Today's intelligence: According to a special report by Searchlight New Mexico, Truth or Consequences's last best hope to avoid a water infrastructure meltdown is an infusion of cash drawn from the pools of discretionary monies that the governor and state legislators can use to fund high-priority projects.
Today's intelligence: heighten awareness and precautions after rabies incident in Sierra County
I return to the idea of entropy, this time as a measure of the increasing randomness in the universe, and I relate this increase to our gradual loss of social cohesion under the influence of individualism, to the breakdown of language in our culture, and to our carelessness about Covid.
New Mexico in coordination with the US Geological Society look for "critical minerals" at Copper Flat Mine in an effort to expand mining.
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.
A cold winters walk through a favorite canyon reveals ephemeral moments to enjoy.
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.
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.
Today's intelligence: New Mexico's tough new pollution rules rely on oil and gas operators to report and fix their methane emissions. How is self-policing working? Plus: a possible model for future suits against polluters and unexpected allies of tighter EPA regulations
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.
Today's intelligence: high-speed rail proposed for New Mexico; wildfire recovery monies go undistributed in southern New Mexico; and Sierra County ranks poorly in life expectancy rates.
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.