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Weekend link dump

Weekend link dump

Last updated on: March 5, 2011 at 6:12 pm by Fred Clark

Weekend link dump 2011-03-05T18:12:08-05:00 Fred Clark

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In response to some concerns about hospitality toward atheists and the nonreligious here at the new site I started to write about why that saddened me and why its terribly important to me, personally, that my own faith and the various faiths of my new friends here not in any way be perceived to be exclusive or unwelcoming to the contributions of anyone, but somehow what started out as a description of why and how much I value the presence and insights and criticism of the atheists and agnostics who read and comment here wound up getting sidetracked into a long rant about Glenn Tinder’s provocatively misleading 1989 Atlantic Monthly essay, “Can We Be Good Without God?,” and 1,200-or-so words in I realized that what I had begun as an affirmation of one set of people had turned into a criticism of people who criticize those people and, in general, just a long screed about how some guy 22 years ago was wrong.

And but so, I’ll have to go back and see whether the various component parts of all that can be salvaged into something worth sharing. But please in the meanwhile know that I appreciate and value and rely on the atheist commenters, readers, neighbors and friends who have visited this blog over the years and I very much hope that you will continue to read and post here, and that it will continue to be somewhere you feel welcome to and happy about visiting and posting.

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I got my real and fictional Kentuckies a bit confused the other night. Port Royal, Ky., is the actual home town of the actual Wendell Berry. Port William, Ky., is the fictional town in which his novels and short stories are set, the home for generations of Catletts and Coulters and Feltners. When we talk about “world-building” in fiction, we’re usually referring to science fiction or fantasy stories, but Port William is a remarkable achievement of world building.

Burt Lancaster said that when he played Prince Don Fabrizio Salina in The Leopard, director Luchino Visconti had the drawers of his bedroom on the set filled with clothes that might have belonged to the prince, all tailored to fit Lancaster. Lancaster asked why they were there, since he would never wear them in the film and nothing in the drawers would ever be seen on camera. Visconti said, “Because you are the prince, and these are for you.”

Port William is like that. You get the sense that every drawer is filled with just what ought to be there — real things that belong to real people. That’s part of why it’s easy to get the fictional town mixed up with the real one.

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“MIT grad’s invention turns brewery waste to fuel”

Eric Fitch … has invented a patented device that turns brewery waste into natural gas that’s used to fuel the brewing process.

The anaerobic methane digester, installed last year at Magic Hat Brewing Co. in Vermont, extracts energy from the spent hops, barley and yeast left over from the brewing process — and it processes the plant’s wastewater. That saves the brewer on waste disposal and natural gas purchasing.

That’s just cool. Waste is Bad, so cutting down on waste is Good. Turning waste into a cheap source of energy is even better. Reducing waste and producing cheap, renewable energy for the purpose of making good beer more affordable is even better still.

This is the kind of story that makes me glad I’m not, say, a Fox News personality or a right-wing blogger. Those jobs require one to turn everything into a partisan political issue and thus to view green energy solutions like this one as something nefarious and threatening. Plus it sounds vaguely hippie-ish — green energy, recycling, artisan beer, Vermont — and anything that makes the hippie types happy makes Fox News hosts unhappy. And it would be awful to have to read a story about something as cool as Eric Fitch’s invention and have to be unhappy about it.

If your political ideology requires you to oppose making good bear more affordable, then it’s time to rethink your political ideology.

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“Trailer-Park Politics on Long Island”

Here’s as succinct a summary of the situation as you will find:

Trailer-park residents are concerned that new owners will raise lot rents; many trailer owners own their unit, but not the land where it is located.

“Right now, if they increase your rent by 100 percent, you have no remedy but to pick up and leave,” state Assemblyman Fred Thiele told the Riverhead News-Review. “All the power is with the park owner.”

New York is considering legislation that would put some limits on that power. A bill in the state legislature would give manufactured-home owners 90 days challenge increases in lot rents in court if the increase is greater than the consumer price index. That’s a step, and I hope this bill passes, but the long-term solution to this untenable situation facing millions of Americans in non-mobile “mobile” homes across the country isn’t just to limit the unlimited power of landlords. The longer-term solution is to empower the homeowners.

Rent-control statutes protect tenants from the abuse of power by landowners. Where that’s needed, it ought to be done, but better to let homeowners themselves exercise power by freeing them from being tenants. Renter-owned communities provide long-term stability and security, financial independence and equity for manufactured-home owners — all without the need for rent controls or other such inefficient protections.

This is what the future ought to look like.

Photo from ROC-USA.org

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Cathleen Falsani: “On evangelical campuses, rumblings of gay acceptance”

Late last week, the provost of Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., announced that the school officially had recognized its first gay student organization.

The announcement came barely a month after the Christian school changed its anti-discrimination policy to include homosexuals, after a popular women’s soccer coach was forced out last December because her lesbian partner was expecting a child.

The gay student group had twice been turned down for official recognition. Belmont Provost Thomas Burns said the change of mind reflected an “ongoing campus dialogue about Christian faith and sexuality.”

Not Eastern or Messiah. Belmont. In Tennessee. Cool.

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Samuel A. Culbert on the horrible, horrible absurdity of performance reviews: “Why Your Boss Is Wrong About You”

As anybody who has ever worked in any institution — private or public — knows, one of the primary ways employee effectiveness is judged is the performance review. And nothing could be less fair than that.

In my years studying such reviews, I’ve learned that they are subjective evaluations that measure how “comfortable” a boss is with an employee, not how much an employee contributes to overall results. They are an intimidating tool that makes employees too scared to speak their minds, lest their criticism come back to haunt them in their annual evaluations. They almost guarantee that the owners — whether they be taxpayers or shareholders — will get less bang for their buck.

Culbert is the author of Get Rid of the Performance Review! How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing — and Focus on What Really Matters. I’m usually not a fan of management books or, as a general rule, of books with exclamation points in the title. But given the subject matter, I’m willing to give Culbert a pass on both points here.

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Stumbled across: The Naked Pastor, Whosoever Magazine

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