78 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2023
    1. If there is a core theme to the formal position it is that education isabout passing on information; for formalists, culture and civilization represent astore of ideas and wisdom which have to be handed on to new generations.Teaching is at the heart of this transmission; and the process of transmission iseducation.
    2. There are, one might say, conservativeand liberal interpretations of this world view—the conservative putting theemphasis on transmission itself, on telling, and the liberal putting the emphasismore on induction, on initiation by involvement with culture’s established ideas.

      The formal educational viewpoint (in contrast to progressive education) can broadly be broken into conservative and liberal interpretations The conservative viewpoint focuses on transmission of knowledge while the liberal places its focus on initiation or induction into a culture's formative ideas.

    3. While progressive educators stress the child’s development from within,formalists put the emphasis, by contrast, on formation from without—formationthat comes from immersion in the knowledge, ideas, beliefs, concepts, andvisions of society, culture, civilization.
    4. We could saythat he was the first progressive educator not simply because he encouraged hiscontemporaries and successors to think about the child as a special kind oflearner, but also because of his views on education’s role in helping to developan open, liberal polity. A political system, he said, needs people who are fair,open-minded, and think for themselves; it doesn’t want people who aresubservient to authority.

      We could say first, though I highly suspect that his ideas came from somewhere else...

  2. Mar 2023
    1. I found the format of these Hypothes.is notes to be much more readable than the notes on the same topic in Evernote.

      https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/17617#Comment_17617

      There is definitely something here from a usability (and reusability) perspective when notes are broken down into smaller pieces the way that is encouraged by Hypothes.is or by writing on index cards.

      Compare: - ://www.evernote.com/shard/s170/sh/d69cf793-1f14-48f4-bd48-43f41bd88678/DapavVTQh954eMRGKOVeEPHm7FxEqxBKvaKLfKWaSV1yuOmjREsMkSHvmQ - https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.otherlife.co/pkm/

      The first may be most useful for a note taker who is personally trying to make sense of material, but it becomes a massive wall of text that one is unlikely to re-read or attempt to reuse at a later date. If they do attempt to reuse it at a later date, it's not clear which parts are excerpts of the original and which are the author's own words. (This page also looks like it's the sort of notes, highlighting, and underlining recommended by Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain text using progressive summarization.)

      The second set, are more concrete, more atomic, more understandable, and also as a result much more usable.

  3. Feb 2023
  4. Dec 2022
    1. Although some of them took a lot of time to create (I literally wrote whole book summaries for a while), their value was negligible in hindsight.

      What was the purpose of these summaries? Were they of areas which weren't readily apparent in hindsight? Often most people's long summaries are really just encapsulalizations of what is apparent from the book jacket. Why bother with this? If they're just summaries of the obvious, then they're usually useless for review specifically because they're obvious. This is must make-work.

      You want to pull out the specific hard-core insights that weren't obvious to you from the jump.

      Most self-help books can be motivating while reading them and the motivation can be helpful, but generally they will only contain one or two useful ideas

    1. Progressive Web App: A Complete Guide for 2023

      You’ve probably heard of Progressive Web App or PWA, but what is it? More and more businesses are turning to PWA to improve their user experience and engagement. So, what are the benefits of PWA? Keep reading Progressive Web App Development Guide. https://bit.ly/2VFjOgT

  5. Nov 2022
  6. Oct 2022
    1. Be ready, as soon as you have read or heard the thing, to repeat it exactly in as far as you want to fix it in your memory. If it is a book, do not leave it without being able to sum it up and to estimate its value. Ta

      Sounds much like the Feynman technique and is quite similar to the advice of Sonke Ahrens.

    1. Jacques Goutor defines content notes as those that "are drawn in one way or another from the actual contents of the sources." He considers them the most important part of note taking as "they will eventually constitute the pieces of the mosaic." (p20)

      He further breaks this type down into generally self-explanatory "quote notes" and "summary notes". (p20) He does advise that one writes out careful summaries so that one needn't do additional future work of writing notes on one's own notes. While he doesn't state it directly, the presumption in his presentation is that a well written summary can be directly used in one's future written project.


      Compare this type of note to others like evergreen or permanent notes.

  7. Sep 2022
    1. Even with interactive features,highlighting does not require active engagement with the text, suchas paraphrasing or summarizing, which help to consolidate learning(Brown et al., 2014)

      What results do Brown et al show exactly? How do they dovetail with the citations and material in Ahrens2017 on these topics?

      Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jhu/detail.action?docID=3301452

      Ahrens, doesn't provide a full citation of Brown, but does quote it for the same broad purpose (see: https://hypothes.is/a/8ewTno3pEeydaHscXVaIzw) specifically with respect to the idea that highlighting doesn't help in the learning process, yet students still actively do it.

    1. Leftists, who won more than two-thirds of the seats, took full control of the process; they did not need a single vote from conservative convention members to approve additions to the proposal.

      Wow, how did the electoral process allow that?

      And how did the "leftists" think that was going to work out?

  8. Aug 2022
    1. The technique is simple: you highlight the main points of a note,and then highlight the main points of those highlights, and so on,distilling the essence of a note in several “layers.”
  9. Jul 2022
    1. Perhaps the best method would be to take notes—not excerpts, but condensed reformulations of what has been read.

      One of the best methods for technical reading is to create progressive summarizations of what one has read.

    1. Your practice sounds akin to that of the idea of progressive summarization which many do in their overall note taking work.

      I generally leave the title for last as well for just this reason. I find these titles are also incredibly helpful in reorganizing slips into broader outline forms for creating new articles.

    1. At the same time, like Harold, I’ve realised that it is important to do things, to keep blogging and writing in this space. Not because of its sheer brilliance, but because most of it will be crap, and brilliance will only occur once in a while. You need to produce lots of stuff to increase the likelihood of hitting on something worthwile. Of course that very much feeds the imposter cycle, but it’s the only way. Getting back into a more intensive blogging habit 18 months ago, has helped me explore more and better. Because most of what I blog here isn’t very meaningful, but needs to be gotten out of the way, or helps build towards, scaffolding towards something with more meaning.

      Many people treat their blogging practice as an experimental thought space. They try out new ideas, explore a small space, attempt to come to understanding, connect new ideas to their existing ideas.


      Ton Zylstra coins/uses the phrase "metablogging" to think about his blogging practice as an evolving thought space.


      How can we better distill down these sorts of longer ideas and use them to create more collisions between ideas to create new an innovative ideas? What forms might this take?

      The personal zettelkasten is a more concentrated form of this and blogging is certainly within the space as are the somewhat more nascent digital gardens. What would some intermediary "idea crucible" between these forms look like in public that has a simple but compelling interface. How much storytelling and contextualization is needed or not needed to make such points?

      Is there a better space for progressive summarization here so that an idea can be more fully laid out and explored? Then once the actual structure is built, the scaffolding can be pulled down and only the idea remains.

      Reminiscences of scaffolding can be helpful for creating context.

      Consider the pyramids of Giza and the need to reverse engineer how they were built. Once the scaffolding has been taken down and history forgets the methods, it's not always obvious what the original context for objects were, how they were made, what they were used for. Progressive summarization may potentially fall prey to these effects as well.

      How might we create a "contextual medium" which is more permanently attached to ideas or objects to help prevent context collapse?

      How would this be applied in reverse to better understand sites like Stonehenge or the hundreds of other stone circles, wood circles, and standing stones we see throughout history.

  10. Jun 2022
    1. Between 1914 and 1980, inequalities in income and wealth decreasedmarkedly in the Western world as a whole (the United Kingdom,Germany, France, Sweden, and the United States), and in Japan,Russia, China, and India, although in different ways, which we willexplore in a later chapter. Here we will focus on the Western countriesand improve our understanding of how this “great redistribution”took place.

      Inequalities in income and wealth decreased markedly in the West from 1914 to 1980 due to a number of factors including:<br /> - Two World Wars and the Great Depression dramatically overturned the power relationships between labor and capital<br /> - A progressive tax on income and inheritance reduced the concentration of wealth and helped increase mobility<br /> - Liquidation of foreign and colonial assets as well as dissolution of public debt

    1. By dropping or reducing or postponing the least importantparts, we can unblock ourselves and move forward even when timeis scarce.

      When working on a project, to stave off potential procrastination on finishing, one should focus on the minimum viable version and finish that. They can then progressively enhance portions and add on addition pieces which may be beneficial or even nice to have.

      Spending too much time on the things that sound nice or that one "might want to have" in the future will be the death of the thing.

      link to: - you ain't gonna need it - bikeshedding for procrastination

      questions: - Does the misinterpreted-effort hypothesis play a role in creating our procrastination and/or lead to decision fatigue?

  11. Feb 2022
    1. Read for Understanding

      Ahrens goes through a variety of research on teaching and learning as they relate to active reading, escaping cognitive biases, creating understanding, progressive summarization, elaboration, revision, etc. as a means of showing and summarizing how these all dovetail nicely into a fruitful long term practice of using a slip box as a note taking method. This makes the zettelkasten not only a great conversation partner but an active teaching and learning partner as well. (Though he doesn't mention the first part in this chapter or make this last part explicit.)

    2. We face here the same choice between methods that make us feellike we learned something and methods that truly do make us learnsomething.

      What methods of studying actually make us learn something versus make us feel as if we've learned something?

      Active reading, progressive summarization may be on this list while highlighting and underlining might not. Or perhaps there's a spectrum of poor to good, and if this is the case, what does it look like? Is it the same for everyone or are factors like neurodivergence part of the equation which might change this spectrum of learning methods and techniques?

    3. Taking smart notes is the deliberate practice ofthese skills. Mere reading, underlining sentences and hoping toremember the content is not.

      Some of the lighter and more passive (and common) forms of reading, highlighting, underlining sentences and hoping to understand or even remember the content and contexts is far less valuable than active reading, progressive summarization, comparing and contrasting, and extracting smart or permanent notes from one's texts.

    4. Probably the best method is to take notes – not excerpts, butcondensed reformulated accounts of a text.

      What is the value of reformulating texts and ideas into one's own words rather than excerpting them?

      In the commonplace tradition, learners were suggested to excerpt knowledge and place it into their commonplace books. Luhmann (2000, 154f) and Ahrens (2017, 85) suggest that instead of excerpting that one practice a form of progressive summarization of texts into their own words as a means to learn and expand ones' frames of reference and knowledge.

    5. Make literature notes.

      Related to literature notes, but a small level down are the sorts of basic highlights that one makes in their books/reading. For pedagogy's sake they're a sort of fleeting note that might be better rewritten in a progressive summarization form. Too often they're not, but sit there on the page in a limbo between the lowest form of fleeting note and a literature note.


      Hierarchy of annotations and notes: - fleeting notes - highlights - marginalia marks: ?, !, ⁕, †, ‡, ⁂, ⊙, doodles, phatic marks, tags, categories, topic headings, etc., - very brief annotations - literature notes (progressive summaries) - permanent notes

    6. Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notesabout the content. Write down what you don’t want to forget or thinkyou might use in your own thinking or writing. Keep it very short, beextremely selective, and use your own words.

      Literature notes could also be considered progressive summaries of what one has read. They are also a form of practicing the Feynman technique where one explains what one knows as a means of embracing an idea and better understanding it.

  12. Jan 2022
    1. https://words.jamoe.org/highlight-question-and-answer/

      A somewhat disingenuous reframing of the Cornell notes method. They've given it a different name potentially for marketing purposes to sell in a book. At least HQ&A is a reasonable mnemonic for what the process is.

      They do highlight the value of modality shift from reading to thinking about how to formulate a question and answer as a means of learning. They don't seem to know the name or broader value of the technique however.

      This question technique is also highlighted in the work of Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen. Cross reference: https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/ and their quantum mechanics course experiments.

    2. If shallow depth is your priority, our Jump Note technique will be a better fit. This technique is for when we're thinking fast like if we're exploring a new topic or slowing down to take more thoughtful notes isn't preferable or practical.

      They say that HQ&A is for when narrow depth is a priority and Jump Notes for when shallow depth is a priority? What's the difference here? Aren't narrow and shallow really synonyms? This should be clearer.

      They sound mostly like they're talking about highlighting facts and then doing progressive summarization.

    1. Manuals such as Jeremias Drexel’s “Goldmine”—the frontispiece of which showed a scholar taking notes opposite miners digging for literal gold—taught students how to condense and arrange the contents of literature by headings.

      Likely from Aurifondina artium et scientiarum omnium excerpendi solerti, omnibus litterarum amantibus monstrata. worldcat

      h/t: https://hyp.is/tz3lBmznEeyvEmOX-B5DxQ/infocult.typepad.com/infocult/2007/11/future-reading-.html

  13. Dec 2021
    1. https://luhmann.surge.sh/learning-how-to-read

      Learning How to Read by Niklas Luhmann

      Not as dense as Mortimer J. Adler's advice, but differentiates reading technical material versus poetry and novels. Moves to the topic of some of the value of note taking as a means of progressive summarization which may have implications for better remembering material.

  14. Nov 2021
    1. Avoid These Costly Mistakes During Web Application DevelopmentDmitryCEOCustom SoftwareHomeBlogTechnologyAvoid These Costly Mistakes During Web Application DevelopmentPublishedJan 16, 2020UpdatedJan 16, 202015 min readAccording to the Startup Genome Report, over 90% of startups fail after launch. There can be different reasons like skipping the market research, hiring wrong specialists, too early scaling, and so on. However, one of the most important elements of startup success is the product you provide. Neglecting estimates, avoiding the MVP stage, designing unnecessary functionality, and saving time on testing may become fatal errors that can result in a complete failure. In this article, we will tell you about the most costly mistakes you should avoid during web app development to succeed after product launch.

      According to the Startup Genome Report, over 90% of startups fail after launch. There can be different reasons like skipping the market research, hiring wrong specialists, too early scaling, and so on.

      However, one of the most important elements of startup success is the product you provide. Neglecting estimates, avoiding the MVP stage, designing unnecessary functionality, and saving time on testing may become fatal errors that can result in a complete failure.

      In this article, we will tell you about the most costly mistakes you should avoid during web app development to succeed after product launch.

  15. Oct 2021
    1. Choosing a PWA Development Company: Key Points to ConsiderAlinaE-Commerce & SaaS StrategistDmitryChief Executive OfficerPWAHomeBlogEntrepreneurshipChoosing a PWA Development Company: Key Points to ConsiderNov 10, 202012 min readThe term “progressive web application” has been floating around recently. So what are PWAs: a buzzword or a decent alternative to native apps? Codica team firmly believes that this technology can be beneficial for businesses. It is not by chance that we have added PWA apps to our list of prominent web development trends for 2020. This technology offers users an app-like experience. Besides, progressive web applications are easy to install, launch, and maintain and they cost less compared with building native apps. To launch a successful progressive web application, you need to partner with a reliable PWA development company. Here comes the most difficult part. There are plenty of software houses offering similar services. The question is: How do you find the right one? To make things easier for you, we covered the key factors you need to consider while choosing a PWA development partner. Besides, in our article you will find out why building a PWA can be challenging even for experienced software development companies.

      Progressive web applications are considered one of the most important web development trends for 2021. PWAs are easy to launch and maintain, being a great alternative for native apps due to their cost-efficiency.

      In this article, we will discuss the main points of choosing the software provider for building your progressive web app.

  16. Sep 2021
    1. Skimming through pages, the foremost feature of the codex, remains impossible in digital books.

      This is related to an idea that Tom Critchlow was trying to get at a bit the other day. It would definitely be interesting in this sort of setting.

      Has anyone built a generalizable text zoom JavaScript library that let's you progressively summarize an article as you zoom in and out?<br><br>(Why yes I am procrastinating my to-do list. You?)

      — Tom Critchlow (@tomcritchlow) September 17, 2021
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

  17. Aug 2021
    1. How to Make a React Progressive Web Application (PWA)Eugene VolkovFrontend DeveloperKate KikidzhanCloud & SaaS Product ResearcherReactJavaScriptPWAHomeBlogDevelopmentHow to Make a React Progressive Web Application (PWA)Oct 7, 202021 min readThe early bird catches the worm. But the situation was not so favourable back in 2007 when Steve Jobs proposed the idea of web applications to be the model for iPhone Apps. Back then, the tech community was not yet ready to bring a huge interest in web apps. But since 2015, tech giants like Google and Microsoft have been preparing the tech ground for progressive web apps (or simply – PWAs). And now, PWA became a must-have technology for both giant corporations and small startups. Twitter, Starbucks, Google, and Aliexpress use progressive web apps to boost their online presence. At Codica, we have been helping our customers to develop their businesses by building robust PWA for our customers since 2015. That is why we have created this comprehensive guide on how to create a PWA with React. Also, you will see the most prominent progressive web app examples.

      The early bird catches the worm. But the situation was not so favourable back in 2007 when Steve Jobs proposed the idea of web applications to be the model for iPhone Apps. Back then, the tech community was not yet ready to bring a huge interest in web apps.

      But since 2015, tech giants like Google and Microsoft have been preparing the tech ground for progressive web apps (or simply – PWAs). And now, PWA became a must-have technology for both giant corporations and small startups. Twitter, Starbucks, Google, and Aliexpress use progressive web apps to boost their online presence.

      At Codica, we have been helping our customers to develop their businesses by building robust PWA for our customers since 2015. That is why we have created this comprehensive guide on how to create a PWA with React. Also, you will see the most prominent progressive web app examples.

  18. May 2021
    1. Build a baseline email experience for subscribers using email apps with limited support for HTML and CSS—such as Outlook and Gmail—before enhancing your email for other clients. Progressive enhancement should not create suboptimal experiences for other users.
    2. An escalator is a great example of progressive enhancement and graceful degradation in real life. The late comedian Mitch Hedberg joked, “An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.” Regardless of its environment, an escalator maintains its functionality.
    3. The main focus of his talk was on progressive enhancement, which involves providing advanced functionality in environments where its supported. He also emphasized the importance of graceful degradation. Graceful degradation means that if your subscriber’s email client doesn’t support a certain functionality, you’ll still provide them with a pleasant experience.
    1. And that just leaves the Word Outlooks (and their ever-aligning web based equivalents), and a few lesser used (for us) regional clients. Here, our div based layout reverts back to every story being on a new line. For #EmailWeekly, we’re ok with that.
  19. Mar 2021
  20. Feb 2021
    1. There’s an important wrinkle when it comes to animating the menu away. When the user closes the menu, it will always disappear instantly, because the open attribute is, by default, removed immediately when the user clicks that summary element. In order to gracefully animate your menu out when it closes, we need some JavaScript. Here we can listen for clicks on the details element, and call preventDefault() on the click event, then use setTimeout() to determine exactly when that open attribute should be removed. This gives us time to trigger the closing animation with CSS. This click event listener will also fire when a keyboard user hits space or enter while the element is focused, which means no further listeners are needed for keyboard actions!
  21. Jan 2021
    1. JavaScript is more brittle than we care to admit. <a> elements function even if JavaScript breaks. Using anchors for your download means that a person can access what they need, even in suboptimal situations.
  22. Dec 2020
    1. Look at filmmaker Anubhav Sinha’s last three films. He went for Muslim minority story (Mulk) then he went to do a Dalit-related, anti-caste-related story in Article 15, and now he has gone for domestic violence (Thappad). He has touched religion, caste and gender.
  23. Nov 2020
  24. Sep 2020
    1. Bringing the Author to Terms — In analytical reading, you must identify the keywords and how they are used by the author. This is fairly straightforward. The process becomes more complicated now as each author has probably used different terms and concepts to frame their argument. Now the onus is on you to establish the terms. Rather than using the author’s language, you must use your own. In short, this is an exercise in translation and synthesis

      [[translation and synthesis]] - understanding the authors in your own words, and being able to summarize their points without just copy-pasting. To be able to do this well, you really need to understand the authors ideas.

  25. Jun 2020
    1. We do know that, just like iMessage, this new approach will failover to SMS/MMS if a user cannot receive the encrypted variant or if bandwidth is insufficient on either end.
    2. A couple of years after WhatsApp, Apple jumped into the game with iMessage—its obvious drawback, that senders and recipients had to be using iPhones, was overcome by integration with the standard SMS platform on those phones. If a recipient was not on iMessage or was offline, the message would revert to SMS.
  26. May 2020
    1. Adopting TypeScript is not a binary choice, you can start by annotating existing JavaScript with JSDoc, then switch a few files to be checked by TypeScript and over time prepare your codebase to convert completely.
    1. First proposed as a somewhat less unwieldy catchall phrase to describe the delicate art of "separating document structure and contents from semantics, presentation, and behavior"
    2. In progressive enhancement (PE) the strategy is deliberately reversed: a basic markup document is created, geared towards the lowest common denominator of browser software functionality, and then the designer adds in functionality or enhancements to the presentation and behavior of the page, using modern technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), or JavaScript.
    3. graceful degradation
  27. Apr 2020
    1. We are a strategic discovery, design and development lab working to transition society in response to technological revolution and climate breakdown.

      Seem interesting and progressive. Very elegant website etc 😉

  28. Nov 2019
  29. Sep 2017
    1. subjective orientation toward freedom, progress, and self-growth that is so clearly formative for Elizabeth Bennet is not taken for granted by Austen as normative for all women. Charlotte Lucas marries Mr. Collins and expects to live a fulfilling life with him. Conscious of Elizabeth’s differing views, Charlotte anticipates being hurt by her friend’s disapprobation, but makes no excuses for her marriage as an act martyrdom or of submis-sion to crushing necessity

      Moe argues here that Elizabeth is the progressive one, yet it seemed to me earlier in the article that Charlotte's actions would be expressed as modern in their own way (at least that is what I gained from reading aspects of this article). Is Moe trying to prove both?

  30. Aug 2017
    1. However, we are willing to work with you on what's really bothering you if you stop behaving like Subhuman sacks of dog shit. Let's fight the influence of big business and Electoral Corruption together. Let's get Universal Basic Income done so not just you, but every American is always secure. Let's end the pointless wars. Let's revitalize and stimulate our inner cities

      Voters have been known throughout history, most recently in 2016, to vote against their own interests for reasons that are, frankly, stupid.

  31. Jul 2016
    1. Library (originally from Mozilla) for building components based on the W3C Web Components specs

    1. A Web Component that can be used to pull fragments of HTML from the server and replace some placeholder content in the page once the fragment loads.

  32. youtube.github.io youtube.github.io
    1. Framework for fast PE-navigation by updating just sections of a page that change during navigation, rather than reloading the whole page.

    1. An experimental performance comparison of client and server-side templating on desktop and mobile, focusing on time to first paint and time to last paint metrics.

      The server is written in Go. The client is the simplest possible client-side templating you can do (using a <template> element and a few DOM API calls), so no frameworks involved.

      Some takeaways:

      • Everything on mobile is ~5x slower than desktop
      • For small amounts of data, there is little difference in time to first paint
      • Server-side rendering generates a modestly larger HTML payload vs. sending JSON down to the client
      • Time to first paint is faster for SSR as the client can render markup as it is streaming down, but this is only significant when there is a decent amount of data on the page
    1. Server-rendered markup can be progressively enhanced as element definitions are registered and upgraded by the browser.

      Question - How is the server-rendering done and in what language?

    1. I came across this from a post reflecting on the last Chrome summit.

      The splash pages which appear to be basic static content with little interactivity load a 1.5MB JS bundle (500KB gzipped). Flipping back and forwards between pages feels sluggish in Firefox. My initial hypothesis is that letting the client's side router tear down the DOM for the current route and build up the DOM for the new route might be slower than just relying on the browser's back/forwards cache as a set of boring static pages would do.

    1. progressive change

      Which isn’t that clear from an outside perspective. It often sounds a bit like some form of Left-leaning perspective, in a French tradition («La Gauche»), but it’s also predicated on a fairly neoliberal notion of progress.

    1. Hardly a scientific survey, but the answers on Twitter and offline have been surprisingly consistent: server-side React for graceful degradation, jQuery and possibly shared templates (e.g. Mustache) for progressive enhancement
  33. Apr 2016
    1. Good article on progressive enhancement. Jake Archibald now works for Google, I'm not sure if that was the case at the time.

  34. Jun 2015
    1. John Muir, a naturalist, writer, and founder of the Sierra Club, invoked the “God of the Mountains” in his defense of the valley in its supposedly pristine condition.

      The "Gods of the mountains" line was a piece of Muir's larger metaphor for the holiness of natural places that figured those who would develop them as "temple destroyers." Here's the full quote from Muir's defense of the Hetch Hetchy in his book The Yosemite.:

      These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.

      Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

      Image Description

  35. Jan 2015