I'm guessing he thinks zebra mussels are totally not a problem, it's just environmentalists who say they "kill" lakes- how can you kill a body of water, huh? If God made zebra mussels then who are we to interfere with where they take over.
Instead of PSAs about cooperation, wouldn't it be easier just to say that zebra mussels speak Spanish?
Does he feel like a jack-ass now?
Probably not. Because he is a jack-ass.
According to the story*, one single private dock wouldn't participate, and sure enough, that's where the mussels got into Lake Austin.
Why didn't they just take his property via eminent domain?
I'm down for your PSA campaign, but no matter how successful the campaign is, expecting every single person to cooperate in service of a public good that requires widespread cooperation is a fool's game. That's why governments have the power to compel people to do certain things (like sell their property) in service of the public good.
1 and 3 are probably right.
So are 2 and 4.
I couldn't find the NPR story either but maybe it was Lake Waco rather than Lake Austin (where the invasion came via a single barge brought in by a contractor)? 4 is right, this goes well beyond mere lack of cooperation and into flagrant lawbreaking, but unfortunately it looks like the regs in question are backed by a max $500 fine so not exactly a proportionate norm enforcer.
Yes! Thank you. It's the Lake Waco story.
If the tarp won't get them all and you've got a bunch of guys out there, can't you just squish them all?
So if you fail to close a strike-through tag in html in a front page post, all old posts get struck through, too. Good to know.
You should just end all your posts with an open strikethrough, to make clear that nobody is supposed to pay attention to older threads anymore.
Can't everybody negatively affected by this douchebag sue him into oblivion? That's the American Way, not this candy-assed commie "cooperation" bullshit.
Remember when that construction worker called Buster Bluth a candy-ass, and Buster has the best little giggle of delight and hop as he echoes the insult to himself, walking away? I love that.
No. I stopped watching new television shows in about 2000.
Really? What do you do to fill your down time?
I think he has been perfectly clear on that score.
This seems like one of those prime cases for strong social shaming. Punishing people for refusing to cooperate towards the public good, especially in cases as bald faced as this, is one of the most central functions of shame in the first place, right?
I don't know if the government could legally put up billboards around town with the guy's face and name on them and something like "Johnson broke the law. That's why you can't ever go fishing in this lake again and why $X of your tax dollars have to be spent cleaning up after him." on them (probably not). But it seems like something a citizen could do, and the sort of thing that kickstarter is perfect for.
It's just TV. I don't see why it should count as a public good.
Even if I had watched Arrested Development, there is no way I would have written to the network as part of a campaign against cancellation.
There were zebra mussels for many years, since the 90s, in the lake where my family has a cabin on a lake. They hurt like hell to walk on but made the water more clear and warm. Then about three years ago they started getting eaten by something else, a small minnow (also an invasive species) and aren't really there any more. It's probably bad for some other reason but the lake has stayed pretty clear and game fish eat the minnows so things aren't looking too terrible.
in the lake where my family has a cabin on a lake
Did you use that phrasing just so I couldn't make a joke about your family having a cabin in a lake?
19: "No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death!"
It's harder than you might think to find out how cold it has to be for gorillas to freeze to death. I find sources saying mountain gorillas can survive the "cold", but nobody wants to define "cold".
You'll just have to run the experiment, Moby.
I'm not certified to do animal research. I'd have to do a whole on-line training.
It's harder than you might think to find out how cold it has to be for gorillas to freeze to death.
Mist is definitely insufficient.
20: Maybe it's one of those lakes-on-islands-in-lakes situations.
24: if only you had done that instead of an extra sexual harassment training, you'd be set.
"Ethics In Gorilla Freezing Research" is definitely one of the more involved IRB courses.
Something ugly was about to happen. I was sure of it. The room looked like the site of some disastrous zoological experiment involving whiskey and gorillas. The ten-foot mirror was shattered, but still hanging together - bad evidence of that afternoon when my attorney ran amok with the coconut hammer, smashing mirror and all the lightbulbs.
Acta Scandinavica Cryoprimatologica
Gorillas and yetis are basically cousins, right? So I think gorillas might have better cold resistance than you'd think.
31 Gorillas and yetis are basically cousins, right?
Not according to the most recent molecular phylogenies.
Apropos of the OP's theme, I've just seen this piece at Washington Monthly on Obama's interview with David Simon on The Wire. Topic: incarceration rates, and policy, in the U.S., the state of policing, how these things impact society.
How odd, for a U.S. President to do this. Apparently this happened two days ago.
34: That really is odd. Is it part of some as-yet unannounced policy initiative?
Of related interest:
Tom Engelhardt on what he calls a new American order. I admit that I at first thought that this would be an optimistic piece, but not so much.
Let me make my case, however minimally, based on five areas in which at least the faint outlines of that new system seem to be emerging: political campaigns and elections; the privatization of Washington through the marriage of the corporation and the state; the de-legitimization of our traditional system of governance; the empowerment of the national security state as an untouchable fourth branch of government; and the demobilization of "we the people."
35: I don't know. It happened two days ago, and googling shows that a variety of places have noted it, but I haven't read those links. Without having looked around, I'm going to guess: Obama is (again) redefining the sorts of things that Presidents of the US do. Sometimes they interview other people instead of being interviewed themselves, because good thinking doesn't particularly come from the top.
I assume it's Obama engaging in some late second term don't give a fuck. Hopefully this means we'll finally get Terminator X and the S1Ws to take over the Secret Service.
Huh, apparently in retirement Terminator X runs an "ostrich stud farm" in North Carolina. "I will retire from politics to cultivate my garden, which is full of male ostriches ready to have sex."
38: I don't understand. What about that interview, and the having of that interview, constitutes not giving a fuck?
40: Not giving a fuck about assuaging moderates.
41: Oh. If you listen to it, he actually makes a point of noting that the police have a really hard job, too, and we mustn't overjudge them, etc. It's really pretty anodyne. Also notable is that once Obama starts talking, Simon is just sitting there nodding blankly in a kind of "Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah, you're the President, so uh-huh" kind of way.
So-called moderates are, what, people who can't stand to hear that there's a police problem when it comes to blackness?
41.2: Relatedly, let us all wonder what kind of ass whupping has taken or will take place for Taraji Henson's son after she had to apologize to Glendale PD for going on a public rant after buying his story about being profiled.