Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands. This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it. I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment. I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital. This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world. It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naïve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony. The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.
From someone whose only wisdom in this case was to listen to a friend.
About a year ago my friend Michael convinced me to get an external hard drive for back up. Without that back up, when my hard drive crashed last week a major pain in the neck would have been a catastrophe, with many years’ worth of writing and research either lost or rendered very difficult to get. My computer repair people said they could usually retrieve the information off a crashed disc – but that it was pretty expensive to do.
Moral: If you do not have an external hard drive or equivalent, get one! They aren’t very expensive. My Costco one was about $100. I think less. It was easy to use. Mac’s Time Machine can do the rest, and so can SuperDuper. Easy. Even for me, a computer doofuss.
posted November 23, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Or use an a really good online back up like Carbonite, which is a cheap $60/yr service that is very very good. A while back my cat decided to walk across my keyboard and I lost everything. Carbonite restored everything I had right down to some things I’d even deleted. It doesn’t restore the operating system but files, music, pictures it does. I just love it — we were having phone problems and I lost the connection to them but Carbonite is VERY user friendly if you’re not a techie so restoring the service wasn’t a hassle. If you don’t want to use Time Machine or don’t have the room for anything external I highly recommend them.
posted November 23, 2009 at 8:03 pm
You’re right; I need to. Maybe after the holidays.
posted November 24, 2009 at 11:42 am
I learned this the hard way when I was younger. Made a full-blown RPG with the BASIC programming language over the course of a year. Then, a virus ate everything on my computer. Lost everything. So, now I have a 1TB backup from Iomega. Relatively cheap, and worth every penny.
posted November 24, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Personally, I suggest going to Linux full time. You’ll have fewer problems overall.
http://ubuntuevangelist.blogspot.com/ can help
posted November 25, 2009 at 12:21 pm
An external hard drive for backup is an excellent start. Remember though that if either that, or your main PC drive goes kaputt, then you will still only have 1 copy of your data left at that moment.
So, it’s not a bad idea to have a second backup option (online or another external or a copy on DVD etc).
Oh, and store one of them somewhere physically different. A burglar wont leave your external disk behind out of thought for you when he steals your PC, and fire and flood are equally non-discriminatory!!!
If you still end up in the position of needing to get lost or deleted files back then there are also file recovery software products that can help you get deleted files back in many cases as deleted data normally remains on the disk until something new overwrites it (moral, if you lose or deleted files you want back, stop using the device in the meantime!)
posted November 28, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Point well made. I’ve been meaning to do backups for ages; I finally did it today!