Turning Hindsight Into Foresight TM

Turning Hindsight Into Foresight TM

www.centerwest.org


The Historian’s Conviction

Our critics say we are strange because we sit in libraries and read about dead people. But we know it is foolish to limit your acquaintances to those people who by sheer chance happen to be alive in the same place and time as you are.

Kenneth Jackson, Columbia University (and my predecessor as President of the Organization of American Historians). . . Hence, we begin with time travel to the Progressive Era and the origins of the Reclamation Service . . . ;


The Secretary of the Interior Faces a Literary Challenge


Frederick Newell, Progressive Era Confidence and the “Human Element”


Collaborative Hopes


Background Music for Reading the State Water Plan

The Rolling Stones – You Can’t Always Get What You Want

“You can’t always get what you want . . . . But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need”

https://youtu.be/oqMl5CRoFdk


The Social Utility of Humorapplied to Trans-Basin Diversions

.Humorists are serious.They’re the only people

who are.--Mark Van Doren


Surges of Subjectivity: Full Employment for Social Psychologists?

• Affection for the color “bright green”• Water treatment re-use and the “yuck” factor• High expectations—the burden from decades of high

performance in water delivery• Wake-up call that energizes, and does not provoke

despair or resignation• The cognitive struggle of proportions and percentages

(agriculture, energy production, municipal uses)• The mystery of the impact of pricing on behavior• Uncertainty in projections and probabilities: the Error Bar


Scientists, Numbers, and Uncertainty

Can a humorousinvitation to readers to make afestive stop at theERROR BAR enhance the cause of public education?

“Customs of Court-ship in the Error Bar”



Proposed John Wesley Powell Award for an Unsettling Public Expression that Stimulates Thought


The Slippery Slope from Merriment to Mockery? Evaluating an Unleashed Moment


Artists as Allies:Chuck Forsman


Artists as Allies:Don Stinson


A Book that Returns to Mind


Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Inspires a New Approach

ParadoxWithoutParalysis


“There is nothing like a paradox to take the scum off your mind.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

Paradox: “Something (such as a situation) that is made up of two opposite things that seems impossible but is actually true or possible; a statement that seems to say two opposite things but that may be true.” (Merriam-Webster)Scum: “A layer of something unpleasant or unwanted that forms on top of a liquid.” (Merriam-Webster)


Stephen LongZebulon Pike

“The Great American Desert”: A Glum Prophecy with Surprising Cheer


History and the Burden of Popular Culture

A classic movie, with little historical content and made by a man with uncertain moral character, still exercises way too much influence over popular thinking about Western urban water today, convincing people that water inevitably provokes bitter, even murderous conflict.

In other words, it’s time to take on . . . ..


An Amazing Susceptibility to Mistake a Movie for Historical Fact

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Western Tradition: Conflict or Collaboration?


Mistaken Assumption

“Whiskey Is for Drinking and Water Is For Fighting Over”: Mark Twain’s Doubtful Career Achievement as a Water Policy Analyst

Water is fated to produce conflicts, contests, and even wars because it is so important to every enterprise and undertaking and to human life.


Better Assumption

“It would be great if we could unclog our stream of thought about the misleading notion of ‘water wars.’”

Wendy Barnaby (and her failed book project on the intrinsic capacity of water to produce conflict)


If Mark Twain Could Do a Rewrite (of a Statement He Never Made) . . .

“Whiskey is for drinking; water is for brewing coffee to be served at facilitated stakeholder meetings to negotiate acceptable compromises.”


Neutrality: A Strenuous Sport


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Documents

Turning Hindsight Into Foresight TM