Today is world "car-free" day. So, of course, today is the one day that I'm obligated to drive. My neighbor is having surgery, and I agreed to pick him up from the hospital.
I'm not going to feel guilty. I lived car free for fourteen years, and only returned to car ownership this past spring. I inherited this car when my brother-in-law passed away, but I rarely drive it. Flagstaff is a very walking/biking friendly town.
Sometimes ya' gotta do what ya' gotta do.
Let's face it: the Aliens don't want to talk to us. They see how we treat each other and our home planet, and realize that human beings just aren't worth the bother.
Any alien seeing that is likely thinking "Earth? Don't go there. It's got Human Beings! They're contagious!"
Insuring comedy gold for the next seven weeks, Christine O'Donnell, the winner in the GOP Senate primary in Delaware, sets a new "standard" for rightwing tea party nuttiness. She's best known for her strong "anti-masturbation" views. Meaning that masturbation will now be a campaign issue. Pundits and comics are certainly going to be 'busy' with that.
Yup, American democracy in action. Just think how much fun the senate would be if she actually wins (thankfully, highly unlikely). Senators debating masturbation? Do we really want that?
WATCH: Christine O'Donnell's '96 Anti-Masturbation Campaign On MTV
Via The Political Carnival, go take a look at Bug-eyed: The cartoon faces of insects caught in incredible detail.
Some lovely bugs!
(Full story at The Rude Pundit:)
Tonight marks the start of another Football season, for which I am happy. While I'm a Baseball fan first and foremost, Football games generate more social participation. For example, my local pub becomes a full on sports bar where fans for each team gather for a party at game time. I'm a lifelong 49er's fan, and on Sunday I'll be with a bunch of other Niners fans (of course, there will also be a bunch of Seahawks fans rooting against us) for the game. That doesn't happen for baseball, except for the world series.
For Football fans seeking a good laugh, here's the Onion Sports 2010 NFL Team-By-Team Guide. Satire at it's finest. For example, on my Niners:
Strength: He may not be a Joe Montana, but Alex Smith is proving to be a better QB than Jim Druckenmiller, Gio Carmazzi, or Steve Stenstrom ever were
Weakness: Whatever head coach Mike Singletary is thinking at any given moment
Player To Watch: Veteran Brian Westbrook is always a threat to explode into a cloud of ligaments and bone
Biggest Question: If the 49ers are willing to let Glen Coffee go to follow Christ, what's to stop the entire team from following suit?
Well, OK then. Sadly, I remember how bad Carmazzi was.
So I'm having a beer with an old river running buddy, and he says: "If you're really a Boatman on The Canyon, then you have a piece of artwork given to you by a passenger."
There are so many negative stories of religious intolerance that it was refreshing to read an actual positive story showing the true teachings of Christ:
When pastor Steve Stone initially heard of the mosque and Islamic center being erected on the sprawling land adjacent his church, his stomach tightened.
Then he raised a 6-foot sign reading, "Welcome to the Neighborhood."
The issue for Stone and the 550-person Heartsong Church in Cordova, came down to one question:
"What would Jesus do if He were us? He would welcome the neighbor," Stone said.
The Memphis Islamic Center, a nonprofit organization formed three years ago, is two weeks from breaking ground on the first phase of a multimillion-dollar complex.
While plans for Islamic centers across the country and just miles away have triggered vitriolic responses and divided communities, here in Memphis it's been a peaceful process.
On a 31-acre stretch at Humphrey Road and Houston Levee, Memphis Islamic Center leaders plan to build a massive gathering place during the next several years. It will include a mosque, youth center, day care center, indoor gym, sports fields, medical clinic and retirement home.
While the 4,000-square-foot worship hall is being completed, Heartsong has opened its doors to its neighbors throughout the monthlong observance of Ramadan.
Under a gigantic cross constructed of salvaged wood, nearly 200 area Muslims have been gathering each night to pray.
"I think it's helped break down a lot of barriers in both congregations," said Islamic center board member Danish Siddiqui.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/aug/28/common-threads/
This in Memphis, not a bastion of liberalism. As someone who isn't religious but has studied a lot of theology and religious philosophy, I've always thought that at the core of all the Abrahamic religions is a message of living together in peace that is far stronger than all the smiting, slaying, or Jihad. We need more Christians to listen to Pastor Steve Stone and his ilk.
(End of positive post. Regular cynicism will return soon.)
The end of "combat operations" in Iraq...
The withdrawal of all but 50,000 troops...
But there is no sense of celebration. The 'war' is 'over', except that it isn't. There is no victory, because there was never anything to 'win' in Iraq. All that was achieved was destruction and despair.
I suppose that President Obama deserves some credit for reducing America's presence in Iraq, as he promised in his campaign. OK, Barack, here's a brownie point. A token of achievement for a rather minor accomplishment.
It was a war that never should have happened. Shrub and the neocons lied to create a threat that never existed and led an invasion that should be a war crime. The slaughter of innocent Iraqi's will be America's shame for many decades to come, as will the debts (both human and monetary) for a tragic act of folly. Over a trillion dollars wasted on wanton destruction, yet we "can't afford" to serve our citizens at home.
So we'll call this an "end", but for what? In the "end", what was it all for? Who was saved?
What was it all for?
The Kestrel electric car will have room for a driver and three passengers and have a top speed of 90 kilometres an hour. (Motive Industries Inc.)An electric car made of hemp is being developed by a group of Canadian companies in collaboration with an Alberta Crown corporation.
The Kestrel will be prototyped and tested later in August by Calgary-based Motive Industries Inc., a vehicle development firm focused on advanced materials and technologies, the company announced.
The compact car, which will hold a driver and up to three passengers, will have a top speed of 90 kilometres per hour and a range of 40 to 160 kilometres before needing to be recharged, depending on the type of battery, the company said in an email to CBC News Monday.
Sounds very innovative and cutting-edge, but the jokes are flooding through my brain so fast they can't stop long enough for me to grab one...
(Tarantula for no particular reason)Yeah, I voted in yesterday's primary. But it was with a total lack of enthusiasm. This has been a rare election cycle for me, one where I found absolutely zero candidates who motivated me to volunteer on their campaigns.
St. Sleazy McCain easily defeated J. D. "the eggplant" Hayworth in a classic case of 'the lesser of two evils' still being evil. But the democratic nominee, Rodney Glassman, is no prize, and has a snowball's chance in Phoenix of defeating McCain.
My congresswoman, Ann Kirkpatrick, is a milquetoast blue dog, who's first term has been sedate at best. But her opponent, Paul Gosar, is a total right-wing whacko. So I'll probably end up doing some volunteer work for Ann for the general election. Just not with much enthusiasm.
And I'll support Terry Goddard over Jan Brewer for Governor, although I'm not a fan of Goddard. Another 'lesser of two evils' choice.
It's tough to be a political junkie when the drug of choice has gotten so weak that there is no 'high' to be had.
This is a scheduled post of the Friday Boobies, as I'm away on the river. Let me know if it doesn't show up.
The river is calling, and I must answer.
There are boats that need to be rowed, and rapids needing running.
For baseball fans only:
On this day 100 years ago, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Brooklyn Superbas (today the Dodgers) played what the Baseball Reference Bullpen describes as "the most evenly
matched game ever." Both teams used two pitchers, scored eight runs, and recorded 13 hits, two errors, 38 at-bats, five strikeouts, three walks, 13 assists, 27 putouts, one hit batter and one passed ball. The game wasperhaps fittingly called on account of darkness, thus preserving the total deadlock.
Nice!
This is a slimy newt. It lies, cheats on its wives, and steals from anyone it can.
This is a good newt. It eats bugs.
I'm a very simple minded old hippie. "Equality" and "Equal Rights" are such basic concepts that I'm amazed there's even a debate about them. I'll take the Bible thumpers a little more seriously when I see them campaigning to ban football (Leviticus: Pigskin is an abomination); otherwise, their hypocrisy has no place in a legal debate.
The High Alcohol Content Beer War Continues With 60% ABV Brew, called "Start the Future." The battle for the title of "most extreme beer" is getting crazy:Hot on the heels of last week's news about the 55% alcohol content beer (which also happened to come packed in roadkill), a Dutch brewer has upped the ante with a brew purported to contain 60% alcohol by volume.
While the 55% beer had been dubbed the "End of History," this 60% ABV boozer has a more uplifting name in "Start the Future." It also does not come stuffed in a rodent carcass, which is a plus.
Additionally, Start the Future's price tag -- $45 for .333 liter -- is a huge savings over End of History, which sold out in spite of its $760/bottle price tag.
The battle over these high ABV beverages has seen a lot of good-natured ribbing between competitors. For example, when German brewery Schorschbrau unveiled a beer with 40% ABV, BrewDog, the Scottish company responsible for End of History, introduced a 41% ABV beer they called Sink the Bismarck!.
"It has become a little competition," said the Start the Future brewer. "You should see it as a joke."
http://consumerist.com/2010/07/high-alcohol-content-beer-war-continues-with-60-abv-brew.html
Have a beer, Mr. President. You've certainly earned it. Let's face it, you're stuck with one of the worst jobs in the world.
Barack Obama has been exactly the type of President I expected him to be. I know a lot of my fellow liberals expected him to be more progressive, but I always saw him as a pragmatic moderate. Sure, I wish he were stronger on a variety of issues; climate, DADT, human rights and ending the wars, among many. But that was never a realistic expectation given our political system and climate.
Let's face it, any American President will be attacked from some quarter regardless of which stance he takes on an issue. Ours is a noisy, fractious political system, and there's a media that makes a good living off of stirring up a controversy. But the right wing noise machine has been over the top when it comes to attacking Obama, no matter what he does. It's not a new phenomena: remember the hearings about the Clinton's Christmas card list? Despite all the attacks, Obama has managed to govern in a fairly calm, cool manner, and I admire him for that. He's managed to make the best of a "no-win" situation.
Obama has actually been very successful so far. The stimulus, health care reform, financial regulation, and most importantly his Supreme Court appointees all count as achievements (even if I wish that they all went farther) to be proud of. The winding down of the wars in Iraq and (hopefully) Afghanistan may be slower than I'd like, but they are moving in the right direction. So President Obama has earned a celebration.
The thing I like most about President Barack Obama? The fact that he saved us from a "President McCain", which truly would have been frightening.
This is a personal, local gripe, so feel free to ignore it. The street by where I live has been undergoing reconstruction for over a month, and today's news reports that the project will take longer than originally planned.
A project to resurface one of the city's oldest streets in Flagstaff is now behind schedule after it was discovered that the road was shallower than first believed.
The much-anticipated project was supposed to be the centerpiece of an effort to rebuild the main streets in the Southside neighborhood -- an area residents and business owners say has been neglected in the shadow of downtown Flagstaff north of the tracks.
Instead, contractors hired by the city discovered portions of South San Francisco were shallower than core samples had indicated, forcing what had been a simple resurfacing project into a complete reconstruction of the entire street.
This has pushed back the project's completion date several weeks -- now slated for near completion in November -- and forced the city to tap a cost-overruns provision in its contract with local contractors.
The project was set to cost $1.28 million, but the contract had an additional $130,000 set aside for unforeseen contingencies.
http://www.azdailysun.com/news/local/article_ece74fd2-cb00-5e28-ab7b-ef9f44d955b0.html
Having San Francisco torn up is a major inconvenience for me, as it's the main route into downtown from my apartment. Never mind the noise of the construction; I can deal with that. But walking in the neighborhood is either hazardous or impossible from one day to the next.
Project Manager Christine Cameron said records on the street are not complete, but the city has resurfaced the street at least several times since the 1950s.
But adding new layers of asphalt over the existing road made some areas thicker than others.
Several 8-inch cores samples taken of the road suggested some portions of the road were at least 14 inches thick, but in reality several portions of the road were only 6 inches deep.
Cameron said the city also discovered other problems after tearing up the west half of San Francisco.
"We are finding things that haven't been touched since the 1930s," Cameron said. The city has begun work on the eastern half of the road, but most of that construction will start after the west side has been completed.
The project area extends from Route 66 to Butler Avenue.
Construction will include new street asphalt, sidewalk, curb/gutter, lighting, benches, trash receptacles, bicycle racks and landscaping/irrigation.
The city employee said she has been working closely with business owners to mitigate any problems the construction causes.
http://www.azdailysun.com/news/local/article_ece74fd2-cb00-5e28-ab7b-ef9f44d955b0.html
Actually, I will be quite happy once the project is completed. The southside has desperately needed revitalization for decades, and neighborhood business will benefit in the long run. This part of town was rather run down (some even considered it a scary "bad" part of town), and it will be much nicer once done.
But it's a major pain in the gluts right now.
A while back I posted that I was tempering my outrage about SB 1070 because I was confident that the courts would find much of the law unconstitutional. And today, Judge Susan Bolton made the ruling:
PHOENIX -- A federal judge this morning blocked several provisions of Arizona's new immigration law from taking effect.
Sections barred from being enforced include:
- Requiring a police officer to make a reasonable attempt to check the immigration status of those they have stopped;
- Forbidding police from releasing anyone they have arrested until that person's immigration status is determined;
- Making it a violation of Arizona law for anyone not a citizen to fail to carry documenation;
- Creating a new state crime for trying to secure work while not a legal resident;
- Allowing police to make warrantless arrests if there is a belief the person has committed an offense that allows them to be removed from the United States.
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton rejected arguments by attorneys for the Department of Justice that other sections of SB 1070 are preempted by federal law. These include creating a separate state crime making it illegal to transport or harbor an illegal immigrant and changes in law dealing with impoundment of vehicles that are used to transport those not in the country legally.
http://www.azdailysun.com/news/local/article_4cd440c6-9a70-11df-83f1-001cc4c03286.html
I'm sure the case will go all the way to the Supreme Court, but for now the worst provisions of the law have been blocked. And that is good news.
Gov. Brewer's support for S.B. 1070 is easy to understand: just follow the money. Yup, her people stand to make a tidy profit jailing brown people:
This Thursday, SB-1070, Arizona’s radical new immigration law, will go into effect. Despite an incoming lawsuit from the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) has maintained that her state “will prevail,” claiming that she is simply defending the border integrity and safety of her state.
Yet a new investigation by local Arizona TV news station CBS 5 finds that the Brewer administration may have ulterior motives for its strong support of the new law. The station has found that “two of Brewer’s top advisers have connections” to private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).
Paul Senseman, Brewer’s deputy chief of staff, is a former lobbyist for CCA. His wife continues to lobby for the company. Meanwhile Chuck Coughlin, who leads her re-election campaign, chaired her transition into the governorship, and is one of the governor’s policy advisors, is president of HighGround Public Affairs Consultants, which lobbies for CCA.
This is important because CCA currently “holds the federal contract to house detainees in Arizona.” CBS 5 notes that the company currently bills $11 billion a month to the state of Arizona and that, if SB-1070 is successfully implemented, its profits would be significantly padded as it would take responsibility for imprisoning immigrants arrested by Arizona police.
The company maintains that it “unequivocally, did not at any time lobby — nor did we have any outside consultants lobby — anyone in Arizona on the immigration law,” but direct lobbying would not be necessary with allies like Senseman and Coughlin working directly for Brewer.
Coughlin, in particular, has a history of boasting about the influence he has had on the state government on behalf of private business. In an interview earlier this month, he bragged about privatizing the commercial garbage business in Mesa, Arizona, by coordinating with industry lobbyists. He told the interviewer, “I can make [expletive] happen.”
And this isn't even considered corruption here in Arizona, just business as usual. Absolutely despicable. In a just world, Jan Brewer would get to experience the joys of a "for profit" prison.
NOVOZAVIDOVO, Russia People in this Russian town used to stare at Jean Gregoire Sagbo because they had never seen a black man. Now they say they see in him something equally rare – an honest politician.
Sagbo last month became the first black to be elected to office in Russia.
In a country where racism is entrenched and often violent, Sagbo’s election as one of Novozavidovo’s 10 municipal councilors is a milestone. But among the town’s 10,000 people, the 48-year-old from the West African country of Benin is viewed simply a Russian who cares about his hometown.
