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Ignoring Climate Change Won’t Make It Go Away

You cannot stop climate change with an executive order. Misinformation is defined as politically motivated actors spreading false or misleading information to reinforce their beliefs. While it can be harmful, it is more of a symptom than a disease. Research shows that misinformation does not change the beliefs and actions of those who encounter it; it merely tends to reinforce them. Misinformation is simply bad actors preaching to the choir. Republicans don’t want to hear that the climate is changing because it challenges their beliefs. The erasing of most climate-related ...

Ukraine Invasion Is Waste Of Humanity

CHAUTAUQUA—Sometimes worship services are striking in ways that go unspoken. So it was with the Aug. 10 sacred-song service at Chautauqua Institution. The service focused on “the family of Abraham,” and thus on the religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—tracing their roots to Abraham and Sarah. Taking part in the service were three young people: One Jew, one Christian, and one Muslim, each a participant in an interfaith program at the institution. Let your imagination run regarding what went unspoken: Had these three young people been born in another place, been ...

End Of The Line

Every time I open my computer I get another message. One fine day I am not going to be able to write anything. I am working on a seven-year-old computer which by today’s standards is a dinosaur. The only thing I use my computer for is this column. For Internet access, reading and ordering things I have another device. The major program will stop being updated this October. I am not sure what that means, but just in case I want to be prepared. I do not intend to buy another computer so whatever happens my column will cease when it dies. I have made so many friends doing this bit of ...

Property Tax Is Hurting Jamestown Residents

There have been three great migrations in our history. One is the Great Migration in Africa where over a million wildebeest, zebras, and gazelles every year cross the Serengeti in search of food and water. It still happens to this day. The second Great Migration, from 1916 - 1970 was after the Civil War, which was the deadliest war in American History. The death toll was around 850,000. Makes me sick just thinking about it. The central issue of the Civil War was slavery and its expansion ( Democrats for its expansion and Republicans against it ). African Americans left the rural ...

Why Neatness Matters

While growing up on the farm, my father always stressed the importance of neatness in the way things were done. He didn’t make a lot of money in dairy farming, but he also never spared spending when it came to keeping the barn painted, maintaining the farm equipment, or mowing the lawn. To him spartan living did not mean slovenly living. It was important to keep things cleaned up, and to do the best with what you had. That has always stuck with me, and I give a “lot of points” to people and organizations who keep things neat and clean. In that vein, for example, I was pleased ...

A Civic Reckoning

I have sat in rooms heavy with the haze of indifference—spaces where dissent is unwelcome and truth is inconvenient. To witness the unraveling of a republic and be met with little more than patronizing dismissal is a profoundly disorienting experience. Any merit of warnings and pleas for compassion are reduced to those of emotional outbursts, and deeply considered critiques are written off as juvenile defiance. But I ask: when in history were the well-informed ever tranquil in the face of injustice? This is not an indulgence in cynicism. It is a measured articulation of grievances ...