"You May Have Already Won!" - John Hancock Does Damage Control

Not a winner? Say it ain't so, John!:

The California Channel, which broadcasts Legislative meetings on cable TV, on Wednesday became the second local entity to reveal that it is the victim of the British International Lottery scam.

People have received letters telling them they won $95,000 - and that to receive their winnings, they must first cash an enclosed check for $2,998 that appears to be from the California Channel.

... "My goal is to get this posted on the Internet, so people will know that this is a scam," said John Hancock, president of the nonprofit, California Channel.

Too bad about that scam. Sad - all those ripped-off people. No use feeling glum, though. In the meanwhile, I've WON 2.5 million pounds, a whole lot more than $95,000, and it doesn't involve the California Channel at all, so it must be legit!:

BRITISH AMERICAN ONLINE LOTTERY COMMISSION
CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPT.
*******************************************
REGENT'S PARK,LONDON NW1 4NS,UNITED KINGDOM
*******************************************
Ref: BAOL/19823108/05/DON
Batch: 23/012/4774

Attn: winner

We are pleased to announce to you the draw of the British American Online Lottery International programs held on the 4th of April 2006 (04/04/2006) in London. Your e-mail address attached to the following numbers listed below:

Ticket number: 2314759773 914
Serial Number: 19445/02
Drew the Lucky Numbers: 04-07-50-16-20-01

The above listed numbers subsequently make's you one of the bona fide winner of the lottery promo in the 2nd category. You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of GBP£ 2,500,000.00 (Two Million, Five Hundred Thousand, British Pounds) in cash credited to file BAOL/19823108/05/DON.

Hole-In-One

Passing strange encounter with the Seattle Police:

A highly improbable shot left an officer's bullet in the cylinder of a gunman's revolver, and police say it's a pretty clear sign that the officers who shot the man faced a deadly threat.

"Physically, it is impossible to conclude anything other than the fact the suspect was pointing directly at the officers," Deputy Chief Clark Kimerer said Wednesday, adding, "I've not seen anything quite like that in my 24 years."

At Boondocks Edge, It'll Be Empty and Bankrupt

Rio Rancho, NM, plans some kind of fantasy district:

"So much of what we're trying to do will be focused on entertainment. It'll be restaurants. It'll be movie theaters. It'll be nightclubs. It'll be the kind of things that make it a true destination spot," said Palenick.

Phil Angelides For Governor

Angelide's been State Treasurer for some time now, and a real estate developer as well. He understands how the state works. I'm worried that he might be a bit too rigid or unimaginative, but better that than Steve Westly's misplaced, enamored response to Arnold Schwarzenegger. And Angelides understands that it's time to make investments in the state's infrastructure rather than focus just on budget-balancing. So, go Phil!

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Fun article about how higher gasoline prices make both Democrats and Republicans just plain stupid.

Foreclosures Up

Realty Trac says foreclosures are up, particularly in Georgia, Colorado, and Indiana:

“The sharp increase in foreclosures in Q1 continues a steady upward trend that we’ve observed since the beginning of last year,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “Foreclosures have now increased in four consecutive quarters and are on track to go above 1.2 million in 2006, which would push the nation’s annual foreclosure rate to more than 1 percent of U.S. households.”

Saccacio noted that foreclosures actually dipped 13 percent from February to March, evidence that the nation’s foreclosure rate could be leveling off after the long run-up.

Despite the potential good news in the levelling off, Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings sees trouble ahead:

So, to summarize: we have an economy that's incredibly dependent on consumers' ability to acquire mortgage debt. We have consumers who are increasingly indebted. Moreover, their debts are much more likely than a few years ago to take this incredibly risky form: low payments for a few years, and then a huge increase in payments for the next few decades. People who would not assume these risks if they were prudent are doing so. If the housing market keeps soaring, they'll be fine; if not, they'll be screwed.

I certainly hope it all works out! My tuchus is on the line too!

Taking Aim At MP3 Streaming

Dianne Feinstein decides to torpedo MP3 streaming by folks like ShoutCast Internet radio.

Celebrity Statues

Apart from places like the Hollywood Walk of Fame, you don't find that many celebrity statues in public places in the U.S. Yet, Australian celebrities do get this honor:

Meanwhile, back home in Australia, it has been revealed that Kylie is set to be the fifth and final Australian 'legend' of the entertainment industry to be immortalised in the form of a larger-than-life bronze statue. The statue will stand alongside likenesses of Graham Kennedy, John Farnham, Dame Nellie Melba and Dame Edna Everage, the first two of which will be unveiled this Saturday night at a gala event at Waterfront City at Docklands.

Celebrities seem to occupy a more important, culturally-significant place in Australian public life than they do in U.S. public life.

Chart of Bush's Approval Rating

Over at Old Hippie's Groovy Blog, where folks learn from history, in order not to repeat it.

Dr. Frank Is Running Again!

I didn't realize until I got the Democratic primary ballot tonight in the mail that Dr. Frank Macaluso, Jr., from Visalia, is running for Governor again. Dr. Macaluso was one of the 135 candidates running for Governor in the 2003 California Gubernatorial Recall campaign. Dr. Macaluso is positioning himself as the budget-conscious Democratic choice in 2006. Certainly keep him in mind when Election Day comes in June!

"Oklahoma!" Callbacks

Lining up all the (rare and unusual) suspects (left to right: Ryan Favorite, Laura Woodruff, Clare Lawrence, Brennen Cull, Jill Wright, and Ryan Adame).

I'm Not A Boomer

I'm not!:

It's been inevitable for a while, I guess, that the Youth Culture of the baby boom generation would ripen, mellow, and then rot, despite the atypical abilities of a few Mick Jaggers to sell their Sympathy for the Devil for eternal muscle tone and dancing feet.

... But far worse than that scene is the prospect of hearing the rebellious and hormone-driven songs of one's youth reformatted for the different rigors of old age. Will hip-replacement ads for women soon feature a soothing version of Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady"? Is it a matter of time until Senior Mall Walks are spurred on by Easy Listening takes on the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams"?

... But when a young friend recently reminded me that I was listening to music recorded before she was born, I could only respond that her generation's remakes didn't sound any better than the originals.

I remain haunted by the prospect of being wheeled into Snack Time at the Assisted Living Center to the strains of "Free Bird." I hope I have the energy to raise a fist in protest.

Pink Toupee Collective

(Left) Hodge has trouble with his cutlery and is aided by the denizens of Le Carnaval des Imbéciles. From left to right: Linda Melvin as Whippa, The Beast Tamer; Jane Hastings as Sadie the Cotton Candy Lady; Jeff Madow as Hodge, The Sword of Swords; William Fuller as Aviáni Le Mystérieux; and Renee Gromacki as TikiTaka The Bird Lady. (Photography by Jack Hastings)


Dada? Dada? In performance? This looks like it might be fun:

The Pink Toupee Collective presents an original musical/theatrical/performance art piece entitled Miss Fortune and the Carnival of Fools, opening Friday, April 28, 2006 at “The Space” at California Stage. The work explores themes of nonconformity and the search for identity in our increasingly homogenized and media-dominated culture. Miss Fortune and the Carnival of Fools takes as its inspiration ideas from the Fluxus Movement in art which flourished from the early sixties to the mid-seventies. Fluxus (“a flow”) was known for its Dadaist leanings and its emphasis on artistic exploration and socio-political activism expressed through performance art pieces known as “Aktions.”

They're Not Illegal, Pete

They're incentives. Incentives for what, who can say, but if you had meant them for exploration and investment, you should have made that clear years ago:

WASHINGTON - With gasoline topping $3 a gallon, the Senate Energy Committee chairman's patience with oil companies has finally worn thin.

Sen. Pete Domenici, upset that oil companies are spending big profits on big payments for executives instead of exploration and investment, says he will back repealing $2 billion in tax incentives for the industry, authorizing tougher fuel economy standards and expanding federal authority to investigate price gouging.

"We're not going to let them get away with any kind of illegal activity," the Albuquerque Republican said.

Barely Made It Across In Time

Minutemen or not, automatic citizenship for the baby:

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- An 18-year-old woman who gave birth to a baby girl in the desert used nail clippers to cut her baby's umbilical cord before being rescued by U.S. Border Patrol agents, authorities said Wednesday.

The woman was spotted Monday night by a Border Patrol helicopter pilot about 25 miles north of Sasabe, said Ron Bellavia, commander of the Border Patrol's search, trauma and rescue operations in the agency's Tucson sector.

The woman, an apparent illegal immigrant identified as Maria Perez Perez, was with two other people, and all appeared in distress, agents said.

"GIVE IT A CHANCE!"

So sayeth the Loud, Opinionated Queen, regarding "Lestat", the recently-opened gay vampire musical:

Expectations had been low after a critically savaged trial run in San Francisco. History was also against "Lestat" after the failure of two previous vampire musicals, "Dance of the Vampires" in 2002 and "Dracula, the Musical" in 2004.

In a review headlined "Vampires, the musical kiss of death," The Washington Post's Peter Marks said the fixation with singing vampires had to stop. "Give the bloodsucker a ballad, and it's his show that joins the walking dead."

My Friend, The Deodorant Stick

The corrosion of MySpace begins....

One-Man Show

In the 1950's, in American industry, there was a job description called "calculator." Calculators were generally young, poorly-paid women with some mathematical training, who would perform tedious arithmetical calculations for teams of engineers.

The advent of the electronic computer was seen as a tremendous leap forward. The computer was said to be capable of doing the work of a "stadium full of calculators."

It soon became clear that computers were vulnerable to error. Their machinations were only as good as the programs and the people used to run them. They could do the work of a stadium full of calculators, but they could make more mistakes than a stadium full of calculators ever could.

Jumping forward, I remember a computer class I took in the spring of 1975. I was calculating the trajectory of motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel over a fanciful representation of the Snake River Canyon, using the college mainframe computer. Instead of calculating a nice parabola over the canyon, however, I ended up instead with two interlocked disjoint arcs. "Congratulations, you've made it across the Canyon!" the printed text mockingly informed me. Disgusted, I threw the computer output away, only to find, later that evening, the same computer output hung on the dorm room wall of one of my best college friends, who thought it hysterical. Computer errors might be inevitable, but in any event, they could certainly be entertaining!

Jumping forward, on Saturday, April 22, 2006, there was a small glitch regarding the eight pages of cast biographies included in DMTC's "Wizard of Oz" program. All audience members received this program. No biographies were included, however, and instead of pictures of the cast, there were eight pages of a grinning Steve Isaacson, posing with a can of Diet Coke.....

Mayor Bloomberg

Is an ass:

A judge has ruled that use of the Internet is no more goofing off on the job than reading a newspaper or making a brief personal phone call.

"It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work," Administrative Law Judge John Spooner said.

Spooner gave the lightest of all possible punishments to a New York City worker who was accused of disregarding warnings to stay off the Internet at work. The 14-year veteran of the Department of Education used his office computer to visit news and travel Web sites.

... Meanwhile, Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- a billionaire who knows what it is to put in a full day -- is upset with the judge's ruling. Mayor Bloomberg said city employees are working for the taxpayers, who expect people to work. He said spending hours surfing the Internet at your work desk is inappropriate.

Ain't It The Truth!

The Foxification of the press corps:

Catrett says being in the Washington press corps has changed since he started at CNN eight years ago and got into broadcast journalism 20 years ago.

"In the briefings and the presidential news conferences, I'm always thinking, 'Where's the follow-up? Where's the follow-up?' " Reporters are too concerned about access, worried about angering an important politician, he says.

"When I came into this business, people weren't afraid to insult somebody in power," he says.

Eastern New Mexico - Where To Now, Brown Cow?

The aquifer that sustains eastern New Mexico agriculture is thinning out (actually as expected, in line with old predictions that by mid-century it would be in perilous shape). If the aquifer goes, what happens next? Dust Bowl II, except this time without the dust? Depopulation, like the Dakotas have seen recently? Ghost towns of the high plains? What a strange future awaits!:

... Such was the case with a recent article from the Portales News-Tribune, located in eastern New Mexico's Roosevelt County, home of 80,000 dairy cattle. Hydro-geologist Amy Ewing reported at a public meeting (attended by exactly nine people) that the Ogallala Aquifer, upon which the area depends for its water, will be at an all-time low by 2020. Over the last 60 years, reported Ewing, the water table has dropped from about 18 feet below ground to 110 feet. When the saturation thickness of the aquifer's water (the amount of water from the aquifer's bottom to its top) reaches 30 feet, it becomes essentially undrinkable. According to Portales Mayor Orlando Ortega, Jr., "there are already areas in [Roosevelt] county where the saturation thickness ... is less than 40 feet." Ewing concluded by saying, "water levels are falling, and they are not going back up."

Who's the culprit? Ewing said irrigation agriculture (this includes dairies and the neighboring cheese plant) is responsible for most of the area's water usage. So that means the dairy industry's growth will be curtailed and forced to conserve water, right? Not according to the News-Tribune story. There are no plans at present to require irrigation farmers to conserve water or to even meter how much they use. If conservation is mandated, it will apparently fall on the backs of homeowners and non-agricultural businesses. The issue was summed up Irene Jones, a member of a Roosevelt County farming family: "The bottom line is the water will run out .... The land is not sustainable as cropland."

Revolution Imposed From Outside

Here is a pertinent historical analogy, comparing the Iraq War with Napoleon's conquests in Europe. In both cases, democratization was imposed from outside, and in both cases, for similar reasons, failure resulted:

But the Exodus story -- like that of the American Puritan migration and the civil-rights movement which it inspired -- shows us that oppressed people struggle to transform themselves and embark on their journey out of bondage with help only from God's “mighty hand and outstretched arm.” These are popular, bottom-up struggles, fraught with self-doubt and corruption but redeemed by indigenous spiritual and political leadership and the courage of countless ordinary people. No foreign army invaded Egypt to set off the Exodus, or England to loose the Puritan migration, or the American South to begin the civil-rights movement. (The federal marshals and National Guard troops in the South came long after the movement was well underway, and they were Americans.) And leaders such as Moses, John Winthrop, and Martin Luther King, Jr. came from the people they led. Bush is no Iraqi Moses, Dick Cheney no Aaron, Donald Rumsfeld no Joshua, Condoleezza Rice no Miriam.

A better model than the Exodus for Brooks’ sophistical exegesis of the Iraq War is Napoleon. Claiming the mantle of the French Revolution, he tried to use the French army to liberate other peoples who weren't ready to liberate themselves. Napoleon’s misappropriation of France’s already-fraught revolution resembles the Bush administration's use of the American republican tradition to justify its crusade to spread democracy to the Middle East. Brooks' conflation of Bush's crusade and American "national greatness" with the Hebraic covenantal tradition and its Puritan and American-revolutionary emulations is even more gross a miscarriage of any American civic-republican mission than Napoleon’s vision was of the France's revolution.

... If Berman, Krauthammer, Brooks, Beinart and other philo-tyrannical minds aren't going to keep on shouting triumphally about democracy amid the fog of war they helped to create, let them join Fukuyama in an exodus off the stage, rather than standing just inside the exit, bidding him good riddance. Let them stop deflecting their political and moral discomfort -- as some on the left have done, too -- into attacks on the few who’ve demonstrated some intellectual honesty amid so much intellectual disgrace.

The Chinese Rule, And We'd Better Get Used To It

Via Ray Fisher, comes this news story about just how little weight we carry with the Chinese. Just like the Americans swept the British out of financial power in the 20th Century, the Chinese seem set to do to us in the 21st, unless we stop destroying our manufacturing base, the ultimate source of economic power in an industrialized economy. Nationalized health care would help, removing a big monkey off the back of auto manufacturers, for example, and maybe even rein in health costs for the entire U.S. economy, but fat chance that happening until we actually destroy both Ford and GM in our current ideological pursuit of shrinking the national government until it can be "drowned in a bathtub."

Once again, President Bush had a difficult time wresting concessions from Chinese President Hu Jintao. And for good reason. Bush may be the leader of the world's only superpower, but when he talks to the Chinese, it's like discussing an overdue loan with his banker. There's not much leverage.

... At each of those meetings, the list of U.S. trade demands has been the same: China must stop unfairly depressing the value of its currency to gain trade advantages; it must halt rampant copyright piracy that is costing American companies billions of dollars in lost sales, and it must open its markets wider to U.S. exports.

The urgency of those demands has grown as America's trade deficit with China has soared; the trade imbalance hit another all-time high last year of $202 billion. That deficit, which represented more than one-fourth of America's record imbalance with the world in 2005, has sparked growing unrest on Capitol Hill and prompted a spate of bills to penalize China unless it halts trade practices that critics blame for contributing to the loss of nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs since Bush took office in 2001.

... But the blunt reality is that the Bush administration has little leverage to make China do more. Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the United States can no longer threaten to impose unilateral sanctions as the Clinton administration threatened to do in the mid-1990s in a copyright piracy fight of that era.

... The deficits have gotten so huge, that China's holdings have ballooned. China is now the second largest holder of U.S. government debt, with $265.2 billion in Treasury securities, and its total foreign reserves have just surpassed Japan's to become the largest in the world.

The willingness of the Chinese to hold that debt has helped to keep U.S. interest rates low, which has been a boon to American home buyers and other borrowers. But if for some reason the Chinese suddenly reversed policy and started dumping U.S. assets in favor of parking their reserves in other countries, that could have a serious impact on the U.S. economy by sending U.S. interest rates up sharply.

"Oklahoma!" Auditions

Went to Monday's audition. It was fun, although, because they're not doing any readings until Wednesday call-backs (just dance and singing Sunday and Monday nights), it lacked a bit of the buzz that builds after prolonged exposure to the theater crowd trying their best. These people, after all, know how to please! Sometimes the buzz gets overwhelming, and you have to retreat to places where inarticulate cave men grunt and scratch, in order to recover your equilibrium. In contrast, after tonight's efforts, we retreated to Baker's Square, where grunting and scratching seemed superfluous.

Musicals As Hell

This snippet from a review of "Cabaret" caught my eye:

We all see the same grinning, thumbs-in-suspenders hell onstage. We all witness the same grueling, psychotic meltdowns that afflict speakers mid-sentence, making them inhale deeply, turn to no one in particular and wail with embarrassing candor about their loneliness, all because an invisible piano told them to do it.

Sounds like it is time to reprint what Wallace Shawn once said in an interview with the New York Times Magazine (January 11, 2004):

Q. Do you follow Broadway theater?

A. No. I don't see that many plays, and for me, musicals are rarely pleasing. I feel the actors are being put through a kind of nightmarish labor. They're like animals being forced to pull heavy carts of vegetables at incredible speeds.

Q. Can't you make an exception for "Oklahoma" or "South Pacific"?

A. I saw "South Pacific" as a child and thought it was terrifying.

Ben And Jerry's Diss The Irish

And who says what Americans don't know about history won't hurt them?:

Ice cream makers Ben & Jerry's have apologized for causing offence by calling a new flavor "Black & Tan" ... "Any reference on our part to the British Army unit was absolutely unintentional and no ill-will was ever intended," said a Ben & Jerry's spokesman. "Ben & Jerry's was built on the philosophies of peace and love," he added.

The Black and Tans, so-called because of their two-tone uniforms, were recruited in the early 1920s to bolster the ranks of the police force in Ireland as anti-British sentiment grew. They quickly gained a reputation for brutality and mention of the militia still arouses strong feelings in Ireland.

"I can't believe that Ben & Jerry's would be so insensitive to call an ice cream such a name and to launch it as a celebration of Irishness ... it's an insult!" wrote one blogger on www.junkfoodblog.com.

...Ben & Jerry's, a unit of Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever Plc, prides itself on its commitment to friendly business. Its mission statement includes a pledge to show "a deep respect for human beings inside and outside our company and for the communities in which they live."

"Wizard Of Oz" - First Sunday Afternoon

Very impressive show! Excellent performances - Buffee Gillihan as the 'Wicked Witch,' Kevin Caravalho as the 'Scarecrow,' and Alissa Steiner as 'Dorothy' are just a few! I have very few complaints. Which is all the more remarkable when I remember watching a portion of the rehearsal, just a few days ago. Technical issues were still causing trouble then, and most of those seem to have been ironed out. Hard work, paying off!

"Thunder Strike"

Sledgehammer across the forehead. Repeat till dawn (Loss: about $1,360.00).

Loud Opinionated Queen Speaks Up

As I perused the selection at Tower Records, one person was hard to escape: an opinionated, earring-bedecked man in his 60's, with a quintessential queen-like manner. He decided to purchase the "Brokeback Mountain" DVD, and, by virtue of his loud, one-sided discussions with the store clerk, his decision was made known to all - I'm sure even the head-banging punkers listening to music samples on the store-provided headphones knew of it.

"That's quite a package you've assembled there," the man boomed longingly, as I bellied up to the checkout counter. Momentarily confused, I realized he meant my eclectic product selection, which included the movie "Rent", which is apparently now on DVD. The man then began expounding on the state of the movie musical.

He said "I haven't seen the movie 'Rent.' I saw the stage show, and I was sold!!! But I missed the movie." I said, "I don't think 'Rent' was in the theaters very long," and he began sipping the bitter venom in that injustice.

He continued, "They just stopped trying with movie musicals. I mean, the critics just don't give them a chance. I saw 'Phantom of the Opera, and I LOVED it, but the critics completely tore it apart. All because they made the Phantom handsome! Come on, people, it isn't a horror movie, IT'S A MUSICAL!!! When I was young, there were so many musicals. It was the Golden Age of movie musicals - 'Oklahoma!'; 'Sound of Music'; 'King and I'. Then they did 'Oliver!' in 1969, and then the 70's came, and THEN THEY JUST STOPPED TRYING!!!"

The clerk piped up, "there were some musicals in the 70's - 'Godspell'...," but the man was unpersuaded. Beginning again in the 60's, he continued "They gave Audrey Hepburn the role of Liza Doolittle in 'My Fair Lady', but what was that all about? - Julie Andrews OWNS that role!!! Then they started making mistakes - Barbara Streisand as 'Funny Girl': BOY WAS THAT EVER A MISTAKE! THEY STOPPED TRYING, and they hit a brick road (I think he meant a brick wall, but the stress of multitasking, talking and completing his credit card purchase, was leading him to start mixing metaphors).

Both him and the clerk wished me good luck as I left with my purchase, but I wondered later, what would the Loud Opinionated Queen be like, if inebriated? Or, say, in a court of law? Frankness can be funny: just ask my cousin, who took my recently-deceased nonagenarian aunt to the doctor, and she made the waiting room erupt in laughter, as she observed 'the girl behind the desk isn't doing any work at all!'

Everyone needs a Loud Opinionated Queen, if for nothing else, but to bounce decisions off of.

'The Merry Old Land of Oz'


(Left) The Lion, our brave and courageous leader (Steve Isaacson).

Pictures from dress rehearsal ('The Merry Old Land of Oz'). Opening TONIGHT at DMTC!

They defy gravity in the Emerald City!

The brilliant Scarecrow (Kevin Caravalho) gets refurbished.

Torrent of Torpedoes

There is an interesting use of language in the latest issue of Harpers Magazine, rather striking really, regarding the importance of Artificial Insemination (AI) in the factory farms of the pork industry. The approximate quote goes something like: AI has had much to do with turning hogs from "affable, potbellied forest dwellers into panicky, torpedo-shaped clones who can no longer live out-of-doors."

Nothing worse than cornering a panicky, torpedo-shaped clone, I suppose....

I take that back. It would be worse to corner one hundred panicky, torpedo-shaped clones.

Office Procedures Awry

Or, perhaps the first time a member of Congress spoke freely to a constituent:

Nobody expects to get a letter from a member of Congress that ends with an expletive.

But that's what happened when Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., recently corresponded with a resident of her southeast Missouri district.

The letter ended with a profane, seven-letter insult beginning with the letter a — "i think you're an. ..."

... "We cannot determine whether the addition to the letter was made by someone within the office or by someone with access to the office, but it is on my letterhead and the responsibility for it lies with me. A valuable lesson has been learned and new procedures will be adopted as a result."

... Connor said that Emerson personally signed the letter, dated Feb. 15. She included a handwritten personal message at the bottom: "PS - please forgive the delay in responding."

Physicists Respond

To President Bush's alarmingly dangerous pronouncements that "all options are on the table" with respect to Iran. Indeed, the Administration's reckless rhetoric has been giving me nightmares of late:

Their letter was prompted by recent articles in the Washington Post, New Yorker and other publications that one of the options being considered by Pentagon planners and the White House in a military confrontation with Iran includes the use of nuclear bunker busters against underground facilities. These reports were neither confirmed nor denied by White House and Pentagon officials.

... “We are members of the profession that brought nuclear weapons into existence, and we feel strongly that it is our professional duty to contribute our efforts to prevent their misuse,” says Hirsch. "Physicists know best about the devastating effects of the weapons they created, and these eminent physicists speak for thousands of our colleagues.”

“The fact that the existence of this plan has not been denied by the Administration should be a cause of great alarm, even if it is only one of several plans being considered,” he adds. “The public should join these eminent scientists in demanding that the Administration publicly renounces such a misbegotten option against a non-nuclear country like Iran.”

The letter, which is available at http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition/physicistsletter.html, points out that “nuclear weapons are unique among weapons of mass destruction,” and that nuclear weapons in today's arsenals have a total power of more than 200,000 times the explosive energy of the bomb that leveled Hiroshima, which caused the deaths of more than 100,000 people.

It notes that there are no sharp lines between small and large nuclear weapons, nor between nuclear weapons targeting facilities and those targeting armies or cities, and that the use by the United States of nuclear weapons after 60 years of non-use will make the use of nuclear weapons by others more likely.

“Once the U.S. uses a nuclear weapon again, it will heighten the probability that others will too,” the physicists write. “In a world with many more nuclear nations and no longer a ‘taboo’ against the use of nuclear weapons, there will be a greatly enhanced risk that regional conflicts could expand into global nuclear war, with the potential to destroy our civilization.

”The letter echoes the main objection of last fall’s physicists’ petition, stressing that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will be irreversibly damaged by the use or even the threat of use of nuclear weapons by a nuclear nation against a non-nuclear one, with disastrous consequences for the security of the United States and the world.

“It is gravely irresponsible for the U.S. as the greatest superpower to consider courses of action that could eventually lead to the widespread destruction of life on the planet. We urge the administration to announce publicly that it is taking the nuclear option off the table in the case of all non-nuclear adversaries, present or future, and we urge the American people to make their voices heard on this matter.”

Martian History - The Cliff Notes Version

Compared to Earth, a simple story, and quite ancient, really:

The planet formed about 4.6 billion years ago. During the first era, clay materials, which need abundant water and moderate temperatures, formed, the researchers said.

Then, starting about 4 billion years ago a second era began, marked by volcanic activity spewing sulfur into the environment. That was the start of a drying out of the planet.

Between 3.2 billion years ago and 3.5 billion years ago the third era began. It was marked by minerals dominated by ferric oxides, which have not been formed or altered by water, the researchers said.

Bede Griffiths

Via Gabe, words of insight from the British/Indian Christian/Hindu/Buddhist mystic:

Father Bede insisted that the time from age 40 on is what life is all about; all the rest was preparation for the flowering of the whole personality. For him, here the spiritual powers begin to develop and transcend the capacities of mind and body. These are not left behind but are integrated into what opens us to the Eternal, the discovery of the Absolute, the Transcendent, the deep Source of all Reality. This is the breakthrough to the mystical and this, Fr. Bede believed, is the great hope for everyone.

History, and George W. Bush

Sean Wilentz's article is just a taste of judgments to come from fellow historians:

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. ... Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

... How does any president's reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

... Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures -- an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities.

... Bush has more in common with post-1945 Democratic presidents Truman and Johnson, who both became bogged down in overseas military conflicts with no end, let alone victory, in sight. But Bush has become bogged down in a singularly crippling way. On September 10th, 2001, he held among the lowest ratings of any modern president for that point in a first term. (Only Gerald Ford, his popularity reeling after his pardon of Nixon, had comparable numbers.) The attacks the following day transformed Bush's presidency, giving him an extraordinary opportunity to achieve greatness. Some of the early signs were encouraging. Bush's simple, unflinching eloquence and his quick toppling of the Taliban government in Afghanistan rallied the nation. Yet even then, Bush wasted his chance by quickly choosing partisanship over leadership.

No other president -- Lincoln in the Civil War, FDR in World War II, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the Cold War -- faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonized the Democrats. Top military advisers and even members of the president's own Cabinet who expressed any reservations or criticisms of his policies -- including retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill -- suffered either dismissal, smear attacks from the president's supporters or investigations into their alleged breaches of national security.

... All the while, Bush and the most powerful figures in the administration, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were planting the seeds for the crises to come by diverting the struggle against Al Qaeda toward an all-out effort to topple their pre-existing target, Saddam Hussein. In a deliberate political decision, the administration stampeded the Congress and a traumatized citizenry into the Iraq invasion on the basis of what has now been demonstrated to be tendentious and perhaps fabricated evidence of an imminent Iraqi threat to American security, one that the White House suggested included nuclear weapons. Instead of emphasizing any political, diplomatic or humanitarian aspects of a war on Iraq -- an appeal that would have sounded too "sensitive," as Cheney once sneered -- the administration built a "Bush Doctrine" of unprovoked, preventive warfare, based on speculative threats and embracing principles previously abjured by every previous generation of U.S. foreign policy-makers, even at the height of the Cold War. The president did so with premises founded, in the case of Iraq, on wishful thinking.

...When William F. Buckley, the man whom many credit as the founder of the modern conservative movement, writes categorically, as he did in February, that "one can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed," then something terrible has happened.

... According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever -- with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006. Yet Bush -- sounding much like Herbert Hoover in 1930 predicting that "prosperity is just around the corner" -- insists that he will cut federal deficits in half by 2009, and that the best way to guarantee this would be to make permanent his tax cuts, which helped cause the deficit in the first place!

... But no president before Bush has allowed the press to disclose, through a close friend, his startling belief that he was ordained by God to lead the country. The White House's sectarian positions ... have led some to conclude that Bush has promoted the transformation of the GOP into what former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips calls "the first religious party in U.S. history."

... Reorganized under the Department of Homeland Security, the once efficient Federal Emergency Management Agency turned out, under Bush, to have become a nest of cronyism and incompetence. During the months immediately after the storm, Bush traveled to New Orleans eight times to promise massive rebuilding aid from the federal government. On March 30th, however, Bush's Gulf Coast recovery coordinator admitted that it could take as long as twenty-five years for the city to recover.

... The full report, of course, has yet to come on the Bush administration. Because Bush, unlike Reagan or Clinton, enjoys a fiercely partisan and loyal majority in Congress, his administration has been spared scrutiny. Yet that mighty advantage has not prevented the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges stemming from an alleged major security breach in the Valerie Plame matter. (The last White House official of comparable standing to be indicted while still in office was Grant's personal secretary, in 1875.) It has not headed off the unprecedented scandal involving Larry Franklin, a high-ranking Defense Department official, who has pleaded guilty to divulging classified information to a foreign power while working at the Pentagon -- a crime against national security. It has not forestalled the arrest and indictment of Bush's top federal procurement official, David Safavian, and the continuing investigations into Safavian's intrigues with the disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, recently sentenced to nearly six years in prison -- investigations in which some prominent Republicans, including former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed (and current GOP aspirant for lieutenant governor of Georgia) have already been implicated, and could well produce the largest congressional corruption scandal in American history.

... By contrast, the Bush administration -- in seeking to restore what Cheney, a Nixon administration veteran, has called "the legitimate authority of the presidency" -- threatens to overturn the Framers' healthy tension in favor of presidential absolutism. Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president's powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim.

The president's defenders stoutly contend that war-time conditions fully justify Bush's actions. ... But Lincoln, under pressure of daily combat on American soil against fellow Americans, did not operate in secret, as Bush has. He did not claim, as Bush has, that his emergency actions were wholly regular and constitutional as well as necessary; Lincoln sought and received Congressional authorization for his suspension of habeas corpus in 1863. Nor did Lincoln act under the amorphous cover of a "war on terror" -- a war against a tactic, not a specific nation or political entity, which could last as long as any president deems the tactic a threat to national security. Lincoln's exceptional measures were intended to survive only as long as the Confederacy was in rebellion. Bush's could be extended indefinitely, as the president sees fit, permanently endangering rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution to the citizenry.

Retro-UFO Convention

I wonder if the Jetsons will be there under the Landers dome?:

The life's work of a onetime aircraft engineer, the bizarre 38-foot wooden structure ... will be put to a more modest use — host to the first Retro UFO convention April 29.

The all-day affair offers a kitschy modern homage to the 1950s- and '60s-era reports of flying saucers that became the stuff of legend in this San Bernardino County outpost, organizer Barbara Harris said.

"It's a new chapter in ufology," said Harris, a graphic artist by trade. "When you go on that property ... there is something that touches your heart, that touches your soul."

Harris hopes to preserve and propagate this most mysterious slice of the desert's history, sharing the stories of those who once flocked to Landers, necks craned skyward.

To that end, next weekend's extravaganza will include talks by old-timers of strange encounters; tours of Giant Rock, now grimy with graffiti and missing a giant chunk that fell off in 2000; a contest for the best aluminum foil deflector beanie; old movies; classic cars; fire spinners; and a live poetic opera by a group called UFOetry titled "Did We Really Go to the Moon?"

Harris hopes the event will draw about 500 people to the 10-acre site; some proceeds will benefit the Morongo Basin Historical Society and help renovate the dome.

It's a fitting place to gather, considering the closest thing to a Retro UFO celebrity may be the Integratron's patron saint, engineer George Van Tassel. He built the dome for $150,000 over 18 years starting in 1957, claiming that he was inspired by a predawn meeting with a visitor from Venus named Solgonda.

What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits

For some reason, Rep. John Doolittle (R) simply can't see the obvious, that funneling campaign contributions directly into his family's pockets is unethical - a flashing-neon, Las-Vegas style invitation to rampant bribery. The professional fundraisers, of course, are more lax - they're OK with flat rates, but even they cringe when they see what Doolittle has done.

Bush Popularity Tanking

Even cheerleader Fox News registers him at 33%:

President Bush’s job approval rating slipped this week and stands at a new low of 33 percent approve, down from 36 percent two weeks ago and 39 percent in mid-March. A year ago this time, 47 percent approved and two years ago 50 percent approved (April 2004).

No President has ever tried to function at levels like this, not even Richard Nixon during Watergate. Indeed, even after Nixon resigned, he still had about a 10% approval rating.

So, what does Bush have up his sleeve? More war, this time with Iran? More Social Security reform? Tax simplification, even though, with recent anti-progressive changes to the tax code, we're already rather close to Steve Forbes Flat-Tax Nirvana? Building a wall at the border?

The long-term trouble with Rove's Bolshevik-style counterintuitive strategy of aggravating partisan differences is that it loses friends and earns you an ocean full of enemies....

Shows Opening Soon At DMTC, Starting With "Wizard of Oz"

"We're Off to See the Wizard..." (L-R) Jason "Clocky" McDowell (Tinman), Steve Isaacson (Cowardly Lion), Alissa Steiner (Dorothy) and Kevin Caravalho (Scarecrow) .


"Wizard of Oz" opens tomorrow night at DMTC! For some reason, YPT's "Suessical" opens two weeks from the opening of "Wizard of Oz" (May 6 - May 21) instead of the usual one week. Maybe this is connected with YPT outreach to Rumsey and Esparto, or maybe it's altogether unrelated:

DMTC's Opens Wizard of OZ on the Main Stage
Purchase Tickets for Wizard of OZ
The Davis Musical Theatre Company invites you to relive your childhood as you go over the rainbow with Dorothy and Toto to the merry old Land of Oz and meet the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion. Jan Isaacson directs this stage adaptation of the 1939 MGM movie musical, with musical direction by Steve Isaacson and choreography by Dian Hoel. Songs by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg include "Over the Rainbow," "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead," "If I Only Had a Brain" and "We're Off to See the Wizard."

Performances for WIZARD OF OZ will be on Friday and Saturday nights at 8:15 p.m., and Sunday afternoons at 2:15 p.m., from April 21-May 14, 2006 at the Hoblit Performing Arts Center, 607 Peña Drive, Davis. Tickets are $15 for general admission, $12 for students/seniors (55 & over), and $10 each for groups of 10 or more. The cast features DMTC newcomer Alissa Steiner as Dorothy, Kevin Carvelho as the Scarecrow, Clocky McDowell as the Tin Man, Steve Isaacson as the Cowardly Lion, Buffee Ann Gilliham as the Wicked Witch, Jill Wright as Glinda and Adam Sartain as the Wizard.

DMTC's Young Performers Open Seussical at the Hoblit (Sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank)
Purchase Tickets for Seussical
DMTC's Young Performers Theater Division, which is now underwritten for the 2005-2006 season by a generous donation from Wells Fargo Bank, will open the musical “SEUSSICAL,” based on the works Dr. Seuss, at the Hoblit Performing Arts Center, 607 Peña Drive. Jeni Price is directing the production. This show features all of your favorite Seuss characters: The Cat in the Hat, played by Elliot Mende; Jojo, performed by Hudson Shivley; Horton the elephant, played by Andrew Lemons; the Sour Kangaroo, performed by Julie Soto; Gertrude McFuzz, played by Jocelyn Price; and Mayzie LaBird, the selfish and self-centered bird, played by Anna Miles, to name a few.

Andee Thorpe Versus Portland

Or something like that:

Alright, Baseball Fans! I'm singing "The National Anthem" for the Rivercats on May 4th, 7PM against Portland!!!

Update: Andrea might have to shift dates - she will update as required. Here's what she says:

It is quite possible I may have to change dates for singing at the Rivercats game, as I am a finalist in the Flash 92.1 Jingle Singer Search, and Finals are May 4th... I am hoping I might switch dates for the game, otherwise I will either sing and dash to the competition, or forfeit my opportunity to sing for this month.

1979 - The Good Old Days

Cloudy's cousin, no doubt:

April 20, 1979 - President Jimmy Carter is attacked by a Killer Swamp Rabbit, while on vacation in Plains GA. The rabbit swam menacingly towards him, and he had to repel the ferocious creature with a paddle. There were no injuries. Press Secretary Jody Powell leaked the story to the press, and the White House had a lot of explaining to do.

Pristine

If we have a nuclear war, these things will survive:

Lance Nesta did what many people do when receiving a fruitcake - he set it aside, only to rediscover it more than 40 years later in his mother's attic. Nesta couldn't resist taking a peek at the cake, still in its original tin and wrapped in paper.

"I was amazed that it hadn't changed at all," he said.

Nesta's two aunts sent him the fruitcake in November 1962 while he was stationed in Alaska with the Army.

"I opened it up and didn't know what to do with it," Nesta said. "I sure wasn't going to eat it, and I liked my fellow soldiers too much to share it with them."

As best he can remember, he packed the cake with the rest of his belongings and shipped it home to Waukesha when he left the military a few years later. He recently rediscovered the boxed fruitcake in the attic of his mother's home in Waukesha.

What's With All These Strange Things?

What's with all the bald men, and the one's who shave their heads? I saw two bald, well-dressed guys walking together down the sidewalk, one in his 20's and the other in his 40's, almost like master and disciple. Cute, but what's with that?

And all the possums? Sparky cornered the cutest possum ever in the tool shed two nights ago (I engineered an escape for the baby), and last night I intervened to scare off a lumbering adult possum from crossing 21st Street before oncoming traffic rendered it into faux-armadillo chili. Where are they all coming from? They're almost as common as bald guys!

And K. says he knows someone who's building an Ark. But the rains finally seem to have stopped. So, didn't the guy get the memo? What's up with that?

And why do I sound like Andy Rooney? What gives?

There Are Only Two Kinds Of People

People who divide people into two kinds, and people who don't:

The research aimed to get beyond the recognized geek population and gauge interest in science among the roughly 150 million Americans age 18-54. About 40 percent of them, or 60 million people, were found to be "intellectually curious" about politics, the arts and science, all spending significant time with newspapers, related television channels and online media.

... Further study of the intellectually curious segment revealed three distinct groups. If you are reading this, you likely fit into one of them:

Science with Passion (14 percent of the 18-54 group): This group contains the geeks and nerds. They don't need to be prompted to share their love of science. "They might switch a cocktail party from politics to science," said OMD researcher Mike Hess in a telephone interview. They watch the Discovery Channel, the Science Channel and PBS. Prime interests: nature, medicine and the environment. This group is 53 percent female.

Money, Success and Science (11 percent of the 18-54 group): These people are also very interested in science. But they're unlikely to discuss it. The study did not reveal why, but they were also very interested in privacy and their higher interest in careers and success suggests they do not want to be perceived as nerdy, Hess speculated. They are notably interested in the Sci-Fi channel as well as science programming. Prime interest: technology. This group is 64 percent male.

Style with Science (15 percent of the 18-54 group): This high-income group follows science but would rather be throwing a party or out on the town than watching TV or having a quiet evening. They do like "Desperate Housewives," however. "If an opportunity arises at a cocktail party [to discuss science] they'll engage," Hess said. Prime interests: technology, weather and nature. This group is 57 percent male.

Hispanics in New Orleans

Part of the reason for the current backlash is that so many Latinos are showing up in places they didn't used to be before in significant numbers, like the South, and in particular, New Orleans:

Latino migration follows an economic logic. Immigrants are prominent in the construction sector; 40 percent of the workers who rebuilt the Pentagon after Sept. 11 were Latino. So, if you are looking to rebuild, you will hire Latinos, many of them illegal. New Orleans is a low-services, low-infrastructure, clean-up and construction-intensive city and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Most of the low-wage (often African-American) labor that served the city before Katrina struck left New Orleans afterward and did not return. Just as Chinese immigrants worked on the railroads out West, Irish immigrant laborers built much of the Erie Canal, and Italian immigrants put together much of the New York subway system, so will Latinos rebuild New Orleans.

Revolt Of The Servant Class

Steve Gilliard makes some good points regarding the big illegal (and legal) immigrant marches lately (dang it - I was in Phoenix for the last big march, but I missed it because my relatives and art friends sandbagged me with dilatory tactics to keep me out of trouble, like serving Virgil's Root Beer - the best root beer ever - and I simply ran out of time):

Hispanics inclined to support the GOP now see them as a group of racists. All because the GOP framed the immigration problem as one with brown people and not with bad laws and ineffective enforcement.

Once it became a matter of talk about not loving the US and destroying the culture, especially when so many Hispanics are serving in combat, was destined to turn them against the GOP. The GOP had made serious inroads into the Hispanic community outside California, who had been radicalized by Prop 187 which passed and then died in courts, until this.

What you basically have is the revolt of the servant class. All those Republiklans calling for the Army on the border and walls think the people who serve them will remain mute. And it isn't just the immigrants, either, it's the small business owners, the civil servants, the panoply of people who make a community work. They're all supposed to bow before the anger of the white ruling class and arm the border.

God forbid that they take pride in their heritage and petition the government for a redress of grievances. They should be rounded up.

Only problem, most of the people marching are as American as the Republiklans, and plan on voting to show that.

Roswell Autopsy Hoax

Apparently the creator of Max Headroom is implicated:

THE creator of Max Headroom, a 1980s television cyber-presenter, has claimed he was one of the hoaxers behind the Roswell film, the grainy black and white footage supposedly showing a dead alien being dissected by American government scientists after a UFO crash.

Alien Autopsy, a movie about the footage, is currently on release across Britain. It stars real-life television presenters Ant and Dec.

John Humphreys, a sculptor and consultant on Alien Autopsy who has also worked on special effects for Doctor Who, said it was he who made the models for the alien dissected in the original fake footage.

His confession, 11 years after the Roswell footage was first shown, will raise questions about the role of Channel 4, which unleashed Max Headroom on the world in the 1980s and bought the UK rights to screen the Roswell footage in Britain.

The footage was first exposed as a fake by The Sunday Times, but an estimated billion people still watched it around the world.

Rather than being shot in 1947 near Roswell in the New Mexico desert as previously claimed, the film was actually made at a flat in Camden, north London, in 1995.

When I was a kid growing up in New Mexico, the flying saucer sighting that caught everyone's imagination was the Socorro incident. As I recall, two off-duty Socorro lawmen said they had seen an alien craft of some sort taking off, sometime in the mid-60's. The older Roswell incident was only a minor footnote.

Of course, as years went by, and especially after about 1980, the Roswell incident grew and grew in the popular mind, celebrated on TV, in the movies, and even in song (e.g. Sheryl Crow). The Roswell incident is celebrated especially by the Roswell Chamber of Commerce, which has built an alien museum, "Welcome to Roswell" signs featuring green aliens, and other tourist attractions. In comparison, the formerly-compelling Socorro incident is now all-but-forgotten. I wonder why that is?

Good Luck and Bad Luck

Luck is so mercuric. Last night, I felt that I had to feed the need, so I ran up to Thunder Valley and picked up $1750. Even perennial loser E. did well, picking up $20. And A., who had to stay behind to meet a Craig's List contact, not only never made contact with the contact, but also somehow lost his billfold.

Next time, I bet the tides of luck will ebb instead of flow.

[Update: Even the bad luck isn't so bad ... the billfold was only misplaced, not lost.]

Safe Teeth

Mercury amalgams appear to be safe for kids:

Two long-awaited, government-funded studies found no evidence that dental fillings containing mercury can cause IQ-lowering brain damage or other neurological problems in children.

This is good news. I wasn't particularly worried anyway: the dentist has been systematically removing amalgam fillings from my mouth for years, and replacing them with white resin fillings, and I presume the same has been happening among others elsewhere as well.

Yesterday, I got my first white-gold crown for a molar. It looks cool. If I get enough such crowns, maybe I'll look like a rap star. And who knows if they are hazardous? If they are, perhaps I can finally achieve that level of idiocy I've been aiming for all these years. What did she-whose-name-shall-remain-xxxx call me: a 'failed nerd'? Injest enough toxics and maybe she'll end up being right!

Holly Cruikshank and "Movin' Out" in London

Originally from Phoenix, Mary Adams' former student, Holly Cruikshank, slays the London theater critics:

Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, the Who's Tommy - you can count the truly great rock musicals on the fingers of one hand. And to that exclusive list must now be added Movin' Out, featuring the songs of Billy Joel and the choreography of Twyla Tharp.

... Holly Cruikshank as Brenda has the most impossibly long legs you are ever likely to see and does things with them that seem to defy the basic laws of human anatomy. In Noel Coward's immortal phrase, she uses sex like a shrimping net - and catches every red-blooded male in the audience.

The Easter Bunny

Gets violent. Somehow, I know Cloudy would approve:

Some young children who saw the Easter Bunny this weekend at Edison Mall no longer see him as the lovable cuddly rabbit that delivers eggs and candy.

This 6-foot-2-inch, 280-pound bunny — also known as Fort Myers resident Arthur J. McClure, 22 — is facing battery charges after he allegedly punched a woman in the back of the neck and head during a fight near a photography set.

In boxing circles, that’s considered a rabbit punch.

... After the punch, Frechette pulled Johansson’s hair, and they both fell to the ground, according to arrest reports. That’s when McClure, who was still in the Easter Bunny costume, came to his wife’s aid. McClure took off the head part of the costume and then punched Johansson in the back of the head, police said.

Dozens of people watched the brawl, including about 15 children who were still in line, witnesses said. Johansson said many children had the look of “shock” on their faces. She said she doesn’t know how to explain what happened with the Easter Bunny to her 3-year-old niece.

... “It was horrible,” said Robert Johansson, whose son Victor, 8, also witnessed the fight. “They were trying to shield the kids from it. Now my son thinks the Easter Bunny is bad and went to jail.”

The Fungus Among Us

Is apparently on our contact lenses. I wonder if it's a nationwide problem, or mostly just a Floridian semi-tropical idiosyncracy?:

Spadafora, of Malden, Mass., is among the dozens of contact lens wearers in the United States left groping for glasses thanks to blurred vision and pain from Fusarium keratitis, a nasty fungal infection. Health authorities say most of the victims in 17 states were using ReNu with MoistureLoc eye solution to cleanse their contacts.

The outbreak also has many of the nation's 30 million soft contact wearers tossing out their ReNu-MoistureLoc bottles and turning to other products. Stores and optometrists are taking the solution off their shelves.

Optometrists around the country say they're inundated with calls from patients asking what to do. Florida has the highest number of cases in the country, with more than 50 reported so far.

... The stock price for Bausch & Lomb, the maker of ReNu, has plummeted -- even though not everyone is convinced the company's product is the real culprit, including Dr. Harry Zink, president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Bottles of the solution have been tested by Bausch & Lomb and independent doctors and no contamination has been found.

Fusarium is commonly found in plant material and soil in tropical and subtropical regions. Without eye drop treatment, which can last two to three months, the infection can scar the cornea and blind its victims.

The Chinese Are Getting Really Desperate

(Left) Photo from Drudge, and presumably they lifted it from some isolated little corner of HobbySpace somewhere. Cool view, from space, of an obnoxious Chinese dust storm.


The Chinese are getting really desperate when they start believing that cloud seeding will get them out of their jam:

Beijing will use artificial rainmaking to clear the air after a choking dust storm coated China's capital and beyond with yellow grit, prompting a health warning to keep children indoors, state media said Tuesday.

... The government was preparing to seed clouds to make rain to clear the air, state TV said, citing the Central Meteorological Bureau. It did not elaborate, and the bureau refused to release more information.

Storms carrying chalky dust from the north China plain hit Beijing every spring, but newspapers said this week's was the heaviest since at least 2001. The Beijing Daily Messenger said 300,000 tons of sand and dust were dumped on the city Monday.

... The dust reached Tokyo on Tuesday, the first time that has happened in six years, said Naoko Takashina of Japan's Meteorological Agency. Dust from China was found in more than 50 locations throughout the country, she said.

... In South Korea, a light layer of dust blanketed the country, but no ill effects were reported. Rain was forecast overnight Tuesday, and the weather bureau said it should clear the air.

The dust storms are expected to last through at least Wednesday in Beijing, neighboring Tianjin and a swath of north China stretching from Jilin province in the northeast through Inner Mongolia to Xinjiang in the desert northwest, the China Daily and other media said.

... China's government has been replanting "green belts" of trees throughout the north in an effort to trap the dust after decades when the storms worsened amid heavy tree-cutting.

Last week, the western Xinjiang region was hit by its worst sandstorm in decades, which killed one person and left thousands stranded after sand covered railways and high winds smashed train and car windows.

So Good, He Put His Name On Them

Mikhail Kalashnikov is jazzed that U.S. troops in Iraq are dropping their military-issue rifles in favor of his own (via GunGuys):

"Even after lying in a swamp you can pick up this rifle, aim it and shoot. That's the best job description there is for a gun. Real soldiers know that and understand it," the 86-year-old gunmaker told a weekend news conference in Moscow.

"In Vietnam, American soldiers threw away their M-16 rifles and used (Kalashnikov) AK-47s from dead Vietnamese soldiers, with bullets they captured. That was because the climate is different to America, where M-16s may work properly," he said.

"Look what's happening now: every day on television we see that the Americans in Iraq have my machine guns and assault rifles in their armored vehicles. Even there American rifles don't work properly."

Some U.S. troops in Iraq have reportedly taken to using AK-47s in preference to the standard-issue M-16. The Cold War-era gun, renowned for its durability and easy handling, is plentiful in Iraq.

All Wet

The government says we aren't losing wetlands to development (provided you count golf course ponds). Field and Stream isn't happy:

In fact, at the same press conference, the Fish and Wildlife Service reported a continued loss of 523,500 acres of natural wetlands during the same time period. So how could the nation have come out ahead if it lost more than half a million acres? Norton didn't try to hide the truth: The 715,300-acre “gain” was mainly artificial ponds.

While saying the nation's wetlands picture remains “precarious,” Norton added that "even ponds that are not a high quality of wetlands are better than not having wetlands." Now there's ringing endorsement of the president's program.

New Las Vegas Resort Opens

The new Red Rock Casino and Resort, located in Summerlin, not far from Suncoast, opens tomorrow.

The New Republic, And Me

The New Republic (TNR) has suffered a precipitous decline in readership, mostly because its Editors refuse to concede that they erred in regard to their support for the Iraq war.

Now, new Chief Editor Franklin Foer, has sent a missive to those of us who cancelled subscriptions, asking us to renew our subscriptions. Here is my reply:

Mr. Foer:

I was a loyal subscriber for a quarter-century. I endured the onslaught of neocon articles out of an interest in enlivening political debate. The ideas TNR promoted are directly implicated in the current Iraq debacle, and the Iran debacle to come. To resume my subscription, when your "murderer's row of journalists and intellectuals" aspires to be murderers would fly in the face of my own experience.

I am not "frustrated" by TNR: I have been betrayed by TNR. TNR MUST be annihilated. You are in league with Satan.

Respectfully,
Marc Valdez

Life of Crime

So, what would that life look like?:

The subject was raised last year in Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's bestselling book Freakonomics. In a chapter called "Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?" the authors described a drug-dealing operation as a bloated, inefficient organization. There were a few wealthy members at the top and a slew of underpaid minions at the bottom. They compared the gang's organizational structure to that of McDonald's.

... Dennis Chevalier, a "forensic investigative psychological criminologist" based in Fort Worth, Tex., says that while there is lots of cash circulating among the criminal element, much of it gets hung up in a kind of underworld bureaucracy.

"People aren't getting rich because there are too many people involved," says Chevalier. "There are payments to keep people quiet, there are cops to pay, security guards to pay, you have to pay the people who arranged the selling of the merchandise... There's not a whole lot of people getting rich."

Chevalier also points out that goods are devalued in an underground economy. The value of, say, a diamond priced at $10,000 in a store takes on a cash value of $2,000 on the streets.

But even if more money were flowing into the hands of criminals and gangsters, they probably wouldn't know what to do with it. It turns out criminals have poor money-management skills. The Oregon Mail Tribune reported in 2001 that only seven per cent of inmates in Oregon prisons have more than $200 in their bank accounts.

"They're not people who defer gratification in the first place," says Greek. "The money those people make, they just go spend it. It's not like they're investing in a nest egg and at the age of 40 they're going to go live in Tahiti. They don't have long-term goals like that.

"People doing robberies are basically living from one robbery to the next. They may go out and do a ton of robberies over a weekend, then they don't have to do any for a month and a half. But they know that when the money's gone, they'll have to go do some more robberies. That's as far ahead as it's planned."

... "They go through psychological trauma knowing what they've done to hurt people," says Chevalier "They start envisioning those things happening to them. They don't trust anyone and anything.

"That makes a great afternoon movie, but in real life the human mind cannot take that kind of heightened sensitivity and alertness and awareness all the time. There's sleep deprivation, a loss of appetite, you end up having paranoia to such a degree that you can't even function as a criminal any more."

Doo, Doo, Doo, Looking Out Ray's Back Door

"Hi Marc," Ray Fisher said. "We've been expecting you. Adam's out in the back yard. He's not terribly social tonight."

After introductions to everyone there watching "The Chronicles of Narnia" on the big home theater system, I excused myself and went out back to see Ray's (and Adam's) big project. Nice project, although it was a little hard to tell since it was well after sunset. Looked a little raw, but Adam had been yanking weeds just that afternoon, so that explained it. Still working on some things, like disguising the skimmer, but now I begin to see where Adam is coming from. Summer approaches, and pleasant back yard barbeques await.

Went out to Thunder Valley. Picked up $480. Interestingly, Adam seemed to like the social mix there, and loosened up.

"They're Playing Our Song" - Garbeau's Dinner Theatre

(Left) Katie Murphy


After dinner at Cattleman's this evening, I went with the DMTC crew to see "They're Playing Our Song" at Garbeau's. This Neil Simon/Marvin Hamlisch musical, set in the 1970's, focuses on the romantic relationship between Vernon Gersch (Jerry Lee), an established composer of popular ballads, and Sonia Walsk (Katie Murphy), a budding lyricist. The relationship is examined with the kind of frantic, psychoanalytic, neurotic intensity that Neil Simon (and Woody Allen) are famous for.

In my judgment, Simon's obsessive intensity interferes with the ability of the actors to tell a story. Instead of a tender bud germinating in the springtime of love, the romantic relationship is treated like a hamster on a rotary treadmill in a tight, little cage, travelling in circles. The actors are constrained by the playwright, and thus must find innovative ways to break free. The actors here did an admirable job of releasing the hamster of love.

Neil Simon found fame, of course, for "The Odd Couple": examining the friendship between Oscar and Felix, two very different people. Opposites do attract: in life, in love, and in theater too! Superficial differences aside, the romantic couple here have neuroses that are too similar, so Simon's approach falls flat.

Musically, the decade of the 1970's were a time of transition - denatured jazz, degraded Broadway, plastic pop, and erratic disco combined to create a soundscape of awesome kitsch. Like a talented musical warrior, Marvin Hamlisch should have been able to overcome all these weaknesses, but instead, each genre works to sandbag him: the combination is weaker than the sum of the parts. The pop music sounds like Neil Sedaka and Donny Osmond channeling Elton John. The disco is purely derivative.

So, Lee and Murphy and company worked with energy to overcome the weaknesses. Jerry Lee (who has been making a mark of late in local musical theater circles) sings remarkably well. Katie Murphy (who arrived in Sacramento two years ago from Pepperdine University) is blessed with a dancer's energy, and the two together attack the material with gusto. The script is full of rapid-fire, yet commonplace, dialogue that is a devil to memorize, but Lee and Murphy pull it off almost flawlessly. I remember, in particular, "I am an entity!" The scenic design, by John Coyne, is fine, and the costuming by Eileen Beaver is excellent. And the choreography by Debbie Davis Worth, ably executed by the company (which includes friends Ryan Adame and Celia Green), is sharp and clever. If I understand correctly, Debbie Davis Worth is active in other theater and dance ventures in the El Dorado area. I'd like to see more of her work soon.

After a weak start, Act I ends very well. Two events (a car that won't start; a mistaken rendezvous place) almost succeed at breaking Simon's self-referential navel-gazing. Murphy really flowers here, full of life and fun. It's almost as if the hamster of love is taken off its rotary treadmill and removed from its cage. I wondered if the hamster would be set free in Act II, or put in a radically-different place, like Alaska's Iditarod Sled Race. Alas, in Act II, Simon puts the hamster back into an even more-confining cage. The neurotic edge eventually dissipates into treacle, however. It's enough to make you wonder why anyone would ever want a 'relationship'.

So, what's an actor going to do? Energy and more energy! Lee and Murphy and company do an admirable job with a script that, unfortunately, needed professional couch time back in the 1970's. I'd sure like to see Jerry Lee and Katie Murphy perform again - they are both excellent!

The Bikini Turns 60

Thank goodness for the tinkerer in the boutique:

The beginnings, however, were inauspicious. In 1946, Louis Reard, a car engineer who had taken over his mother's lingerie boutique in Paris, met with disbelief when he brought out a range of two-piece swimsuits made from just 70cm of cloth.

Although similar garments had been worn in ancient times, they were considered shocking in Reard's day. Provocatively, his garment revealed the navel - a part of the female anatomy banned as indecent from Hollywood films under the so-called Hays Code in the 1930s.

Not even his great rival, the French designer Jacques Heim, had been so daring. Heim boasted that his swimsuits were small but still covered le nombril.

Reard went a step further. "My bikini is smaller than the smallest swimsuit," he said.

And he caused such a scandal that he was unable to find a fashion model to wear his creation, which he had named after the Pacific atoll where the US had just carried out its first peacetime nuclear test. His reasoning was, apparently, that his invention would produce an atomic-like burst of excitement.

In the end, he persuaded Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer, to pose with it on. But sales were disappointing.

With his invention denounced as immoral by the Vatican, and banned by Spain, Portugal and Italy, Reard went back to designing orthodox knickers to sell in his mother's shop.

Get Those Pills!

So, what's the street price of diuretics?

Last night, I was jamming to tunes on my headphones while here at work, and I thought "that band's horn player has got just the worst sense of rhythm." Then I realized the insistent honking was my car alarm (I had chosen to park outside the gated parking lot).

Things in my car had been rifled through, but it wasn't until later I realized they had taken my blood pressure medication (apparently the only thing they took). It's a cheap-o medication, and I didn't hesitate to leave it plain view (since I knew what it was), but I hadn't realized that, to grasping passersby, it might look valuable.

Last night, walking past the Runaway Stage Productions rehearsal space, I saw a sight that's unfortunately not unfamiliar, especially in warmer weather: crumbly windshield glass in the gutter, where some parked car was undoubtedly broken into fairly recently.

I hope thieves everywhere in Sacramento take fistfuls of my pills! They deserve the thrill of peeing every five minutes!

"How Can You Have Any Pudding If You Don't Eat Your Meat?"

Marketing to the ignorant (basically, people like me):

Cargill's campaign features labels that help consumers figure out what to do with a particular piece of meat, online promotions and advice, and cuts that make sense for single people or smaller households.

The campaign is based on the company's own research, which found that eight of 10 shoppers were baffled by the meat case at their stores.

There's always been high demand for tender cuts from the middle of the cow -- the rib, the loin and sirloin. But most of the meat is in the tougher chuck and round -- the shoulder and rump.

"We've got to sell all of it," said Herb Meischen, vice president of strategy and consumer development for Cargill Meat Solutions in Wichita, Kan.

Cargill's survey found that shoppers' knowledge of beef depended a lot on their age. Those older than 45 tended to have grown up with stay-at-home mothers. Those younger tended to have had working moms, like Hogan, and thus a big falloff in passing down culinary knowledge.

... For Meischen, the dilemma is how to educate consumers.

"What if you're 25 years old and you haven't had any skills, teaching or any desire to learn? What would stir you to experiment with an eight- to 10-dollar piece of meat?" he asked.

What Cargill is doing, as it promotes its Sterling Silver and AngusPride premium brands, is trying to unravel the mystery.

American History - What The Callow British Learn

Those who don't learn from the past are bound to repeat it:

In GCSE history for some reason we had to watch Kennedy getting shot. I never understood why, since we were learning about Russia at the time. Maybe the teacher had the decorators in or summat and just wanted to see a man die. Anyway, just as his cranium explodes in a shower of brain, blood and bone, Chris shouts in his best Southpark voice "Oh my god! They killed Kennedy" immediatly followed by the entire class shouting "You Bastards!" We never got to watch videos after that.

Acoma Geology

How did those congealed lava flows get there, along Interstate 40, near Grants, NM?:

The story starts with an unkind spirit who killed people and took their property because he was an expert gambler, Aragon said.

Twin warrior spirits decided to fight him by learning his gambling tricks and using them against him, Aragon continued.

"He gambled away all of his power to hurt the people," Aragon said. "In the end he lost his eyes, and lost the right to do what he was doing."

However, the unkind spirit was still mad, so he boiled pine sap to throw at the people of Acoma Pueblo, Aragon said.

"But because he was blind, he spilled it," forming the lava flows, Aragon said.

Why Did I Give Up TV?

Look at what happens when you watch too many reality shows!:

A woman's skeleton was discovered in her flat three years after she is believed to have died, it emerged today.

Joyce Vincent was surrounded by Christmas presents and the television and heating in her bedsit were still on.

The 40-year-old's body was so decomposed that the only way to identify her was to compare dental records with a holiday photograph.

Police believe she probably died of natural causes in early 2003, and was only found in January this year when housing association officials broke into the bedsit in Wood Green, North East London.

They were hoping to recover the thousands of pounds of rent arrears that had piled up since her death.

... Some mail was marked February 2003, and medication and food had February 2003 expiry dates, the spokesman said.

Ms Vincent was found lying on her back on the floor of the living room, which also doubled as a bedroom.

Dr Simon Poole, a pathologist, told the inquest he had been unable to establish the cause of death because the remains were "largely skeletal", but police do not regard the circumstances as suspicious.

John London Canned

It's tough at the top, but sometimes you just can't help being bad. Too bad for the Bay Area. I know John London was Peter P.'s favorite DJ, and acting at Peter's urging, I even managed to get a couple of minutes on John's show during the 2003 California Gubernatorial Recall campaign!:

Bay Area radio talk show host John London was fired over the weekend by KIFR-FM (106.9) after offering a reward on the air to have talk host Penn Jillette killed.

London said his offer was an ``obviously sarcastic'' response to a show that Jillette did attacking Mother Teresa and calling her a fraud.

A spokesman for CBS-owned KIFR declined to comment.

... On Wednesday, London spent two hours complaining about Jillette's show calling Mother Teresa a fraud. Thursday, at the beginning of his show, he offered ``5,000 dollars to the person that kills Penn Jillette. If he suffers, I'll make it $7,000,'' according to Cruz.

London, reached at his San Francisco home, said the bit was a satrical response to Jillette's attack.

``I was sickened by it,'' said London. ``What he said wasn't satire. He raped her morally, when she couldn't respond.''

Jillette did a bit on his show claiming that Mother Teresa had set up refuges for dying people for her own ``sexual kink'' and ``sexual kicks.'' He also claimed Paris Hilton was morally superior to the sainted nun.

``Paris Hilton is much too moral'' to play Mother Teresa in a movie, said Jillette, whose syndicated show preceded London's Wednesday. ``Mother Teresa was a really bad person.''

... This is the second big firing of a local host at the FM talk station, which calls itself ``Free FM.''

The once popular Darian O'Toole was let go last month after rambling incoherently and falling asleep on her show.

The station's format began in December, in response to Howard Stern leaving the network for satellite radio.

... Its radio ratings have plummeted since losing Stern, and its ``Free FM'' format was a bold attempt to interest a young audience in controversial subjects.

"Strange Science"

My sister got this painting this week from Deborah McMillion-Nering in Phoenix. She says it reminds her of mom: I think it reminds us both of watching "Science Fiction Thriller" every Sunday afternoon on Albuquerque's KOAT TV-7 when we both were kids.

When Life Hands You A Lemon....

Kylie Minogue is now sporting a nice-looking, quite-short hair style - like Sinead O'Connor's long-lost, less-judgmental sister.

Sentimental Journey

(Left) "Miss Murphy" - B-25 Bomber. Don't cross Miss Murphy!

Our family took a day trip and visited Falcon Field, where the Commemorative (formerly Confederate) Air Force is headquartered, among the citrus orchards of the East Valley, near Gilbert, AZ.

MIG 15 (Korean War vintage) and the Navy's primary World War II Trainer, the N3N "Canary" biplane.

Vietnam-War era MIG-21.

Sidewinder anti-air missiles beneath a McDonnell Aircraft Corp. F-4N Phantom II aircraft.

"Sentimental Journey": a restored B-17 Flying Fortress.

Looking like it's right out of "2001: A Space Odyssey": Ball turrett, for shooting below B-17 "Flying Fortresses." The gunner is unusually-cramped in this ball (and quite vulnerable, of course).

Ballet Class With Mary Adams

Deborah got this shot of me preparing to take class. I misunderstood: Deborah and James said 'oh, it'll be simpler - it's Matthew's syllabus.' I thought maybe formidable Mary Adams wasn't teaching, and some lax person named Matthew was the instructor instead. Wrongo! Matthew was the student, and Mary taught in her classic RAD (Royal Academy of Dance) manner. 'Solo Seals' exams are coming up, and people need to work!

If THAT was simpler, I'd hate to see the girls' syllabus!

Memorial Service

Memorial Board assembled by my sister Michelle for the service.






Hurry! The timer gives us ten seconds to get in place for the family portrait!




Family portrait (I'm taking this particular photo, so I'm absent).






Nephew Aaron.