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Jan. 16th, 2004 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafoc
The Destruction Theory of Place Names
As someone who has (unfortunately) watched much so-called development, I've come to the conclusion that developers name their golf courses and subdivisions after what they've destroyed. Golf courses: The Loon (built in a wetland), The Natural (not any more), Wilderness Valley (it was before you paved it) The Black Bear (black bears wandered through the neighboring village while they were building it because their dens and habitat were destroyed). Works for subdivisions too-- my own is Otsego Lake View, and you could view the lake before they built all these houses around it.
The Bambi Effect
Muddleheadedness bothers me, especially when it's wilful ignorance. I think Bambi, the book and especially the movie, has fostered more of this than almost anything out of politics. Whole generations of kids grow up to be PETA terrorists because they think the natural world is all cuddly and cute and sweet and stuff. It isn't. Mother Nature is RIGHT, she is exactly what she should be-- but she ain't cuddly. Animals fight, kill, hunt, and die.
The particular newspaper article that set off this rant was about the lion at a zoo a couple hundred miles from here. He lives in an enclosure with a glass wall, and the little kiddies love him because when they walk by his window he walks beside them just on the other side of the glass. They figure he likes them. He wants to be close to them. He's just being friendly.
SURE he is.
As someone who has (unfortunately) watched much so-called development, I've come to the conclusion that developers name their golf courses and subdivisions after what they've destroyed. Golf courses: The Loon (built in a wetland), The Natural (not any more), Wilderness Valley (it was before you paved it) The Black Bear (black bears wandered through the neighboring village while they were building it because their dens and habitat were destroyed). Works for subdivisions too-- my own is Otsego Lake View, and you could view the lake before they built all these houses around it.
The Bambi Effect
Muddleheadedness bothers me, especially when it's wilful ignorance. I think Bambi, the book and especially the movie, has fostered more of this than almost anything out of politics. Whole generations of kids grow up to be PETA terrorists because they think the natural world is all cuddly and cute and sweet and stuff. It isn't. Mother Nature is RIGHT, she is exactly what she should be-- but she ain't cuddly. Animals fight, kill, hunt, and die.
The particular newspaper article that set off this rant was about the lion at a zoo a couple hundred miles from here. He lives in an enclosure with a glass wall, and the little kiddies love him because when they walk by his window he walks beside them just on the other side of the glass. They figure he likes them. He wants to be close to them. He's just being friendly.
SURE he is.
