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Be the finch

 

Think things are hopeless? That Republicans control it all?

I just saw a hawk flying straight towards my house, being chased by a dozen small finches.

Be the finch.

 

 

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But his emails…

Social media is abuzz with the proof of Donald Trump Jr’s collusion with Russian officials. He actually released the emails containing the proof on Twitter, but only because the New York Times was about to release content from the emails.

Continue reading “But his emails…”

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Integrating WordPress’ Multisite support

In the past, I’ve skipped between supporting multiple sites and only having a single site, here at Burningbird.

I like different domains and sites so that people can focus primarily on the topics they like. For instance, tech people may get a bit tired of my political writings, and those interested in the political writings may not care for in-depth overviews of JavaScript.

The main issue with multiple sites, though, is the amount of work to maintain the software for each site. In fact, that’s been a real pain in the past, and the reason I took down the individual sites.

Thankfully, WordPress has very good multisite support now. I can support different sites with different domain names, and you all have no idea it’s all fed by the same WordPress installation. More importantly, if I decide to subscribe to a security system for my site, such as Wordfence, I only need one subscription. Considering how much my site gets hammered on a daily basis, I’m definitely interested in increasing my security. However, security API keys are not cheap. They’re too expensive to get one for every domain.

I’m also eliminating all statically generated web pages. I just wiped out the old weblog.burningbird.net site. I thought about keeping some of the old content but then realized people have enough stuff to read, they don’t need to see stuff that’s 15 years old. In addition, I’m adding newer statically generated content into WordPress, in preparation for converting everything over to the secure version of HTTP, HTTPS.

As I add active content to new sites, I’ll post a note linking to them. Right now, I have active content here and at One Lawsuit.

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The GOP’s disHONEST Act against the EPA

Musician playing in empty Beijing square, mouth and nose covered to protect against the pollution

Yesterday, the House passed the Honest and Open New EPA Science, or HONEST, Act. Tortured use of acronym aside, this Act is anything but honest.

The GOP claims the act is to force the EPA to provide the raw data behind all of its decisions. However, the primary reason for the Act is to inhibit regulations based, in part, on confidential or proprietary raw data. The Act’s inspiration came from research published in 1993 and known as the Harvard Six Cities Study.

To summarize the Six Cities Study, the research found that people in cities with dirty air were dying sooner than people living in cities with clean air.

This research formed the basis for many of the EPA’s Clean Air Act regulations related to particulate matter. If you can clearly see the skyline of LA now, and breathe its air without a facial mask, thank the authors of the Six Cities Study.

Continue reading “The GOP’s disHONEST Act against the EPA”

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Finding Truth

According to Dictionary.com, triangulation is:

The location of an unknown point, as in navigation, by the formation of a triangle having the unknown point and two known points as the vertices.

When I studied history in college I had a professor tell me that the only way to discover the truth behind an event is to read three completely different interpretations of the same event. Somewhere in the middle of all these interpretations, you’ll find the truth.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to only listen to one viewpoint, one interpretation.  Listening to those who are like-minded and speak with one voice is less disruptive than seeking the truth.