chuck7

"You can't padlock an idea"

2012-01-17T18:30:00.000-07:00

So Arizona bigots think they've punished the folks who teach Mexican American Studies in Tucson Arizona high schools. The bigots have simply outlawed the classes. But many writers across the great and culturally diverse nation of the U.S.A. see the shallow attempt for what is: censorship. Racists in Arizona don't think any cultural viewpoints but their own should be included in school curriculum. See an example of a USA Today article that begs to differ here.

My goal as a teacher of ethnic studies was never to foment hatred against Whites or to promote segregation, but to simply educate students about the full breadth of American history and culture, good and bad, so they would know how far as a nation we have come -- and how far we have yet to go.I had that in common with the teachers in Tucson's Mexican-American-studies program.I know this because I have listened with pride to the students who took those courses as they've recounted how it made them believe for the first time in their worth and contributions.

The Arizona attack on Mexican American studies continues

2011-12-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

Ernie McCray writes in the Tucson Citizen about the ongoing racist attack on Mexican American studies.Arizona, at least Phoenix anyway, has gone to great lengths to portray Tucson High's Mexican American Studies program as some kind of evil voodoo that tortures and twists young minds, turning one culture against another. Despite massive public opposition, despite the fact that students taking this course in high school excel and continue to excel in college, the effort to outlaw Ethnic studies steamrolls along blindly.The idea of actually outlawing a very successful high school program is the actual wedge between cultures.

Free Range considerations from Boston Magazine's Katherine Ozment

2011-12-06T13:11:00.001-07:00

Read the article here. Yes, I found it in the lovely Boing Boing.

IN THE ARLINGTON middle school cafeteria, Michael Thompson asks if anyone wants to share their sweetest memory from childhood. I raise my hand and tell the group how, when I was eight, my friends and I discovered a frozen pond way back in the woods. We raced home to get our ice skates and laced them up in the hollowed-out trunk of a towering tree. And then, accompanied only by the sounds of our voices, laughter, and the scratching of our blades, we skimmed the ice, unsupervised, for hours. “Why,” Thompson asks me in front of all the parents, “is that memory so sweet?”Without thinking, I say, “Because my parents didn’t know where I was.”“Your parents didn’t know where you were. So that experience was wholly your own,” he says. Then: “Would you let your own children do that?”“I don’t even let my kids out of the house,” I blurt.

She's just kidding about that last part, but makes a free-range kids argument you hear more and more lately.

But what calling up my sweetest memory made me realize is that while today’s middle- and upper-middle-class children have an unprecedented array of opportunities, their experiences are often manufactured by us.

Of course almost all of us were free-range kids when I grew up. Growing up in suburban northern California several of us played in an abandoned field that nature had reclaimed with oak trees and blackberries. Southwest of the field was an old olive orchard that had been similarly reclaimed. This plot had not seen human intervention in decades. Huge trees and cattails had grown in a swampy area in the middle and the olive trees kept growing wildly in their grid, with nature filling in with whatever kind of vegetation nature wanted to grow there. A creek, complete with toads, bullfrogs, minnows and dragonflies separated the two acreages. We built forts, raced our bikes, shot bb guns in the field and the orchard.Of course our parents made rules to follow on where we went, how far, when to return and reporting where we were. And we pretty much got our asses kicked if we didn't follow the rules. But our parents thought nothing of our unstructured activities. It was considered completely normal. There was no such thing as extra curricular activities to help us get in the right college. Kids didn't have resumes in those days. We were also allowed to go on hikes to explore other undeveloped land. We'd have to follow busy streets for a mile or two to get to the other areas. No one ever even broke a bone, no one was kidnapped or killed. Nothing more serious than cuts and bruises from dirt-clod fights.

Where I learned a wide array of creative and athletic skills. You can see my school next door. We hated it. Where the abandoned tennis courts are there was an old farm. Some of the same trees are still visible by the ruined athletic club. Of course the field and orchard were developed decades ago, but it was a magical area for us.By the time I moved to Maryland in 1973, a McDonalds, a mom-and-pop pizza joint and a mini-mart had appeared at the nearby intersection. We'd graduated from bb guns to hunting with our dads, and where we once played we smoked cigarettes and talked about girls. But we still hiked through the field and the orchard on our quests to get pizza or burgers at McDonald's, and the long walk, the lack of supervision was an important part of the journey. One of my friends grew up to be a famous comic book artist, another a profesional musician, another a commercial pilot who used to fly f-14s for the Navy. My point is I don't think we'd be the same people if we'd been toted up there in an SUV on the way to constant structured activities. Instead our parents would give us $2.50 and say "be careful and be back by 5."

A look at "Republican" actions with tax dollars.

2011-03-12T17:54:00.002-07:00

"Where does tax money go/come from?"

Rosemont Mine impact statement on hold

2009-10-19T19:45:00.007-07:00

The environmental crime proposed by a humongous greedy copper company, to be gouged into the shoulder of a 9400-foot mountain range just south of Tucson, and opposed by pretty much the entire universe except for the copper company, the people paid to spread bullshit rhetoric about the mine's fantasy benefits, and people dumb enough to believe the lies or in favor of destroying the very planet we live on, may be losing steam. Quoting from Inside Tucson Business

...Derby’s announcement comes just before a planned Oct. 24 visit from Jay Jensen, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources and Environment, which oversees Forest Service policy. Jensen is coming at the request of Southern Arizona’s U.S. Reps. Gabrielle Giffords and Raul Grijalva, both Democrats, for a tour of the proposed mine site and a public meeting.

Giffords and Grijalva have asked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to have the Coronado Forest Service consider a “no action” alternative in the environmental impact statement for the proposed mine, which could then lead to a decision to deny permission to start the mine.

The Coronado National Forest has said it doesn’t believe it can take that position under federal law.

Meanwhile, Pima County officials are continuing their efforts to stop the mine...

Quoting from the AZ Daily Star

The U.S. Forest Service won’t meet its November deadline for releasing an environmental document about the proposed Rosemont Mine and officials said today that they don’t know when the report will be released.
The announcement of the delay comes after months of emotionally charged controversy on the $900 million mine, proposed for the Santa Rita Mountains, about 30 miles southeast of Tucson. It also follows a raft of critical statements from officials from various agencies reviewing alternatives for the mine, which if approved would become the third or fourth largest copper mine in the United States.

The service is taking a hard look at many of the ideas raised by the general public and a group of agencies who are cooperating with the service’s review, Roth said. The Tohono O’Odham tribe, the Pima County Administrator’s office, the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the Town of Sahuarita and the Arizona Department of Water Resources have all raised issues, questions or concerns about the Rosemont proposal to remove 220 million pounds of copper a year for the next 20 years from a site just west of State Highway 83 in the Santa Ritas.

See the Star's article here. After that, try your library.

DJ Olive : Art as medicine, music as medicine

2009-08-05T07:57:00.001-07:00

DJ Olive's Sound and Sculpture Installation at the 2008 Whitney Biennial

J.G. Ballard dies

2009-04-20T13:15:00.008-07:00

Of all the writers I've read, this guy was the biggest influence on my own artwork. His science fiction stories always take place in the present and bring into focus a creepy side of life caused by industry, tv, psychosis, neurosis, & the machines we build.

The UK Guardian does a nice job eulogizing Ballard, his contributions, & his unique genius in these two articles:

How JG Ballard cast his shadow right across the arts : JG Ballard's influence on culture went far beyond literature. We look at his lasting impact on film, pop, architecture, TV and visual art

Crash author JG Ballard, 'a giant on the world literary scene', dies aged 78

Quoting from the second article:

The young science fiction author "wasn't interested in the far future, spaceships and all that", he explained; rather he was interested in "the evolving world, the world of hidden persuaders, of the communications landscape developing, of mass tourism, of the vast conformist suburbs dominated by television – that was a form of science fiction, and it was already here".

After reading Ballard more than 20 years ago when I was in college, I never saw things the same way again. Abandoned buildings, empty swimming pools, highway overpasses, machinery, and tv always make me think of Ballard and the creepy side of modern life.

AZ Daily Star continues coverage of Jaguar's death

2009-04-02T11:29:00.003-07:00

As the Arizona Daily Star continues to cover the death of Arizona Jaguar Macho B, evidence has emerged that researchers from the state Fish and Game Department intended to trap a Jaguar but told the public that Macho B's capture was unintentional.

In a tragic and cruel case of messing with Mother Nature the 12 year old cat was lured with female jaguar poop, captured and apparently injured, then captured again and euthanized by vets at the Phoenix zoo.

The Star has covered the story almost daily. Today's story has video that shows how cruel this capture was. The Star pretty much summed up my feelings about this incident:

Some environmental groups such as the Sky Island Alliance and Center for Biological Diversity have questioned or opposed capture on the grounds that its risks to the rare animal outweighed the benefits.

IMO, scientific study is important in preserving rare species and in measuring the effects of such asinine and destructive things as the giant iron wall BushCo was trying build along the Mexico border. But it's completely stupid to lie about your research and then to bungle it and kill the jaguar you're trying to study.

Death of Macho B Jaguar

2009-03-28T16:24:00.003-07:00

The Arizona Daily Star has been following the story of Macho B, the Jaguar that was recently caught, radio-collared and released in southern Arizona.
I'll quote from a 3/28/09 update, bascially a teaser for a story being run in tomorrow's Sunday edition:

What killed Mach B, the country's last known jaguar living in the wild?
Four individual U.S. jaguars have been confirmed to exist since 1996 — two each in Southern Arizona and southwest New Mexico. With the recent death of aging Macho B, who was caught in a trap then released with a tracking device in Southern Arizona, no jaguars are known to live in this country today.
Officials have said the jaguar euthanized early this month due to kidney failure clearly had suffered from the disease before his Feb. 18 capture. A vet also said the stress of the trapping probably aggravated Macho B's problems.
New information uncovered in a Star special investigation into the death of Macho B contradicts earlier conclusions.

Way to go AZ Daily Star for following up and investigating on an important, local, environmentally-oriented story.

Arizona responds to Sunshine Week by kicking reporters out of State Capitol

2009-03-17T06:11:00.004-07:00

Since 1960 reporters in Arizona have had a press room in the state capitol in Phoenix. Now state Senate President Bob Burns has announced legislators will take over the press room in the Capitol and prevent reporters from using any other rooms in the capitol. This announcement was made in a speech detailing what State Government will do to ensure transparency in State Government. Cocky, eh? Well this what we here in Arizona are being treated to now that Gov. Janet Napolitano has left for D.C. This is only one example of rightwing backlash & retaliation since January 09. State legislators have also moved to allow guns on school campuses, gut higher education, restrict abortion, and abolish the governing body of the State University system, the Arizona Board of Regents.

Wow they are feeling high and mighty up there but it's not the Dark Ages anymore, morons. From the Arizona Daily Star, 3/17/09:

Capitol Media Services
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.17.2009
advertisement
PHOENIX — For the first time in nearly 50 years, reporters will not have work space in the state Capitol after July 1.
Senate President Bob Burns said Monday he is not interested in finding new space for reporters after Republicans take over the current press room in the Senate on that date.
Burns wants the current press room for Republicans to have caucuses, meetings of party members to discuss policy and pending legislation.
Burns also said he is not interested in providing space for reporters in any of the other rooms that will open up once the caucus room moves out of its current second-floor location.
And he's not interested in finding space for reporters who cover the House and Senate in the adjacent Old Capitol building.
"We have needs for the space," he said.
Burns' statement came at the end of a press conference where he and other Senate Republicans used "Sunshine Week" to detail what they say they are doing to make government more transparent to the public.
Sunshine Week is an unofficial effort by the American Society of Newspaper Editors designed to educate the public about the importance of open government and freedom of information.
There has been a place for reporters to work since the current House and Senate chambers were constructed in 1960, according to Rep. Jack Brown, D-St. Johns, first elected to the Legislature in 1962.
Reporters have been in the same room on the first floor of the Senate since the late 1970s.
About a decade ago, amid concerns about subsidizing private operations, the Senate began charging rent based on the equivalent cost of Class A office space. The rent this year is $77 a month per reporter.

Chernobyl in 2009 photos

2009-03-07T02:18:00.004-07:00

See Boing boing's wonderful post full of photos of Pripyet, the town that was zapped in the Chernyobl meltdown.

And read Martin Cruz Smith's "Wolves eat dogs."

Lux Interior R.i.p.

2009-02-04T14:44:00.006-07:00

True Wildman of the dark swampy recesses of the world of R&R- The Cramp's Lux Interior has apparently passed away.

Arizona state legislator attacks public media in Tucson

2009-01-23T01:28:00.003-07:00

Although the AZ Daily Star reported it here in the 1/23/09 op-ed section, "conservative" yah-hoo Al Melvin, the freshman Republican senator from Legislative District 26 did walk in to KUAT's offices and threaten to cut funding to public media in southern Arizona unless somebody conservative enough for M. Melvin starts to appear on KUAT's Arizona Illustrated segment "Weekend Roundtable." This segment, which already includes a conservative voice (usually somebody from the Star) has caused this fucking right-wing moron asshole Melvin to waltz in there and pretty much threaten "well I'll cut your funding unless you put a paid right wing radical mouthpiece on your program." And this guy is supposed to represent the people who supposedly elected him.

This just illustrates the right wing backlash retaliation effort in Arizona, now that Janet Napolitano has answered the higher calling and departed for Washington D.C. The clowns come out of the woodwork, and acting cocky, they immediately want to slash k-12 and higher education, arm every redneck creep in the state, and twist public media to broadcast their phony, destructive crap. What's next? Prayer meetings for State employees? Hire Blackwater to be the police force? Teach creationism in the schools? Fire State employees and University faculty members who are not right wing "christians?"

Blogger's Rights

2009-01-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

Read up on blogger's rights at the EFF.

San Francisco bay area celebrates in a diverse and normal way

2009-01-20T21:39:00.008-07:00

Gee why is everybody crying? Maybe they are relieved at the end of the Bush Administration and its army of publically and privately-paid spies, and its intention of stamping out every liberty we hold dear.

The Chron says it all, just read the examples. Here in Tucson there were some fireworks on election eve but up there in the City, tonight? People are really cutting loose as we say goodbye to an 8-year USA Nightmare on Elm St.

We got a ways to go, people. There is whining, yes, we are now all commies, lots of other bad names that have been around since the beginning of time. The local CBS affiliate, KOLD TV, or somebody upstream, quickly cut off the sound in Katie Couric's interview w/ Rev. Jessie Jackson, and then dumped the video all together. The sound and vid was miraculously restored as soon as it was time for the next commercial break.

As a "Unicorn chaser," continue reading the San Francisco Chronicle's on-the-ground coverage of the tangible spirit of elation and relief in a city where diversity is the norm, and where the politics of the Bush administration were obvious poison from the very start.

Watching history

2009-01-20T18:03:00.003-07:00

Good thing they did not use a Chrysler limo, it would have probably broken down halfway there

(From an email)

Observations:

When it looks cold on tv back there, it really is. I fucking been
there. Jr. High, outside for fire drills, or waiting on the schoolbus
stands out to this day. Good thing the [Maryland] fall and spring were so nice. ...I
totally went to school with a whole ton of black folk back there and got to
know the dirt-poor and the proto-yuppies both. I heard a lot of ugly things said and race riots were common a year or two ahead of me at my highschool. Somehow I got perspective and hope and now I am honestly not surprised to see a black man be president. We used to smoke the weed with kids whose big brothers had fought just a couple years ago. I am honestly blown away to see MLK day and Obama's inauguration on consecutive days. All the talk about Lincoln, [and] Illinois. Interesting. People treat history like a joke, like it does not matter unless it's pop entertainment, but now you can see [the subject of] history's not something add to the "useless liberal arts" category. All of us folks who [spoke up] and [said] "hey this is wrong, it needs to stop," ... maybe we really can stop some of the really wrong things going on.
And not get tortured, shot, jailed, spied on, slandered, libeled, harassed, poisoned, intimidated, attacked, badmouthed, pushed around, bullied, or psi-opsed.

2. The network anchors are kind of morons, not very good speakers at all,
although what they say is not as stupid you might think. They just string
it all together in one sentence so there's no discreet units of meaning.
The commentary is like junk blowing by in the wind. They just said 3
year-olds love to say "Obama." It's easy to say for them. Michelle Obama
is 5'11" and the 10 year girl is already very tall. They had a whole long
interview about Michelle Obama, and selecting clothing. Relevant, clothing
discussions? You bet. Relevant to at least half the population. [The point being the network "reporters" are not that short on subtance but still weak in style and obviously, for people who are supposed to be journalists, are not that skilled w/ language, meaning these folks are used to being cute and saying what they're told to say.]

My old friend from [Xxxx] posted to "Now I know how you all felt the past 8 years. I'm moving out of the country." [He] is no longer [on my section of that website]. Fuck him, I don't need that shit. I can remember him saying "I like Reagan, he put money in my pocket." Sure he did, and you were [working hard, earning low wages and drinking too much] and living in a hovel and driving a beater car and when you needed treatment you didn't have insurance cuz the employer didn't give a fuck about you. And now you managed to escape those days and still be alive you still you are believing whatever crap [Rush Limbaugh et al] feed you.

New Arizona governor tired of "betting on the come"

2009-01-17T02:07:00.005-07:00

WTF?? Brewer adds herself to a long line of whacky Arizona governors. From today's AZ Daily Star:

Brewer has been vague on her own plans for dealing with the budget. But without naming Napolitano, Brewer said in an interview Friday that there has been "irresponsible management" of the state budget.
"There has got to be spending cuts," she said. "We have gone down the path of using gimmicks and rollovers and 'betting on the come' that revenues are going to come in higher than they were projected."
Brewer said many legislators, and even the general public, are not fully aware of the magnitude of the problem facing the state.
"I believe the people of Arizona are in denial and they've got to step up and face reality," she said. "We've got a huge historical crisis in the state of Arizona."

...According to this article in the 1/17/09 AZ Daily Star.

Our outgoing governor Janet Napolitano has a budget remedy sized up thusly in the same article, which article's title was so wisely chosen by the Star to be "Napolitano releases budget plan, but it's likely to be ignored
By Daniel Scarpinato"

Outgoing Gov. Janet Napolitano released a state budget proposal Friday that seeks to get Arizona through shortfalls this year and next by relying on borrowing to salvage government.
But incoming Gov. Jan Brewer, the secretary of state who is set to replace Napolitano within days, warns there will be cuts. The state, Brewer said, can't continue to rely on what she called "gimmicks and rollovers."
With her resignation likely to come next week, Napolitano wants lawmakers to borrow at record levels, delay paying bills, withdraw nearly all the money out of the state's savings account and make targeted cuts to state agencies.
And Napolitano wants to do it all without laying off any state employees or eliminating governmental agencies

Gee Whiz, ya mean she doesn't want to take people's jobs away or eliminate services our tax dollars pay for? Well, we can't have that now, can we?

Arizona Rebpublicans immediately begin to gut higher education

2009-01-16T12:34:00.007-07:00

In the budget crisis situation Arizona Republicans in the state legislature finally have their chance to strike back at the evil liberals trying to spread dangerous knowledge.

University of Arizona President Robert Shelton states the facts pretty plainly in a report from UAnews today.

Arizona's state budget is already in deep doo doo, but now that Gov. Janet Napolitano is getting ready to go to Washington D.C. the Republican dominated Arizona state legislature is pissing all over themselves because they have their long-awaited chance to gut higher education.

Knowledge is a dangerous thing to these folks, people. And the excuse they've been waiting for has arrived. They can now gleefully cut the State University system's budget by what amounts to about 30%.

This will mean thousands of jobs; staffers and faculty both. Many, many folks are employed here in Tucson by the UA. This will also mean a drastic reduction in service to other people who are trying to get a college education.

Shelton mentions something not covered in the snitty piece published in today's AZ Daily Star. Republican micro-management of the State University system. How do ya like them apples? So I guess now it's gonna be mandatory classes in fundamentalist Christianity and financial aid preference based on how you vote? I'm not kidding, that is how most of Arizona Republicans are.

Richard Grant interview on KUAZ FM Tucson

2009-01-02T21:10:00.004-07:00

Richard Grant, author of God's Middle Finger talks about his awesome book. Interview is at 7:40 in this recent edition of KUAZ FM Tucson's Arizona Spotlight.

God's Middle Finger is a great book about a very interesting range of mountains in Mexico. You can actually see the northern reaches from Douglas, Arizona. The range goes 800 miles down into Mexico and has never been tamed. God's Middle Finger is Grant's book about his journey down there. Great reading.

I am also reading another great book by Grant called American Nomads. In this book Richard Grant writes about the road, and really takes you back into history about the subject of wanderlust in the U.S. Western states. Awesome reading.

Weekend America interview

2008-12-27T15:00:00.007-07:00

"Weekend soundtrack" segment...

Yee HA! It's up. Thanks to Weekend America and Michael Rapheal for giving me the opportunity to tell my story!!

12/29/08: PM...Hey Apple computer users, this podcast won't play on your Mac in Firefox, try Safari. :) I'm posting an excerpt from an email to the show's producer, the awesome music geek Michael Raphael.

Hi Michael,

...Speaking of Facebook I heard Weekend America is getting canceled. Bad
news. Weekend America is entertaining, and more. Your program lets
the voices of people around the country be heard, and gives people a
chance to share their stories with the public radio audience. Another
good thing about your show is that the giant money-making machine that
is commercial media has no hand in this process. Weekend America does
a truly fine job of demonstrating that the mass media is a public
resource. Neither I or any of my friends can even stand to listen to
commercial radio or television.

Let me know what is going on.

Charles

EFF Christmas carol

2008-12-16T21:12:00.003-07:00

The only xxxmas carol I feel like singing. Remember, because of Bush and his publically acceptable psychopaths, they are trying to step on every right you have. See this link at the EFF for more information on how the fight to restore the constitution has progressed in 2008, with a strong focus on internet usage.

Remember, it is wrong for our government to spy, snoop, and treat you like you're guilty till proven innocent. What you do is your own business. This country belongs to us, not Bush, not private security companies, not paid mouthpieces, not commercial media, not churches & creepy religious interests.

chuck7 website down weekend of 12/7/08

2008-12-06T13:14:00.003-07:00

For about the 5th time the dickheads at my ISP have made my website disappear. They usually do it on a Friday, and I usually find out when I go to post some cool new photos. Then they make we wait till Monday, "when the admins are here." Then I get to talk to some guy with a radio voice who can't understand that I don't use Windows, then something about how I need "index.htm," then stunned silence when I say I avoid Microsoft products if possible, then they say goodbye, then my site comes back pretty soon.

Arizona losing two important protectors and leaders

2008-11-23T15:17:00.005-07:00

I'll quote from today's AZ Daily Star artcle:

Grijalva, an outspoken critic of President Bush on land-use and environmental policy, has introduced several pieces of legislation to protect federal lands, including trying to stop uranium mining on a million acres near the Grand Canyon and to halt future mining claims in the Coronado National Forest.
And just Friday, Politico.com reported Grijalva was "emerging as a top contender" for the post, "according to sources close to the transition."

Raul Grijalva is the kind of Congressman who has the Bush Administration crooks seething mad. Grijalva has constantly spoken out against BushCo wrongs. And Napolitano has kept the right-wing moron dominated State Legislature from ruining Arizona again and again.

First it's Napolitano, for Homeland Security, and now it's Grijalva for Interior Secratary! We were so overjoyed here in So. AZ when Obama won. Big grins all over Tucson the next day. And it's nice that 2 of our best and brightest will most likely answer the call to serve the wider scene on the national level with the Obama administration. But they'll leave a gap behind, that is for sure.

They are throwing us to the wolves here man! At least Gabby Giffords beat that customer of Karl Rove Tim Bee.

Arizona is truly at risk because of the State Legislature, which is half-full of the kind of folks who'd arm every half-wit drunk in the state, allow guns on college campuses, and who feel we can waste the environment cuz it don't matter cuz Jesus is coming. ...and gonna sweep up all them straight-laced, god-fearing, right wing extremist morons, I guess.

Without Napolitano and champion Bush-fighter Raul Grijalva, the rest of us are even more vulnerable to the machinations of folks who think knowledge is a dangerous thing. These folks would gut our State University system and use our tax money to fatten the pockets of the rich. If they had their way dancing would be illegal, there'd be a law saying you have to go to their same church every Sunday, and the cops could stop you and check your citizenship, not to mention your pockets, all day long.

Augusta Rosemont mine looking really stupid

2008-11-23T14:37:00.007-07:00

The Arizona Daily Star published this article about a recent acid spill at a nearby copper mine, and had the audacity to point out that the same kind of thing could happen at the Rosemont mine, if it is dug. Well, The Star, in its long article actually said more like opponents said this could happen. Weenie words. They don't report the fact that things like acid spills and other environmental devastation do happen at mines, they have to say Well critics say this kind of thing could happen. However, Kudos to the Star for at least having the guts to report the two ideas side by side in the same story- the acid spill, and the disgusting, greedy, destructive bad idea that is the Rosemont mine.

This is the headline the Star tacked onto the story:

Morenci acid spill riles Rosemont foes-
But company says proposed mine's plan has safeguards

... Well, it's just those damn foes that are riled, that's all. No sir, the Daily Star is not going to stand in the way of progress. Might rile the Tucson Chamber of Commerce. Wouldn't want to the local Republicans wetting their pants over things like facts being reported now, would we? Nope, legitimate concerns about environmental destruction and public safety don't belong in the paper unless preceded by "Critics say..."

I'm guessing some editor somewhere said "oh, all right you can report the spill and bring up the Rosemont issue, but you have to be sure to point out that it's the oppenents who are saying..."

Yes, the acid spill in Morenci really is the kind of thing we'll be seeing down Sonoita way, off the Eastern flanks of the 9300 ft. Santa Rita range. Things like always happen around mines. The Star could have published statistics, but didn't.

If...

But word is it's a done deal. Rosemont is advertising on public radio station KUAT-FM, leaving a poisonous taste in the mouths of Tucson area classical music fans, Rosemont Copper offered to pipe C.A.P. water for free to retirement city Green Valley- "hey, it's free-" if they support the mine, Rosemont Copper goes on and on about safe they will be, yadda yadda.

The Star reports the words of Lanie Levick, who is a senior research specialist in Watershed Management at the UA, at the end of the article, after veering off into a discussion of the fact that the copper company is planning a mine able withstand a 100-year flood, although we've seen far worse storms and floods frequently in the Tucson area in recent years. They end the story with the mindless words of a slick-ass automaton Rosemont Copper spokesperson.

"They can't be designing to 100-year standards for Rosemont in such a sensitive area," said Lainie Levick, a board member for Friends of the Scenic Santa Ritas, which opposes Rosemont. Levick, who was stranded in her far Northeast Side neighborhood for a day during the 2006 flooding, said she's concerned that a larger-than-100-year flood at Rosemont could cause its tailings dam to fail. Levick is a senior research specialist in watershed management at the University of Arizona.

Augusta's Howard replied: "We're trying to build to as high a standard as is appropriate at this time. We don't want to speculate from a climate change standpoint about what the standard might be. That's something that the federal government is looking at.

"It seems to be a valid goal to build towards the 100-year storm."

What a fucking dumb ass.

Our 11/08 Ride

2008-11-22T11:59:00.004-07:00

Gmaps pdmtr. URL

BuschCo on the way out.

2008-11-04T21:24:00.002-07:00

They are shooting off fireworks in my neighborhood. Don't let anyone tell you Arizona is a "red" state. Only thing red about this state, at least down here in Tucson, is the sunsets.

moderation and comments

2008-10-18T09:49:00.006-07:00

just in case someone says the rightwing is bitter

sexuality mixed with domination mixed with violence- the unconscious side of the Arizona legislature's gun-mania

I've enabled comments on this blog again- for folks w/ google accounts. I've also enabled moderation. This blog gets only 5-10 hits per day, but my virulent Anti-BushCo posting and my criticism of Arizona State legislature's moronic attempts to arm every half-wit yahoo in the state and allow those arms to be carried w/o permit in schools and college campuses, has caused some real creeps to come outta the woodwork. Like slimy insects eating your food, they post reasonable-sounding but twisted arguments and long, LONG blocks of text full of yet more twisted arguments, designed to give the American rightwing extremist spiel the look of academic legitimacy. For a time I considered a separate, "Moron blog," where I'd offload the crap and comment on what I thought the commenter's perlocutionary intentions were. However it never got that thick.

But I was particularly offended by someone who defended arming school campuses in the wake of a rash of college mass murders, like 5 people are going to pop up and become instant cowboys and prevent the crazy guy w/ 15 guns and an intricate attack plan from carrying out his suicide assault.

My feeling is that regulations and laws are there for a reason. If you can justify getting a carry-permit, fine. However, too many seriously mentally ill folks are ending up w/ arsenals. The latest being the Delos case, which I blogged on below, which could have escalated into something much more serious than a rolling shooting spree across the Northside of Tucson. For crying out loud, it was bad enough- he killed a good police officer, wounded a few others, and shot up his neighbor's front doors! Over barBQ smoke!

The guy's blog or myspace was covered w/ pics of him and his rifles, and he'd scared the shit outta former women friends. And the smug asshole I mentioned above commented w/ the argument that deregulating handguns would prevent such things from happening. The crazy guy had rifles which could kill from a mile off, could hold dozens of bullets. Offended, I was.

Intentions of this guy? A troll. Just doing whatever to uphold the appearance of the rightwing "cause," which includes being stupid as shit, ignorant, and proud of it, and calling on pseudoscience, twisted words, twisted logic, attempts and twisted concepts to win an argument and change minds. That shit's for idiots.

JOY DIVISION

2008-10-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

The foundation of EVERYTHING. Live 1979.

Patrick's Tucson singlespeed routes

2008-09-28T12:17:00.006-07:00

Yipee! City Rides mapped out in KML by Patrick.

That is actually me in the pic w/ my 1991 Santa Fe Wolf.

City ride: A route around Tucson that is not a mountain bike ride but which may contain dirt sections. Circuitous in nature and usually involves a stop for beer.

My last-Sundy city ride. See Gmaps Pedometer for fun with maps.

Troll problems

2008-09-28T12:11:00.002-07:00

I've turned off comments on this blog due to trolls.

Sarah Silverman on making sure Florida goes Obama

2008-09-28T12:04:00.003-07:00

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.
The Great Schlep.
On getting your elderly relatives in Florida to vote for Obama. Wish I could think of a way to talk sense to my people in Texas. Sarah is cute.

Republican Convention report in Tucson Weekly

2008-09-14T13:35:00.002-07:00

Photo and story by Sam Stoker. In this week's Tucson Weekly and probably a bunch of other Weeklys around the Nation. The story is about how U.S. citizens were treated when trying to protest against the "Republicans" at the recent convention in St. Paul.

put you in jail with a beer
and your fear

an attack and a snack
with conservatives

wave a sign in the zone
where you say what they say

wave your sign in the cage
when they say that you may

Free Speech Zone
Free Speech Zone
Free Speech Zone motherfucker

you're a hippy you're a freak you're a radical
you're powerless and you're weak
and invisible.

you're on a plane full of dope
private security

nobody knows where you're at
you're invisible

wave your sign use your voice
nobody's listening.

The BushCo Legacy

2008-06-12T19:19:00.001-07:00

I think we're realizing what it was all about now.

Civil liberties violated in Washington, D.C.

2008-06-08T10:18:00.004-07:00

Isn't it a bit creepy to have to answer to the police when you're just driving down the road minding your own business? Wouldn't it be better, if in Washington D.C. they turned the officers loose in the neighborhood to look for criminal activity based on reasonable suspicion, that is, let the police do their jobs, rather than, relying on already weak precedent, add one more crazy step to the blanket destruction of civil liberties? It is very wrong to order police to investigate everyone.

According to this article on the AP wire police in Washington, D.C. have been ordered to stop all vehicle traffic on a specific street, look in vehicles, demand identification, and permit or deny passage. Citing nothing except a crimewave in a torn inner city neighborhood, police decision-makers have crushed your freedom of movement. If you drive down this street, you will have to speak to police, answer questions, show identification. Then they will say whether or not you can drive down the fucking the street.

The final straw is that someone somewhere has decided to play like it's legal for cops to say, "Well, Mr. Jones, we're not going to let you drive down this street, you're going to have to turn around and get out of here."

It's a very old police tactic in poor neighborhoods to find a reason to stop someone and start asking questions about what they are doing there. This is usually because police are suspicious about something criminal.

What's new here is the blanket-approach, first legitimized by sobriety checkpoints, a blanket suspicion where everybody at a certain point gets checked for alcohol consumption. Police devote millions of dollars in overtime wages for this legally shaky activity, while statistics show they find several times more drunks by pulling over people driving like maniacs.

However, with this lazy, scatter-shot approach to law enforcement, in bending civil liberties, whoever it is makes these decisions accomplishes 2 objectives. One, they create what they apparently believe is a deterrent to drinking and driving, although if this kind of thing keeps on going, it will in reality be more like a deterrent to leaving your own house. Two, they believe they score a publicity victory. In their mind, nobody can say they're not tough on alcohol-related crime, by God, just look: they stopped 8,000 drivers in one night and found 15 drunks.

So on one hand you've got ruling by fear, and on the other you've got cop-theatre. So you're not only afraid to leave your own house to pick up that six pack, but you're apprehended on the way to the Quickie Mart, and held up as a shining example of how hard the Police decision-makers are working to prevent drunk driving. Who cares if you've not had a beer since last Thursday? Certainly not the person (more likely a committee, i.e. not just one bonehead but multiple boneheads) who decided to allow this wholesale invasion of privacy and blatant violation of constitutional rights.

But the American people do care. According to the article, Civil Liberties groups, that is, patriotic and gutsy American citizens, will also speak to the folks who are stopped. They will gather data, and eventually will fight, legally, to restore trendy damage to principles that have made the United States of American a wonderful, and free, nation.

Insanity and guns in Arizona

2008-06-03T07:32:00.006-07:00

A guy with a geranium in the cranium pulled a cross-town shooting spree Sunday. He poured dozens of shots into the front doors of his back-fence neighbors, and proceeded to drive across the north side of Tucson, managed to shoot 4 policeman, 2 of them in the head. While driving. Using a military-style rifle. One of the officers, who died, had served 21 years in the military and had decided to work for TPD. The kind of cop who is there to serve, to help.

Our governor here in Arizona has vetoed several of the psychopathic bills presented by right-leaning Arizona congresspeople that would have allowed such things as waving your gun in someone's face whenever you want, carrying concealed guns on school campuses, and concealing guns in your car.

The support for such bills seems to come from a kind improvised-cowboy mentality, as if some schmo driving down the road is going to have a chance against a crazy guy with an assault rifle, the kind of guy who not only managed to shoot 4 policeman in an hour on city streets, but whose acquaintances said was way off the deep end and clearly needed to be in a psychiatric hospital.

The signs were everywhere. The guy's mental health is described in this article in the Arizona Daily Star. (Their links only last a couple weeks) He had threated to kill at least 3 people, including the poor girl who went to a highschool prom with him 7 years ago. She had called police, encountered an administrative wall of do-nothingness, and had ended up telling everyone she knew that if something happened to her, to look for this guy.

All this craziness was clearly illustrated on his MySpace page, the focus of the Star's article in the link above. That this guy should have been in a rubber room with a few straightjackets in the closet was clear.

But what happened instead. Looks like his parents bought him a house, nobody lifted a finger to intervene in spite of the obvious signs of serious mental illness.

It may be true that popular trends in mental health care may result in someone like this going away for a month or two but they have a tendency to come back, get scooped up by the police and end up in the jails instead. In this case the only thing to be thankful for was that his over-the-backfence neighbors weren't home, and he did not end up at the University or some other puplic gathering place, like the other horrors we've all read about recently.

Everybody knows there's a problem with folks like this. The poor guy just has a very serious mental disease, adult-onset schizophrenia, it was obvious to everyone he was off his rocker but for some reason he was out walking around, had a car, a house, no need to work. The article said he came over the neighbor's fence to complain about BarBQ smoke. The MySpace page had a photo the crazy guy had taken of the neighbor, along with the death threat.

There's not much of a point to made here, but an obviously insane person should not have had military rifles. It's mostly just sad, and it seems preventable. Mental health sevices, law enforcement, need to change their ways, to look for the signs of someone who is just gone and can't change. Have you ever had to call the police and had the dispatcher say, "well we can't do anything until they hurt you?"

Proliferation of guns is not the answer, the instant cowboy is not the answer. And you don't need a rifle capapble of destroying the house across the street to defend yourself against the kind of people who kick in you door in the middle of the night.

If anything the key lies with acknowledging this kind of thing happens again and again, defining what you see prior to that, and committing some individuals for at least 10 years, forget about helping healthcare organizations maintain their profit margins by letting these poor crazy souls go. It seems like popular medical theory is under corporate influence here. As if it's a sin against corporate dogma to realize that some folks are obviously dangerous. Protecting the rest of us means a life at shady acres is necessary for some folks.

Here is the interactive map of how the crazy guy drove across our pretty foothills neighborhood and filled the town with lead directed at his imaginary adversaries.

Sheldon Brown, 1944-2008

2008-03-27T21:06:00.003-07:00

THE bicycle guru Sheldon Brown died in February. He'd been diagnosed w/ MS but apparently it was a heart attack that took his life. If you've never heard of him, he was famous for his encylopedic bicycle website out of Harris Cyclery in West Newton Massachusetts. If you ever need to unstick a stuck seat post, set a proper chainline on a singlespeed, build a wheel, tighten a loose cone, put on new brakes, well you can look it up there and find it explained in clear language with good photos. He was famous in biking circles as a great great mechanic, bicycle advocate, a talented and practical man who shared everything he knew. Before I do anything major to any of my 5 bikes, I always consult his site.

Thank you Sheldon, you continue to be a great influence on all of us riders, and have helped many of us develop decent bike mechanic skills.

Wikepedia has a nice entry on Sheldon, with a good list of relevant links. Here is the gear calculator, a real masterpiece, which you'll certainly appreciate if you're at all geeky about bikes.

Quadruped robot

2008-03-22T08:37:00.004-07:00

I think we are finally getting there with the quality of our robot technology. It's like in the 50s they write, "yes we will eventually build robots that move in a fashion eerily similar to animals..."

Boston Dynamics created the robot. But hey, don't kick it, that just seems wrong. Sure it's just a machine that can walk on ice or hustle through the forest, but would you kick your new Prius or your brand new mountain bike?

This thing can carry 340 pounds, climb a 35 degree slope, has a gasoline engine and some nice computers. More about Big Dog here.

Yes I read about it on the wonderful Boing Boing

BushCo National Security incompetency

2008-03-08T07:07:00.010-07:00

Philip Shenon's new book The Commission : The Uncensored History Of The 9/11 Investigation fingers Condoleeza Rice in the Bush administration's national security failure of 7 1/2 years ago. This excerpt from Shenon's book published in The Sydney Morning Herald shows the U.S. intellegence apparatus doing its best to warn the Administration about Bin Laden's crazies and just how dangerous they were. The book paints Rice as almost a highly-paid do-nothing, choosing to ignore intelligence and focus instead on promoting the administration, focus on what appears to be PR, game-playing, a big show. As the book follows the 9/11 commission one Richard Clarke emerges as a true soldier, intent on protecting the country. Clarke was at the time the National Security Council's counter-terrorism director. He'd been demoted by the time of the attacks. From the excerpt:

Other parts of the Government did respond aggressively and appropriately to the threats, including the Pentagon and the State Department. On June 21, the US Central Command, which controls American military forces in the Persian Gulf, went to "delta" alert - its highest level - for American troops in six countries in the region. The American embassy in Yemen was closed for part of the summer; other embassies in the Middle East closed for shorter periods.

But what had Rice done at the NSC? If the NSC files were complete, the commission's historian Warren Bass and the others could see, she had asked Clarke to conduct inter- agency meetings at the White House with domestic agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI, to keep them alert to the possibility of a domestic terrorist strike.

Repeatedly in 2001, Clarke had gone to Rice and others in the White House and pressed them to move, urgently, to respond to a flood of warnings about an upcoming and catastrophic terrorist attack by Osama bin Laden. The threat, Clarke was arguing, was as dire as anything that he or the CIA had ever seen.

He pushed for an early meeting in 2001 with Bush to brief him about bin Laden's network and the "nearly existential" threat it represented to the United States. But Rice rebuffed Clarke. She allowed him to give a briefing to Bush on the issue of cyber terrorism, but not on bin Laden; she told Clarke the al-Qaeda briefing could wait until after the White House had put the finishing touches that summer on a broader campaign against bin Laden. She moved Clarke and his issues off centre stage - in part at the urging of Zelikow and the transition team.

Shenon's book seems to offer a thru-the lens glimpse into a shameful and tragic chapter of U.S. history: the bumbling incompetence of an administration created by the most hated and destructive U.S. president of all time.

Amazon.com's reference to Shenon's book is here.

This guy is a hell of a journalist. It should be hilarious to hear what Limbaugh and the other highly-paid fart-generators say about him.

About the author, quoting Amazon:

Philip Shenon is an investigative reporter with The New York Times, based in Washington. He was the lead reporter on the investigation of the September 11 commission and has held several of the most important assignments of the Washington Bureau, including chief Defense Department correspondent, diplomatic correspondent, Congressional correspondent and Justice Department Correspondent. He was one of two Times reporters embedded with American grounds troops during the invasion of Iraq and worked in pre-war Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran for Times foreign staff.

Buddy Miles

2008-03-01T08:54:00.008-07:00

Buddy Miles, Hedrix' drummer in the outrageous Band of Gypsies, died Tuesday in Austin Texas, his home. He was 60, died of heart failure. He was also a stroke survivor.

Buddy Miles was one of those singing drummers, playing well and singing well, being the heartbeat of the band and its voice simultaneously. Miles founded the Electric Flag in the 60s and in the 80s was involved in TV advertising-music, singing in the animated claymation ads in the California Raisins.

Band of Gypsies was a milestone in Hendrix' career after the Experience broke up. Three black men playing soul-influenced funk, marked by Hendrix' indelible guitar-power were a bit of a new thing in those days, and reflected the music Hendrix was working on when he died.

"machine gun" pt.1
Black and while uTube videos of the Band of Gypsies are out there, but somehow putting on the original record album, holding the album cover in your hands and looking at its vivid color photographs shows how the music really is, vivid and transfixing and timely.

"them changes" Buddy Miles

Arizona conservatives try to liberalize gun laws again.

2008-02-16T06:24:00.003-07:00

In a further affront to the basic principles of civilization, Arizona Republicans, this time led by Rep. John Kavanagh of Fountain Hills, have come up with a bill that would allow concealed guns in cars- whether a concealed-weapons permit is involved or not. Almost thumbing their noses at another in a series of school campus gun attacks, the great right wing minds of Arizona have now united themselves to not only allow concealed weapons on school campuses, but to allow concealed weapons in cars too. Brilliant. Thanks for endangering more of the public, you fucking morons.

In this article, the AZ Daily Star details the brilliant logical process by which Kavanagh justifies this timely legislative action. It's sad that these great legal minds have a role in protecting the public.

Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said the current law regulating where someone can have a gun is confusing, not only to individuals but even to police.
"You shouldn't have to have a table of yes-no locations taped to your dashboard so you can figure out where you lay the weapon whether it's legal or not," he said.
Kavanagh said the current law can make a criminal out of an otherwise innocent citizen. For example, he said, a person without a permit might put a weapon on a car seat, where it is visible, only to have a jacket fall over it inadvertently. Or a driver could hit the brakes, causing a formerly visible gun to slide under the seat.

For Christssakes, ya dimwit, Arizona law already allows you to put your six-shooter in the glove compartment or trunk.

Karl Rove consulted in Arizona congressional race

2008-02-11T19:34:00.000-07:00

I got a creepy feeling when I heard Republican AZ State Senate president Tim Bee was planning to run for the very fine young Gabrielle Giffords' seat in the U.S. Congress. Giffords, a democrat, won Jim Kolbe's seat, and has been busy doing great things for Arizona and the U.S. ever since. Naturally, Arizona Republican morons, like Tim Bee, apparently, are not happy with such positive events. It was with further distress that I read in this article that Karl "Mr. Dethroned Neocon Asshole" Rove was in Tucson the other day. The scourge of scourges, the worst of the worst, except of course Lord Cheney. Two more things added to my unhappy feeling: One, Bee ran straight to Rove for advice in the upcoming campaign. Rove's advice in such matters would no doubt be some kind of dirty trick, smear campaign, or other form of widespread lying. Two, Arizona Democrats did not like the fact that the scumbag Rove was in Arizona at all, and protested about it. The problem was the Star's gutless way of reporting what happened, using standard Rush Limbaugh/Fox News code words:

Democrats, meanwhile, became completely obsessed with Rove's trip to the Old Pueblo, devoting an ample amount of their week to drumming up all their hatred for him and allowing the brief visit to get them all down-in-the-dumps.

Right, it's just hatred, those bad Liberal commies just like to hate. Forget how pissed most people in the country are about the things Rove and his ilk have done to the wonderful place we call home. It's just hate. No reason. Nope.

So, you can bet Rove was up to no good here in Arizona, something much more insidious than the fundraising dinner reported in the Star. So today, this story in the Star reports that Bee, the very man who ran to consult Rove for advice, is proposing something: a change to the State constitution that would divide the people of Arizona, and support discrimination against gay people. A constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage will show up on the November ballot- If Arizona Republicans get their way. Who's hating now? Kolbe was gay, you morons.

Now where do you think that divisive idea came from? People like Rove are adept at polarizing people, causing fights and disagreements, problems, trouble, destruction everywhere they go. And Arizona's right-wing morons in the State government are eager to jump on the bandwagon, in denial about the fact that people like Giffords, who work to undo some of the damage caused by the Bush Administration, are getting elected.

AZ legislators propose allowing guns in schools

2008-01-25T05:34:00.000-07:00

In another one of those astounding "welcome to Arizona" events, two AZ State legislators have demonstrated their complete lack of understanding of human civilization and come up with a bill that would allow students and teachers with a concealed weapons permit to carry firearms on Arizona school campuses. How stupid these people are can be seen by the way they talk:

"These gun-free zones are just open areas," [Mesa Rep. Karen Johnson] said. "If a kid gets mad or crazed or some weirdo decides to go into school, he knows there's going to be nobody there to stop them."
[Mesa Rep. Russell] Pearce said schools have become "no-self-defense zones."
Johnson said changing the law might deter someone who means harm from deciding to start shooting.
"This way, nobody knows who has a concealed weapon," she said. "But at least they'll know that somebody could."

"If somebody does start shooting and is crazed, they can be taken down pretty quick," she said.
Pearce, a former Maricopa County sheriff's deputy, said the best ally of law enforcement can be an armed citizen or someone willing to "jump in and help."

Wow. I'll just let that speak for itself. They sound like psychotic 5-year-olds that watch too many violent movies. So, nobody would know who has a gun on a college campus, and the moronic new law would allow "armed citizens" to "jump in and help" if "a kid gets mad," or "some weirdo decides to go into school." Yes, they actually said that, it was in the AZ Daily Star right here. This is the kind of thing that makes many of us who live in Arizona ashamed.

BushCo environmental destruction continues

2008-01-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

It seems like anything destructive you hear about, whether it's environmental, social, diplomatic, economic, infrastructure-related, or civil liberties-related, you can just say, "Thanks Bush." Moronic industrialization of old-growth forest and the consequent destruction of salmon habit in the Pacific Northwest is detailed in this story in the AZ Daily Star. Because the Star's links only last a week or two, I'll quote a bit of the story here:

GRANTS PASS, Ore. – The Bush administration's plans to dismantle more than a decade of protections for northern spotted owls and salmon to sharply increase logging in old growth forests is seriously flawed and not adequately supported by science, the federal agency in charge of saving salmon concludes.
In a Jan. 11 letter obtained by The Associated Press, NOAA Fisheries told the U.S. Bureau of Land Management that its Western Oregon Plan Revision — known as The Whopper after its acronym — has no coherent or cohesive conservation strategy for salmon and steelhead, and relies on assumptions and models not supported by published scientific studies.

Once again you can see the typical BushCo hallmarks of doing business. First, an aggressive disregard of scientific evidence. You can see this at work all through the Bush Presidency anywhere you look, whether it's support for fundamentalist bullcrap like Creationism, or policies regarding reproductive and women's health. Second, time after time, the people Bush puts in charge of environmental and Interior Department responsibilities are usually on the payroll of companies that profit from environmental destruction. Look no further for a motive. This is just plain illegal, but of course the law means nothing to BushCo.

For example, in this story, by veteran Star reporter Dan Sorenson, which details the Federal Government's unraveling of policies related to the survival of endangered wildlife, in this case the Jaguar, some hack by the name of Elizabeth Slown glibly defends lack of support for the jaguars that have managed to survive, while the reporter presents some weak evidence that the abandonment of reintroduction plans is actually related to Homeland Security plans for the so-called border wall, which Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano described in her Tucson state of the state speech as "nothing but an ivitation to go get a ladder or dig a tunnel."

"What we said is that … doing a recovery plan for the jaguar doesn't advance conservation for the jaguar," Slown said.
"We'd rather put our efforts into on-the-ground efforts: participating in the Jaguar Conservation Team led by (the state of) Arizona, continuing to fund research we do throughout Central America," she said.
"The jaguar is still under (the protection of) the ESA; it doesn't affect that at all," Slown said, referring to the Endangered Species Act.
"Instead of a 200-some-page recovery plan," Slown said, "let's help the countries where the jaguar can survive and help the Jaguar Conservation Team."

Sorerson:

There will be no recovery plan, at least not one with teeth, for the rarest of the wild animals native to Arizona — the largest and rarest cat species of North America — the jaguar.
The Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group that has pushed for an official plan to set goals and spell out and enforce efforts to save the big cats, portrays the move as a concession to the Bush administration's border-fence project.

A reporter on the job as long as Sorensen no doubt did some background on the spokepeople quoted in the story, and no doubt the Star's editors didn't include that, and you can bet that Slown works for some company somewhere that has a stake in the dismantling of environmental law.

The overall point is here, if we're going to take a giant chainsaw and clear all the forests and deserts so that mining companies, logging companies and private security companies can have an easy go at running up profits, and if we dismantle the law in the process, then we destroy not only our fellow animals that live on our planet, but we also destroy our planet, and destroy the resources we need. BushCo policy, if it continues, will lead to a planet without wood, fish, januars, deserts, mountians or forests, and not only will we suffer in ways we cannot even imagine, but the resulting economic destruction will make things much worse than are now. You can't make a buck off a scorched, denuded, dying Earth, Republicans! You can't feed your children if you destroy this place in the name of short-term profits, and you can't give your children clean air to breathe if you kill all the trees.

The Star's Portillo argues in favor of Ethnic Studies in Tucson high schools

2007-12-14T05:47:00.000-07:00

The Arizona Daily Star's Ernesto Portillo has continued to provided excellent arguments in favor of TUSD's Ethnic Studies program. The program has been under attack by state Superintendent of Education Tom Horne, who no doubt is bowing to the political forces which represent bigotry and xenophobia in Arizona.

The Ethnic Studies program, which is available to all Tucson high school students, focuses on literature and humanities from the point of view of those who are not white males. In other words, the program values diversity and presents the contributions of all members of society. The program is very strong on academic excellence, and has consistently demonstrated success in this area- its students have gone on to major success in college and found good jobs, which may be part of what threatens Horne and other Arizona "conservatives."

In this editorial in the 12/14/07 Star Portillo cites several excellent arguments which clearly show the weakness and backwardness of Horne's position. Sorry the Star's links only last a couple weeks, btw.

Horne last month asked Tucson Unified School District's Ethnic Studies Department to give him copies of course materials and the program's cost. He told the Arizona Daily Star, "This is not about education or academics; it is about values."

Really. Whose values?

Would those be of TUSD, parents and students who have asked for and benefited from ethnic studies? Or are they the values of someone who, by his own admission, is opposed to ethnic and gender studies?

Mr. Portillo here echoes what I feel is the strongest and most obvious argument against Superintendent Horne's attack on the program. Horne and his backers don't like it because it focuses on work that is not from their own culture. I can't help but see a really glaring intolerance of cultures not their own. As if the program teaches kids to be rabble-rousers or something!

Portillo on high school in the 70s:

One of my teachers, Geta LeSeur, who taught English and whom I've written about previously, introduced to her ethnically diverse classes literature from women and men of color, along with the accepted works of white males.

Native American. Black. Chicano. Poetry. Essays. Novels.

Prior to this period, it was unheard of — in nearly all of Tucson, I dare say — to read literature outside the foisted norm. I didn't know African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native-Americans and Mexican-Americans wrote prose and poetry.

This powerful, eye-opening literature spoke truth to me as a young Chicano trying to make sense of the confusion around us.

There were the Vietnam War, civil-rights marches, Nixon and Watergate, Wounded Knee, César Chávez and grape boycotts, and more.

The rich literature gave me a realistic view of my changing world, and LeSeur and other forward-thinking Cholla teachers helped me develop critical-thinking skills and instilled a lifelong love of learning.

Critical thinking skills? Exposure the reality of, and value of diversity? Curriculum that gets students interested and causes them to actually study, and think? What in the world is wrong with that? Horne and his ilk would say that's fine, but it's the wrong kind of curriculum. But it seems some in Arizona feel it's more like the wrong kind of cultures being represented, the wrong kind of people, and the wrong kind of critical thinking skills.

No Country for Old Men followup

2007-12-12T20:30:00.000-07:00

No one's posted the Oprah interview with Cormac McCarthy to uTube. I went to Oprah's site, the interview's sound and vid were distorted, and did not load in a cohesive or orderly fashion. Oh yeah, then there's the annoying "registration." Why the hell should I have to give them my email address just because I want to watch an interview with my favorite author or access any of Oprah's other fascinating topics? Tell us why, marketing luminaries. Is it because you went to a seminar where someone in an expensive suit told you you might be able to indirectly squeeze a few more dollars out of your target audience by insidiously gathering personal data? ...Go to bugmenot.com when they tell you need to "register" or "sign in."

Ahem. Anyways here is a McCarthy-esque thread that came up when a friend asked what Cormac McCarthy book to get for an inlaw for Xxxmasss. My bud was like "hey what is the best Cormac McCarthy book?"

It's so strange how dark this stuff is, and how gripping somehow.

No Country for Old Men, btw takes place in 1980, yes, 1980. The Cohen brothers did a good job with it, but it was more like a filmic exercise- they got everything down and it worked pretty good- especially the complexity of the plot.

I think as far as handling the odd zen questions of McCarthy they depended on the photography to handle it more than the conflict of the central character. That worked, but still, other characters were developed more thoroughly in the book, and in the book their conflicts meshed with the odd, lifelike, roaming central questions of the book.

What the Cohen bros. faced in the movie is what you face when you turn a book into a movie, typically. You try to have a film that says what the author said but works as a film too, and can be gripping the same way most films are gripping. Nice effort, you should go see this, just go get Claire and just go see it.

Best...Hmm...best.... hmmmmm....

The border trilogy is probably considered his most important work- it's really just 3 books written several years apart that have an interlocking storyline and message. I'd say of all the tough questions McCarthy asks, they are all encapsulated in their most stunning, thought-provoking, disturbing form in the Border Trilogy, especially in All the Pretty Horses.

Blood Meridian would have to run a close second, even compared to the trilogy.

I think the strangest and most puzzling thing about this guy is that his books describe a world that is so beautiful, but there are these dark and random doings going on at the hands of people. You read one of his books and you feel like you've been through one of the most beautiful landscapes you've ever seen- the Earth in its cruel, wonderful, merciful, blooming ways. Then the humans come around, and you never know what you're going to witness, the ugly part, or the inspiring part. Dig?

Stockhausen

2007-12-08T20:13:00.000-07:00

R.I.P. Stockhausen. We've lost a real giant, a real innovator, a big inspiration to us noise-lovers & classical music freaks.

Ethnic Studies under attack in Arizona high schools

2007-12-04T18:59:00.000-07:00

Tom Horne, Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction, citing concerns about "values" and "ethnic chauvinism," is apparently seeking to dismantle a very successful Tucson Unified School District ethnic studies program.

TO HIS CREDIT, Mr. Horne does play a mean classical piano, is taking Spanish classes, and is also entirely pissed at voter-driven tax cuts that harm Arizona school funding.

HOWEVER. The ethnic studies program under attack has resulted in statistically proven success among high school students. The program is designed for Latino, Black, Native American and Asian students. Other students who are interested also take part. Quoting from this article in AZ Daily Star by George B. Sánchez:

TUSD's ethnic studies department was created in 2004 as an umbrella for its black, American Indian, Pan-Asian and raza studies programs.

The ethnic studies programs heighten students' understandings of different cultures, offer a critical perspective of U.S. and world history and bolster cultural identity for some, [Augustin] Romero [coordinator of TUSD's ethnic studies department] said.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, raza studies has significantly expanded during the past five years.

About 900 students are officially enrolled in raza studies classes at four high schools. Teachers who have taken part in raza studies workshops are able to incorporate the department's lesson plans into various classes. Romero estimated that about 1,400 students are served daily by the program.

(Sorry the Star's links only last a couple weeks.) Our man Horne, however, who also opposes bilingual education and women's studies, is concerned about "ethnic chauvinism."

...concerned about what he calls "ethnic chauvinism," which he described as "teaching people to make their primary personal identity the ethnic group they were born into rather than identifying as an individual in terms of character and ability."

Mr. Horne has a problem with an academically excellent high school program that's not based on his own culture, in other words! Apparently, to him it's "cultural chauvinism" if something the school district is teaching is not based on a certain culture.

The Star's Ernesto Portillo Jr. also rails against Horne and the xenophobic attack on education in this op ed piece. See also this Star editorial against Horne and his attempt to suck-up to Arizona bigots. The Tucson Citizen spanks Horne's ass in this timely editorial. The local Fox station has of course linked the ethnic studies program with protests against local law enforcement's handling of the case of a student who was not only "an illegal," but also (gasp) smoking pot. Link to Fox-twist here.

University of Arizona new Architecture addition keeps getting shot up

2007-11-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

QUIT SHOOTING AT THE NEW COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE FACADE! Fucking morons. Show a little respect.

A new glass building on Speedway Boulevard in Tucson Arizona is apparently an easy target for countless lowbrow idiots driving up and down the street. Speedway has for decades been a magnet for gearheads, kids, people just cruising, all in the name of fun. Of course a gorgeous new building along Speedway's southern side in the northwest corner of the University of Arizona has drawn the attention of the few bad apples that tend to show up in crowds, ruining the fun for everybody, including those working late in the building.

Show some respect, morons. Maybe if you got an education, or made use of the education your parents worked so hard to be buying you right now, you'd understand that not only are people usually working late in the building, not only do you have no right to shoot at buildings- in this case a public building your taxes paid for, but that YOUR thoughtless actions do nothing other than fuck up all of us. The University is there for everybody. Those of us on the staff work very hard to enable it to fulfill its mission- to discover, build and serve. If you need help extrapolating, this mission can be interpreted as being involved in the betterment of this world, and giving you and others the tools to ensure we don't destroy our own planet. This does include CIVILIZED BEHAVIOR.

Information and pic are via the Arizona Daily Star. Story by Tom Beal at this link. Sorry their links only last a couple weeks. Pic by David Sanders.

UPDATE 12/10/07. UA police arrested & charged 2 young Tucson men on 12/8. From the UAPD press release:

The University of Arizona Police Department has made an arrest in a recent case involving damage to the University of Architecture building. An alert student who heard projectiles striking the windows of the building called the UAPD on December 8, 2007 at 10:03 p.m. Witnessing a vehicle leaving the area the student relayed the information to responding officers who were unable to locate the vehicle upon arrival. Corporal Jeff Kamper later spotted a vehicle matching the description of the suspect vehicle and with assistance initiated a high-risk stop.

Two suspects were identified and an air pistol (BB type) was located after the stop. Detectives questioned both suspects this evening and have charged both subjects with felony counts of Criminal Damage over $10,000.00 and Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Damage both Class 4 Felonies.

Phoenix New Times editor and CEO arrested

2007-10-19T06:27:00.000-07:00

The arrests appear related to retaliation by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The Phoenix New Times reported that Grand Jury subpoenas were used by Maricopa county to track readers of the Times' stories related to Arpaio, and to scoop up reporter's notes, tapes and publications. The New Times also has had a series of reports on Arpaio's doings in the Phoenix area. Hm.

Apparently the paper is involved in a criminal case for publishing personal contact information about the Sheriff a few years ago. The grand jury subpoenas reek of spying, intimidation, and trampling of the 1st Amendment, so the paper felt obligated to disregard secrecy laws and let the public know about this little facet of life in Phoenix. What is the Press for, right?

Quoting the editor & CEO via a local paper:

“the authorities” probably believe revealing the subpoenas is against the law, “but there are moments when civil disobedience is merely the last option.”

"We're not harboring state secrets, we’re not harboring terrorists, we’re just straight up reporting on issues they don’t want us to report on.”

Read the article here in the East Valley Tribune. I've linked to the Phoenix New Times and recommend reading their articles about the Sheriff and the current tactics Maricopa County is using against the Press.

Welcome to Arizona, everybody!

-->UPDATE 10/19/07 P.M. John Peter Zenger would approve. The Maricopa County Attorney has dropped charges against the Phoenix pressmen and stated publicly that the prosecutors involved in the spurious and insane charges had overstepped their bounds in a major fashion. Quoting from the (Phoenix-area) East Vally Tribune: "Citing “serious missteps” by Dennis Wilenchik that led to the arrests of the paper’s top two executives, Thomas also dumped legal efforts to force New Times editors and reporters to turn over notes, emails and other research related to stories involving county Sheriff Joe Arpaio, as well as information about the alternative newsweekly’s Internet readers. To reiterate, John Peter Zenger would be proud, and is mostly likely SITTING UP in his grave, with his fist raised.

Josh Olson on lonliness

2007-10-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

Yes, I read about in on the lovely Boing Boing.

I will quote writer Josh Olson's words and add a link and a brief comment after:

We spend much of our lives alone. Some cope with it better than others. The ones who don’t are primed and ready for victimhood. You have to learn to be with yourself, because if you don’t, there’s a whole world of drugs, booze and rotten people who will be your friend until you’ve been sucked dry. Beware of what loneliness makes you do; and beware of this creature [the lady in the photo above], because she is out there, she is real, and Janna St. James is only one of her pustulant manifestations.

This is the last paragraph from a fascinating story that appeared here in the L.A. Weekly.

Basically the story is about someone who was active in internet message boards for writers, and what happened to her. In short, why I don't chat or meet people over the internet. What really struck home for me was the paragraph above- the sentence in bold especially. We are born alone. I have always liked spending time alone. But. Abusive elements can really fuck things up. What a fascinating story. There's a lesson here for anybody's who's ever been had.

Arizona Sonora Desert Museum takes down Mexican flag after complaints and threats

2007-10-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, a Tucson-area educational and environmental resource that's been around since the 1950s, will no longer fly the Mexican flag, or the U.S. flag, because of complaints and threats by local morons over the Mexican flag.

This article in the Arizona Daily Star states that death threats were actually made against the museum's animals in recent months.

I'm sorry to say it but this represents an accurate picture of the type of person that's receiving equal coverage in the newspaper around here lately.

However, the good news is that smart money says this kind of bullshit represents nothing like a random sampling of public opinion around here. It's highly likely the Star's passively-active dramatic coverage points to the actions of an extremely small, xenophobic, over-reactive group of citizens. In fact if you look at the subtext of the article it appears someone named Kaluzniacki who sits on the museum board was instrumental in the museum's gutless decision. True to form, the Star does nothing to reveal Kaluzniacki's political ties, nor does the Star report on the veracity or sources of the complaints the Desert Museum says it has received.

Of course in typical Star fashion the actions of the fringe are presented as some kind of legitimate occurrence, as if the xenophobic attacks against the Mexican flag should somehow naturally be countered by letters to the Museum in favor of flying the Mexican flag.

-->UPDATE 10/13/07 After hundreds of people called in to complain, both flags are going back up. A museum official said:

"We are going to explain that it is part of the museum's heritage dating back to the early '50s, and the flags are flown in great part to represent the binational conservation and educational endeavors of the museum regarding the Sonoran Desert,"

Dennis Kuchinch has balls of brass

2007-10-05T20:22:00.000-07:00

In this interview on PBS Dennis comes out in favor of keeping jobs in the U.S, higher wages for ordinary working folks who keep the U.S. in the green, sensible corporate and industrial policy, and sensible foreign policy.

Kucinich may not be tall or look like a TV star or an athlete, but he can kick your ass when it comes to policy, when it comes to doing things that are good for the United States and all of our nearly 300 million souls and rest of our fellow world citizens. This guy could easily kick the ass of any Democratic or Republican presidential candidate when it comes down to brass tacks.

Watch out for this guy, he is one of the few voices keeping the Midwest strong, in favor of realistic economic and social policy. He also keeps his religion out of the social and political fray. Go Dennis, the world would be such a better place if we could keep our religions out of government and social affairs.

Mike Huckabee

2007-10-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

I don't think a "Christian Minister" should be president. Separation of church and state is a very important worldwide principle right now.

1/16/08: To reiterate this point, I'd like to include this quote, which shows this guy is SERIOUSLY FULL OF SHIT, delusional, dangerous, psychotic:

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

However, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who got interested in being a triathelte and lost 110 pounds, is in favor of sensible, preventative healthcare, and is in favor of giving a hand to folks coming up here from Mexico looking for work, despite his "social conservative" and anti-gay marriage position, looks like a traditional, low-tax, less-government Republican who would not let the U.S. be overrun by Huge Corporate Interests seeking to overrun government, workers, Citizens, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, etc in favor of short-term profits. See his interview and read about him here on PBS.
Oh yeah, he also apparently plays bass, with his fingers.

Rosemont mine PR hatchet-job reported as fact in the Arizona Daily Star

2007-09-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

The photograph is a beloved natural area south of Tucson. Rosemont Ranch is at the edge of the area's highest mountain range, the 9200 ft. Santa Rita range. A copper company has claimed the right to create an open pit copper mine to remove Rosemont Ranch, swallow the area whole, and leave a giant pit behind. Copper mines typically release tons of airborne contaminants, and let tons of chemical pollution seep into the aquifer. Opposition to the mine has been widespread in the area. The only voice in favor not obviously associated with the mining company itself has been the Tucson Chamber of commerce which has made such inane statements as this:

"They've got to mine there, because that's where the copper is," [Jack] Camper said. "You can't lock up everything. If you do, you lose your tax base, and we can't afford to live here."

In this article, which is not quite a pro-mining puff-piece, and which does present a watered-down version of opposing arguments in the body of the story, the Arizona Daily Star presents as fact ridiculous arguments created in a "report" authored by a company obviously on the payroll of the mining interest. The journalist does not present much information about the author of the report or his employer. Instead a quote is given from one the many Pima County officials opposed to the blatant environmental destruction:

"It's not an objective report," said county Supervisor Ray Carroll, whose district includes the area where the mine would be developed.
"It's a glowing, rosy report that promotes their interests," he said. "It's almost as if the analysis was put together by the sales department of Augusta Resource."

Ok, so wouldn't it be normal for a journalist to do a little background on "Western Economic Analysis Center?" Well that's not what you get in the Star. What you do get is the following headline:

Long-term impact debated
Proposed Rosemont copper mine would add jobs, revenue, economist reports

For more balanced coverage, and to get a much more realistic picture of what is going on and what kind of company we are dealing with here, please see coverage by Tim Hull and Tim Vanderpool in the Tucson Weekly:

Glass Half-Empty - The company that wants to mine in the Rosemont Valley is promoting water plans that may be all wet By TIM HULL. (08-09-2007)

Fierce Opposition - The controversy over a proposed Pima County mine proves copper is no longer king By TIM VANDERPOOL. (06-14-2007)

Rosemont Rising - Can this mine fight turn a national tide? By TIM VANDERPOOL. (03-08-2007)

Dreams and Duds - Dapper miners with their eyes on Rosemont Valley get thumped by Pima County By TIM VANDERPOOL. (01-25-2007)

University of Arizona Business School involved in U.S. Military project to search the Interent for "...threats"

2007-09-25T20:20:00.000-07:00

My point here is the Star's language makes it look like basically the U.S. Military is gearing up to start tracking anybody who opposes Bush and what his administration has done to mess up our country.

There is probably no better time or place to say that those of us who love this country feel it's very important to speak out in opposition to Bush and his policies. The intention is to prevent BushCo-sponsored destruction of the environment, destruction of the infrastructure, destruction of the economy, destruction of the Bill of Rights & Constitution, destruction of healthy and productive foreign relations.

This is a democracy after all, and we are free to exercise our right to free speech as we see fit.

"The possibilities are endless," [Hsinchun] Chen...director of the University of Arizona's Artificial Intelligence Lab... said... The UA is collaborating with various federal intelligence agencies and essentially taking orders for what Dark Web will focus on.

Wow. Taking orders, huh? Focusing on whom? The article at the Arizona Daily Star focuses on actual threats- mass killings committed by extreme fundamentalists against ordinary, unsuspecting, innocent people. But further down the subtext gets scarier.

The various agencies he works with on Dark Web have their own unique uses for the data.

Also, the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management, under which the programs mentioned in the article are operating, is, simply put, the U's business college. Isn't that about profit? Isn't this kind of along the same lines of having a for-profit "private security company" involved in law enforcement? It might be a good time to ask how many private, for-profit interests are involved in so-called Homeland Security.

UPDATE-- 9/27/07-- More information and links are available here at Wired's Danger Room blog. Also, the wonderful Boing Boing's Xeni reported last winter on similar efforts, sticking more closely to the analysis of actual threats.

From the Star:

Terrorists use the Web as a virtual university of how-to videos for making bombs, enticing recruits and plotting attacks — but UA researchers are zeroing in on them.
UA's Dark Web project scours the Internet to listen in on terrorist chat rooms, untangle the vast network of extremist links and spot threats emerging daily.

That gives Tucson the world's largest database of terrorist-generated Web sites, a collection of more than a half billion pages, postings, images and videos — a new tool for the military and U.S. agencies to use in assessing threats.

And now the UA will use a $1.5 million federal grant to look deeper into one pressing danger: how the Web teaches extremists to set up improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, the roadside bombs often used against U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

"Our young soldiers, before they're being deployed, will know the IEDs through the enemies' eyes," said Hsinchun Chen, director of the University of Arizona's Artificial Intelligence Lab, which is three years into its Dark Web work.
UA will now get even "closer to the action," Chen said.

The Army's military intelligence school at Fort Huachuca is also working to gather intelligence on IEDs.

Officials there can't comment specifically on Dark Web, but fort spokeswoman Tanja Linton noted that the Internet makes the job of intelligence officers more challenging.

"As a rule, obviously, having a better understanding of the enemy is always a goal of military intelligence," Linton said. "The better we are at identifying terrorists, the better off we are.

"Now we're fighting people who don't wear uniforms," making it especially tough to root them out, she added.

Sophisticated analysis
The UA is collaborating with various federal intelligence agencies and essentially taking orders for what Dark Web will focus on. "The possibilities are endless," Chen said.

In cyber-terms, Dark Web is now about at version 2.5 and moving toward version 3.0, Chen said, growing savvier along with its prey.
Its success lies in the sophistication it brings to analyzing social linkages between groups and the ability to identify and track individual authors by their writing styles, Chen said.

That component, called Writeprint, helps combat the Web's anonymity by studying thousands of lingual, structural and semantic features in online postings. With 95 percent certainty, it can attribute multiple postings to a single author.
From there, Dark Web has the ability to track a single person over time as his views become radicalized.

The project analyzes which types of individuals might be more susceptible to recruitment by extremist groups, and which messages or rhetoric are more effective in radicalizing people.

In one study, Chen found terrorist Web sites and U.S. government sites are equally sophisticated on the technical level. But terrorist Web sites are about 10 times richer in multi-media content like pictures and video and also about 10 times more effective in creating a community. Terrorist sites are quick to provide answers and instruction when their users ask questions, he said.

50,000 terror sites on Web
Chen estimates there are now more than 50,000 terrorist-led or terrorism-related Web sites, with new ones cropping up every day, especially in Arabic, but also in many other languages.

At its start, Dark Web had the capability to collect and analyze Internet activity in English, Spanish and Arabic.

It's now branching out into other languages, with German and French already incorporated into the system, and Chinese, Farsi and Dutch among about 10 others in the works.

"We have to increase the sophistication of our language recognition," Chen said.
In the future, Chen envisions Dark Web moving from a research prototype into a tool agencies can use independently.

The various agencies he works with on Dark Web have their own unique uses for the data. One group is looking at which ideas are most effective in recruiting, while another is analyzing the spread of training information.

Deception-detection research
The Dark Web team, made up of about five professors and eight graduate students, isn't the only group of UA researchers bringing computer expertise to the national security effort.

Led by Jay Nunamaker, UA's Center for the Management of Information is using subtle indicators in language use, vocal qualities like pitch or pauses, and an analysis of gestures and motions to build a complex model of how people behave when they're being deceptive.

"We take those three cues and fuse them to get a signal of truth or deception," said Nunamaker, whose team, like Chen's, is within the Management Information Systems Department of UA's Eller College of Management.

The next step is to refine the project so it can adjust for different situations and cultures, Nunamaker said.

"Everybody wants a silver bullet, one super cue that will identify truth or deception, but the problem is far too complex for that," he said. "You have to identify the context you're dealing with."

The UA is expanding on the deception-detection research with three recent grants, starting with $823,000 from the Defense Academy for Credibility Analysis. Researchers also are teaming with three other universities on a $1.2 million grant to study human and social dynamics, and are working with West Virginia University on a $350,000 project to pair biometric indicators with the deception techniques.

"There's no single technique that's going to identify a terrorist," Nunamaker said. "It's with all the technologies taken together that you're going to be able to make some progress."

strip-search at Arizona middle school

2007-09-25T19:39:00.000-07:00

Looking for ibuprofen, following rumors, unnamed school administrators at a middle school in Safford Arizona detained a 13 year old student for 2 hours, refused to let her call her mother, and strip-searched her. The Captiol Media Services' story by Howard Fischer was carried by the Arizona Daily Star here.

That this happened, that the girl's mother filed suit, that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals supported the search, are some of the reasons we should be ashamed of Arizona, and ashamed the Federal court upheld such barbaric behavior.

Ricard Serra installation

2007-09-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

Installation of this dynamic sculpture by the infamous Ricard Serra, my favorite sculptor, at the NY MOMA. Serra's works are generally huge, will dwarf you while confronting the site.

Here is a sculpture, View Point, in Germany.

Ralph Nader speaks at Washington protest

2007-09-17T18:39:00.000-07:00

The photo below makes it look pretty bad, but looking around on YouTube and reading various stories, the police and the peace marchers behaved fairly well, all things considered. The worst behavior was coming from the attendees who believe in the "war" and who came to harass the peace marchers.

Nader:

"The impeachable offenses of Bush outnumber any other list of impeachable offenses of any US president," Nader said. "Not only did he and Cheney violate their oath of office to uphold the constitution and the laws of the land, but they proceeded to impose a practice of torture, to arrest thousands of Americans without charges and throw them in prisons without lawyers.... They spied on millions of Americans randomly without judicial approval. How many more impeachable offenses do those spineless, gutless, hapless Democrats need in the Congress."

From this article on Raw Story.

Here are a couple quotes by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who also spoke at the protests:

“I’ve been in Iraq every year since 1989, and I’ll tell you it’s never been like this before” said former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who described the quality of life for Iraqis as “unlivable” and illustrated a growing refugee crisis in Iraq’s neighboring countries as Iraqi citizens flee the war.

"Nothing is going to stop this machine but to impeach Bush and his gang and bring the troops back home,"

Clarke was quoted here in Broadside online and here in the L.A. Times.

Some YouTube vid here:

Center for Biological Diversity sues to reclaim wilderness

2007-08-29T07:43:00.000-07:00

In an effort to start undoing Bush Administration environmental damage the Center for Biological Diversity announced its intention to file suit against the federal government over protected endangered species habitat in 28 states. The amount of land involved is stupendous, 8.7 million acres. The suit describes the typical Administration practices we've all read about. For example, quoting from this article in the Seattle Times:

In the case of the marbled murrelet, the organization contends the government manipulated a scientific review to make it look like the bird didn't need further federal protection. The government also illegally shrank the amount of critical habitat for the Western snowy plover by exaggerating the economic costs involved in the protections, said [a CDC spokesperson].

The outcome of this type of policy is that land that normally would be preserved gets destroyed when industrial and corporate interests move in. In formulating this type of policy, it's quite clear who BushCo represents in the U.S., clear who BushCo is working for.

It's important to note that the more we allow destruction of wilderness, the more the earth looses its ability to keep us alive. Without an environment free of toxins, without fresh air, without wildlands, we all die. BushCo has been absolutely criminal in its lies, policies and disregard for scientific data in this area, and there has been very little talk of consequences or solutions.

National day of celebration

2007-08-28T20:18:00.000-07:00

People should be out rejoicing in the streets over the Gonzales resignation. We should be declaring mass parties, with banners with the names of Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, DeLay, Rove, and Gonzales inside circles with the big red slash.

Read the paper lately and it's like, "oh well there were some questions about Gonzales' integrity, competence and honesty." And "well old Rove, well, he's just going to go fishin' now, with his wife and his dog..." Well what a fucking couple of good-old-boys now, why, those good old boys, they just done had enough now haven't they. The fuck. They are running scared, like all those BushCo crooks, once people start finding out what BushCo has been upto.

Let us all hope that exactly what BushCo has done can be brought to light. And let's hope that damage to the constitution, the law, the environment, the economy, the infrastructure, international relations, and the way in which the federal government spends our tax money may be repaired, and the sooner the better.

Karl Rove resigns

2007-08-13T08:16:00.000-07:00

Looks like he just gave his 2 weeks' notice.

Add him to the list of failed BushCo NeoC*n thugs.

Hooray. He was one of the worst, one of the men responsible for the tragedy foisted upon the United States and the rest of the world.

Details here at Reuters Canada.

I'm putting a sweet old family picture with this post as kind of a "unicorn chaser," since the image of Karl Rove is a sickening reminder of BushCo offenses.

Space travel via balloon

2007-08-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

In what I'd describe as a revolutionary and simple idea, an independent company called JP Aerospace is using balloons to facilitate space travel.

I read about it here in Wired's "Threat Level" blog.

In dozens of tests, JP Aerospace balloons have reached altitudes of nearly 100,000 feet. The balloons carry cameras, cell phones and GPS devices.

So this is what it looks like from up there:

This is roughly 18 miles up.

JP's idea is to assemble a platform up there, which can be reached with a unit like this:

From there (140,000 feet), theoretically, a space ship can be launched.

BushCo Lexicography hit-list

2007-08-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

"information"
"in·for·ma·tion /ˌɪnfərˈmeɪʃən/ [in-fer-mey-shuhn] –noun
1. knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance; news."

"knowledge"
"knowl·edge /ˈnɒlɪdʒ/ [nol-ij] –noun
1. acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation; general erudition: knowledge of many things."

"blogger"
"blog (blŏg) n. A weblog.

intr.v. blogged, blog·ging, blogs
To write entries in, add material to, or maintain a weblog ... blog·ger n. ... Part of Speech: n ... Definition: a person who keeps a Web log (blog)."

Sample usage: "Well I heard the bloggers are using information to create knowledge on their blogs..."

Rush L: "OH MY GOD-- BLOGGERS HAVE BEEN INFORMING PEOPLE!! THEY ARE CAUSING KNOWLEDGE!! THE BLOG-O-NAZIS ARE DETERMINED TO STOP THE SPREAD OF FREEDOM!!"

Next week on Hannity: "Do you want the world of the bloggers or do you want the world of America? America must choose now!!"

Return of the Pork Chops

2007-08-09T06:34:00.000-07:00

Still relevant after 20 years! Damnit. Classes start the 20th and the worst of the worst are coming back to town. I once got in an argument in the middle of a class with one of these types who would not shut up during the lecture:

"Well if you're not here to talk alot and have fun, then what are you here for?"

"To get an education!"

I will quote from my friend at Shavedneck.com:

I made this flyer in early 1985 as a gut response to the recent infestation of the U of A campus with a strain of vermin known as College Republicans. Not sure their origin but they brought with them a "fashion style" that was soon to be ubiquitious: beach bikes, walkmen, oversized shirts and shorts. Unacceptable though was their attitude of "dont fuck with me cuz my daddy will sue your ass". They were almost exclusively fraternity members and were responsible for making the word "frat boy" synonymous with the Niedermeyer-asshole type frat (Animal House nemesis) it is today. (Once was a day when not all frats were conservative gross shitheads or trust fund hippies pretending not to be.)

Ugh! 22+ years later and I can still spew this hostility!! Its probably pretty easy for me cuz the Bush era we are struggling through makes those horrible Reagan years look like the Summer of Fucking Love in Haight Ashbury.

Me and my buddy Tim hung these all over campus. We actually had a pork chop see us hang one, read it and exclaim "i'm a pork chop!!" and instead of getting aggro on us he begged us for more copies. Now thats a good pork chop!

We also had to ride for our lives on fraternity row to escape their wrath at one juncture. Never underestimate the violence of a Reagan brainwashed (insert Rove/Bush today) humonculous.

As an added related note: it was Tim who first commented to me upon seeing a Pork Chop: "that guy just shaved his neck". We began calling Pork Chops "Shaved Necks". Now you know where the fucking ridiculous name for this website comes from!!!

Journalist killed in Oakland

2007-08-08T20:16:00.000-07:00

Chauncey Bailey, a reporter at the Oakland Post, was killed last Thursday, Aug. 2nd 2007, by a 19 year old who worked a bakery. The bakery was the subject of a story by Baily. The 19 year old killed Baily with a shotgun & confessed to the crime, according to this story in the Chron.

People who spoke at Baily's memorial service expressed a strong desire to continue with the story he was working on. They also expressed the importance of investigative journalism. Chauncy Baily's editor:

"This is a moment of disaster for journalism, nationally and internationally. One of the few journalists ever killed on American soil and he was in the pursuit of stories that were controversial... I hope that this is an opportunity for us to continue the work he was doing and to step up... It ain't over. This community will know what Chauncey Bailey and I were working on... I want us to make his untimely, forced exodus our genesis, our genesis of renewed advocacy for investigative journalism."

more on the Gonzales scandal

2007-07-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

"There are no rules"
Alberto Gonzales, July 2007

"The attorney general took an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Instead, he tells the half-truth, the partial truth, and everything but the truth. And he does it not once, and not twice, but over and over and over again."
Senator Charles Schumer, July 2007

ASTOUNDING stuff is trickling into public view in the Gonzales scandal. My point here is that we are seeing less and less tolerance in Congress for BushCo's lying, cheating, stealing ways, and that damage caused by Bush, Cheney, Rove and company is coming to light, stirring citizenry and congress, Demos and Reps alike, to call for punishment, adherence to the law, the public's right to know the actions of those who are supposed to represent us in government. BushCo has become its own ugly little entity and no longer serves the People of the U.S. The Gonzales scandal illustrates business as usual at BushCo- secrecy, lying, disregard for the constitution and law, attempts to discredit and obfuscate, contempt for the Bill of Rights and the very people the President is supposed to represent.

List of stuff that's been all over the news this week:

1. The entire top tier of the U.S. Justice Dept. was going to quit over the BushCo domestic spying program. That means ASHCROFT, yes, even Ashcroft was was so pissed about Bush's disregard for the law & Constitution that he was going to resign from his job as fucking ATTORNEY GENERAL, along with the head of the FBI Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General James Comey. This was in 2004. Link to Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's 5/15/07 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

2. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are now trying to charge Gonzales with perjury, via a special council. Gonzales keeps saying- under oath- there was no internal dispute over the domestic spying program. Mueller and Comey, in their testimony, have been frank about how the people who ran the Justice Dept. at the time believed the domestic spying was illegal and were about to resign over it.

3. Karl Rove has been subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is part of the committee's 7-month-old proceedings regarding the BushCo purge of U.S. Attorneys.

4. It's coming out that the Attorneys were fired in states where the Administration believed the Attorneys would oppose Republican attempts to discredit Democrats and draw attention away from election fraud through phony "voter fraud" scandals.

5. In the media they are now referring to Gonzales as "Gonzo."

Link to DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE's New York Times article, which sums up the week's developments in the Gonzales scandal, and provides the adminstration's masterfully persuasive counter arguments, which arguments I'd like to quote:

“confusion is inevitable when complicated classified activities are discussed in a public forum where the greatest care must be used not to compromise sensitive intelligence operations.”
“The disagreement that occurred in March 2004 concerned the legal basis for intelligence activities that have not been publicly disclosed and that remain highly classified,”

It's worth noting that these strong-sounding arguments are handily deflated by sworn testimony of people who were there when this went down.

"Voter fraud" linked to U.S. Attorney firings

2007-07-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

On an NPR edition of All Things Considered today I heard a story where for the first time it was mentioned that the Congressional response to the U.S. Attorney firings is now focused on Gonzalez' attempt to fire U.S. Attorneys who may have opposed BushCo's so-called voter fraud diversions.

The story, which story I cannot find on NPR's website, clearly stated that U.S. Attorneys were fired in states were Gonzalez & Co. thought said Attorneys might oppose election-timed investigations into said "voter fraud."

Paraphrasing the the NPR story, I'm quoting this story on ahn.com regarding a 52 page memorandum written by Michigan congressman John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee:

The memorandum also says the congressional probe has turned up evidence that some of the U.S. attorneys were fired because of their handling of vote fraud allegations, public corruption cases or other cases that could affect elections.

...I am hoping this point makes it to the Arizona Daily Star tomorrow, and I am wondering if it will...

"Voter fraud" was a slimeball Republican tactic to divert attention from, and pacify objection to, election fraud.

Election fraud as, for example, illustrated in Florida, involving voting machines and the poorly covered up trail of bullshit involving voting machines, voter intimidation, and many other similar efforts, which helped put our current president in office.

The link between the U.S. Attorney firings and BushCo's "create-a-scandal-that-conveniently-discredits-Democrats-at-election- time" machinations illustrates BushCo's tendency to cheat, lie & discredit, and has come to light through congressional attempts to shed light on the actions of Bush's old friend, Alberto Gonzales.

No Country for Old Men trailer link

2007-07-11T19:48:00.000-07:00

This film blogger has posted a trailer from Cormac McCarthy's No country for old men here. The movie is from the Cohen brothers, who always kick ass.

The trailer of course looks like it was put together by the Marketing department, and is full of jump-cuts and those annoying booming/squishy noises that Hollywood film adverts always seem to have these days. At least there are none of those annoying flashes.

anti-war protest sign mysteriously emerges

2007-07-04T06:18:00.001-07:00

Kudos to the Star for having the guts to report on this. Photo above is by the Star's Kelly Presnell.

At a building being refurbished in downtown Tucson, a large anti-war sign from the Viet Nam era has slowly come to the surface on the building's west side. The sign says "Help End The War By Dec. 31, 1971. Join Common Cause," and is approximately 4 x 7 feet. The building is at Stone and Alameda. The City's Dept. of Transportation is the new tenant. The department, at the urging of the Tucson Museum of Art's Executive Director, will not paint over the sign.

The anti-war movement was strong in Tucson in the late 60s and early 70s. Congressman Morris K. Udall spoke out against the war as early as 1967. This Udall quote is from the sidebar to the AZ Daily Star article about the sign:

"This nation has the brains, the know-how, the courage, the imagination to begin to extricate itself from a war we should never have blundered into,"

Sound familiar? By 1971 protesters in the thousands appeared with some regularity in the University of Arizona area.

These days you're more likely to see well-funded anti-abortion circuses, "Christians" handing out leaflets, psycho mall-preachers, aggressive military recruiters, and gospel bands on the open air stage.

The early 70s anti-war sign, which as it turns out was painted by a wealthy young liberal who owned the building at the time, has obvious historical significance, but also has a timely element. That people started noticing the sign now, and that the sign will be preserved, says a lot about popular sentiment concerning the so-called war. The sign had been painted over years ago, and took its time re-emerging, but it chose now to become noticeable.

As it turns out, the building's owner, one Gene Vinik, who died in 1999, had also painted another sign on the building's east side. This sign, which was painted over years and years ago, will never come back. The sign, which had the building's tenant, a bank, threatening to move out, was a giant peach. It said "Impeach the President."

Im-PEACH. Get it? Go Mr. Vinik! A timely fellow, messages and thoughts back from the grave, saying what everybody is thinking right now.

Star article 2 on the story is here.

An aside: links to Star articles are not permanent, as I've discovered going back over some of my old posts. I'll remedy this by quoting more, & going back and trying to replace some of the dead links with links to stories from the Tucson Weekly &tc, whose material stays on the web permanently, and, like an archive should, remain accessible and a matter of historical record.

BBQ Movie

2007-07-01T16:52:00.000-07:00

More Butthole Surfers. I am surprised YouTube did not pull this one. Whacky vid of "Fast Song" from BBQ Movie...

More Chuck Biscuits

2007-06-23T23:10:00.000-07:00

As and addendum to the R.I.P. of a year and a half ago, here is the Man in action. With the Big Boys, Austin TX. I am guessing about 1986.

Butthole Surfers

2007-06-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

I don't think there is a better explanatory video for this wild Texas band than this:

These guys were crazy, not in the crazy sense but in the way beyond crazy sense where humor meets musical prowess and originality and just plain common sense.

Here is a version of "Florida" ca. 1988:

Forida

And let us not forget this older 1983 performance, where you can really see they used to be a punk band. Includes my fave B*tthole Surfers song "BBQ Pope!"

Also worth noting is this 2-part "interview in bed" with them (ca. 1989?) -very strange and worth watching: ("Tommy Forester is dead" !!)

World Naked Bike Ride Day 2007

2007-06-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Hopefully YouTube will not remove this video. [Update 6/14/07: fuckin' prudes! They removed this video. It was really quite innocent and well shot.]

What strikes me here is not only how trim these people are (us bike-riders, you know, we keep in shape), or that World Naked Bike Ride Day was on my birthday this year, but the sheer numbers of people that turned out to protest our filthy, violent, gas-belching habits we all indulge in when we drive. This is 4 minutes of people in London riding 4 abreast, peacefully, nakedly protesting the fact that we are slowly destroying ourselves by burning fossil fuel.

Plateau ala Nirvana

2007-06-08T19:59:00.000-07:00

"What're they tuning, a harp?" Dig the crazy version of Sweet Home Alabama while they are waiting (see 1st part of vid below).

Dig Dave Grohl smoking a cigarette while playing. That's how good players everywhere just spontaneously bust out in music.
The subject however is Plateau, its lyrics, something about Greenland, the Brothers Meat of the infamous Meat Puppets, another twisted band comparable in stature to the ever-loving Butthole Surfers. Both bands have a distinct Southwest (US) flavor, both rock, both will kick your ass. And dig, my brothers and sisters, Nirvana playing a Meat Puppets song, acoustic, on TV, with 2 founders of the Meat Puppets.

There were times where I keep walking around singing this song...

Nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop
And an illustrated book about birds
You see a lot up there but don't be scared
Who needs action when you got words...

Also dig Cobain reading an apparent WFMU newsletter:

Life returning to Chernobyl

2007-06-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

Martin Cruz Smith had it right- the mystery writer's mystery writer, in what damn well may be my favorite of his book, Wolves Eat Dogs, describes the area surrounding Chernobyl as a twisted but thriving natural paradise. Today's news story in this link to the UK Guardian corroborates Cruz' vision. Older folks who refused to move out after the meltdown of 1986 describe packs of wolves, forests growing up in the towns and fields, and dozens of other animal species thriving. The area is still polluted, loaded with radiation. Of course Mom Nature keeps doing what she can to heal the wounds.

Cruz Smith makes you feel like you were there. You can see the place. After I read the book I got on the web and found the journal of a woman who'd take motorcycle trips through the area, stopping to take photos and measure the radiation. She wrote that she was glad to have a fast bike, as it was a comfort getting quickly through the areas that were still really hot, and the roads were deserted so she could haul ass as much as the deterioration of the pavement would let her.

The pictures above are of Pripyat, a town near Chernobyl. The woman's riding journal is here. Read and enjoy.

Wolve Eat Dogs also chillingly predicted the Alexander Litvinenko affair.

Johnny Depp cookie

2007-06-05T20:26:00.001-07:00

In keeping with my theme of lightening things up a bit around here, I'd like to present this hilarious Johnny Depp cookie I found at the local 7-11 last night. They had about 6 or 7 of them, all hand painted, sugary, crusty, unique renditions of the dependable and talented Johnny. Wow.

Cormac McCarthy on Oprah

2007-06-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

Now this is unbelievable.

If you have not read Cormac McCarthy, and you are at all interested in the desert southwest, any kind of dark, bleak literature, well told, gripping stories that do not necessarily have a cheery, rosy, happy, neat ending, then McCarthy is highly recommended. His books include All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, & Cities of the Plain- AKA the Border Trilogy, and Suttree, and 2 newer books, No Country for Old Men, and The Road, which I believe won a pulitzer. Oh and don't forget Blood Meridian- WOW.

The amazing thing about him appearing on Oprah is that he's super non-celebrity, the opposite of famous. The CNN article here quotes a time when he turned down a well-paid speaking engagement in the years when he was barely scratching by. I know from other articles I've read about him that reason he's done that kind of thing is he's too busy writing! He's been kind of a writer's writer for years and years but his stuff is so good that more and more people are reading his books.

As soon as this appears on You Tube I will embed it.

[update 7/11/07: found the trailer for No Country for Old Men here. ]
[update 8/8/07: Dang this guy really is hard to find info on. His books say it best, boys and girls, I will tell you that. However there is an awesome interview here from 1992 published at the New York Times by Richard B. Woodward. Still no Oprah interview on YouTube. Apparently clips are available on Oprah's site & you have to register & etc. C7]

Going solar in Tucson

2007-05-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

I am always amazed there is not more use of solar power going on here in Tucson. The average day is sunny. Almost all days are sunny. You can power your house, business, you can make your electric meter spin backward. A solar house setup featured in a recent episode of This Old House in Austin, Texas detailed a system that costs 18,000 dollars- I think this was after incentives had cut the original cost 40 to 50 percent.

Today's article in the AZ Daily Star got me thinking about Arizona in solar circles. The house is a "showcase" home, at a quarter of a mil, but generates all its own energy and harvests water. When it rains here, it really rains, so if you're clever you can water you gardens with what you harvest. But the point is, the more people that go to the trouble of outfitting their homes to face the future, the cheaper it will become.

To say that it pays for itself is important. To say that it's necessary, if we are not going to exterminate our own species with pollution from coal burning power plants, is a more important point.

Kurt Vonnegut dies

2007-04-12T07:25:00.000-07:00

This guy had a bearing on life that was a big influence on me from the time I started reading his books when I was 12. Like the AP copy below says, he spoke out about many destructive things- things others just blindly accepepted. The AP copy does not emphasize something else: Vonnegut was a VERY FUNNY GUY. Humor was interlaced in every book he wrote.

Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died Wednesday. He was 84.
Vonnegut, who often marveled that he had lived so long despite his lifelong smoking habit, had suffered brain injuries after a fall at his Manhattan home weeks ago, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz.
The author of at least 19 novels, many of them best-sellers, as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays, Vonnegut relished the role of a social critic.
He lectured regularly, exhorting audiences to think for themselves and delighting in barbed commentary against the institutions he felt were dehumanizing people.
"I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations," Vonnegut, whose watery, heavy-lidded eyes and unruly hair made him seem to be in existential pain, once told a gathering of psychiatrists.
A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking humanist, Vonnegut used protagonists such as Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater as transparent vehicles for his points of view.
He also filled his novels with satirical commentary and even drawings that were only loosely connected to the plot. In "Slaughterhouse-Five," he drew a headstone with the epitaph: "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
But much in his life was traumatic, and left him in pain.
Despite his commercial success, Vonnegut battled depression throughout his life, and in 1984, he attempted suicide with pills and alcohol, joking later about how he botched the job.
His mother had succeeded in killing herself just before he left for Germany during World War II, where he was quickly taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge.
He was being held in Dresden when Allied bombs created a firestorm that killed an estimated 135,000 people in the city.
"The firebombing of Dresden explains absolutely nothing about why I write what I write and am what I am," Vonnegut wrote in "Fates Worse Than Death," his 1991 autobiography of sorts.
But he spent 23 years struggling to write about the ordeal, which he survived by huddling with other POW's inside an underground meat locker labeled slaughterhouse-five.

I was always shaken, inspired, enlightened by every book of his I read. No matter what age I was, each Vonnegut book meant something very big to me and I read many of them a few times. They say he had depression- but here was one guy who didn't spread depression, as I believe so many others do, he spread humor instead.

BushCo hiring grads from Pat Robertson's "Christian" law school

2007-04-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

Regent University School of Law, Pat Robertson's attempt to change the world through intertwining "Christian values" and the Law, has had 150 of its graduates hired by the Bush administration since 2001. The attorney who recently resigned as part of the Gonzales scandal, Monica Goodling, who looks like a cast-member from the Lawrence Welk show circa 1973, was a Regent grad. Goodling had graduated from the "law school" 2 years earlier and had been part of BushCo's effort to dump U.S Attorneys who were doing too good of a job. Goodling was involved in importing Karl Rove's pal Timothy Griffin to fuck things up in Arkansas.

Way to go BushCo. The attempts to pack the U.S. Circuit courts with rightwing zealots for judges, label all other judges "activist judges," subvert the law in a million other ways, promote creationism, destroy habeus corpus, the Bill of Rights, and so on, is now joined by a transparent and gutless attempt to give legal muscle to fucking morons who can't separate church from state, who are apparently unaware of the tyrannical actions taken throughout century after century in the name of religion, and are stupid enough to go to a school founded they King of Dorks, Pat Robertson.

Furthermore in an act that surly must be illegal, BushCo placed a Dean from Regent in charge of hiring at the U.S. Government's Executive branch. The hiring of the 150 moronic followers of Pat Roberton's insane and prejudiced social views began immediately after. According the Globe article we can thank the psychopathic John Ashcroft, who put a curtain up so nobody could see the breasts on a statue representing Justice, for the lowering the hiring standards at the DOJ:

"John Ashcroft , then attorney general, changed longstanding rules for hiring lawyers to fill vacancies in the career ranks.

Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite schools."

Naturally, Ashcroft is now a professor at Regent University School of Law.

Details are here in the Boston Globe's story by Charlie Savage.

And yes I read about it here in the venerable and great Raw Story.

U.S. attorney firings, Gonzales & Rove

2007-03-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

Even the Republicans are fed up with BushCo's attempt to replace U.S. attorneys with compliant BushCo substitutes such as Karl Rove's friend Tim Griffin. The Huffington Post reports here that two additional Republican Congresspeople, Gordon Smith and Dana Rohrabacker of Oregon and California, respectively, have publicly stated it's time for Attorney General Gonzales to call it quits. Senator John Sununu was the first republican to speak up on the obvious transgressions in this matter.

To top it off, 2 years ago Karl Rove and Gonzales were involved in a plan to replace all 93 U.S. Attorneys. Emails cited by ABC news show Rove and Gonzales involved in the sneaky plan long ago, which eventually led to the firing of 8 U.S. attorneys, and a lot of inconsistent rhetoric and explanations from BushCo.

New unreleased e-mails from top administration officials show that the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was raised by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove in early January 2005, indicating Rove was more involved in the plan than the White House previously acknowledged. The e-mails also show how Alberto Gonzales discussed the idea of firing the attorneys en masse while he was still White House counsel — weeks before he was confirmed as attorney general.

The e-mails put Rove at the epicenter of the imbroglio and raise questions about Gonzales' explanations of the matter.

The fact the people found out about this and are outraged is BushCo's second-worst nightmare. The truth is that this type of transgression is business as usual for the Bush administration. We see evidence of it week after week after week, they just say, "well we're responsible for that, and mistakes were made..." blah blah blah, and get away scott-free. But it seems like once people find out about it, the wheels start rolling, and the idea of justice starts to come about, like what do you do with people at the very top of a government, a democracy, who break the law again and again, and who do great harm to us and our beloved country, and the government which serves us and makes the U.S. a free country, great, wonderful and awesome. You just can't say "shame on you" and let it go and just accept the harm done.

diversion vs. replacement plans for attorney generals

2007-03-15T19:50:00.000-07:00

Hm not quite sure what to say about this one but I know I am not the only one thinking it. See this link at the LA Weekly blogs.

The point is, as has been pointed out to me, isn't it funny the terms mastermind, mega-confession and 911 have been floating around all of a sudden right after the whole fucking country finds out that BushCo had been about to fire the entire staff of United States Attorneys General and replace them with new Attorneys General who agreed with BushCo? The seriousness of the firing of the 8, the disregard for law, the trashing of checks and balances, the destruction of the independence of the judiciary, not to mention BushCo's shitty rhetoric surrounding the topic, quickly became a serious enough issue that Brittney and other fluff-crap could not eclipse it.

Bushco and torture

2007-03-07T21:08:00.000-07:00

'Prisoners of war' vs. 'Unlawful combatants.'
Philip Zimbardo is the kind of guy who would be targeted by right-wing moron and highly-paid propaganda expert Horowitz. The Stanford psychology professor, who has some serious credentials, in his last lecture before retirement, and not doubt not for the fist time, blamed BushCo higher-ups, rather than U.S. Military personnel, for the style of torture and abuse we've heard about over the last couple years.

Zimbardo — who spent months interviewing [Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick II, the highest-ranking officer implicated in the scandal] and his friends and relatives, and poring over his work history and personal background — argued that his sentence should be lessened.

Based on academic research, Zimbardo said, very few people could resist the situational pressures of Abu Ghraib — particularly Army reservists, themselves subject to hazing and abuse by active duty soldiers.

"There's only one rung lower than reservists, and that's the detainees," Zimbardo said while flashing dozens of "trophy photos" of Iraqi prisoners in naked piles, being menaced by snarling German shepherds, covered in blood, or with their eyes missing.

Zimbardo, an unusual icon of both academia and pop culture also starred in the 2002 Discovery Channel reality show "The Human Zoo" and the PBS series "Discovering Psychology."

On Wednesday, he displayed a grainy, 1971 photo of Stanford's mock prisoners with bags over their heads, guards looking on casually — then switched to an eerily similar digital photo

The SF Chron article is here.

Lightening it up with Isabel Baker

2007-03-01T19:09:00.000-07:00

Alright, let's lighten it up here. I ain't saying nothing about the Brian Jones hairstyle in the photo but I'd kill for the old Fender Mustang. Listen to Isabel's caterwaulin' gospel here.

Posted on the fabulous WFMU's Blast of hot air. If you love radio, and if you love music, listen, and contribute. WFMU is a major voice in non-corporate-controlled media, and a major voice in music itself.

Net Neutrality

2007-02-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

This video nicely explains corporate attempts to turn the internet into a corporate place where only certain voices have access. As it is now, the net is an open, public, equal place where we can all say what we want. Visit SaveTheInernet.com and find how to take a stance and keep the internet a public place where all voices have equal access.

The Cheneyspere & Fitzgerald

2007-02-23T19:13:00.000-07:00

Dog bless Raw Story for keeping a stiff upper lip in the darkest of times. In this story by Brian Beutler Raw Story claims prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is stalking Vice President Cheney, like a wolf in search of a fat arrogant bullfrog. With all due regards to the office of the Vice President, Cheney's blithe participation in the information war surrounding the Plame scandal has seemed like a Very Bad Thing from the start.

Headlines and pacification

2007-02-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

"Dems foiled in bid to bash Bush on Iraq"

-Arizona Daily Star headline. Yes, we are just trying to bash Bush. A convenient buzzword that portrays bipartisan efforts to end an invasion begun on false premises as something more akin to a baseless temper tantrum on the part of Democrats. The headline tacked onto this AP story published in the AZ Daily Star backs up Benjamin Whorf's theory that language affects thought.

Apathy and magnetic yellow ribbons

2007-02-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

Asylum Street Spankers on complacency.

Molly Ivins

2007-02-10T19:08:00.000-07:00

Here is a lady who would kick your ass, who was living proof the pen is mightier than the sword, who would walk in there and say what's what on a daily basis. And she was from Texas, living proof that Texas is not an outpost of moron, shit-for-brains fuckwads.

One of my cousins down there has expressed some concern about this current view of Texas, for which we can thank not Molly, but somebody named George....

Quoting from an Ivins column of July 2005 about the ACLU:

“We suffer the worst attack on this country since Pearl Harbor, and the Bush administration sends the FBI after the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU exists to protect every citizen’s rights as defined in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States. The ACLU works solely through the legal system: It does not advocate violence, terrorism or any other damn thing except the Bill of Rights. Since when is that extremist? … We are living in a time when our government is investigating an organization that stands for the highest and best American ideals.”

BushCo replacing U.S. Attorneys

2007-02-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

Getting fired for doing a good job is exactly what happened to a high up Washington state U.S. Attorney. Jon McKay was damn near famous for his job performance. He was highly thought of by judges and everyone else. He was ordered to quit 2 months ago by the Bush Administration. McKay was in line to become a federal circuit court judge but apparently was not a BushCo automatic right wing zealot drone. It's well know BushCo has been packing federal circuit courts across the nation with right wing radicals, and diverting attention by growing a huge crop of rhetorical bullshit about "activist judges" (= any judge who does not tow the tyrannical BushCo party line).

McKay's firing is detailed, to some extent, in this story by AP writer Gene Johnson here in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. The story is deeper, though, as U.S. Attorneys of similar stature across the nation are being dumped by BushCo under a secretive provision slipped into the renewal of the Patriot Act 2 years ago. A notable example is that of Carol Lam, the San Diego U.S. Attorney who was prosecuting the spectacularly corrupt Republican House Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Hm, go figure. How'd that happen?

This article in Salon.com by Joe Conason details the other firings.

The House of Representatives has taken notice of this typical BushCo boodoggle thought. The chairwoman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, Linda Sanchez, is beginning hearings on BushCo's attempt to end Congress' role in appointment of federal Attorneys.

"No presidential administration - now or in the future - should be allowed to dismantle the important constitutional set of checks and balances to achieve a political agenda."

Go Representative Sanchez!

Also, according the same Raw Story article by Mike Sheehan quoted above, a bill is under consideration that would nullify the slimy Patriot Act provision that allowed BushCo to appoint U.S. Attorneys without Senate oversight.

Using TOR at Bowling Green State

2007-02-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

This story, which was posted on the loveable Boing Boing, shows what can happen when you start anonymously using the web at work. A professor got a visit from the campus computer security expert and 2 of the campus police detectives. The trio was chasing an actual wrongdoer but thought the professor's use of the ubiquitous Onion Router (see the EFF's info and download page here) was enough to come and question the professor. They also felt it necessary encourage him to stop using TOR.

A good way to describe The Onion Router, and our current use of the internet, is to point to an obvious analog with postal mail, AKA snail mail. You usually put your letters in an envelope, right? Maybe an envelope made with opaque paper so no one can hold it up to the light and see what's inside? We seal the envelope, too, right? Why do you do this- to simply contain the pages, or because IT'S NOBODY'S FUCKING BUSINESS WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR MAIL?

We live in an age, thanks to BushCo, where you can become a suspect- a suspect of nothing specific, mind you, for resisting violations of privacy. Furthermore, according to the ACLU, it is currently commonplace for the military and the police to spy on people who belong to peace advocacy and anti-war groups.

Pima County tries to prevent mindless destruction of Davidson Caynon

2007-02-07T07:16:00.000-07:00

The Arizona State Land department is committed to the mindless rape of pristine desert wilderness on a grand scale. Its latest effort to allow mining in a wilderness area on the flanks of a 9400 ft. mountain range south of Tucson is a good example of the typical AZ state land department way of doing business.

Most of it seems to center around Mark Winkleman, the department's current commissioner. Since he's entered office there has been a strong push for destruction of parcels of land best left alone. Conservation, environment, quality of life & pollution issues have been consistently ignored by the department in recent years.

The latest development (no pun intended) is detailed in small part here in the Arizona Daily Star. Winkleman and crew have crassly stated that the rape of this part of the desert is nobody's business but the land department's, and that the department is above legal challenges, and presumably, the law. Winkleman is allowing an open pit mine in the middle of a natural high desert area that rises up to the Santa Rita mountains, a lush sky island, part of the Coronado National Forest.

With this fucking moron working for the state of Arizona, it won't be long before we are facing the same kind of environmental devastation that folks in West Virgina are facing with so-called mountaintop removal.

State Trust land was purchased many years ago, to be leased to ranchers and eventually sold, and the money diverted to education in Arizona. However, most state land purchases are now in the middle of wilderness areas or national forests, or have become desert outposts in the midst of massive-scale housing developments.

A great example of the latter is the nationally known 3 square mile mountain biking area known as Fantasy Island. Opposition to the blading and grading of this area has resulted in an official OK to keep about 2/3 of it free of development. This is one fight where Republicans and Democrats came out together in force- mountain biking unites us, the desert unites us, the quality of life we share in Arizona unites us.

After all, true Republicans are in favor of sensible stewardship of the land, and conservation of natural resources. It's the new breed of republicans that's so bent on short term profit and the destruction that results. Everyone should realize that this is the only planet we have, and destroying it, does not, to put it in republican terms, make good economic sense.

A line must be drawn somewhere to stop the wholesale destruction of Arizona's deserts. Whether the sale of State Trust land to developers actually benefits education in Arizona has been the subject of a lot of argument around here. Evidence points to Winkleman and crew being heavily under the influence of developers and other industrial interests that have traditionally contributed to the destruction of Arizona's land.

Law in Arizona states that recreational use of State Trust land OK with a nominally priced 1 year permit. Mountain bikers for years went to the little restored house in downtown Tucson, shelled out their 15 bucks, got the permit and headed toward the mountain biking trail on the east side. A couple weeks ago I went downtown to renew my permit, discovered that the office had been closed down. Yesterday I looked up the new State land office, which is on the top floor of a tall downtown building. Inside the office was a richly paneled desk, deep carpet, and a million dollar view. The glizty receptionist apologized and told me the office no longer issues permits. You have to send the form and the money up to Phoenix now. This takes the place of some folks who used to simply sign and stamp the permit.

This kind of service also represents the new tack of the state land department under Winkleman.

Winkleman, get out. You're not serving Arizona in the least.

New FBI internet snooping on massive scale

2007-01-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

1/31/07 UPDATE: DOJ replies to author of article in this news.com post. They say they follow the law, and the sources quoted in McCullagh's story are incorrect. Let's hope so, because the idea of massive government surveillance is a disgusting one and it's really time the law was shown some respect in this country. Journalism is all about verifying your sources and statements. Given the Bush Administration track record on telling the truth, it's pretty hard to believe anything they say these days tho.

Do you like living in a free society?

Hey wow, Big Brother has been watching over your shoulder as you email, web surf, conduct e-commerce, even, potentially, as you tap away at your keyboard at your job.

Wow, and all this time I thought our government was there to represent and serve us.

ZDNet's Declan McCullagh has published this article detailing the new "vacuum cleaner" approach the FBI has adopted to surveiling U.S. internet traffic, and by proxy, those millions and millions of U.S. citizens who use the internet.

Writin' your Momma? In touch w/ your partner, maybe writing a sexy letter to her or him while he or she is out of town? Chatting w/ co-workers, blowing off steam about the boss, joking with friends, seducing lovers? Reading up on anything, anything at all? Reading up on BushCo? Hmm. Looking at Pr0n?? Hmm?? Buying new shoes, looking at videos on uTube, visiting the iTunes store? Doing anything? The FBI is "recording" internet traffic at ISP's across the nation. Warrants barely enter into it- it is as if they were routinely recording any community's telephone and mail traffic for no reason at all.

Who allowed this? Take a guess. We sure didn't allow this. I don't remember a vote on it.

Why should the government be allowed to snoop at random? Is this because we have a massively unpopular president and administration who fear the very people they are supposed to represent?

Is this our government or not? Just whose government is this?

Is the FBI in charge of protecting us against large scale crime, or are they jailkeepers now?

Or now maybe our lovely government can become judge, jury and executioner?

Don't let's forget that people who work for the government are public servants, they work for us, and they are human beings. We pay their salaries, AND we don't have to put up with them, or anyone, looking into our business every time we cut a fart, step out for breath of fresh air, or walk down the road, or in this case, walk down what used to be referred to as the information superhighway.

In case you think snooping is OK, or that BushCo is not really a threat to freedom, or that your rights don't matter, now might be a good time to read the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. Especially a good time to read George Orwell's 1984. Or maybe read a book on this history of Argentina, because I think that is where we're headed unless we quit feeling helpless in face of BushCo transgressions.

How the fuck does it make you feel to have everything do on the internet recorded by the FBI for posterity? Look up "chilling effect" in a legal dictionary. Think of the government recording each of your phone calls, or photocopying each piece of mail you send or receive. Think of the government recording everything you buy. Ask, why?

Is the internet that much of a threat? Is information that much of a threat? Why should it be treated as such? What minds, in all their managerial genius, have come up with this paranoid nonsense? Is there a bit of an intimidation factor going on here?

There are too many of us for them to mind everyone's business, and real FBI agents and real cops, who give a shit about this country, are worried about catching people who are your worst nightmare- those types who murder, torture, break into our homes kidnap families, and worse.

However, not everybody in this country is a suspected criminal. But this is, unfortunately, the approach Bush, Gonzales and all the other clowns responsible for this mindless stormtrooping seem to be adopting. In their actions, they are more and more treating each United States citizen as a criminal suspect, based on nothing, no fucking evidence at all.

It is time for us to put our collective foot down and not tolerate warrantless searches and random snooping. Write your congressperson, tell the whole world what you think about this misuse of public servants and tax dollars. Remember, your life is nobody's business but your own and privacy is a constitutional guarantee. Privacy never needs an excuse, and privacy is a component of a free society.

War protests in DC

2007-01-27T22:23:00.000-07:00

Tens of thousands turned out Saturday 1/27 in Washington, D.C. to protest the war. The story is covered here in My Way News by the AP. I have an uncertain feeling about this protest being covered in tomorrow's Arizona Daily Star. We'll see, I guess, but the point is opposition to the Iraq "war" is huge. People have had it with Bush, the invasion, being lied to, and the general stupidity, incompetence, wastefulness, and destructive behavior of the Bush Administration. Something has to change with the fucking moron and his merry band of bloodthirsty criminals. Otherwise we could end up in World War III, and nobody's going to win that one. And for what?

A 74 year old career Air Force pilot named Frank Houde summed it up very well:

"The fact is war doesn't work," he said. "Iraq is not going to work. The war was started for reasons that turned out to be false."

People from all over the country turned out, from all backgrounds and ages and professions. Make your voice heard. Do not be intimidated by imitators of highly-paid right wing mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh and the like. It's up to all of us to call for an end to the unnecessary use of the U.S. military and the subsequent waste of life.

Mesa city coucilperson threatened for not pledging

2007-01-26T07:26:00.000-07:00

Mesa, Arizona city councilperson Tom Rawles received threats after not standing during the pledge of allegiance. He's refusing to stand and pledge until the U.S. backs out of the so-called war in Iraq. The story is relayed in the 1/26/07 Arizona daily star article here.

I guess it's the kind of thing that could happen in any state, but to me it seems like another one of those "welcome to life in Arizona" things. Just a state where stupidity runs wild like the wolf used to. Stupidity and moronism as wild entities in a place where they get plenty of support.

I guess the argument made toward Rawles is that he's some kind of traitor for not buying the BushCo ready-made conceptual distortions lock stock and barrel. Like Rawles is against the United States. A counter argument would be that the military is for our defense, and Iraq was not a threat. Why weaken the military by sending half of it over there? And if the U.S. is all about freedom, what is wrong with people demonstrating that they are sick of the lies and deceptions the Bush Administration has pushed on us? Recruitment is also an important thing in the armed forces, and how are the best and brightest going to choose the service if they get sent overseas for no good reason?

San Manuel smelter towers come crashing down

2007-01-18T20:16:00.000-07:00

For many of us in Arizona copper mining is a symbol of environmental destruction and pollution and the rape of the wilderness. At the same time, mines like the one in San Manuel, northwest of the 9000 foot Catalina mountains that tower over Tucson, created a nice town, lots of jobs with decent pay, and a facet of Arizona culture where people came together and did what people are best at doing- being people, working, sharing peace love and family time, and of course, beer. Lots of beer, I'm sure of that.

The 500 foot twin towers of the San Manuel mine were blown up yesterday January 17 2007, as the mine up there finally was shut down by its Aussie parent company. You can watch the video here at the Arizona Daily Star and see a thousand linear feet of smoke belching industrial equipment hit the dirt. I'd post it to uTube but I don't have Quicktime Pro.

I don't have data on the weight of the pollutants this mine and these towers put into the air. I don't have data on the extent of the mine's effort to clean and scrub the material that went into the air. I do not have data on the toxics that can be found underneath the tailings ponds of the mine.

I can tell you that in the late 70s and early 80s when local miners were on strike the air around Tucson was crystal clear and it looked like a whole different town. I can tell you that as some of the major mines have shut down the air has become clearer and clearer, but in the past 5 or so years more and more filled with auto exhaust. I can tell you that today mining companies continue to do everything they can, here and in northern Mexico, to get at their copper, to leave a wasteland behind, and pay their public relations folks pretty good salaries. I have also heard that precious stones are their real income, while copper is just their gravy, but that is only a rumor.

The venerable Arizona Daily Star published this nostalgic public relations puff-piece, which looks like it could have been written by copper company pr-types, the other day. The piece, which is factual but leaves out lots, also includes some great photos from the Star archives, some of which look like they were shot by Jack Sheaffer, a Star photographer who worked at the Star for around 30 years and whose photos did a nice job of capturing the essence around here somehow.

Arizona restaurant gets fined $5000 for dancing

2007-01-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

Dale Bell, the owner of a Phoenix area bar and grill, said he'll take it step by step.

Read the story published in the Arizona Daily Star here.

The gist is that this guy was fined 5000 dollars because people were dancing at his restaurant. Welcome to Arizona, everybody! You can really see the dark ages in motion here, folks. Come to Arizona for your own history lesson!! I'm sure the Phoenix chamber of commerce is jumping all over this.

The restauranteur has enlisted the help of the Arizona chapter of the libertarian Institute for Justice. Hear hear. The Institute's main page states "IJ Litigates nationwide on behalf of individuals whose rights are being violated by government."

Charles Bowden sums up America in one paragraph

2007-01-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

Bowden also does a good job assessing the illegal immigration scene in the Southwest in this article in Mother Jones.

Here is the paragraph that sums up the U.S. and the world at large these days:

In America

The birds can no longer be trusted. Our government suspects a duck or a goose, perhaps that rare swan, will bring plague to our shores. The ice is melting, also. The polar bears are fated to die, the seas are guaranteed to rise and flood our coasts. The skies have mutinied and new monster winds whip off the ocean. We've already lost one city and there is concern about future storms. We worry about nuclear weapons that are not controlled by white people. The government eavesdrops on many people and says this is necessary for our protection. The enemies can be anywhere and appear as almost anything.

Bowden is the author of about a dozen books, mostly on the Southwest, and used to be a reporter here in Tucson.

So far I've read Desierto, Frog mountain blues, and am now reading Blood orchid : an unnatural history of America. All highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the West, Mexico, that whole nexus of cultures and related past present and future.

Grand Canyon and creationism

2006-12-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

It's official, the Bush administration is living in Fairy-Tale Land. Nobody cares much where you worship but people draw the line at myth being passed off by the government as fact. Science, one of our most civilized accomplishments as humans, and of which God, if there is one, would surely be proud of us for, must not be supressed in the public and educational arena. It is science that is going to save us from global warming, industrial pollution, nuclear waste, and rampant mutant bacteria. Trying to force myths and stories down our throats as fact will do nothing but make things worse, and it appears BushCo supports this practice as some kind of diversionary tactic. The BushCo bullshit machine is continuing its policy of spreading lies and insane policy throughout the federal government, in this case at the Grand Canyon.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is publicizing the fact that federal workers at the Grand Canyon are not allowed to state the age of the canyon. Morons appointed by BushCo supporting the right wing Christian agenda also won't allow the canyon bookstore to sell books about geology, while allowing the sale the sale of just one new book, a book stating the Grand Canyon was created in the same flood that Noah got mixed up in. A pamphlet written for Park Service interpretive rangers detailing how to discuss the difference between science and religion was also supressed by BushCo over the past four years.

Now, this is in a U.S. national monument, here, land stewarded by the federal government, and last time I looked our government has a pretty strong policy about separation of church and state.

Apparently that doesn't really matter to BushCo, who, with this action and many, many others like it, is promoting a very false view of reality. I suppose this is because the only people who support Bush and his henchman, besides those who would gleefully dig up the Grand Canyon to mine copper, are fucking gullible morons who believe whatever they're told and who're too subsumed with guilt to distinguish between myths and stories versus reality.

In the TV culture-age marketers tell us that if a lie is hammered home again again and again people will eventually come to believe it and support it. Like the idea that McDonald's serves food, for example, or the idea that sending the best and bravest and brightest folks in the U.S. military to Iraq was somehow necessary.

In a further demonstration of BushCo standard operating tactics, the huge uproar over the bookstore policy and the creationist book being passed off as science, and the supression of actual scientific books, was quelled by an empty promise to "review" the moronic fake-science book about a supposed biblical origin of the Grand Canyon. A Freedom of Information Act request by PEER revealed BushCo standard operating procedure: lie, redirect attention, and keep on doing stupid shit. From the press release of 12/28 published on PEER's website:

In August 2003, Park Superintendent Joe Alston attempted to block the sale at park bookstores of Grand Canyon: A Different View by Tom Vail, a book claiming the Canyon developed on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale. NPS Headquarters, however, intervened and overruled Alston. To quiet the resulting furor, NPS Chief of Communications David Barna told reporters and members of Congress that there would be a high-level policy review of the issue.

According to a recent NPS response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by PEER, no such review was ever requested, let alone conducted or completed.

Pitiful, eh? Don't let's tolerate this kind crap in the government that represents us.

Weakening organic standards

2006-12-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

The USDA has an organic advisory board which is being packed with representatives from large industrial agribusiness concerns. The board is in a position to define what the word "organic" means, as far as what practices are observed to eliminate pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, antibiotics, and other chemicals and poisons from the food we eat. Read about the current state of the board here in the article by Megan Tady of the New Standard.

Presumably, this article also functions as a good indicator of the state of the USDA during the Bush regime. In other words, the USDA functions to represents big business rather than to keep food supplies safe, and agriculture renewable and sustainable.

I don't know why it is but since we've had that psychopathic moron Bush in office, there has been this idea stated over and over again that these huge businesses that control so many things can be trusted with our food supply, our economy, our infrastructure. It was bad enough under Clinton, there was NAFTA, and a lot of creepy pro-megabusiness things going on. But now, given the evidence of so much greed and corruption (Haliburton comes to mind- read up on the scandals surrounding its stake in the Iraq boondoggle), it is particularly unwise and devastating to continue to allow foxes to guard our henhouses.

The Organic Consumers Association is grass roots non-profit that works, among other healty, vital things, to keep the meaning of the word organic from changing into something the mega-corporations can throw around in an attempt at short term gain and smashing competition from smaller farms.

If huge corporations had their way, our entire food supply would be nothing but tasteless poison. You can easily taste the difference between vegetables and meat grown in corporate conditions versus those grown in a truly natural setting. Places like McDonalds have to infuse their food with flavor agents to make it even taste like food. Read Fast Food Nation for a chilling, well researched and packed-with evidence report on routine agribusiness practices. I heard the movie was not that good- but the book showed the journalistic talent of the San Francisco Chronicle reporter, Eric Schlosser, who wrote it. I have not spent a dime at McDonald's or the like since, except for the time I saw a movie with a coworker who needed to have coffee and cookies after.

Organic farmers have an eye toward a healthy end product, without the wake of environmental and economic destruction left by mega-agribusiness. Tune in and think. Read up. And think what happens when our food supply consists of frankencrops and animals not even given the dignity due to living things. We parish, that's what. We can't survive eating poison and shit, and that's what the mega-corporations like Con Agra and the like feed us- it's well-documented, and with the money these folks are making (that's right, at the heart of all this nasty stuff is people, not some robot like corporate entity, but people, very very rich people) it is best for them to invest some in changing their ways of doing business so that our one-and-only planet, and our one-and-only community are sustained in a healthy manner.