The ability to corner cross is an interesting product of mapping technology that allows hunters to find the corner where two pieces of public land intersect. Apparently there are more than 27,000 landlocked corners in the West amerisurv.com/2023/02/09/c...

An amusing puzzle-- Robert Goodman, "After the Planners"?

Like Reagan's anti-regulatory efforts, which accomplished relatively little bc they failed to also recognize the legitimacy of government action, Trump's attacks on regulation promise another lurch in an unproductive and likely unsuccessful direction.

Environmental protection and bureaucratic reform were both personal passions for Carter. But Carter found it difficult to persuade either liberals or conservatives of the merits of embracing both priorities, along with the struggle to balance them.

It's unfortunate that Gonzalez's @theatlantic.com editors did not think that article should engage the piece The Atlantic had run just the previous year. It would have been more interesting and complex to wrestle with the tension. www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

There's a counter argument about culture and noise that makes some good points, but also completely disregards the health research. Xochitl Gonzalez's widely circulated article, for ex, simply dismissed noise reg'n as something that the rich impose on the poor. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

The noise/health research has gotten more definitive, but the policy response has lagged. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

A friend of William Howard Taft IV, who was working for Nader in 1969 on Nader's FTC report, wrote to Taft to mock Nader's attack on rock music. "Has he freaked out, or is it all due perhaps to excessive amts. of base metals in his dental work?"

Nader was/is probably right about noise hazards, but noise has never gotten its due as an environmental health threat, despite growing evidence of its impact.

Reminds me of one of Ralph Nader's little known and less popular crusades-- a call for federal regulation of noise levels in rock music performances. Nader considered excessive noise a worker safety issue and a consumer safety problem.

The newly-announced DOGE could help institute these reforms. Unfortunately, Vivek and Elon’s expressed interest in cutting personnel would only exacerbate out state capacity problems – a point I expand on in my op-ed in @TheHill today:

thehill.com/opinion/fina...

END

You can get a taste of the book here www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Lots of post-election discussion now about "the groups" and the "nonprofit industrial complex" in Democratic Party politics. Check out "Public Citizens" to read about how some of these groups got started and why their founders embraced a "public interest movement" as the right solution.

This week's event poster attached. If you're local to New Haven, you might like to join the Yale Environmental Humanities email newsletter which lists upcoming in-person and Zoom events in one Monday newsletter, many open to the public: subscribe.yale.edu/login?return...