Boobies Bouncing Along

I've posted these before, but they deserve an encore. Happy Friday!

Baseball Prayer

Let Timmeh Smoke!

(Go Giants)

Prop. 203

Once again, the people of Arizona will attempt to legalize medical marijuana (it's been passed by the voters three of the four times it's been on the ballot, but courts have intervened) this November:

The 2010 Arizona election is looking once again, at a long held debate over the legalization of medical marijuana. If passed the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act would authorize the use of marijuana for individuals with medical conditions and written certification from a physician. Most controversial to the election outcome, is the fact that Prop 203 would establish a regulatory system under Arizona Department of Health Services to create and license medical marijuana dispensaries.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5842608/arizona_election_2010_prop_203_arizona.html?cat=49

My views on this are quite clear: for humanitarian reasons, there should be no question about medical marijuana. Compassion demands that it should be legal. I can see a legitimate moral argument against recreational marijuana (I disagree, but I can see a valid debate), but it's a very different issue.

Of course, this being Arizona, there are some serious flaws with the law. For one, it's way too restrictive:

Unlike California, where it's possible to get a doctor's recommendation to use marijuana for almost any condition, only patients with a limited number of serious and debilitating conditions, including cancer, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer's Disease, glaucoma, Crohn's disease, and multiple sclerosis (MS) will be able to acquire medical marijuana in Arizona.

It would not be an initiative that would implement any immediate and wide sweeping licensing, so it is not going to change anything over night. Nor will Arizona become like California in status over medical marijuana, as some conservatives fear might happen.

Still, I support 203 as a starting point. It will be interesting to see how the vote turns out.

Quite a Year

It's been quite a year for weather here in Flag. Blizzards, wildfires (OK, technically they aren't 'weather'; rather 'events'), floods, and now tornadoes. Haven't seen anything quite like it in my sixteen years here. My only question is: what next?

Good Morning Tornado

Nothing like waking up to a tornado warning, even if the tornadoes are outside of town. So far, three are being reported, in the area of Parks and Bellemont (about 8 miles outside of town). Interstate 40 is closed, and "extensive damage" is being reported. The tornado watch is in place until 11:00 am local time.
Tornadoes are not something we're used to around here. I realized that my tiny apartment lacks a storm cellar, like most housing in the region. We'll see what happens, but for now there's not much I can do. More coffee, anyone?

A Post

I'm a lazy slacker of a blogger. Or I haven't had much to say.

Celebrate!

They did it! My beloved Giants are in the playoffs!

Not Ready for Prime Time

Jan Brewer had an abysmal performance in her debate with Terry Goddard. So she's making a smart move by avoiding any more debates. Well, unless she starts losing:

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has had only one debate against Terry Goddard, her Democratic challenger in the gubernatorial election, and she didn’t have a choice: since she took public funds for her campaign, she had to agree to one debate under Arizona election law. Given the option, Brewer prefers not to debate again — and she admitted to a local reporter yesterday that she would only debate the issues again if it was politically advantageous:

“Maybe there would be a possibility that we would debate if my numbers starting dropping dramatically,’’ she said. “And, of course, I’m working hard to see that they don’t.’’ [...]

She said her reticence to meet with Goddard again should come as no surprise.

“We made that decision long ago,’’ the governor said, saying the single debate was part of the game plan all along.“So far, we’ve been right on the game,’’ Brewer said, adding, “And I’m winning.’’

Brewer brushed aside a question of whether Goddard will be disappointed with her stand. “And you think I care?’’ she quipped.

It’s not surprising Brewer doesn’t want to have another debate. In her first one, she struggled to name her accomplishments and subjected the audience to a long, awkward pause; she also advanced a falsehood about beheadings in the Arizona desert and was unable to justify it after the debate. She quietly retracted her claim a few days later.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/01/brewer-no-debate/

The question to be determined is whether the semi-comatose Goddard can take advantage of this. Given that he's shown the typical democratic aversion to actually winning elections, I'm betting against it.

Smart Lock

The best device to keep someone from carrying away your Smart car.

Nice Looking Boobies

A nice pair of Masked Boobies. Is it really October already?

Fire Up the Starship!

Cosmic Log - Alien planet looks 'just right' for life
We've found a 'livable' planet. Can we get there before we completely destroy this one?

Astronomers say they've found the first planet beyond our solar system that could have the right size and setting to sustain life as we know it, only 20 light-years from Earth.

"My own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent," Steven Vogt, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, told reporters today. "I have almost no doubt about it."

The discovery, published online in The Astrophysical Journal, is the result of 11 years of observations at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Astronomers participating in the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey detected the planet by tracking the faint gravitational wobbles it produced in its parent star. Now they say there may well be many more planets out there like this one.

"The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common," Vogt said in a news release.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/09/29/5202633-alien-planet-looks-just-right-for-life

Only 20 light years away, which is very close in astronomical terms. The slogan "Earth First! Then We'll destroy the other planets!" comes to mind.
(BTW, Glad to see this came out of UC Santa Cruz, which was the first college I attended. Go Banana Slugs!)

For Old Geeks

In the beginning there was the computer

At Least One War Will Be Over

I'm always happier when a war ends, so Sunday should be a good day:

The First World War will officially end on Sunday, 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies.

The final payment of £59.5 million, writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another.

Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead.

"On Sunday the last bill is due and the First World War finally, financially at least, terminates for Germany," said Bild, the country's biggest selling newspaper.

Most of the money goes to private individuals, pension funds and corporations holding debenture bonds as agreed under the Treaty of Versailles, where Germany was made to sign the 'war guilt' clause, accepting blame for the war.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/8029948/First-World-War-officially-ends.html

Of course, I thought WW1 was already over. Learn something new every day (or at least I try to.)

Baseball History

50 years ago today, Ted Williams swung a bat for the last time in his major league career:

Fifty years ago today, Ted Williams walked up to the plate on a chilly, overcast
day at Fenway Park and stepped into the batter's box in the bottom of the eighth inning against Baltimore pitcher Jack Fisher. He took his familiar stance, looked at the first pitch for a ball, swung and missed at the second, then drove the third pitch into the bullpen for the most famous farewell in baseball history.

Williams had gone out the way so many players dream about and almost none accomplish: He homered in his final at-bat.

"I was gunning for the big one," Williams said in the clubhouse after the game. "I let everything I had go. I really wanted that one."

Some tidbits about that farewell shot:http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=caple/100928_ted_williams&sportCat=mlb

OK, I was to young to know. But my Dad always said it was the most dramatic at bat he ever saw.

Vintage Truth

Walt Kelly was a genius, and some of his cartoons are remarkably relevant to this day. Here, he anticipated political debate over 45 years ago.

Agriculture

You never know where you'll run into a Badger.

The Difference

Just the basics.

Boobies Bouncing into Autumn

Boobies celebrating the first Friday of fall.

As A Marxist

OK, I admit it: I am a Marxist. I love every one of the Marx Brothers movies. And I like Dali, too. So when I read this, well...:

Salvador Dalí sketching Harpo Marx (1937, via).

Dalí, a huge Marx Brothers fan with a particular admiration for Harpo, whom he viewed as “the most surrealist figure in Hollywood”, sent him a harp with barbed wire for strings & forks and spoons for tuning knobs as a Christmas present in 1936. Delighted, Harpo wrote Dalí that he would be “happy to be smeared by you” if the artist ever found himself in Hollywood. The next month Dalí arrived, brushes and easel in hand. The resultant painting is lost, but a monochrome pencil-and-ink study survived (here)

Dalí wrote an entertaining, if rather implausible, account of this meeting in a 1937 Harper’s Bazaar article:

“I met Harpo for the first time in his garden. He was naked, crowned with roses, and in the center of a veritable forest of harps (he was surrounded by at least five hundred harps). He was caressing, like a new Leda, a dazzling white swan, and feeding it a statue of the Venus de Milo made of cheese, which he grated against the strings of the nearest harp. An almost springlike breeze drew a curious murmur from the harp forest. In Harpo’s pupils glows the same spectral light to be observed in Picasso’s.”

Dalí later wrote a script for a Marx Brothers movie, Giraffes on Horseback Salad, which included, among other things, burning giraffes wearing gas masks & Harpo catching dwarves with a butterfly net. The film was never made. Groucho, that killjoy, claimed to have scuttled the project: “It wouldn’t play.”

Just a delicious story. Beats talking about current politics.

A "Must Read"

If you haven't already read it, please go read:

Poll: 1 In 5 Americans Believe Obama Is A Cactus