Old article (2005) and even for that, old data. If I skim it correctly, cohort born around 1966 in Berkeley/Oakland*, assessed for personality traits in nursery school in 1969, then politically assessed in 1989 around the age of 23. N = 104. No descriptive statistics, oddly.
* From two nursery schools total. I wouldn't be surprised if both were in the south Berkeley / north Oakland region so got kids from both.
Your comment has been flagged for being easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and relatively over-controlled.
In these dark times, we must take joy when we find it.
2: ... which is the conservative caricature of liberals, right?
The fact that this is the Bay Area specifically is fascinating. Did anyone in any other region of the country try to replicate it?
I wonder what The Crash Test Dummies are up to?
6: Still touring! https://www.crashtestdummies.com/
7: Which I presume they will do until they come to an abrupt stop.
fearful, rigid, inhibited, and relatively over-controlled
Counterpoint: I was a fairly liberal 23-year old.
But maybe this means I'll develop bad politics twenty years from now.
Trump is opening LA dams to cause harm? Does anyone understand consequences of this? Horrible.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-01-31/trump-california-dams-opened-up
I'm sure the owner of the LA Times will find someone whose byline can be used to praise the move.
12: Those dams are nowhere near LA and that water will flood farmlands that don't need it then flow into the Pacific with no impact whatsoever on the fires, which are mostly contained at this point anyway. This is probably the stupidest thing he's done so far, up against some very strong competition.
I posted a link to an article in a different thread, but there was apparently a real chance they could have broken levees and flooded towns if people hadn't stepped in to tell them not to do it all at once.
Informative, thank you. Sounds inflationary.
That water is in the southern San Joaquin Valley. It won't even reach the Pacific. It will evaporate after flooding some fields in the south valley. It is extraordinarily pointless in every regard. The only possible explanation is that someone shouted "turn the water on" until people who knew nothing about water opened some dam gates.
I defer to Megan's greater expertise in hydrology.
Do you know if any of it makes it to the Kern National Wildlife Refuge? I was just there a couple weeks ago and thought I'd wait for more rain before going back. But if it got water another way, that could be interesting too.
Doesn't look like it is on the Kaweah or the Kern River, so I don't see how it could, more's the pity.
Reading these comments about the dams is somehow bringing me to my knees. Like whole new avenues for unnecessary damage and stupidity and feeling angry helplessness that I hadn't anticipated.
I know we don't say 'heighten the contradictions' but there have never been contradictions this incredibly fucking stupid and visual. I actually think this one is fairly harmless, except to Trump-voting growers. It could only have happened by Trump bellowing 'turn on the water' until he found someone on the Army Corps chain of command who would do it. I promise you they are not deluded ideologues who want to spill that water in January. It is distressing that he was able to bully them into doing something so contrary to their very pure mission. Or replace them with people who would and have no idea of downstream flood capacities.
the whole "turn on the water" imbroglio is stupid and hilarious for all the reasons megan explained. it's also a great illustration of how uninformed the national press is about the geography and infrastructure of the world's sixth largest economy. the map here
helpfully includes terrain as well as facilities. trump has shown he can directly control the operation of federal facilities, but not state (or privately owned*) facilities. even for federal facilities, there remain two constraints - professionals within the corps who have knowledge and any remaining shreds of common sense (a weak constraint) and physics (here mostly terrain and its friend gravity). the latter are strong constraints that we overcame in building the state and federal systems but that we haven't recently been able to muster to address big problems and that require immense resources including both $$$$ and human knowledge, all deployed by government. musk seems intent on precluding that as an option in favor of some different way of organizing society and allocating resources.
it would be great if i felt more confident in constraint number one given that people i love live downstream of several federal dams. a random trump tantrum isn't my top fear - it's the hollowing out of capacity to run and maintain these dams during spring melts in years with decent snowpack and spring rains. the oroville dam (a state water project facility, so sure - this time not federal) came uncomfortably close to abruptly ceasing to function in 2017.
* e.g. the dams on the klamath removed last year. indirectly, he could have prevented federal agencies from issuing the permit required to remove the dams and restore the landscape, so thank god they got the permits under biden.
I am very deeply grateful those dams were physically removed in the Biden era. I know that if they weren't already demolished, removing them would have been put on hold despite all plans and permits to remove them.
i am very proud of my colleagues who worked on the permits!