Turn A New Leaf

http://www.turnanewleaf.org/home.asp
I'm checking to see if they need any volunteer help with facility repair, maintenance, upgrades, general upkeep of vehicles, capital equipment, grounds, etc. Per their website, they've got multiple locations, and the desert environment here is Harsh on everything. I've got the tools and the knowledge, as well as a AZ PE license, so why not help some people who might need it. =) If they do need the help, I think I'll have to go through a DPS finger printing, but that's understandably cautious due diligence.

Let your wallet & email voice your support

Boycott of Glenn Beck Advertisers - I signed it, it took only a minute.

Everyone should sign up, if you're moral, have a conscience, have a sense of rational decency, if you're patriotic, a thinking person, not swayed by rhetoric, etc. I mean, yes, I do enjoy the vaudevillian comedy of Glenn in leder hosen agonizing over histrionic interpretations of various innocuous publications from the Obama administration, but hey, Rupert is a business man, and he'll drop old Glenn as soon as it's no longer profitable. Glenn can find a home on Youtube I'm sure.

R J Roushdoony's followers won't let their new spokesman Glenn down. Do you really want to be one of them?

Joe-Joe-Joe! (09/09/09 09:09:09)

I was in Chengdu China on September 9th, 1999, and trying to go to dinner that night with my co-workers, every restaurant was PACKED with wedding parties. We had to go to three places before anyone would let us in without reservations. The Chinese are super superstitious, and 9 (pronounced "Joe" in Mandarin) is considered even luckier than the 7 is to Westerners.

Today, as it is 2009, 9 September, and at 9:09am and 9 seconds, supposedly, very very lucky. As China is 15 hours ahead of me (and it is 9am here now in AZ), most of the well celebrated wedding party revelers are now sleeping it off.

thanks to Google, for their 09/09/09 banner this morning.

Sad Joke of the Day - September

Q: What do you call someone in their 20s or 30s who has cancer?
A: A Canadian

...at least in the USA, since a U.S. citizen with cancer in their 20s will be broke, then homeless, then often dead soon after they get to stage 4. Contrasting view points here, and here, regarding cancer and hilarity.

Yeah, and from the admirers or liberty and it's pursuit above all else (aka Fox news devotees), not all cancers are from life choices - healthy athletes who eat excellent diets get colon cancer sometimes too, healthy non-smokers can get lung cancer, a series of bad sunburns as a very small child can lead to early onset skin cancer in one's 20s - or from someones genetic make up. Those poor bastards who get such terminal illnesses, well, in America, too bad for them. It's not the Fox News devotee's problem. Everyone else should stop their whining, and get some boot straps! You might make Fox viewers begin to develop a sense of morality, or a conscience that considers something outside their own myopic microcosm.

Deficit Binge Drinking, Never Again?

After spending US Federal Treasury funds like a drunken sailor on Jaffe Rd in Hong Kong's red light district for 8 years, Republicans are so very worried about the Federal Deficit now. I remember Gingrich stating how deficits didn't matter with the American public back when Republicans dominated Congress. Now, all of a sudden, the deficit is "#1" on everyone's radar screen. Yes, it is incrementally bigger now, than it was during W's reign of plutocratic spending on the rich (tax cuts, more tax cuts, un-justified war, more tax cuts, no-bid contracts, etc).

Perhaps it's like after a night, or long weekend of binge drinking, and then saying "I'll never do THAT again"... except they waited until after they lost a national election by a wide margin to declare it?

Bring the Windex!

Today, First Solar Corporation of Tempe Arizona announced that they have been contracted by the Chinese government to build a 2 gigawatt solar plant in the northern Chinese desert. This will be the world's largest. Bigger than the 1G they announced earlier this year. Of course it's not in America, we only want to finance (and celebrate) massive fossil fuel drilling projects here.

Good luck to First Solar and the Chinese Government. After being in China, and seeing how dirty the air is there (the desert is north of Beijing, where the Olympic air was so nasty), and having a basic understanding of solar radiation energy absorption, they'll need lots of Windex (or a cheaper Chinese knock-off) to frequently clean the reflective / absorptive array surfaces, if any efficiencies will be realized.

So much Koolaid, so many children, so little time!

Dr. Zauis has a comprehensive compilation of "Hitler = Obama" hysterical fear mongering and blatant ignorance posted yesterday. Linked here. Awesome work!

Some of the video links Dr.Z has posted are quite delusional, making Glenn Beck look factual and reasonable.

Wow, so many clueless Americans are gullible, easily manipulated, frightened little lemmings!

Da Bears, online

I figured I'd miss the Thursday night Chicago Bears pre-season game since it is not being televised, and I do not have the $300 NFL Dish package, but leave it to the flock of the FSM - ARRRGH! me matey! - justin.tv, provides a free internet view. Very cool.

The Paradox of Libertarianism

Andrew Sullivan has an interesting essay on his site today, linked here, on the Paradox of Libertarianism: “liberty-as-goal” vs “liberty-as-means” libertarianism.

I'm curious to see which camp the libertarian readers of this blog see the themselves tending to gravitate more. I'm not a libertarian myself, so I aspire to neither theory personally - cartoonish, or otherwise.

He Can't Be All Four!

Kudos to Dr. Zaius for this hilarious link!

36 More Days of Oil Found! WOW!

I just read the dumbest, most short-sighted article, on BP's oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico's Keathley Canyon Tiber Prospect, about 200 miles off the coast of Parde Island Texas, in 10,564 feet (3,220 m) feet of water of 3 billion barrels of oil. The well that shows promise hit a field at 35,055 feet (10,685 meters). (almost Mariana's Trench depth 11,033 meters (36,201 feet))

To quote the AP article: ""It will ease concerns about peak oil because it shows there is life left in these mature areas," he said, adding that it could be the second half of the next decade before the find is producing."
That is ridiculous! 3B barrels of oil, at the current world consumption rate of 85 million barrels a day, means "BP just found 36 more days of oil!" Whoop-dee freakin dew! It goes right along with the moronic paradigm of "drill baby drill". So in the "second half of the next decade" there will be a trickle of oil that amounts to 36 days of world consumption. I've gotta go out and buy a used Hummer! No - actually, my buddy Ron alerted me to one of these sweet feats of German engineering .

Laptop Seizure Rules? WTF?

Laptop Seizure Rules? WTF? I've not had this happen to me yet... and I hope it never does. I have started traveling with my puny net book now more often, and over-all, traveling much less than I used to internationally.

With Detroit's Demise...

As the "Big 3" have become the bankrupt 2 + Ford, and fuel prices will continue to rise as peak oil approaches in the next generation, it's about damn time that the expansive US gets on the High Speed Rail track, like The Rest Of The World has. All the naysayers of rail saying it is not profitable, need to come to Phoenix and ride the new light rail when gas was $4 a gallon, or spend some time in the NE corridor where rail ridership is huge, or take the South Shore into Chicago everyday, from East Chicago, as my father did for 20 years, along with thousands of other commuters. Well organized and modern rail works very well (France, Germany, Japan, and some parts of the UK). Even not well organized rail still serves massive public needs (India, China, Italy, many Eastern Europe nations, Russia... and some parts of the UK).

Short sighted, pessimistic, anachronistic Americans who cling to their precious paradigms from the 50s and 60s need to evolve and work towards accepting the future. Notice how the map above has no high speed rail connecting LA to Vegas? So sorry, delusional tea baggers, find a wind-mill elsewhere to joust with. I've driven 2/3rds of the proposed routes via Federal Highway. Had an efficient rail line been available, I would have preferred to sit and read, or surf, or sleep instead of burn fossil fuels in my individual internal combustion engine.

Il faut voir... we'll see, if it ever comes into being.

Daniella Mangoes

Maybe it's because I spent several years in Jr High and High School working evenings and weekends making boxes at the print & lithography shop where my dad used to work (next to WJOB's radio tower in Hammond), maybe it's just a heightened awareness of food safety, perhaps it's my aging focus on personal health, or maybe it's some combination therein, but I've been noticing how the produce I've been buying has been increasingly well marked.

I recently picked up a flat of a dozen Mexican Mangoes at Costo for $9.
Daniella Mangos, Variety Kent, Item 83303, bar code 6-0454612750-6, lot 229928, grown and packed by Agricola Daniella, Tel (668)... Fax(668)... El Porvenir, Ahome, Sin, www.agricoladaniella.com.mx
then
Distributed by Splendid Products, 1011 Cadilla Way, Burlingame CA, 94010, ph (650)... www.splendidproducts.com
with a side note of
"primuslabs.com, when food safety counts"

The mangoes are fantastic - ripe, juicy, tasty, succulent. 3 consumed, 9 in the fridge to slow down the rest of the ripening process. Had they been sub-par, or contaminated somehow, or recalled, there is no shortage of clear labeling to identify this flat, in this lot, in this shipment, to this store, in this state. Nice to see effective product marking is beginning to catch up with modern living.

Local AZ Treasonous Loons

Yeah, excited right wing 2nd amendment zealots try to say that bringing weapons to Presidential Rallies is demonstrating their 2nd amendment rights. Sure, nice story. But, when you read deeper (as Dr Desert Flower did Sunday morning), you find that the Baptist Preacher, of the church where the first AR15 carrying protester attends in Tempe Arizona, has preached to his flock " Tempe pastor asks for death of President Barack Obama". (18 USC section 871 "Threats against President and successors to the Presidency")

Yes, a treasonous, religious leader, has published a sermon on his website "Why I Hate Barack Obama" - and how he is praying for his death. In the sermon, he is stating how he wants the President to be killed (like a slug with salt), and "aborted". The US Secret Service has had a talk with this nice man too. What harm does a public figure asking for such things do? Well, it inspires an individual in his parish to take his loaded automatic weapon into the center of a major metropolitan area. A reactionary Pastor with a history of confronting authority (Border Patrol & Department of Public Safety officials) violently, inspires his flock. Yeah, it's all about 2nd Amendment rights and "freedom". If you believe that, I've got some land outside of Florence Arizona in which you might be interested.

Żywiec Warka - good strong beer

At the wonderful little Polish Deli on the west side of Phoenix, there's "The Warsaw Market". A few weeks back, before my Godfather and aunt came to visit, I picked up some Polska Kielbasa and some Warka beer. Last Saturday, while floating in the pool in 115F weather, I enjoyed my first Warka. It was delicious, and highly recommended.

This full bodied beer is named after the village of Warka Poland where they've been brewing beer there for over 500 years. It is where US Revolutionary War General & Hero Kazimierz Pulaski was born, and his name and semblance are on every bottle. Good stuff. $2 a bottle. Zachwycający!

NFL + DVR = 80 minute game

Last night as I watched the Chicago Bears trounce the Denver Broncos on NBC, for the first time in my life, I watched a NFL game as it was being recorded on DVR. Commercials took about 4 seconds to fast forward through. Booth reviewed calls took all of 10 or 15 seconds. I did not have to listen at all to Chris Collinsworth droning on - except when he would NOT Shut Up in the 4th quarter. Finally, Madden is gone, and now we have to listen to Collinsworthless? Ah, but DVR to the rescue!

Paused to light the grill, recycle consumed beer, obtain more cold beer, grill wings, eat said wings, were an extra 30 or 40 minutes all-together, max. I could really get used to this. As Stephen Colbert says "it's like having a DVD player, a time machine, and friends, all in one!"

On a regional note, cry-baby Cutler did not do too badly. Finally da Bears have a QB who can do more than hand off to the running back! Hester did a nice 40 yard punt run back to help change momentum. It was a nice Sunday Night pre-season opener. It looks like it won't be a losing season for da Bears. =)

Too Much Junk Mail?

Tired of having your snail-mail filled with catalogues you don't want, or need? Getting credit card applications and home loan refinancing offers on a daily basis? Well, I signed up to opt out of catalogs - like Victoria Secret that sends sometimes 2 or 3 a day - at www.catalogchoice.org. It is free, and simple to sign up. No phone number or credit card needed - though they will take paypal donations. You just enter in the customer numbers and source codes from the catalogs and they contact the sends. We'll see how well it works. Other services (myjunktree and greendimes) wanted credit card numbers - yeah, like I really want to sign up for that! No thanks.

Additionally, the US Postal Service recommends writing to these perpetrators of deforestation & mass marketing of your financial information:

MAIL PREFERENCE SERVICE
DIRECTOR MARKETING ASSOCIATION
POST OFFICE BOX 643
CARMEL NY 10512-0643

EQUIFAX INC
NAME REMOVAL DEPARTMENT
POST OFFICE BOX 740241
ATLANTA GA 30374-0241

EXPERIAN
ATTN CONSUMER SERVICE DEPT
901 WEST BOND STREET
LINCOLN NE 68521-3694

TRANS UNION LLC
NAME REMOVAL OPTION
POST OFFICE BOX 97328
JACKSON MS 39288-7328

Time will tell if the actual influx of useless, unwanted, personal information sensitive mail begins to abate, at all. Il faut voir.

For the older generations this weekend

I found this link in my gmail draft folder, and had forgotten I'd ever saved it. Admittedly, I could not stop laughing as I watched it. It's office, and family friendly, as long as you don't object to seeing one very happy tortoise, and one rather... beleaguered on.

Giant Tortoises do live longer than humans. They build up those 1.5 billion heart beats a little bit slower than we do... except perhaps, during Youtube video sessions. =)

Ocotillo Sculptor

Some sculptors like to work in metals or other materials (links here, and here), but I prefer working with the real, organic, growing, living thing, and persuade it into the form I desire, regardless the 37mm spines with points sharp enough to make Mel Gibson giddy as he practices Aramaic, covering every arm. Ocotillo Sculpture, is one of my hobbies. The hummingbirds love to perch within the heavily guarded confines as well, as it is adjacent to the nectar feeders. Ocotillos in the wild can sprawl quite alot.

Compare and contrast 2008 to 2009, above. It's a constant evolution, and I enjoy bending hardy desert organisms to my somewhat clumsy, determined, bi-pedal, stubborn Eastern European will.