Comments on: Byline: Bay-Delta BioRegion

By: john thackara

john thackara — Sat, 29 May 2010 15:57:45 +0000

Hah! So you’ve already done it (given a bio-region as your byline). Bril. Or is everyone in California doing it, and I’m the last to know?

Do you know much about the Washington Centre — where they have a curriculum for bioregions? http://www.evergreen.edu/washcenter/project.asp?pid=62

By: Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan — Thu, 27 May 2010 20:04:31 +0000

Ha hahaha. Yeah, I didn’t know what to think about that part about oral/written/transmitted communication. I feel like you can start ANY sentence with the words “As recently as three generations ago…” and then finish it with something crazy — re: electricity, employment, education, public health, you name it. It’s a bit of a cheat.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:31:59 +0000

This reminds me of a recent 30 Rock joke: Jack’s dating two women, a blonde CNBC financial news host named Avery and his redheaded high-school sweetheart, Nancy. He eventually tells Avery about Nancy, but not the other way around. His justification goes something like, “Avery is forgiving, descended from happy Swedish valley people… Nancy is a crazy Irish Catholic, descended from bog people!”

(Which raises the question; are you the geography you’re in, or the geography in your DNA?)

By: Tim Maly

Tim Maly — Thu, 27 May 2010 18:27:50 +0000

Ok. Now I’ve read the linked piece. There is a lot of good in there. Lots of good material to think about. So forgive me as I go after the bit that made me angriest.

You don’t get to go on about how much time you spend maintaining your blog in a post in your blog a few paragraphs after you tell us that mass communication drove us off the rails and there are too many blogs. Not cool.

By: Tim Maly

Tim Maly — Thu, 27 May 2010 18:11:12 +0000

Commenting without reading the linked piece.

I’m pretty sure that my bioregion is planet earth, given the impact that the water cycle, weather systems, and full climate have on my life. These are all pretty interconnected and interdependent natural systems. You could make an argument for solar system, though I suppose that the case for INTERdependence is kind of weak. The Sun would probably be just fine without us and not vice versa.

To say nothing of the old fashioned presumption on display that humans are not a natural phenomenon.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Thu, 27 May 2010 16:33:41 +0000

Thank you Snarkmarket for eating up my entire workday morning. Had you not pointed out the “Bio-Region” reference, I would have pulled something completely different from this piece. I particularly liked his line about replacing a doomsday machine economy with a solidarity economy. A great piece. Thanks.