Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from that of their social environment. -Albert Einstein
1. Rally to stop Highway 1 widening in Pacifica
2. Knowland Park update
3. Wendell Berry wants you to fill out his Questionnaire
4. Nominations are open for Livable City’s 2014 Livability Awards - by MARCH 24
5. Environmental effects of marijuana plantations on our national forests and other public lands
6. Suited and booted, America's marijuana entrepreneurs talk tax on Capitol Hill
7. Dutch parliament bans all neonicotinoids
8. Feedback: Cadillac Desert/food from 3D printing technology/storing San Francisco’s water
9. CNPS field trip to San Bruno Mountain March 29
10. Ted Kipping potluck: Springtime in the Smoky Mountains March 25
11. Billy Collins’ birthday today/Constellations
12. With no elephants around, the Chinese keep buying ivory
13. Notes & Queries: Why do fewer people use the world “less”?
14. SciAm potpourri
1.
Rally at Highway 1 to Stop the Widening Saturday March 29, 11:00 -12:00
Cynthia Kaufman
Kaufman.cynthia13@riseup.net
650.557.9797
3/21/14
On March 29 at 11:00 at the corner of Highway 1 and Rockaway Beach Avenue, Pacificans for Highway 1 Alternatives (PH1A) will be rallying to inform the citizens of Pacifica about the Caltrans plan to double the width of Highway 1 between Reina del Mar and Fassler.
The group has been engaging the public in front of shops and going door to door. They have found overwhelming opposition to the project. The volunteers are asking for signatures on a petition that reads:
“To the Pacifica City Council: The Caltrans plan to widen Highway 1 is not good for Pacifica. It will cause more problems than it will solve. I support pursuing a combination of alternatives that can improve traffic congestion on Highway 1 and that will be less damaging to Pacifica.”
PH1A opposes the plan for a number of reasons: The present plan from Caltrans is vague and does not address the needs for safe pedestrian crossing at these crucial sites; it does not have good bicycle lanes. The plan calls for huge retaining walls and does not rule out the possibility of sound walls blocking coastal views. In short, it will destroy some of Pacifica’s unique beauty and our quality of life.
Moreover, the plan seems destined not to reduce traffic in the long range but to increase it, since 4 lanes would go to 6 lanes and then back to 4 – permanent bottlenecks. The increased traffic during years of construction will generate more traffic congestion, as well as air and noise pollution. Most likely, it will never lead to shortened traffic after that multi-year process.
PH1A has been organizing for over a year to get the Pacifica City Council to hold public hearings on the proposed widening of Highway 1. So far the city has not acted, and the plan is moving forward, with Caltrans taking the lead. PH1A also wants City Council to hire a traffic consultant to investigate what alternatives would be best for Pacifica. The group has already suggested synchronization of the lights, more resources for carpooling by the schools, better public transportation, and other alternatives that are better for pedestrians and bicycles, more likely to reduce traffic, less massive, and less invasive to the lives of Pacificans.
If you’d like to volunteer or for more information, please contact PH1A at ph1a@gmail.com.
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2.
"Our kinship with earth must be maintained; otherwise we will find ourselves trapped in the center of our own paved-over souls with no way out.” Terry Tempest Williams
Dear Knowland Park Supporters,
Scroll down for:
Does the Zoo Board really know the truth about this expansion plan?
Weed Whack continues
Earth Expo event—volunteers needed
Save the Date—Big Earth Day Rally at the Zoo
Another great op-ed published
Does the Zoo Board really know the truth about this expansion plan?
Park defenders have continued to attend East Bay Zoological Society (EBZS) Zoo Board meetings and bring concerns to the board about the expansion project. This week, a group comprised of FOKP, CNPS, and CNGA representatives presented three things to the Board:
1) Since 2005, EBZS has failed to comply with the requirement in their "zoo management" agreement with City of Oakland to submit an annual capital spending plan (detailing expenses and schedule for projected development in the current year and two subsequent years). In January 2014, EBZS for the first time ever finally submitted a simple list---including a single-figure estimate of $45 million for the expansion project---with no other contractually required details. We expressed concern that if EBZS's financial feasibility study for the expansion project is as inadequate as their first-time submitted capital spending plan, there is no evidence or basis for assuring the public that the project is financially sound.
2) We pointed out that EBZS trustees and even the zoo's conservation director have demonstrated no knowledge or understanding of Knowland Park's natural resources---particularly that the specific site where the expansion is planned is recognized by conservation experts as a Bay Area ecological hot-spot and botanical priority protection area, with exemplar native grasslands (important when only 1% of original native grasslands in California remain), globally rare maritime chaparral, over 40 locally rare native plants, as well as a state- and federally-listed threatened species (Alameda whipsnake, for which the zoo has applied for a Fish & Wildlife "take" or kill permit during project construction). With no awareness of Knowland Park's biodiverse resources and what will be destroyed in the proposed expansion, how can the zoo effectively manage the park or act as its designated steward?
3) There is a disconnect between the projected increase in zoo visitors after expansion and the zoo's claim there will be sufficient parking available. When visitor parking was a concern 10 years ago, EBZS decided against a new parking structure as too costly. Where will additional zoo visitors park?
Based on our impressions, we are increasingly concerned that the Board itself does not have all the facts about the expansion plans.
Weed Whack continues
Want to enjoy the Park, get some great exercise, AND help protect it from the non-native French Broom that chokes out the native plants and habitat? Then join our Weed-Whack party in the Park this SATURDAY, MARCH 22. We ask the following of volunteers:
* Wear long pants and long sleeves, sturdy boots or shoes;
* Wear a hat;
* Bring your water bottle;
* Bring work gloves if you have some.
We will have several weed wrenches for volunteers, other hand tools and extra gloves, as well as snacks. The group will meet at the dead end of Cameron Ave, off Malcolm Ave. before 10:00 a.m. New volunteers will be asked to sign a Waiver of Liability form before proceeding into the Park. If you can come, please call our volunteer coordinator, Elise, 510-875-3992.
Earth Expo event—volunteers needed
CNPS and Friends of Knowland Park will share a booth at Oakland’s EarthExpo taking place Wednesday, April 9 from 10am-2pm at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland. This annual environmental fair highlights transportation, environmental health, waste reduction, water, energy, urban design, nature and community themes. We could still use some volunteers to help staff our booth including information about Knowland Park and why it is worth protecting. If you can help, please email info@friendsofknowlandpark.org
Save the Date—Big Earth Day Rally at the Zoo
Save the date—April 19, Friends of Knowland Park will hold another rally at the zoo entrance. If you only come out for one thing, come out for this! We’ll have music, signs, lots of fun for both adults and kids. We will be challenging the zoo’s “greenwashing” and delivering the message that habitat destruction does not equate with conservation education, or as one child put it: “you’re going to teach us how to save what you already destroyed?” More info to come, but please mark this one on your calendar and join us!
Another great op-ed published
Just in case you missed seeing it, check out Karen Smith’s great op-ed piece in the Oakland Tribune: http://www.contracostatimes.com/opinion/ci_25312604/guest-commentary-oakland-zoos-pr-campaign-is-faltering
GREAT piece comparing Knowland Park with another local parcel and the fight to save it from development.
Think of the amazing genuine conservation education programs the zoo could establish with the kind of money they plan to spend on this massive aerial gondola ride alone—and in the process destroy important wildlife habitat. Instead, they could develop programs that actually take kids into nature and let them experience it. But that wouldn’t allow the developers to build a view restaurant on top of the ridge.
Let’s face it: They aren’t making any more wildlife habitat like this. There are an abundance of good reasons why it should be saved by anyone who really cares about conservation. And if we succeed, maybe our children’s children will be able to see an authentic piece of “wild California” close to home.
Come join us and help save Knowland Park!
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3.
Questionnaire
by Wendell Berry
How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.
For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.
What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy
In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.
State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.
From Leavings. © Counterpoint, 2010
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4.
Who are your livability heroes? Nominations are open for Livable City’s 2014 Livability Awards
Sunday Streets parent organization, Livable City, will be recognizing outstanding San Francisco advocates and organizations at the 2014 Livability Award Ceremony this spring.
We are seeking nominations of individuals and organizations who have made outstanding contributions to the livability of San Francisco. Award winners will be recognized at Livable City's annual member party and Award Ceremony - stay tuned for date and details. Please help us identify worthy nominees in the categories below – or suggest a new award that you’d like to see us recognize.
• Livability Advocate
• Livability Innovator
• Public Servant
• Lifetime Achievement
• Livability Legislator
Email nominations to tom@livablecity.org by Monday, March 24.
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5.
Steve Dunsky:
Jake,
The Forest Service recently released this short video called Marijuana Grows and Restoration. It is about the environmental effects of marijuana plantations on our national forests and other public lands. The damage to watersheds, plants and animals is shocking.
Please share this Youtube link: http://youtu.be/IFNe_KZhPZw
Steve: I haven’t had a look at this yet. I have long been aware of the damage, but not the extent of it and perhaps will delay viewing it, because I have to ration the amount of bad news I assimilate. I wonder if the trend toward legalization might alleviate or even pull the rug from beneath them?
Add this to the thousand other insults our forests and other public lands undergo: logging, mining, foraging, commercial mushroom collecting, careless campers not putting out campfire, and so on. Jake
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6.
Suited and booted, America's marijuana entrepreneurs talk tax on Capitol Hill
Washington bipartisan lobby group shows increasing respectability of part-legalised US cannabis industry
Holly Yeager for the Washington Post
Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist (speaking), discussing selling marijuana and the tax code with congressman Earl Blumenauer (second from right). Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty
The delegation from the National Cannabis Industry Association made a point of dressing well for its day on Capitol Hill, sporting mostly dark suits, lots of ties and plenty of the group's signature lapel pins, which feature a sun rising over vibrant fields of marijuana.
Marijuana advocates have come to lobby Washington before, often to argue for more lenient treatment under federal law. But last Thursday, buoyed by a flurry of state decisions that have expanded the legal use of marijuana, the cannabis crowd came less as social activists than as entrepreneurs, asking Congress to remove some of the obstacles that stand in the way of their fledgling businesses.
They met with staff members to ask for changes to the tax code, which prohibits the businesses from taking standard deductions for expenses. And they huddled in congressional offices to make the case for other changes that would encourage banks to work with legal cannabis businesses.
If their aims seemed mundane, even technical, it was a measure of how far the marijuana movement has come in just a few years. Medical marijuana is now legal in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Last year Colorado and Washington state made marijuana fully legal for adults, and similar efforts are gathering steam elsewhere in the country. Colorado collected about $2m in marijuana taxes in January, the first month that sales for recreational use were permitted – a detail that was mentioned often.
"This is an issue that is absolutely at its tipping point," Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster, said at a congressional briefing organised by the group in a formal room that is usually home to the House budget committee. She cited recent polling that shows that younger voters are the strongest supporters of legalising marijuana, but that backing for legalisation is increasing among people of all ages.
The group also heard from members of Congress, Democrats Earl Blumenauer and Jared Polis, and Republican Dana Rohrabacher, each of whom spoke out in support of some of an array of proposed marijuana-related legislation. They also lamented that Congress has not kept up with the pace of change in the states. "We're in this never-never land on Capitol Hill," Blumenauer said. "But we're watching the rest of America march forward."
The cannabis association, founded in 2010, counts about 550 member businesses across the country and recently hired its first full-time Washington lobbyist. Fewer than 10 people participated in its first Washington event, in 2011, and last year about 45 members flew in for Capitol Hill meetings.
The industry, now more than ever, operates in an unusual space, legally permitted in some states while largely outlawed at the federal level. Last week, with some 55 "cannabis industry professionals" meeting with congressional officials, the group hoped to underscore the role of small businesses in the fast-growing industry and to counter popular perceptions of the drug and its users.
"We're not the typical face of marijuana," said Dorian Des Lauriers of Franklin, Massachusetts, an entrepreneur and co-founder of a new laboratory that will test medical marijuana. Des Lauriers, wearing a blue suit and a tie with an American flag design, said he had used his meetings with congressional staffers to talk about Section 280E of the tax code, which prohibits companies involved in drug trafficking from deducting normal business expenses that other legal businesses can claim.
The higher tax burden he faces makes it harder to hire workers, Des Lauriers said. He added that some staff members he spoke with seemed receptive to the group's proposal, which would allow standard business deductions and tax credits for marijuana-related businesses that comply with state laws.
The group's other top concern is the limited access to banks that many legal cannabis businesses face, forcing them to operate in cash. Some have trouble getting financing and can't even maintain chequing (current) accounts.
Last month, the Obama administration gave the banking industry the green light to do business with legal marijuana sellers, part of a push to open up banking access for the industry.
But the cannabis association said federal regulations still require financial institutions to undertake special monitoring of cannabis-related customers to see whether they might be in violation of other laws, making banks hesitant to take on such customers. Legislation backed by the group would provide a legal safe harbour for institutions working with legal cannabis businesses.
"There are small details that need to be taken care of," said John Davis, co-owner of the Northwest Patient Resource Centre, a medical marijuana dispensary in Seattle.
Polis, an outspoken supporter of legalisation efforts, provided one bit of intrigue during the mostly serious briefing. Asked how many of his colleagues use marijuana, Polis didn't hesitate to hazard a guess. "I don't think more than five or 10," he said. "But I really wouldn't know because I haven't seen them use it."
He then took a more scientific approach, suggesting that members of Congress really are like everybody else. "Remember the demographics," said Polis, 38. "I don't know what percentage of 60-year-olds use marijuana, but it's probably similar in Congress."
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7. Dutch parliament bans all neonicotinoids:
http://www.ontariobee.com/inside-oba/news-and-updates/dutch-parliament-votes-to-ban-all-neonicotinoid-pesticide-uses-in-the-netherlands
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8. Feedback
On Mar 21, 2014, at 12:44 PM, deidre martin wrote:
Hi Jake,
Do you keep a birthday calendar for your postings? This email is to suggest that your Nature News recognizes Marc Reisner the author on his birthday Sept. 14th. I'm currently reading his book Cadillac Desert: The American West and It's Disappearing Water.
I was reading about him online and found this quote from another book:
"San Francisco was something beyond the most explosive boomtown in history. It was the only nineteenth-century American boomtown among hundreds that never skipped a beat. It didn't decline, collapse, disappear from the earth - it just went on. This is not necessarily something to brag about, because the by-products of San Francisco's early years were horror and excess. During the gold-panning era, which went full-tilt for only five or six years, miners and cavalry massacred Indians by the thousands. When they were bored killing Indians, they lynched Mexicans, blacks, and Chinese. Market hunters feeding San Francisco and the gold country towns and camps needed about eight years to wipe out the Central Valley's herd of antelope and elk, which some had compared to bison on the Great Plains: they also slaughtered waterfowl by the millions. Whole mountainsides - whole basins, like Lake Tahoe - were shorn of virgin timber to erect San Francisco and dozens of mining towns."
-Marc Reisner, A Dangerous Place: California's Unsettling Fate
I appreciate his knowledge and understanding.
Yes, Deidre, and that is only a beginning. Have you read Gray Brechin's Imperial San Francisco; Urban Power, Earthly Ruin? Perhaps we San Franciscans shouldn't be so smug and superior.
On Mar 20, 2014, at 5:59 PM, Steve Neff wrote:
Nice little film about the wolves in Yellowstone. One clarification I would make is that the narrator is English, and when he refers to "deer", he means what we call "elk"
On Mar 14, 2014, at 9:08 PM, Steve Neff wrote:
Jake: I found this reader's reply comment to the Scientific American article to be interesting, and (disturbingly) perhaps not tongue in cheek. I was reading some time back about how there were plans to use 3D printing technology to make "food":
I am NOT a gourmet.
I want everything I need in as quick and easy a way as possible.
I look forward to when a 3D type machine can create such a compact meal straight from minerals, etc.
"Grow " will be a thing of the past. No pesticides, no phosphates and nitrogen pollution, etc.
The hoopla over food is silly to me"
Steve: Yes, it is disturbing that there are shallow people who think this way. But it’s not new, and people have expressed outrageous thoughts ever since the beginning of time. A few of the outrageous things come to pass, and even promote our welfare; most sink into oblivion.
On Mar 20, 2014, at 3:40 PM, Peter Vaernet wrote:
Vetting, Specifically, Restore Hetch Hetchy..
Yes, Jake, I must admit that the reference to Hetch Hetchy last week was very selective, maybe unvetted reading.
The writing contradicted the fact that the SF Chron article clearly stated that the water from the other reservoirs will have to be filtered at Sunol. Also, the two other reservoirs are not an attempt towards replacing, but only supplementing Hetch Hetchy supplies.
Unvetted? I read it for what it is: a statement about our storage capacity and the lack of a need for storing water in Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. With Eleanor, Cherry, Don Pedro, Calaveras, Crystal Springs, and a few others, there is adequate storage capacity (some, like Don Pedro, may need to increase its capacity a little--one of many options to be studied); only thing lacking is political will. San Francisco has exposed its hypocrisy in being unwilling to reverse this historical miscarriage, being the only city to store its water in a national park. Shame. And Hetchy water must be filtered also.
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9.
California Native Plant Society field trip
MARCH 29, SATURDAY, 10 am to 2 pm
San Bruno Mountain: Buckeye & Owl Canyons
Leader: Doug Allshouse
These two large canyons adjacent to Brisbane offer habitats not common to the rest of the mountain. Both canyons contain riparian forests of buckeye, bay and oak trees, as well as hazelnut, toyon and a burgeoning new blue blossom community. In June 2008 a brutal wildfire transformed them from lush paradises to blackened-moonscapes, and though they still show some of its effects, they have rebounded nicely. The canyons are very rich in species including hound’s tongue, yerba santa, paintbrushes, lupines and sanicles. Rarities include centaury (Zeltnera muehlenbergii, a rare coastal gentian), coast rock cress (Arabis blepharophylla), San Francisco wallflower (Erysimum franciscanum), Eastwood manzanita (Arctostaphylos glandulosa) and star lily (Toxicoscordion fremontii). We’ll visit an Ohlone shellmound in Buckeye Canyon where we will see chaparral currant, maidenhair fern and western chain fern. Bring a lunch, since we will stop for a while on the ridge between the canyons. If there’s heavy rain, we’ll cancel and try again on April 12. Meet at the Brisbane Post Office. From Bayshore Blvd turn onto Old County Road and follow it to Visitacion and San Francisco avenues. Contact: Doug Allshouse, dougsr228@comcast.net or 415-584-5114.
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10.
Images by Bob Case
SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY FAIR BUILDING
9TH AVENUE at LINCOLN WAY (GOLDEN GATE PARK)
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122 - (415) 753-7090
The Kippings invite you to Potluck*/Slideshows
4th Tuesday of the Month- 7:00 pm.
MAR. 25 BOB CASE - SPRINGTIME IN THE SMOKY MOUNTAINS
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11. Billy Collins
Today's the birthday of the man who said, "My poetry is suburban, it's domestic, it's middle class, and it's sort of unashamedly that, but I hope there's enough imaginative play in there that it's not simply poems about barbecuing." That's the poet Billy Collins, born in New York City (1941). He was an only child. Before he even knew how to read, he would page through books and pretend that he was reading whenever his parents had company. He said: "I would say it was a fairly happy childhood. But they say he who says that is just better at repressing things." He wrote his first poem at the age of seven when he was driving with his parents and looked out the window and saw a sailboat on the East River.
He hasn't stopped writing poems since then. He said: "I was a most impressionable teenager back in the days of beatnik glory, so I responded fully to Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti's 'Coney Island of the Mind' — still a good title — Gregory Corso, and others. I was in Paris for a summer in the early sixties and hung self-consciously around the corners of the scene on the Boul Mich, as they called it. I sat at the same table with Corso and others, and I even hung around with an American girl named Ann Campbell, whom Realities magazine had called 'The Queen of the Beatniks.' (Let's see ... what did that make me??) But mostly I was a Catholic high school boy in the suburbs who fantasized about stealing a car and driving nonstop to Denver. I probably would have done it, but I didn't have access to those special driving pills Neal Cassady had. Plus, there was always a test to study for, or band practice."
His books include The Art of Drowning (1995), Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001), Horoscopes for the Dead (2011), and most recently, Aimless Love (2013).
Writer's Almanac
________________
Constellations
by Billy Collins
Yes, that's Orion over there,
the three studs of the belt
clearly lined up just off the horizon.
And if you turn around you can see
Gemini, very visible tonight,
the twins looking off into space as usual.
That cluster a little higher in the sky
is Cassiopeia sitting in her astral chair
if I'm not mistaken.
And directly overhead,
isn't that Virginia Woolf
slipping along the River Ouse
in her inflatable canoe?
See the wide-brimmed hat and there,
the outline of the paddle, raised and dripping stars?
From The Trouble with Poetry. © Random House, 2005
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12.
With no elephants around, the Chinese keep buying ivory
Heard on Marketplace March 17
AFP/AFP/Getty Images
Ivory is displayed before being crushed during a public event in Dongguan, south China's Guangdong province on January 6, 2014. China crushed a pile of ivory reportedly weighing over six tonnes on January 6, in a landmark event aimed at shedding its image as a global hub for the illegal trade in African elephant tusks.
Interview by Kai Ryssdal
Monday, March 17, 2014 - 15:11
Story
One of the surest ways to create a thriving black market in something: Make it illegal.
Drugs and U.S. dollars in closed economies are good examples. Another good example is the elephant ivory market, which is booming, despite bans on international trade and crackdowns in many African countries.
Damon Tabor wrote about the illegal ivory trade from source to final sale in the current issue of Men’s Journal. He says there is a rising demand in China and that fuels poaching in Africa.
"The demand is a function of the rising Chinese middle class," said Tabor. "You have a sizeable portion of China’s population that now has disposable income and can spend it on things like ivory trinkets and these intricately carved ivory statues."
Tabor broke down the process of how poaching works. He gave us this example from one of his sources:
1. Suppliers will get an order from a buyer.
2. A supplier will then transmit the orders to the actual poachers.
3. The poachers go out and kill the elephants.
4. The supplier will then pick up the dead elephants and drive them somewhere for international transportation, most likely a port.
5. The ivory may then hit a customs official, who in this case would be on the supplier’s payroll.
6. It's shipped to buyers and traders.
Tabor said the demand for ivory has exceeded the reproductive capacity of elephants. Which means of course, that the animal will eventually die out. He says for people who don’t come into direct contact with the animal, this isn’t an issue.
"With the traders and the dealers and the middlemen I spoke to in China and Vietnam, there’s not a great deal of care for an animal that is several thousand miles away," said Tabor.
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13. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
(JS: The Guardian really pushed my button with this less/fewer question--which, I think, they purposely worded incorrectly so as to provoke people, which it did.
I know language changes constantly, and I accept many of the changes without getting upset. However, this less/fewer grates on my sensibilities, like fingernails on a blackboard. [oops, blackboards: what are they?
I frequently ask myself: Am I just being fuddy-duddy, or is this important? Somehow, this less/fewer seems important to me, but can't give a good reason why. I see 'less' being used more and more frequently.)
Grammar police will go wild
Why do less people use the word "fewer"?
Are you sure you didn't mean to ask: "why do fewer people use the word "less"?
Terence Rowell, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Fewer means smaller in number, while less means in smaller quantity. Not many, including evidently our questioner, always get this right.
Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills, Victoria, Australia
• Because they do not know that people is a count noun, not a mass noun (as in "less cement"). It should be "fewer people"; but this does not make them less(er) people.
Edward Black, Church Point, NSW, Australia
• To infuriate uncountable legions of grammarians.
Richard Orlando, Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• Because they think less.
John Ralston, Mountain View, California, US
• "Less" has fewer syllables and takes less time to say.
Avril Taylor, Dundas, Ontario, Canada
• Because fewer than less people care about clarity in communicating.
Jennifer Rathbone, Toronto, Canada
It's a thin line between them
If music be the food of love, what is the food of hate?
In personal relationships: love.
Michael Moore, Whidbey Island, Washington, US
• Your neighbour's music.
Philip Richard New, Düsseldorf, Germany
Any answers?
Why would anyone say "I'll be quite honest with you ..."?
Sklief Garweagle, Necum Teuch, Nova Scotia, Canada
Political science?
Terence Rowell, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
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14. Scientific American
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN VOLUME 310, ISSUE 4: Why Global Warming Will Cross a Dangerous Threshold in 2036
Emitting carbon dioxide at current rates will soon push Earth’s temperature up by 2 degrees Celsius. Here’s how to make the calculation yourself
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=39&ms=NDU0MDkyMjUS1&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=NDAyNDg4NDExS0&mt=1&rt=0
OBSERVATIONS: Global Warming: Democrats and Republicans Agree
Wait, what? Contrary to the polarized positions that politicians and commentators often take in the media, Americans do not disagree about global warming or what to do about it.
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=38&ms=NDU0MDkyMjUS1&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=NDAyNDg4NDExS0&mt=1&rt=0
GUEST BLOG: Mapping Changes in Soil Biodiversity Due to Climate Change
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=45&ms=NDU0MDkyMjUS1&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=NDAyNDg4NDExS0&mt=1&rt=0
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN VOLUME 310, ISSUE 4: Protect the Endangered Species Act: Editorial
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=25&ms=NDU0MDkyMjUS1&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=NDAyNDg4NDExS0&mt=1&rt=0
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN VOLUME 310, ISSUE 4: No-Till Farming Is Even Better for Wildlife Than Thought
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=6&ms=NDU0MDkyMjUS1&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=NDAyNDg4NDExS0&mt=1&rt=0
NATURE: Water Returns to Arid Colorado River Delta
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=10&ms=NDU0MDkyMjUS1&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=NDAyNDg4NDExS0&mt=1&rt=0
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