Coyote Gulch

Monday, December 19, 2005

Thank you from timbl
Tim Berners-Lee: "I just played my part. I built on the work of others -- the Internet, invented 20 years before the web, by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn and colleagues, for example, and hypertext, a word coined by Ted Nelson for an idea of links which was already implemented in many non-networked systems. I just put these technologies together. And then, it all took off because of this amazing community of enthusiasts, who have done such incredible things with the technology, and are still advancing it in so many ways."

7:44:15 PM

Elevated Voices
Kat Valentine, one of the bloggers over at Elevated Voices has taken the Macintosh plunge. Wait'll she finds out that there is a spellchecker for HTML text fields in Safari. She writes, "Overall, I'm happy as a clam."

6:27:42 PM

Bill Winter for Congress?
Coyote Gulch follows elections for Denver county voters. Since congresswoman DeGette is not facing a challenge so far for next year our eyes have wandered to CD-6 and the challenge to Tom Tancredo from Bill Winter. We really like the candidate's Internet presence so far.

The website is tastefully done without too much flash or a hard sell. It's easy to sign up to volunteer and donate - essential to a campaign. The site is easy to navigate with an "events calendar" right up front. Hopefully the events will be kept current. Video is presented in several formats showing an inclusive attitude. I didn't find an email newsletter.

Mr. Winter has a weblog! Judging by the early entries it appears that the campaign understands short posts and posting often. No RSS feed however, requiring a visit from interested readers for the latest content.

The website and weblog are a great start for Mr. Winter. Good luck. Coyote Gulch will be watching your race with interest.

6:49:05 AM

Colorado River Water Users Association Annual Meeting

Here's a short article from the Pueblo Chieftain detailing some of the problems discussed but not solved at last week's annual meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Association. From the article, "Water managers from seven western states failed to reach agreement on a drought-management plan for the Colorado River in meetings that ended in Las Vegas on Friday. Instead, the managers agreed to sit down again several times next month in hopes of crafting a plan for the river's water supply in drought years that will meet a February federal deadline. Last year, Interior Department Secretary Gale Norton told those meeting at the yearly Colorado River Water Users Association they needed to come up with a plan or she would impose one developed by the federal government. The water officials from Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California are trying to hammer out a deal that would allocate water from the river when flows are low and reservoirs can't supply normal amounts to each state."

Category: Colorado Water

6:20:03 AM

Immigration reform and religion in Western politics
In his column today David Harsanyi highlights Helen Krieble's involment in an immigration plan being touted by Governor Owens [December 19, 2005, "Answers to border issue lie in middle"]. From the column, "What do I do when a challenging public-policy question arises? Naturally, I turn to a billionaire heiress for advice. Frankly, Colorado's Helen Krieble, who owns a horse farm in Parker, is not your classic scion. She's a policy wonk and a tireless advocate of 'the principles of the founding fathers of our country.' Last week, when Gov. Bill Owens returned from Washington with a lucid plan on immigration - one that provides private employers the power to issue guest-worker visas - he was touting a policy initiative co-written by Krieble...Krieble argues that a commercial visa process should be so cheap and painless that it would deprive foreign workers of the incentive to illegally cross the border. This sane proposal - co-written with Greg Walcher, a former Colorado GOP congressional candidate - is sure to polarize the Colorado right. The split, Krieble believes, will be between the business community, which understands the organic need for labor and, frankly, couldn't care less about borders, and the law-and-order crowd, whose contention is that we must unconditionally and entirely secure the border."

Western Democrat: "But, the math problem isn't simply a libertarianism lacking religion in the West and a religious based conservatism in the South. The Sagebrush region, where that quote is taken, is only one of three political regions in the West (the other two being El Norte and the Coasts). If you take into consideration the entire West, most importantly, Idaho and Utah, and New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, you see some very real divisions between the South and the West. Namely, Catholics and Mormons see politics differently than evangelical Protestants."

Category: 2008 Presidential Election

6:03:23 AM

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