"That's a massive amount of housing to take out of a neighborhood as a neighborhood is trying to maintain its vitality," said Karen Gadbois, a preservation-minded gadfly who maintains the Web site www.squanderedheritage.com, where the discussion is taking place.Now, Matt McBride in the New York Times:
Matt McBride, an engineer who became an anti-corps gadfly on flood-protection issues, left the city along with his wife after deciding he simply did not trust the new system.Hooray for gadflies.
I understand that gadfly is a compliment. But it just sounds weird. I don’t know if everyone, including me, gets the classical allusion.
According to Wikipedia:
During his defense when on trial for his life, Socrates, according to Plato's writings, pointed out that dissent, like the tiny (relative to the size of a horse) gadfly, was easy to swat, but the cost to society of silencing individuals who were irritating could be very high. "If you kill a man like me, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me," because his role was that of a gadfly, "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."How about "active citizen" or "citizen-activist." Or, "blogger," to give us a little credibility.
4 comments:
We need hordes of gadflies to smother D.C. Good post.
Matt is my hero..honestly.
The first time I saw him make a presentation at City Council I almost fell out of my chair.
It was at that point that I realized if you paid attention to one thing, and did that night and day,you become the "expert"
Blog On!
I tried to get that word pulled, but they stuck with it.
It really is a compliment. Wear it with gadfly pride.
Maybe get a gadfly patch or something.
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