloggers...until someone really smart suggested to stop thinking "Who do I trust" and ask instead "Who do I believe". At that moment, everyone in the room relaxed.

Words are great! "Trust" implies the trusted object is, in fact, trustworthy. A journalist or a blogger might feel personally threatened that the reader doesn't trust him. He isn't trustworthy.

"Belief" requires no rational support at all. It's when you close the book on "I think..." "I'm done thinking about this. I believe it. There's no need to discuss it further." If a reader doesn't believe what's written, it isn't necessarily the fault of the writer. It may be that the writer hasn't made a good enough case. But it may be that the reader has a conflicting belief and isn't willing to re-examine it - not the writer's fault at all.

I've thought a lot about the difference between "know" and "believe." I'm an extreme skeptic, so there aren't many things I claim to know with certainty. There are things I know from direct experience. Do I know that the theory of gravity is true? I honestly couldn't tell you exactly what the theory of gravity is. Let's see - something about attraction of bodies toward each other relative to their respective masses? I know that every single time I've dropped something, it has fallen down. So, though "past performance is no guarantee of future results," and, in fact, there may be some other explanation for things falling, I can claim to know the theory of gravity is true because people I trust have told me so and because I'm unaware of any plausible alternative explanation. (n.b. "people I trust")

Dryden Town Budget

Last Friday's Dryden Town Board budget workshop was interesting. Honestly. Members of the Board were cordial to Simon and me - the only representatives of the public present. The clerk was kind enough to get a copy of the preliminary copy of the budget for us - all 86 pages of it. I've had a chance, over the weekend, to condense those 86 pages to 10 more meaningful ones. I've been in touch with Supervisor Trumbull with some questions, but here are a few salient points.

1. Total expenses budgeted (about $6.5 M) remain nearly the same as expenses budgeted in 2005.
2. Revenue includes:

• Property taxes (about $2.5 M): budgeted to increase as a function of increased assessments and tax rate remaining constant.
• Other income (about $2.5 M), including: sales tax (budgeted at the same level as 2005), state aid (increasing 15%), interest income (increasing)

The gap between total expenses and the total of property tax and other income is covered from the substantial surplus remaining from prior years. The surplus has accumulated apparently as a result of a generous contingency line item and apparently years of spending less than is taken in. And here a quiet debate begins. Should we continue budgeting for a surplus?

Dryden Town taxes, a small fraction of total property taxes, have declined steadily in the past decade. According to figures provided by the Tompkins County Board, the Dryden town tax rate has declined from 2.65% in 1995 to a projected 1.5% in 2006. The tax levy (the total amount raised through property taxes) has declined from 1,311,451 in 1995 to $914,240 in 2005 despite rising assessments. The surplus occurs as a result of either increased other income or increased control of expenses.

Should we decrease the tax rate and stop accumulating a surplus? Should we apply the surplus to increased town services? Or are we happy to continue accumulating a surplus? A public hearing is scheduled for October 27, 2005 at 7:00 PM in the Town Hall. Try to find out all you can about the budget before then so that time at the hearing will be well spent.

Next week I'll try to look at what may be the larger issue: assessments - up 25% since 1995. Or School taxes: about 90% of the Town of Dryden is in the Dryden School District where the tax rate is up from about 16.8% in 1995 to 22.1% in 2005 on top of the increased assessments.

I and the Bird

I and the Bird #8 will be up at Science and Sarcasm Thursday the 13th. I think it will include a link to my post about Bill's show. It's a great site. Check it out.

For a laugh about my prep for the show go back to my notes about matting.

Art show

I'm finally finishing framing Bill's paintings for the show that opens at the Laboratory of Ornithology Thursday. Bill is William C Dilger, Cornell Professor Emeritus and my dearest friend. The oldest of the paintings here, is the barred owl he did in 1942 when he was nineteen.

I've finished framing seventeen paintings. I've made horrible compromises on nearly all of them. But they look good. I can't scan larger than 11x14. So I made mock-ups of the deer (bottom right), the screech owl (top right) and the bittern as place holders in the layout which will actually be two rows about 16 feet long each. When we talked about the layout today we decided to add two of the mouse paintings and another field sketch.

I especially like the field sketches Bill did when he was in the Army. The cardinal was done in Washington D.C in 1944 and the Myna bird in India in 1945. Field sketches always include information about the specimen and where it was collected. The Myna bird is labeled "Collected by S/SGT Louis Van Guelpin. Area #1." They weren't allowed to say where they were. Bill says when he corresponded with Dr Allen he made a point of mentioning animals with narrowly overlapping ranges, thus letting Dr Allen know where he was.