Skip to Content

Blogs

Central Pennsylvania Native Plant Festival Sat May 5th Shavers Creek

Central Pennsylvania Native Plant Festival
 
 
Saturday, May 05 2012, 10:00am - 3:00pm  

Come celebrate the arrival of spring, the return of wildflowers, and the beginning of another gardening season at the Central Pennsylvania Native Plants Festival at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center! Sponsored by PNPS and Shaver's Creek Environmental Center in conjunction with the Penn State Extension Master Gardeners. This is our second year of partnering with Shaver’s Creek. Come on out for a hike, a picnic…and enjoy one of the scheduled educational walk/programs on native plant gardening. In addition to expert speakers, there will be native plants for sale; local seasonal prepared foods and breads for sale; and educational resource tables where you can have native plant and gardening questions answered. Admission to the festival is free but please come prepared to support one of our vendors through purchases of plants and/or food.

Schedule of events:

10 am - Plant and food sales begin
11 am - Guest speaker (lower classroom): Gardening for pollinators

The Rich Give Back

Stevieslaw: The Rich Give Back

The NYTimes reported today in its magazine on the publication by Edward Conard of Bain Capital(former home of Mitt Romney) of “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong,” to be published in hardcover next month by Portfolio. The book, he hopes, will change the way we think of the superrich forever. He argues that income inequality is a good thing—the driver of innovation, industry, and the small pittance you may be lucky enough to get as a salary. The article, however, is incomplete. In fact, we, at Stevieslaw, find that more and more the NYT leaves out the essential ingredients—the hooks—of their stories. Sadly, they’ve done it here—even though the piece ran some seven columns, more space than the Times has dedicated to Noble Prize winners in Physics, since 1959.

The deal is that Eddie, who wants nothing more then to get his message out, will loan you the money to buy his book! And considering what a boon this book will be to your pitiful existence, the daily interest rate of 33% is more than reasonable. Contact him at iwantitall.com. Be sure to have the birth certificate of your first born son handy when you write.

Voices has a gay cousin

Linking LGBT Communities In Central Pennsylvania And Beyond

http://thecentralvoice.ning.com/

 

 

Both Sides Now

Stevieslaw: Both Sides Now

Justin Gillis reports in the New York Times this morning that climate change dissenters have latched on to the work of Richard S. Lindzen, a Meterology Professor at MIT. Dr. Lindzen’s research supports the theory that the change in cloud formation, as a result of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere, will act to reduce the temperature of the earth—a counterbalancing affect. While nearly all climate scientists disagree with Dr.

Helping poor women out of poverty

We are seeking like-minded persons who want to share ideas on how to best

assist poor women in our local community escape the trap of poverty. Most

established charities turn these women who depend on them into perpetual

beggars. If the charity handouts stop, no viable alternative is offered. Dispair

and lack of hope follow all too often.

We believe that a better alternative for these women should be on education

and skill-set training, so that they have a decent chance to escape the
"velvet trap" of relying on handouts and charity only. Most people want to

preserve their dignity by being self-reliant and self-supporting. We encourage

that notion. Perhaps you want to discuss this initiative and learn more about

a plan to help poor women succeed. We especially would like to correspond

with any person who has successful grantwriting expereince.

Email us a povertyerasers@yahoo.com. Tell us your thoughts and interests

in learning more or getting involved. Thanks. Charlie

So funny to see those rich guys and corporations buying secretive attack ads on the local tv

Oh LUCKY LUCKY Pennsylvania!

We get to have a bunch of rich out-of-state mutherfrackers buy ads on the local stations and tell us what to think and who to vote for - surprise surprise, it's vote for the RICH GUYS!

Let the rich out-of-state guys with their secret money superpacs and their advertisements tell us what to do - yeah, thats the ticket, i'll jump right on that.

Karl Rove, Koch Brothers, Australian Billionaire Rupert Murdoch and creepy Roger Ailes - you think you can buy this election, and who knows, maybe you can.

Funny thing - I personally do not like Obama. I know, I'm not supposed to say that, but I don't care for him. I knew we were in for a corporate presidency when he selected Tim Geithner for Secretary of the Treasury. Talk about putting the fox in charge of the henhouse!

But when I see these secretive Rovian and Koch-Murdochian attack ads with all their dirty Citizens United money, well, I'm tempted to vote for Obama just to say, "Frak you Karl Rove". 

Photos from the New Leaf Co Space benefit dinner...

I just be grabbing the links from a flickr feed... photog got it set to no perms, so, you gotta click to see. Maybe later I got some photos I can embed. (Note photog gave me permission to paste from her facebook, so pasted pics added.

I was there, nice piece of work. I liked the space, got to remember it, be great for fancy events - especially if I can get some design-minded folk like teh new leaf crew to decorate, they did it up proper - General Potter Farm.

Photos by Sarah Hanson 

Here's the link to the flickr set, click this for an easy way to view them all:

New Leaf Dinner Photos - Flickr by Sarah Hanson

And here's a few sample photos...

 

Read more »

Pretty good metaprimer on the rhetoric of debunking climate change myths

I'm constantly interested in rhetoric, the language of persuasion. This pdf had a lot of good but demanding points about how to get people espousing factually untrue climate denial myths to become able to actually look at the science.

Hint - it aint easy.

"Once people receive misinformation, it’s quite difficult to remove its influence. This was demonstrated in a 1994 experiment where people were exposed to misinformation about a fictitious warehouse fire, then given a correction clarifying the parts of the story that were incorrect.3 Despite remembering and accepting the correction, people still showed a lingering effect, referring to the misinformation when answering questions about the story.

Is it possible to completely eliminate the influence of misinformation? The evidence indicates that no matter how vigorously and repeatedly we correct the misinformation, for example by repeating the correction over and over again, the influence remains detectable.4 The old saying got it right - mud sticks.

There is also an added complication. Not only is misinformation difficult to remove, debunking a myth can actually strengthen it in people’s minds. Several different “backfire effects” have been observed, arising from making myths more familiar, from providing too many arguments, or from providing evidence that threatens one’s worldview. 

The last thing you want to do when debunking misinformation is blunder in and make matters worse. So this handbook has a specific focus - providing practical tips to effectively debunk misinformation and avoid the various backfire effects. " Read more »