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The Lost Oaks of California Ave

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Lost Oaks of California Ave

#71

Post by eserorg »

Your tax dollars at work.

It's no wonder that the State of California is bankrupt.

While the state of California is piling on _billions_ of dollars in debt to pay for unionized wellfare programs, raising tax rates across the board on its citizens, cutting essential city and state services, closing state parks, issuing "IOU's" to people in-lieu of tax refunds, and seeing its general obligation bonds downgraded below "junk" status, it apparently is still OK to spend taxpayer money cutting down perfectly healthy trees to make sure that all of the trees on a street are the same height.

This in a state that has more Honda Prius' per-capita than any other state in the union.

Isn't being "green" wonderful?

I'm sure there's an entire office of twinkie-munching government bureaucrats that could be fired to compensate the California tax-payer for this gross misappropriation of his hard-earned tax dollars.

Re: The Lost Oaks of California Ave

#73

Post by fjabre »

ardit33 wrote: post #36

It is sad though, that Cal. Ave, is considered on the most nicer areas of Sillicon Valley. There is nothing really special in it that you can't find in any dinky town in the us, minus the charm that small towns have. Compare to any nice areas to Cambridge, or W. D.C. or NYC, or Boulder. With the money flowing in the area, that that's what they can achieve? At least during the gilded age, the rich folks built memorial…

Amen to that. Yeah put up some monuments!

Re: The Lost Oaks of California Ave

#74

Post by Methusala »

If governments have so much power that they can demolish well loved landmarks in the center of American entrepreneurship, imagine what they can do to a whole state or even country...wait a minute.

What needs to happen to save the state and country is the exact opposite of this travesty-entrepreneurs should replace the real deadwood, government on every level.

http://lewrockwell.com

Re: The Lost Oaks of California Ave

#75

Post by kevbin »

hedgehog wrote: post #9

I like Cal Ave partly because it's about as close as you can get in this area to my favorite neighborhood in Seattle (15th Ave). A photo I took yesterday while they were taking the last one down: http://openbs.org/photo/wehavenotrees.jpg Quote from the notice they sent out: "The City of Palo Alto Public Works Department ... shall be replacing most of the street trees on Cal Ave ... most of the existing trees are Holl…

"…which will bring a uniform look to the business district…"

Sweet, with a little more effort they can turn all of California avenue into a strip mall. Uniformity is great in pencil leads and spark plugs, but the fractal beauty of nature is not just a sitcom on Fox. If you want uniformity, there's a few towns due south of LA where they shave the rough, non-uniform hill-sides into perfect 45° slopes to ultra-flat plateaus on which to build uniform tract homes.

This just doesn't seem like something Palo Altans would knowingly do. Well, we'll always have Los Altos: http://www.losaltospost.com/PhotoGallery/photo/fullimages/Fu...

Re: The Lost Oaks of California Ave

#77

Post by TriinT »

ellyagg wrote: post #70
TriinT wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please note that "virtually never" is weaker than "never". In any case, thanks for your input. Your misguided fanboyism greatly amuses me...

No one (yes, this includes you) can apprehend what's true and make decisions only by reason and observation. We use heuristics, such as giving extra weight to the opinions of other smart people. In the olden days, they called it respect. All the people I respect this way can unashamedly and unreservedly admit to respecting other people themselves. When it's mutual, it's called friendship. Sometimes it's called love.…

In my book there's a difference between respect and adulation. Sure, a high-karma member is likely well-known by the community (especially if he has a track record of solid and insightful comments) and will likely get away with a silly comment once in a while. This is natural.

I just wanted to stir things up a bit and stress that dissent can be good. If HN ever becomes a monoculture due to excessive inbreeding and indoctrination, it will become uninteresting because everyone will think the same. There's richness in variety of ideas / opinions.

Re: The Lost Oaks of California Ave

#78

Post by rms »

supahfly_remix wrote: post #30
pg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of HN users are in Silicon Valley, and most people in SV know California Ave. This is the neighborhood Facebook just moved to, among other things.

I meant nothing towards you. PG's gonna write essays on whatever he wants. I was just pointing out evidence of the adulation/infatuation some of the HN denizens have for you. BTW I know Calif. Ave. too, I used to eat at Chu's every now and then (the little potsticker hole-in-the-wall shop). Is that still there?

Um, you are not stating anything profound by saying that lots of people here like PG's essays. That's about as obvious as it gets.

Re: The Lost Oaks of California Ave

#79

Post by jfarmer »

johnnybgoode wrote: post #61
petercooper wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was one of those disagreeable kids who used to argue with teachers when they got their math or chemistry wrong, and eventually I stopped doing that That's depressing. That's what education is supposed to be about (rather than blindly accepting incorrect facts).

Yes. lionhearted's example illustrates quite well the reason today's schools are generally incompatible with good education.

There are good ways and bad ways to go about it.

You have to think about your goal. Is your goal to get the teacher to correct their mistake and move forward? Or is it to boost your ego?

If it's the former, it's probably better to approach them later, in private, and point it out politely. They will correct the problem next session, or send out an email between sessions.

Either that, or be very polite, e.g., "Excuse me, Mr. Smith, but you wrote down there. Why isn't it ?"

If you say, "Mr. Smith, you're wrong. It should be , not " you are strictly speaking correct, but you'll humiliate them. It feels good for your ego -- I'm smarter than the teacher! -- but probably won't advance the class.

This isn't about the "sorry state of education," it's about knowing what people feel when you blurt shit out in class.

Re: The Lost Oaks of California Ave

#80

Post by johnnybgoode »

jfarmer wrote: post #79
johnnybgoode wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. lionhearted's example illustrates quite well the reason today's schools are generally incompatible with good education.

There are good ways and bad ways to go about it. You have to think about your goal. Is your goal to get the teacher to correct their mistake and move forward? Or is it to boost your ego? If it's the former, it's probably better to approach them later, in private, and point it out politely. They will correct the problem next session, or send out an email between sessions. Either that, or be very polite, e.g., "Excuse…

Why is it the student's responsibility to protect the teacher's ego?

Here is the admittedly unusual way in which I look at it: In most cases, the school system (including the teachers) is implicitly claiming that students are better off in school with them than anywhere else. When a ludicrous claim like this is being made and enforced, I don't see why they should be cut so much slack.

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