New perspective on Copper Flat Mine
New Mexico in coordination with the US Geological Society look for "critical minerals" at Copper Flat Mine in an effort to expand mining.
Max Yeh
Sierra County Public-Interest Journalism Project’s board president Max Yeh is a novelist and writes widely on language, interpretation, history, and culture. He has lived in Hillsboro, New Mexico, for more than 30 years after retiring from an academic career in literature, art history and critical theory.
Assaying Entropy XI: Language and Covid
The exposition of recent changes in reading and writing leads to this excursion on a breakdown of what we used to think was the social function of language. That postulate is discussed by analyzing the comments to this series of articles as symptomatic of that breakdown.
Assaying Entropy X: Science, non-writing, expertise, and discussion
I've weighed the way three institutions have historically unshaped our idea of democracy as a model of human relations. I now turn to look at how these cultural tendencies impact public discourse and our apparent inability to settle any public issue.
Assaying Entropy IX: Reading, writing, and arithmetic
The validation of a personal, individualistic point of view in American culture to the exclusion of an objective, shared, and collective perspective constantly puts us at odds with one another because individuals normally disagree in judgement, interpretations, and opinions.
Assaying Entropy VIII: Education in America
Continuing my discussion of our turn towards individual points of view to the exclusion of larger concerns, I propose that in the last half century, American education has focused on student subjectivity pushing the culture towards individuation rather than cohesion.
Assaying Entropy VII: American democracy
Continuing the series "Assaying Entropy," I continue to develop a description of how the original idea of democracy in America was altered due to the influence of undemocratic structures. The last essay dealt with corporate hierarchy. In the present piece, I discuss the military influence, militarism, and the frontier mentality.
Assaying Entropy VI: Democracy in America
The Constitution created a government around the arguments about democracy, but it did not resolve those conflicts. The resulting ambiguity allowed traditional hierarchical, undemocratic structures, institutions, and values to inform American life. Those hierarchical ideas still dominate American social thinking today resulting in a complex and often self-contradictory identity.
Assaying Entropy V: Pause
Looking back over the series of essays called "Assaying Entropy," I summarize what has been said: why the topics so far covered are a continuous investigation of loss and time, how that process of thinking got to the question of democracy; and where that may be going.
Assaying Entropy IV: Covid and America
Some aspects of American society might make us more prone to what psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls fast thinking and thus more prone to make mistakes in judgment when it comes to complex issues like Covid.
PAWA granted standing in local water litigation
In the hearing on the application to transfer water rights to wells in Caballo for use at Copper Flat Mine, the hearing examiner has decided that Percha-Animas Water Association has standing to appear as a protestant against the granting of the application.
Appeals court affirms water conservancy in New Mexico
Water conservation has been a legal requirement in New Mexico for several decades, but until now, the courts have never discussed or defined the requirement. Yesterday, the Appeals Court gave substance to law by affirming a lower court decision based on conservation principles.
Assaying Entropy III: Thinking about Covid
Some limits on our ability to think when we want to think about Covid.