Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

A current job posting at Swift Communications:

Page Designer – Sierra Nevada Media Group – The Sierra Nevada Media Group is looking for a skilled page designer to join a centralized design staff of five in Carson City, Nev. This crew is responsible for building six newspapers in the Northern Nevada and Lake Tahoe regions. With that in mind, you’ll be collaborating not only with the design staff, but with a handful of editors as well. This particular position will be key in building the group’s flagship paper, the Nevada Appeal — a six-day daily — and working Tuesday through Saturday. The successful candidate must be well versed in AP style, as well as Quark — Adobe CS programs (InDesign, Photoshop, Ilustrator) skills will be necessary this summer as we begin working with the DTI content management system. Some copy editing duties may be required. Carson City is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, where the high desert meets the alpine beauty of the Lake Tahoe area. Remarkable outdoor recreation opportunities and scenic adventures are within close proximity. We are family owned and offer full benefits and a 401K.

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“Gore Vidal, the iconoclastic writer, savvy analyst and imperious gadfly on the national conscience, has died. He was 86,” the L.A. Times is reporting.

“Vidal died Tuesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills of complications of pneumonia, said nephew Burr Steers.

“Vidal was a literary juggernaut who wrote 25 novels, including historical works such as “Lincoln” and “Burr” and satires such as “Myra Breckinridge” and “Duluth.” He was also a prolific essayist whose pieces on politics, sexuality, religion and literature — once described as “elegantly sustained demolition derbies” — both delighted and inflamed and in 1993 earned him a National Book Award for his massive “United States Essays, 1952-1992.”

“Threaded throughout his pieces are anecdotes about his famous friends and foes, who included Anais Nin, Tennessee Williams, Christopher Isherwood, Orson Welles, Truman Capote, Frank Sinatra, Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Eleanor Roosevelt and a variety of Kennedys. He counted Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Al Gore among his relatives.

“He also wrote Broadway hits, screenplays, television dramas and a trio of mysteries under a pseudonym that remain in print after 50 years.”

The rest of the article is here.

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Editor’s note: There’s much consternation on the normally tranquil West Shore of Lake Tahoe this week after a well-known bear was found shot and killed on a beach in Homewood.

Bears can be a nuisance, but a shooting in such a visible place is rare. Most people deal with bears with bear-proof trash cans or other deterrents.

The Department of Fish and Game is investigating. According to bear advocates, the bear has been in the area for years. Named Sunny, it is a mascot for the Bear League. The Bear League has published the name of the man who is currently the main suspect on its Facebook page, creating a heated debate over whether that decision was appropriate.

Except for a brief report on channel 4 out of Reno, there has been no local media reports. Social media is reshaping communications in rural areas throughout our region.

Here’s the Channel 4 report:

HOMEWOOD, CA (Mynews4.com & KRNV)- A Placer County Sheriff’s Deputy says a bear was found shot and killed on a beach in the Homewood area of Lake Tahoe, California. The Deputy told News 4 the investigation is now in the hands of the California Department of Fish and Game. 

According to Placer County authorities, a person can obtain a permit to shoot and kill a bear.  A permit can only be issued if there is a reason; if a bear is a problem bear or has done damage to property. If there was no permit, Placer County authorities say this would be considered illegal.

According to bear advocates, this bear has been in the area for years.  They says the bear’s name was Sunny and it was a mascot for the Bear League, a bear advocacy group in the Lake Tahoe area.

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Local blogger Don Pelton, an enterprising fellow, has written this on his blog, Sierra Voices:

“Sierra Voices will display the following widget in its right-hand column on all main pages and subpages until September 13th, by which time Emgold must deliver the funds to the City of Grass Valley for continuing the EIR (environmental impact report) or else its application to re-open the Idaho-Maryland Mine will expire administratively (with no further action by the fully assembled city council needed) and it will be required to start over from the beginning with a new application (should it wish to continue).”

The link to the widget is here.

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Cool Runnings Jamaican Grill is now open at 104 Union Street in Nevada City, 470-8894.

Hours are Monday through Thursday 11am-8pm; Friday and Saturday 11 am-9 pm. Carry-Out or Dine-in.

Experience Jamaican food such as Oxtail, Curry Goat, Lobster & Red Snapper, plus Jerk Chicken and Ital Stew.

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At a gathering of Nevada County Online in late June, The Union told attendees it would launch its new Website around mid-August. (The presentation was videotaped). But now that’s delayed until “at the beginning of September,” according to The Union’s comments to a reader last week on Facebook.

“Comments should return after the new site is in place,” The Union, owned by Swift Commmunications out of Nevada, added. “It is difficult to give an exact date, or that the comments feature is even certain, but for now that is the plan. (TownTalk) didn’t require a subscription. The new commenting system will.”

Facebook commentary is free — just like on Yubanet.com, KVMR.com, KNCO.com and blogs. The Roseburg News-Review, Swift’s only other print “broadsheet” besides The Union and the new home of The Union’s ex-pubisher, not only has a “paywall” it has no mobile app either.

Here’s a video on how to build a moat for your sandcastle:

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Here’s a report from Think Progress, citing a new study, as well as reports about it in the New York Times and UK Guardian:

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) is poised to release its findings next week on the cause of recent global warming.

UPDATE (9 pm, 7/28): A NY Times op-ed by Richard Muller, BEST’s Founder and Scientific Director, has been published, “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic.”

Here is the money graf:
“CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

Yes, yes, I know, the finding itself is “dog bites man.” What makes this “man bites dog” is that Muller has been a skeptic of climate science, and the single biggest funder of this study is the “Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000).” The Kochs are the leading funder of climate disinformation in the world!

It gets better:
Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.

In short, a Koch-funded study has found that the IPCC “consensus” underestimated both the rate of surface warming and how much could be attributed to human emissions!

UPDATE (9 AM, 7/29): The UK Guardian has a good story up, “Climate change study forces sceptical scientists to change minds: Earth’s land shown to have warmed by 1.5C over past 250 years, with humans being almost entirely responsible.”

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