We've Been Down This Road Before

U.S. troops in Mexico wouldn't help:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has long criticized the federal government on border security. ... When host Chuck Todd then asked Perry if the U.S. military should cross the border to help Mexico combat drug cartels, Perry said "we have to have use every aspect of law enforcement that we have, including the military."

"Obviously, Mexico has to approve any type of assistance that we can give them," Perry said. "But the fact of the matter is these are people who are highly motivated, with money, they are vicious, they are armed to the teeth. And I want to see them defeated. And any means we can to run these people off our border and to save Americans' lives, we need to be engaged in."

First, no conscious Mexican politician would ever approve a U.S. incursion. Second, the Mexican traffickers have the means to easily corrupt U.S. servicemen, and their leaders. Third, they have excellent technology - excellent weaponry, modern communications, anything you could ask. After all, many are former members of the Mexican military themselves, and they've received training on a par with that of the American military. Fourth, they know the battle field better. And we've been down this road before, in the last century, with General Pershing chasing Pancho Villa all around northern Mexico. That escapade didn't work well; why would a 21st-century intrusion?

Governor Perry likes to sound tough, but he has just no idea.... We could end up with American drug cartels run by heavily-armed American servicemen in league with their Mexican compatriots. Imagine Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix, controlled by mobsters with A-10 tank killer aircraft. Nice Interstate-10 there: it would be a shame if anything was to happen to it!

Looking For The Dessication

I decided to plot up 100 years worth of annual precipitation for Tahoe.

If the effect of global warming is dessication at Tahoe, I just don't see it yet.

Maybe it's more subtle than that....

Some have argued that global warming means increased evaporation, which would naturally mean more precipitation, and extremes of precipitation.

In any event, it looks like the effects of global warming might be complicated....

The Healthcare Is Too Damned High

The deficit worriers keep pointing at the social welfare network, and Social Security, but that's not where the problem is. The problem is Medicare, or, for that matter, anything at all associated with health care. THAT'S where the problem is!

The Circus Of Mutual Incomprehension Blunders On

Gloria Allred and Nicky Diaz are back in the news:

Defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman agreed to pay her former undocumented maid $5,500 Wednesday to settle a dispute that erupted during the heat of the fall campaign.

Nicky Diaz Santillan and Gloria Allred, her famous Los Angeles attorney, said they were pleased with the agreement.

It includes a statement from Whitman that she does not feel she owed her maid any money, and it is less than the $8,000 to $10,000 in wages, mileage and penalties that Allred had pursued.

But Allred called the agreement a "victory" that "vindicates us" because the check that Diaz Santillan will get is close to the entire amount she had initially sought – about $6,000.

...Whitman did not attend the conference with officials of the state Department of Industrial Relations, but an attorney and her husband, Griffith Harsh, did attend.

..."Dr. Harsh was very concerned. He wanted to make sure that what Nicky Diaz was saying, she actually believed," Brown added.

Harsh asked the former maid, Brown said, to "look him in the eye" and say she was really owed money. He said Diaz Santillan refused.

Dr. Harsh may have felt he won a kind of moral victory by Diaz' refusal to meet his gaze. In Anglo-Saxon culture, the refusal to meet someone's gaze is usually taken to mean dishonesty, or bad faith. Cynical Harsh probably concluded that it was just about the money anyway (even though the amount was tiny for a billionaire), and willingly signed off.

Nevertheless, in Hispanic culture, it's usually extraordinarily bad manners to meet someone's gaze directly. Since Diaz, in particular, had her integrity in question, she would never, ever, have met Dr. Harsh's gaze.

And so, once again, we run smack into the Anglo/Latino cultural divide, where distrust breeds.

Bev's Review Of "Annie"

She liked the show:

It was a near-sellout audience and everyone had a wonderful time.

...Enhancing solid performances by many in the large cast, there are a couple of stand-out performances by actors in minor roles...

Little Megan Spangler, who plays the youngest orphan, Molly, in addition to being cute as a button, has a real flair for comedy and brings down the house with her antics.

...Also, Eimi Taormina, who plays several small roles, sparked up the stage, particularly with her solo as the 'star-to-be' during the song 'N.Y.C.'

...Maldonado has a winning personality and good rapport with Cross.

The other orphans - Lizzie Carey as Tessie, Claire Deamer as Kate, Devon Hayakawa as July, Emma Kehr as Duffy and Natalie Month as Pepper - are all quite good and have their choreography down pat.

Cross is outstanding as Warbucks, who doesn't have a clue about the real world, but has a huge heart. It is clear that he grows to love this Little Orphan Annie who has come into his life.

Monica Parisi is the terrible Miss Hannigan, running the orphanage like a concentration camp and whose life is 'plagued with little girls.'

...Markel gives an interesting performance as Rooster. Most actors in that role are tall and thin and try to create the body language of a barnyard fowl. With a bit more weight on him, Markel instead mimics the cartoon's Foghorn Leghorn, and does it well.

Christina Rae is Grace Farrell, Warbucks' secretary, who is obviously secretly in love with him, and who becomes Annie's friend and protector.

Michael Manley has a suitably prominent jaw as FDR and, fortunately, does not try to mimic the Bostonian accent too heavily.

A Bundle Of - Not Joy, Exactly, But....

The alley behind my house sports heavy traffic from the homeless, and the merely thrifty, as they plunder the recycling containers, 24/7. So, it was no surprise that I found a bundle of folders last night in the alley, dropped in haste, or by accident, by some nocturnal garbage picker.

In the better light of morning, I took a closer look at these folders. The covers of these school folders feature several examples of artwork extolling the virtues of abstinence as a way of controlling teen pregnancy.

I believe in serendipity, and the chance appearance of these folders is making me wonder if God thinks I should be in the business of preaching teen abstinence. If so, God has an unusual sense of humor, but who am I to know his intentions?

I wonder what I should do with these folders? They are still in the alley, waiting the next serendipitous event.

Lake Tahoe Forecasts

I was real happy to see this latest study come out regarding Lake Tahoe. One of the authors is John Reuter, whose daughter Jenny was so prominent in local musical theater circles just a few years ago (until she went away to college).

Nevertheless, I have trouble with the most-newsworthy projections of the study (the ones that happen to fall outside John's specialty) regarding the climate changes at Lake Tahoe over the next century:

About 55 percent, on average, of the precipitation at lake level in Tahoe now falls as snow. By 2055, the study predicts snow will drop to about 45 percent – and to just 30 percent by the end of the century.

The result: a shorter ski season, and perhaps a spring without snow-capped peaks ringing the lake, said Robert Coats, lead author of the study and a visiting scholar at UC Davis.

"We're looking at a shift from snowfall to rainfall, increased melt rate, and earlier melt," Coats said. "Once you lose the snowpack, then you lose the late-spring water supply. So drought could begin earlier in the year."

Since global warming is expected to be concentrated in polar regions, the first-order climatic effect should be warming, with a retreat of the jet stream farther north. In other words, the northern Sierra should become more like the southern Sierra. But snowfall is still plentiful in the southern Sierra, so why the long faces here?

I've started looking at the report itself, and I'm struck at what a strong, lower-precipitation impact they are forecasting. They put a lot of faith in their GCMs, but I can't help but wonder if weaker wintertime precipitation might mean stronger summertime precipitation from a stronger Southwestern monsoon. These days, the monsoon reaches the Tahoe region only imperfectly in summer, but the retreat of the jet stream might change that balance. And even in winter, you might see more activity from cutoff lows than you do today. Just because the jet stream retreats it doesn't mean it stops raining altogether.

I'll start looking at this interesting question in more detail....

LDS Weighs In With The Utah Compact

People are now familiar with the people supporting tighter immigration laws, and the people who don't. But in Utah, these people have to fight around the looming presence of the LDS Church, which has its own ideas how things should work, and which, almost always in Utah, gets its way:

The compact calls for a federal fix to immigration reform and urges Utah leaders to avoid policies that would unnecessarily separate families; that would redirect police resources to the prosecution of civil, rather than criminal, offenses; and would sully Utah’s reputation as a “welcoming and business-friendly state.”

The LDS Church, in turn, emphasized three principles of its own:

• Love thy neighbor: “The Savior taught that the meaning of ‘neighbor’ includes all of God’s children, in all places, at all times.”

• Strengthen families: “Families are meant to be together. Forced separation of working parents from their children weakens families and damages society.”

• Observe the law: “Every nation has the right to enforce its laws and secure its borders. All persons subject to a nation’s laws are accountable for their acts.”

Airport Security In Israel

The Israeli approach to airport security is a lot different than ours:

"First, it's fast — there's almost no line. That's because they're not looking for liquids, they're not looking at your shoes. They're not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you," said Sela. "Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes ... and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys."

...So. Eight years after 9/11, why are we still so reactive, so un-Israelified?

Working hard to dampen his outrage, Sela first blames our leaders, and then ourselves.

"We have a saying in Hebrew that it's much easier to look for a lost key under the light, than to look for the key where you actually lost it, because it's dark over there. That's exactly how (North American airport security officials) act," Sela said. "You can easily do what we do. You don't have to replace anything. You have to add just a little bit — technology, training. But you have to completely change the way you go about doing airport security. And that is something that the bureaucrats have a problem with. They are very well enclosed in their own concept."

..."But, what can you do? Americans and Canadians are nice people and they will do anything because they were told to do so and because they don't know any different."

The Rate Of Inflation Is Amazingly Low

Bristol Palin, And All

I can't believe I don't have an opinion about Bristol Palin on 'Dancing With The Stars', but it's only because I haven't been watching (my blessed state of no TV). She might be a good dancer; she might not be a good dancer; I don't know. Ballroom dancing is a strange sport/art.

Nevertheless, it's only fair to point out that she probably has a large corps of supporters, and that corps may be motivated as much by politics as by dancing. So what else is new? Ever been to a major ballroom dance competition? It's a hoot!:

"Let the conspiracy theories begin!" said Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog.

"After Tuesday night, it should be plainly obvious to anyone even barely paying attention to the 11th season that ABC and 'Dancing With the Stars' have -- for want of a better phrase -- a 'Bristol problem,'" wrote Verne Gay in Newsday.

Jimmy Kimmel called Brandy the latest victim of "Hurricane Bristol" and suggested "an organized Tea Party voting bloc" was behind Brandy's elimination when the ousted singer and her partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy appeared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

Perhaps the most violent reaction came from a 67-year-old Wisconsin man, who had a standoff with authorities and was charged with second-degree reckless endangerment when he reportedly shot his television after Bristol Palin's performance, citing that "he didn’t think she was a good dancer."

Taylor Swift Is Always Surprised

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Micail Buse - Curtain

Left: 'The Dream' from Woodland Opera House's 1997 production of "A Fiddler On The Roof". Foreground, from left to right, Elizabeth Monet Nilsen as Fruma Sera, Charlotte French as Golde, Joseph Schulte as Tevye, Julie Bock as Grandma Tzeitel, and Micail Buse as the Ghost Rabbi. In the background, the Ghost Chorus (which includes Robert Valencia, Karen Gay, Rich Verdugo, and Peter William Wagner, among others).



Jason Hammond sends this via E-Mail today:

Last night Michail Buse took his final bow. I work with his Sister-in-law and I told her I would let people know. I don’t have any further information, but if I receive any, I will pass it on. If you know others who knew him please let them know as well. I know I’m not nearly capturing all the people who would want to be aware.

Micail has been a stalwart supporter and fixture at the Woodland Opera House for years, and he will be missed.

Micail played the Rabbi in the first community musical theater show I ever did: Woodland Opera House's "Fiddler On The Roof", in 1997. Interesting guy!

During rehearsals, for the "To Life!" dance sequence, Micail insisted that that he be flung into the furniture - in particular, into the bar. "I know how to do pratfalls," he insisted. Generally he did OK getting flung around in "To Life!", but one night during a live performance he hit either the bar or a table top square-on with his face, and broke his nose. After exitting the stage, he headed downstairs into the dressing room, and had the unpleasant task of dealing with all the blood. He had to come onstage again shortly as the Ghost Rabbi in "The Dream" musical number, so he swiftly got out his latex and plastered it all over his face, to both shore up his shattered probiscis, and to hide the blood. He did not miss his entrance.

Ever the optimist, Micail saw the advantages of a broken nose. This was the second time he broke his nose. The first time he broke his nose, years before, it had healed slightly-crooked, so that one nostril was sealed. Breaking his nose again liberated both nostrils, and made breathing easier.

Everyone loved Micail, and he will be missed....

Volatile Templates

Yesterday, I had an E-Mail discussion with someone from the Sacramento Bee who is unhappy with my tendency to quote what she considered overlong sections from the writings of other people on my blog. I do tend to get ramblesome sometimes, but long or short, I always make sure proper citations are made. Shorter tends to be better for the readers, but not always.

What worried me more, however, is that Blogger's usual BLOCKQUOTE method of distinguishing quoted work is sometimes not adequate to make quoted work distinct from the regular text. That causes confusion.

So yesterday, I went shopping for better templates, and experimenting with the one I have. I haven't found a template I like better yet, though. And the one I have seems pretty volatile.

Over the last year, I've been having trouble making sure the sidebar always appear besides the main text. Sometimes, for puzzling reasons, the sidebar shifts to the end of the main text. Sometimes the shift appears associated with certain overwide videos, but sometimes not.

Yesterday, I found I could make the sidebar shift up or down, just by taking the posted story on "Twins", and making the quoted text appear either in italics, or not. That's a very volatile template there! I don't understand it, but it makes me loathe to experiment more. Maybe it's better to start the blog over again....

Idle Hands, Busy Hands; It Hardly Matters In The Devil's Workshop

E.: MMMMAAAARRRRCCC! Open this bottle of wine!

M.: Why do you need some wine?

E.: I'm wrapping lumpia!

M.: So?

E.: It's BBBBOOORRRIIIINNNGGG! It's not even as interesting as folding clothes!

Phishing Through Facebook

I just got a message from Elena regarding a sort of profile statcounter that required an E-Mail and password on a web site that seemed to almost looks like Facebook. I almost, almost fell for it. It's apparently a phishing expedition. Elena is just as baffled as anyone.

Civic Theatre West Meeting Is Called

Via E-Mail, here is a call for support:

The Board of Directors of Civic Theatre West is calling the community together for a Town Hall Meeting and Public Support Rally this Friday, November 19th at 7:00pm in the Roseville Theater. The purpose of this meeting is to save Civic Theatre West from permanent closure. A snapshot of the theatre's status will be presented along with testimonials to the value of what we intend to save. A Plan for saving the theatre will be put forth to the community and the necessary funds will be solicited. We invite all season ticket patrons, donors, sponsors, actors and any interested parties to attend.

Please join us! This is your community theatre and we need to pull together to save it!

Twins

Developing weird story:

TWO Australian twin women have been shot at a Colorado shooting range in a suspected suicide pact that left one dead and the other critically wounded.

The 29-year-old siblings were simultaneously shot in the head at around 2.50pm local time on Monday at the Family Shooting Centre in Cherry Creek State Park southeast of Denver, the Denver Post reported today.

...Surveillance videos did not show the incident itself but suggested that there was no third party involved in the double-shooting, KDVR-TV said.

Intel Air Pollution Worry

Photo Caption: Residents for Clean Air and Water and Southwest Organizing Project hold a demonstration in front of the Intel factory in Rio Rancho, N.M.,. circa 1999. (Courtesy Corrales Comment)










This story of Intel-related air pollution is of interest to me, mostly because I grew up in the town of Corrales, New Mexico.

I'm unpersuaded as yet that they a major menace on their hands, even though six of the eight incidences of pulmonary fibrosis were apparently located near the plant (where is that map they speak of online?). There's just so many ways to get pulmonary fibrosis!

Indeed, I may be vulnerable to pulmonary fibrosis, and may even get asbestosis for all my troubles. I remember, in high school, buying a portable hair dryer that had asbestos insulation in it. I pointed the hair dryer at my face on cold winter days, just for the warmth. If you pointed the hair dryer at a black cloth, you could catch enough asbestos dust to inspect. And when I returned the hair dryer to J.C. Penney's in 1975, in a nationwide product recall, they whisked that baby away in a flash. Lots of that asbestos is still in my lungs, waiting to cause trouble as I enter old age, and lots of people had the same sort of experiences. No need to wait for Intel to make trouble!

Associating disease with environmental exposure is exceedingly difficult, because people move around so much, and there is a lot of noise in the medical data. To get unambiguous results you need serious impacts. The impacts here may not be big enough and intense enough to escape debate. In fact, I hope the data are never so clear as to be unambiguous (because that would mean lots of sick people!)

Nevertheless, I will watch this matter with interest. Intel emits other air pollutants too. Heck, I might even be something like a control rat for the folks in Corrales: I grew up there, but moved away in 1980, before Intel's emissions were significant:

Located just north of Albuquerque, N.M., Corrales is a quaint village of about 7,300 residents that has dozens of eclectic shops, restaurants and art galleries.

Just to the west, in Rio Rancho, sits a massive computer chip manufacturing operation owned by Intel Corp., one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world.

...Locals have complained of bad odors emanating from the fabs and report disturbing symptoms such as headaches and coughing, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting and even seizures, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in Atlanta, which has studied possible health impacts of the site.

And some believe a chemical used in the factories -- hexamethyldisilazane -- is giving people a fatal lung disease called pulmonary fibrosis after it is burned by thermal oxidizers and released into the air.

"It turns into crystalline silica," says Barbara Rockwell, a resident of nearby Placitas who wrote a book about the environmental impact of the Intel plant titled "Boiling Frogs: Intel vs. The Village."

...Rockwell and others have counted eight cases of pulmonary fibrosis in Corrales they claim were caused by crystalline silica emissions from the Intel plants. Half of those diagnosed with the disease have already died, including a former village councilman who blamed Intel for the disease.

...The report cast serious doubt on whether Intel's thermal oxidizers actually spew out crystalline silica, since the stacks operate at 1,385 degrees Fahrenheit on average, which is about 100 degrees lower than is required to make the dangerous material.

"We strongly believe that Intel's air emissions are not causing adverse health effects," said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. "We will continue to work with the community and government agencies to monitor odor complaints and other concerns and seek mutually agreeable solutions."

A Trend Starts Here?

In 2004, when I 'cut the cord', I had no sense of being at the start of a trend.

But it looks like I was just premature:

Cable networks lost 130,000 subscribers in the third quarter, the industry’s second straight quarter of sequential declines, estimates Credit Suisse. The pay TV industry, which up until the until the second quarter of this year had never in history posted a decline in customers from one period to the next, could end up losing 1.5 percent subscribers annually if the shift to Internet providers continues, the research firm said.

...Where did cable companies go wrong? Credit Suisse’s analysis suggests your parents’ complaints may have been right all along: there are just too many channels. Instead of focusing on tiered offerings for customers with different viewing habits, they just kept on loading on content.

Way Off The Reservation

Matthew Yglesias comments that David Frum is way off the reservation. Matthew is correct - David Frum is making a lot more sense these days - now that he doesn't have to carry baggage for the entire conservative movement:

If Republicans are to act effectively and responsibly, we need to learn more positive and productive lessons from the crisis.

Lesson 1: ... Too often, conservatives dupe themselves. ... Every day, Beck offers alternative knowledge — an alternative history of the United States and the world, an alternative system of economics, an alternative reality. As corporate profits soar, the closed information system insists that the free-enterprise system is under assault. As prices slump, we are warned of imminent hyperinflation.

...Meanwhile, Republican officeholders who want to explain why they acted to prevent the collapse of the U.S. banking system can get no hearing from voters seized with certainty that a bank collapse would have done no harm to ordinary people.

...The same vulnerability to closed information systems exists on the liberal side of U.S. politics as well, of course. But the fact that my neighbor is blind in one eye is no excuse for blinding myself in both.

Lesson 2: ... Whatever the reason, the intellectual right accords a deference to the wants and wishes of the financial industry that is seldom accorded to agriculture, manufacturing, transport or retailing.

But it’s not always true that what’s good for Goldman Sachs is good for the economy, or vice versa. Nor is what “the markets” want the same as what free-market economics require. ... And yet nearly 80 years after the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, influential conservatives — including The Wall Street Journal editorial board — argued that trillions of dollars of derivatives trading should be exempt from regulation.

Lesson 3: The economy is more important than the budget.

...If Republicans reject Obama-style fiscal stimulus, what do they advocate instead? ...But if fiscal stimulus leads to socialism, and quantitative easing leads to Nazism, what on earth are we supposed to do? Cut the budget? But we won’t do that either! On Sean Hannity’s radio show, the Republican House leader John Boehner announced just before the election that one of his first priorities would be the repeal of the Obama Medicare cuts.

Lesson 4: Even from a conservative point of view, the welfare state is not all bad. ... Social Security, unemployment insurance and other benefits were designed as anti-Depression defenses, “automatic stabilizers” as economists called them.

... Retirees who lost their savings had to cut back painfully. But at least their Social Security checks continued to arrive. People who lost their jobs might lose their homes. But they continued to buy food and clothing. And the industries that sold those basic necessities continued to function — unlike in 1929-33, when the whole economy collapsed upon itself. ....

Lesson 5: Listen to the people — but beware of populism. ... American populism has almost always concentrated its anger against the educated rather than the wealthy. So much so that you might describe contemporary American politics as a class struggle between those with more education than money against those with more money than education: Jon Stewart’s America versus Bill O’Reilly’s, Barack Obama versus Sarah Palin.

...The message we hear from some Republicans — “this is no time for compromise” — threatens to extend the failures of governance for at least two more years. These failures serve nobody’s interest, and the national interest least of all.

Tunnel Vision

Driving to work, I noticed a police car pull up beside me. Then I noticed the car in front of the police car do an unsignalled lane change directly in front of me. "Foolish driver," I thought, "it's a bad idea to do an unsignalled lane change directly in front of a cop!"

My bad. Unbeknownst to me (because it was just outside my range of vision), the cop car already had his lights on. The lane change was unsignalled because the driver was rattled about being pulled over for a traffic stop. All three our cars had to do an awkward series of lane changes to make the traffic stop happen.

Rick Perlstein Discusses The Tea Parties

Quite interesting!



Rick Perlstein's keynote address at the Berkeley Conference called "Fractures, Alliances and Mobilizations in the Age of Obama: Emerging Analyses of the 'Tea Party Movement'"

Sacramento Press' Review Of "Annie"

This is my first encounter with the Sacramento Press - an online publication of recent vintage (I remember providing the reviewer with his tickets). I hope we see them more often!

Deborah Takes Her Work On The Road

Deborah McMillion-Nering (an artist distinguished, among other things, by use of avant technologies) startled me with her use of newish, faddish technology (in this case, Facebook) last night to get in touch with me:

How ARE you! Long time no hear. Thought this'd help in a small way.

I replied:

(oh no! I have been observed! - chitinous skittering sounds -)

Hi Deborah! I just awoke after a coughing fit triggered by a Facebook nightmare.

(I dreamt the Facebook corporate behemoth offered a microorbit named 'Joe's Tarantula', available for commercial messages for a nominal fee, to circle a 'Friend' named Joe, in perpetuity. So I desperately reach for Facebook in the wee hours, only to find your greeting. There is a message here somewhere, but I can't divine it.)

I am fine. How are you?

Deborah replies:

All good. James taught class for 6 weeks. Doug is replacing all our windows w/double panes, one every weekend. ...and I have to go to VEGAS!!!! ahhhhhhhhh

Vegas? Vegas! VEGAS, BABY!:



This collection, featuring 10 artists from around the world, representing completely different backgrounds, demonstrates just what is possible.

Attendees of Autodesk University can visit the Mobile Art Gallery live at Mandalay Bay, South Conference Center, Level 2, in the Manufacturing Lounge, November 30 - December 2, 2010. For more details or registration information.

The AU Mobile Art Gallery is curated by Susan Murtaugh and includes the art of:

Matthew Seydel Connors
Deborah McMillion-Nering
Shaun Mullen
Susan Murtaugh
Salvador Navarro
David Newman
Gabriel Palacios
Benjamin Rabe
Francesco Salvati
Starr Allen Shaw

For more information about the contributing artists, you can download an e-mag from magcloud.

A virtural experience will also be available online, so you don't have to be there to experience the art, the artists, and the event. A dedicated Virtual Art Expo Lounge will host freshly updated video content direct from Las Vegas. More details to be posted prior to the event.

Invisible Assault

This was a quiet weekend, focused mostly on helping out at DMTC's Box Office for opening weekend of "Annie" (while Steve was still at home recuperating from his latest tangle with the medical system).

Nevertheless, other things bubbled on under the radar. Attended Dian Hoel's dance classes at Sierra 2 on Saturday. Confabbed with Joe the Plumber about fixing the porch, but decided to postpone that work for a few days. Got out the ladders and started cleaning gutters. I got the south and west sides of the house done. Raked leaves.

The alley behind the house always features homeless people of various sorts and temperaments passing by at all hours. I handed out $2.00 to one rheumy-eyed fellow who looked like he just woke up. Sunday night, I could hear another fellow with a shopping cart shouting menacing obscenities behind my house. I waited until he passed, then rolled out my leaves that I had collected in the toter, and set them in the alley. In the distance, I saw the same menacing fellow taking notice of my activities. It made me uncomfortable.

I wish I knew more about California birds, but there is a kind of small bird (kinglets?) that have an eerie, ringing call that come around sometimes. While I was perched at the top of a ladder Sunday afternoon, they came around, and while remaining invisible in the tree's canopy above, they began pelting me with their little wild bird poos as they sang their eerie song. It seemed strange to be under invisible assault in the middle of the day, and serenaded too, but it's part of the charm of living in the Curtis Park neighborhood.

Bill Richardson Hesistating On Pardoning Billy The Kid

I'm sure it looks like a pardon would be a media event winner, which no doubt attracts Bill Richardson like a light attracts moths, but pardoning Billy the Kid is a bad idea. Billy the Kid had his appealing qualities, and even had a heyday as a genuine hero for the Hispanic population during New Mexico's Lincoln County War, but he was also, at times and places, a vicious killer. He killed jailers in the line of official duty. He even provoked a drunk braggart (who didn't know who he was talking to) into saying he'd challenge Billy the Kid to a duel. The Kid then surreptitiously stole the fellow's gun and emptied it of bullets - then he unmasked himself as Billy the Kid and challenged the hapless fellow to a duel. I mean, that's just cruel....:

Time is running out for pardoning New Mexico's most famous outlaw, despite a continuing campaign by people who think he's a relative or at least a kindred spirit.

Early in his first term, Gov. Bill Richardson hinted he was looking into posthumously pardoning William H. Bonney, also known as Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim or "Billy the Kid."

...But with less than two months left in his second and final term, Richardson "has yet to decide whether he's even going to proceed with a review of the Billy the Kid issue," gubernatorial spokesman Eric Witt said recently. "He still has not come to a decision which direction if any he wants to go on this thing."

...The main argument Billy the Kid fans use to justify a posthumous pardon is that territorial Gov. Wallace, the Union general who wrote the novel Ben Hur while living in the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, promised one to him. But William Wallace, the former governor's great-grandson, who lives in Westport, Conn., recently said there is no historical evidence of that.

The story of the promised pardon apparently stems from a letter Billy the Kid wrote to Wallace from the Santa Fe jail on March 2, 1881, imploring him to walk over to visit him in his cell, minutes away, and offering to testify about a murder if Wallace would "annul" murder indictments against him for killings during the Lincoln County War. "I have no wish to fight anymore," Bonney wrote in the letter now in the collection of the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library. "Indeed I have not raised an arm since your proclamation of 1878 demanding that hostilities cease in the Lincoln County War."

But the next month, a judge in Mesilla sentenced Bonney to hang for killing a deputy. On April 28, 1881, while awaiting execution in Lincoln, Bonney escaped by killing two deputies with a pistol believed to have been left for him in a privy. By the end of May, Wallace had left New Mexico to accept an appointment as minister to the court of the Turkish sultan, without ever acting on the pardon.

Six weeks later, on July 14, 1881, Sheriff Garrett shot down Bonney in a dark bedroom of the residence of Peter Maxwell, son of land baron Lucien Maxwell, near Fort Sumner.

When the pardon was proposed in 2001, then-Gov. Gary Johnson, Richardson's predecessor, quickly announced he would not consider a pardon. That was partly based on an analysis of the situation by Charles Bennett, a historian and former deputy director of the state History Museum.

"By the end of Billy the Kid's life he had performed other misdeeds beyond those committed at the time of his discussion with Gov. Wallace, and most likely knew he was no longer in a position to expect a pardon or exemption from prosecution," Bennett wrote. "While it is accepted that the myth and image of Billy the Kid embodies youth, nobility, humanity, romance, and tragedy, he was, in the final analysis, a killer and an outlaw, though hardly on the scale represented by the legend that grew around him."

Some Kind Of Chaos Tonight On I-80 Westbound

Just east of Davis' Mace Blvd. Multiple buses, lots of fire trucks, lots of flashing blue and red lights. There's a story there somewhere!

The Deficit Reduction Commission - A Total Failure

This week, Alan Simpson finally realized the real resistance would be on the Left, so he trotted out the public option (!) as a talking point, but it's too late - no Democrat can possibly dignify these despicable proposals with even a discussion:

So how, exactly, did a deficit-cutting commission become a commission whose first priority is cutting tax rates, with deficit reduction literally at the bottom of the list?

Actually, though, what the co-chairmen are proposing is a mixture of tax cuts and tax increases — tax cuts for the wealthy, tax increases for the middle class. They suggest eliminating tax breaks that, whatever you think of them, matter a lot to middle-class Americans — the deductibility of health benefits and mortgage interest — and using much of the revenue gained thereby, not to reduce the deficit, but to allow sharp reductions in both the top marginal tax rate and in the corporate tax rate.

It will take time to crunch the numbers here, but this proposal clearly represents a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans. And what does any of this have to do with deficit reduction?

Let’s turn next to Social Security. There were rumors beforehand that the commission would recommend a rise in the retirement age, and sure enough, that’s what Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson do. They want the age at which Social Security becomes available to rise along with average life expectancy. Is that reasonable?

The answer is no, for a number of reasons — including the point that working until you’re 69, which may sound doable for people with desk jobs, is a lot harder for the many Americans who still do physical labor.

But beyond that, the proposal seemingly ignores a crucial point: while average life expectancy is indeed rising, it’s doing so mainly for high earners, precisely the people who need Social Security least. Life expectancy in the bottom half of the income distribution has barely inched up over the past three decades. So the Bowles-Simpson proposal is basically saying that janitors should be forced to work longer because these days corporate lawyers live to a ripe old age.

Deborah Has An Interesting Book For Sale

Deborah McMillion-Nering has a book for sale: "The Carnivorous Flower Dines" - a tale about a radioactive desert flower's upbringing and education, and about the general endurance of plants.

I am intrigued by the cover - this may be the only time - ever, or at least for a very long time - that Deborah has painted a man's face. Usually she substitutes a flower, or a coin, or any other vaguely-round object in its place.






I ordered one copy. Order a bunch of copies for your Retro-50's friends!

Disco & Atomic War Trailer

This looks like a thoroughly-charming film:

Winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Warsaw International Film Festival, this witty, charming, and provocative film recounts how in the mid 1980's, the nation of Estonia still lay firmly in the grip of the Soviet Union, and the repressive authorities controlled virtually all aspects of Estonian life. ... But one day everything changed. Just a few miles across the border in Finland, a huge new television antenna was built that broadcast western signals in all directions--including directly into the heart of the Talinn, the capital of Estonia.

Filmmakers Jaak Kilmi and Kiur Aarma grew up in Talinn in the 80's, and in DISCO AND ATOMIC WAR they make use of wonderfully playful but credible recreations to set their true personal coming of age story against the backdrop of the rapid collapse of the Soviet government in Estonia. As illicit television antennas sprung up in Northern Estonia, rumors about the attempted murder of J.R. Ewing spread by word of mouth to the rural south, and the nation of Estonia was as gripped by the saga as the USA had ever been.

Teenagers went to their school dances and imitated the disco moves they saw on television, clothing and hairstyles began to change radically, and things would never be the same. The government controlled media scrambled to create western-style soap operas and disco-saturated television programming that vaguely reinforced communist values, but it was far too little, and much too late.

Aussies In The Mood To Travel And Shop

All things are possible Down Under:

While the Australian dollar reaching parity with the United States dollar was a long-awaited moment, it appears to have left consumers a little jaded toward spending their money here.

There is talk of holidays to America and online shopping at American sites, but Mr Timbrell believes manufacturers have come to the party to save our Aussie Christmas 2010.

The effects of lower import prices will start to be seen in coming months especially on TVs, home theatre, DVD and Blu-ray players.

Matter Eater Lad

My favorite of the Top 20 Worst Superhero Names.

Currency Rap - China Vs. USA

Teamsters feat Errol Reid - Feels Like Love

Belligerent Raccoons

Five raccoons may be the threshold for the animals to feel brave enough to take on a person with a dog. I remember once walking Sparky late at night in Sacramento, and coming across four raccoons in a driveway. They struck me as awfully insolent, and on the verge of an attack - but uncertain about our resources, they held off. One more raccoon, though, and that might have been enough to trigger a gang attack:

ALAMEDA, Calif. -- An Alameda woman was receiving rabies shots as a precaution after being attacked by five raccoons over the weekend during an ordeal she described as like something out of a horror movie.

The Sunday night raccoon attack in Alameda’s Washington Park was not the first such incident, according to wildlife officials.

...Campos said she felt lucky that she escaped with just one bite and that her terrier Doogie wasn't hurt. It was the dog’s barking that brought on first one raccoon and then an entire pack.

“The other four dropped out of these trees somewhere and all started to run after us,” said Campos. “And then I tripped. Once I fell down, I was worried I wouldn't be able to get them off me, and I was screaming at the top of my lungs.”

County officials know thousands of raccoons are in trees and storm drains, emerging at night to search for food which is plentiful in garbage cans and pet dishes.

Surveillance cameras and calls for service in the area reveal an exploding population. Raccoons are getting more territorial and less afraid of people.

“It's Bay Area wide, but Alameda is a unique situation because it's landlocked,” said Daniel Wilson of Alameda County Vector Control. “So when their population increases, they can't expand out.”

In the attacks that have happened across Alameda since June, nine people have been bitten, usually while trying to save their pets.

Greyhound Bus Catches Fire

This story reminds me of the good ol', pre 9/11 days.

In 1978, I boarded a Greyhound bus in Philadelphia for a trip to Albuquerque. Somewhere on I-40 in Missouri, one of the passengers realized his wallet was missing, so somewhere in Oklahoma the highway patrol stopped us, and we were all searched.

Since the trip had been partly a camping trip, I was carrying a gallon of camp stove fuel in my luggage. I thought: "Oh, this is going to be awkward!" But they were looking for a wallet, not any obvious hazards to health and safety, so they let me keep the fuel (I still have it, I think....):

Three passengers have been treated for smoke inhalation after a Greyhound bus en route to Dallas from Los Angeles caught fire on a freeway northwest of Tucson.

Northwest Fire Department paramedics say the driver and 37 other passengers aboard the bus escaped injury. They say the three passengers were treated at the scene for minor smoke inhalation and released.

Investigators have determined that the fire was accidental and resulted from a mechanical problem within the engine compartment.

I Very Much Like Fark's Headline

The Fark Headline on this story is: "We will launch on time and under budget, no matter how long it takes or how much it costs":

Work on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) - intended to be the Hubble's replacement - is behind schedule and over budget, according to a Wednesday report.

...But it's not the design or build of the telescope that is causing the problems. JWST is in "very good technical shape," according to a Friday letter John Casani from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab wrote to NASA chief Charles Bolden. Instead, the root causes of the cost and scheduling issues are due to a "badly flawed" budget and the inability of those involved to adequately assess what is needed, Casani wrote.

DMTC - "Annie" - Wednesday Night Rehearsal

Civic Theatre West Closes

The Sacramento theater community was rocked this evening by news that Civic Theatre West (CTW) was abruptly closing.

I had thought that, moneywise, CTW was the strongest musical theater in the local area. Looks deceive, I guess....

According to the Bee:

Stevens said the theater's continuing debt of $500,000 had become untenable, and the board decided the responsible course of action was to close its doors.

"We had continuing unpaid obligations, but no operational buffer," Stevens said. "The responsible thing to do is to stop operations rather than keeping the wheels turning and hoping against hope when it really can't be done."

...Last year, the theater company's annual operating budget was $1.1 million. Civic Theatre West also has one the largest children's theater workshops in the state, and had more than 1,200 subscribers for its season last year.

Let's see, if they were paying banks for these loans they had to be paying $2,500.00 per month, interest alone, minimum. If they were paying principal too, the amounts would be considerably greater, of course. That's a heavy burden, but not insurmountable - except that they were paying salaries too. And who knows how many other costs they had?

Sometimes, with community theater, it comes down to a will to live: the urge for survival. The 'responsible' businessmanlike thing to do may be to close the doors, but it's sometimes better to be the artist, stridently and willfully deny reality, and keep thrashing on nonetheless. Like that Elvis-loving Chilean miner who kept up his running regimen, when most people would have sunk into depressed torpor.

I knew this Malthusian moment was coming for the community theaters. Over the last fifteen years, the number of groups have proliferated, so that now the many groups are starved for audiences, talent, and money. And now we have the recession too. The weak, halt, and sick will start falling.

But it's hard to tell who the weak, halt, and sick are. It's like spotting the weakest person in a Haitiian cholera ward - truth be told, no one looks all that strong. As I say, I thought CTW was the strongest in the local area. Maybe it is, technically. But maybe it has the weakest will to live.

Steve Got His Knee Replaced Today

I hope it all works out OK....

The Best Laid Plans Of Mice And Men

Smokestack demolition goes terribly awry:

The former Ohio Edison Mad River Power Plant's 275-foot tower in Springfield came down on Wed., Nov. 10, but the blast knocked it the wrong direction. The tower was supposed to fall to the northeast, but ended up falling to the south — knocking down several nearby powerlines.

Record Gold Myth

The myth, she is sturdy. The inflation hawks won't correct for inflation if it helps them sell gold bars:

“Gold sets record high amid economic fears,” say The Associated Press and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. “Gold surges to record high,” says CNN. Gold closed Monday “at a record $1,402.80 per troy ounce,” reports the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal.

It’s a good story. Unfortunately, it’s not true, at least not in any meaningful sense.

Gold is at a record only if you fail to adjust for inflation. ... The actual record was set 30 years ago, when the price of gold, in today’s dollars, hit $2,318 — or 71 percent higher than it closed on Tuesday.

Bipartisan Claptrap Rolls Into Town

A complete non-starter. Toxic for anyone to embrace! Reduce taxes on the rich and make the middle class pay more and reduce services? Nice! :

WASHINGTON — A draft proposal released Wednesday by the chairmen of President Obama’s bipartisan commission on reducing the federal debt calls for deep cuts in domestic and military spending starting in 2012, and an overhaul of the tax code to raise revenue. Those changes and others would erase nearly $4 trillion from projected deficits through 2020, the proposal says.

The plan would reduce Social Security benefits to most future retirees — low-income people would get a higher benefit — and it would subject higher levels of income to payroll taxes to ensure Social Security’s solvency for at least the next 75 years.

But the plan would not count any savings from Social Security toward meeting the overall deficit-reduction goal set by Mr. Obama, reflecting the chairmen’s sensitivity to liberal critics who have complained that Social Security should be fixed only for its own sake, not to balance the nation’s books.

The proposed simplification of the tax code would repeal or modify a number of popular tax breaks — including the deductibility of mortgage interest payments — so that income tax rates could be reduced across the board. Under the plan, individual income tax rates would decline to as low as 8 percent on the lowest income bracket (now 10 percent) and to 23 percent on the highest bracket (now 35 percent). The corporate tax rate, now 35 percent, would also be reduced, to as low as 26 percent.

Even after reducing the rates, the overhaul of the tax code would still yield additional revenue to reduce annual deficits — a projected $80 billion in 2015.

But how low the rates are set would depend on how many tax breaks are reduced or eliminated. Some of them, including the mortgage interest deduction and the exemption from taxes for employees’ health benefits, are political sacred cows.

Mystery Launch

Interesting article and video regarding the Southern California mystery launch.

There's got to be a military angle here somewhere, but what it is, who can say?

Weak Holiday Season Indicator?

Diesel fuel use usually peaks in October, but not this year:

The Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index™ (PCI), a real-time measure of the flow of goods to U.S. factories, retailers, and consumers, fell 0.6 percent in October following a decline of 0.5 percent in September and a decline of 1.0 percent in August. The three consecutive month decline is the first since January 2009, when the U.S. was still deep in recession. The negative month-over-month trajectory for October, typically a peak month for America’s trucking industry, may also prelude a disappointing holiday season, indicating retailer wariness about future sales prospects.

Tony Tormenta Goes Down

Tony Tormenta, the brother of the leader of Mexico's Gulf Cartel, was killed on Saturday. This event aggravates a highly-dangerous situation:

MEXICO CITY — Mexican security forces killed reputed Gulf cartel leader Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen, one of Mexico's most-wanted drug lords, in a spectacular, hours-long gunbattle Friday in the northern border city of Matamoros.

Cardenas Guillen, also known as "Tony Tormenta” or "Tony the Storm,” is the brother of imprisoned former leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen and is believed to have run the powerful cartel along with Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez.

He is the latest in a growing number of high-profile cartel leaders who have been captured or killed by the armed forces since President Felipe Calderon stationed them across the country to battle drug traffickers.

...Gunfire first broke out about 11 a.m. at an upscale residential area in Matamoros and shoot-outs ensued throughout the city after that for about eight hours, said a resident who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal.

A video posted on YouTube shows a string of sport utility vehicles and pickups racing through a street while continuous shooting is heard in the background.

Men wearing ski masks get out of a car and use it to block the street.

I don't know if this is the YouTube video referred to in the news story, but it's interesting nonetheless. This fellow tries to get close to the action. Below is an approximate translation of the accompanying text:

About 20 late model trucks belonging to the Gulf cartel are shown making defensive maneuvers to stop the incursion of Mexican sailors that were aimed at stopping Ezequiel Cardenas, alias "Tony Tormenta", one of the most powerful drug traffickers and sought after Mexico and the United States.

This video shows the organizational and tactical maneuvers used by the assassins who tried to encircle and neutralize the actions of sailors and soldiers, showing the level of danger to the civilian population who have to live here every day and the high risk to Special Forces.

Status Of That Enormous Chicken Coming Home To Roost

The mortgage securitization machine was supposed to run only in one direction (mortgage > security > investor). Only now that many foreclosures are forcing the machine to run in the opposite direction are people discovering just how badly the machine ran in the forward direction. In physics, this nonreversibility is akin to the phenomenon called "hysteresis", but with regard to the banks, the proper term is "hysteria."

In order for the housing market to bottom out and start recovering, someone somewhere is going to have to lose an awful lot of money. The courts are necessarily inefficient, so this process will be slow, with both homeowners and banks victims. Nevertheless, we have to get through the process first, because there is no housing recovery until then.

Denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance. We are at the 'anger' phase:

EAST PATCHOGUE, N.Y. - A year ago, Long Island Judge Jeffrey Spinner concluded that a mortgage company's paperwork in a foreclosure case was so flawed and its behavior in negotiations with the borrower so "repugnant" that he erased the family's $292,500 debt and gave the house back for free.

The judgment in favor of the homeowner, Diane Yano-Horoski, which is being appealed, has alarmed the nation's biggest lenders, who say it could establish a dramatic new legal precedent and roil the nation's foreclosure system.

It is not the only case that has big banks worried. Spinner and some of colleagues in the New York City area estimate they are dismissing 20 to 50 percent of foreclosure cases on the basis of sloppy or fraudulent paperwork filed by lenders.

Their decisions illustrate the central role lower court judges will have in resolving the country's foreclosure debacle. The mess came to light after lawsuits and media reports showed lenders were routinely filing shoddy or fraudulent papers to seize the homes of borrowers who had missed payments.

In millions of cases across the United States, local judges have wide latitude to impose sanctions on banks, free homeowners from their mortgage debts or allow the companies to proceed with flawed foreclosures. Ultimately, the industry is likely to face a messy scenario - different resolutions by courts in all 50 states.

..."We believe the Yano-Horoski ruling, if allowed to stand, has sweeping and dangerous implications for the entire mortgage lending industry," said OneWest Bank, the family's mortgage servicer.

...Judge Dana Winslow of Nassau County says he's thought a lot about why judges in his area are more apt to question filings. He said it comes down to one thing: Lack of trust for Wall Street. In this region, judges have seen a lot of inaccurate filings from the financial sector.

Trust "of the lending institutions and Wall Street has eroded in some areas of the country more than others," Winslow said.

...On Sept. 21, Judge Peter Mayer of Suffolk County delayed a foreclosure by Ally Financial's GMAC mortgage unit after noticing that the paperwork transferring the mortgage to the bank was dated two days after the foreclosure was initiated.

And on Oct. 21, Judge Arthur Schack of Kings County dismissed a OneWest foreclosure motion because the bank had not adequately documented how the mortgage had been sold and resold to investors. He also questioned why the employee who signed many of the documents claimed to be a vice president of several different mortgage companies at the same time.

...In his November 2009 ruling, Judge Spinner of Suffolk County blasted OneWest for negotiating with an "opprobrious demeanor and condescending attitude." He also cited the bank's "duplicity" in offering a forbearance agreement with a deadline that had already passed and for presenting contradictory paperwork claiming different amounts for what the family owed.

...Nonetheless, Horoski remains optimistic.

"People thought people who didn't pay their mortgages were automatically deadbeats," he said. "People are educated now. They are realizing all of a sudden how many hundreds of thousands of these homes that were foreclosed may have been done so with fraudulent documents."

Brother-In-Law Lashes Out; I Lash Back

Yes, indeed, this will be a long, long decade!:

What your boys did to health care pisses me off. My premium is up 68.1% Good job.

That’s not our boys; that’s your boys! Delaying implementation till 2014, and not having a public option for cost containment, will ruin us all.

No R voted for this. It's your boys.

Health care delivery, like electricity delivery, forms imperfect markets, which means that customers are not free to shop (heart patients do not shop when they need surgeons; neither do customers put out bids for electricity providers). In markets, shopping is the primary cost-control mechanism.

Imperfect markets with few providers immediately degrade into cartels, where providers collude to keep rates high, unless they are forced to compete with an entity that has different priorities – generally a publicly-owned provider answerable not just to shareholders, but taxpayers too.

Sometimes all you need is proximity to keep prices under control. For example, in Sacramento, the simple existence of the publicly-owned SMUD electricity utility is enough to keep the privately-owned PG&E’s utility rates under control, because they exist side-by-side, and SMUD can poach on PG&E’s turf if disparities get too great. But if SMUD didn’t exist, PG&E could double rates overnight and hardly anyone could stop them.

All that liberals want is a public option – a public provider of health insurance, just like every industrialized country in the world has (except the USA) – which would force private insurers to stop colluding and start competing, and keep rates down. Without the public option, the health insurance cartel can raise prices to any level they want.

So, the R’s got what they wanted – no public option – which means the sky’s the limit on rates. I’m sorry you are so heavily-impacted, but you are hardly alone (rates are up 40% in CA).

So, this disaster has the R’s fingerprints all over it. They just don’t care. D’s are trying to fix the mess, but if R’s keep acting as the health insurance cartel’s stooges, it won’t happen.

Any ideas on how I will get my healthcare?

Parameters: I'm a 62 year old white guy, an R, not in a union, retired. Comments on how it will happen?

(As you listen to this, ask yourself, "What Country Do We Live In"????)

Well, your health care will be rationed, according to your ability to pay – same as it has always been.

Interesting Facts Regarding The Sept. 4th Earthquake Near Christchurch

A selection, from a new fact sheet:

• The fault that caused the earthquake on 4 September 2010 has been named the Greendale Fault. It is a previously unknown fault under the Canterbury Plains.
• The rupture on the fault broke through to the ground surface from many kilometres below and created a 29 km long east-west running scarp in the land between the Hororata River and Railway Road near Rolleston.
• Up to 4.6 metres horizontal and 1.5 metres of vertical of permanent offset has been recorded across the fault at the ground surface. This is thought to be the first time that this fault has moved in several thousand years. It is highly unlikely that it will move again, producing another large earthquake, within the next few thousand years.
• Movement on the Greendale Fault that caused the earthquake on 4 September also placed stress on the rocks around the fault, and particularly at the ends of the fault. Aftershocks are happening as the rock readjusts to this movement. This readjustment takes some time, so aftershocks generally continue for a few months after a big earthquake. However, they do tend to become less frequent and tend to generally get a little smaller as well.
• It is unclear at this stage how this earthquake has affected other faults in the region. The chance of another major earthquake in the central South Island is not likely to have changed. Earthquake activity in Canterbury and elsewhere in New Zealand following the earthquake appears to be normal.
• Cracks seen in the ground in areas of Waimakariri district, Christchurch city and lower Selwyn district are not faults. They are where the ground has cracked, often because of liquefaction, during the earthquakes. These cracks only go down to a depth of up to several metres. The Greendale Fault itself continues down kilometres into the earth’s crust.
• Parts of the Waimakariri River stopbank system downstream of State Highway 1 were damaged during the earthquake. At present there is approximately 1 in 20 year protection for this area. A programme of repairs is now being undertaken by Environment Canterbury staff, and 1 in 30 year protection is expected within two months. Flood protection upstream of State Highway 1 has not been compromised and remains at 1 in 500 years.
• Liquefaction and lateral spreading within the Halswell catchment has affected the capacity of the Halswell river and drainage system, and water levels are raised. Environment Canterbury staff are currently dredging the Halswell River channel and digging out side drains, and will move on to stabilising river banks. This work will take several months.
• The level of flood protection on the Avon River has not been significantly affected by the earthquake.Christchurch City Council investigations show that the risk of flooding from the Avon and Heathcote rivers is no greater than before the earthquake. However, heavy rainfall could cause localised surface flooding in areas affected by liquefaction because of damage to stormwater systems.
• Banks Peninsula is an extinct volcano and the earthquake activity is not related to it. Volcanic earthquakes are very different in style to the 4 September earthquake and subsequent aftershocks. Measurement of warm springs in the Lyttelton Harbour basin show an increase in flow, but no significant increase in temperature after the earthquake.

Let The Bush Tax Cuts Expire

Let the Bush tax cuts expire. They aren't worth saving. And it's way to send an important signal that tax cut policy by intimidation won't work:

The Obama administration’s hopes of reaching a tax deal with Republicans that would decouple rates on the rich from the middle class appear dead.

House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) threw cold water on the proposed plan, which would temporarily extend tax cuts for the wealthy while permanently extending tax cuts for the middle class. “Taxes shouldn't be going up on anybody right now,” Cantor said.

Cantor’s comments Monday evening on Fox News follow similar remarks from Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the incoming senior Republican on the Senate’s tax-writing committee. While Hatch expressed an open mind to extending tax cuts past the 2012 election rather than permanently extending the rates, he also ruled out the decoupling proposal.

Hatch said he would be open to a compromise with the White House that would extend all of the Bush tax rates for at least two years.

Republicans do not want to separate the timelines for extending the rates because doing so would make it easier in the future to let tax breaks on upper-income people expire. Cantor on Monday also said the decoupling proposal would send a signal to small businesses that their taxes will rise, which he said would hurt the economy.

Cruise Line Update

That's actually quite amusing: they are sending bread and canned milk. I'm sure they have ridiculous amounts of food on board, probably in danger of spoiling; so much they can't possibly eat it all. But they are sending bread and canned milk.:

Tugboats assigned to bring a dead-in-the-water cruise ship into Ensenada will not reach the ship until midday at the earliest, the cruise company said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy plans to deliver 70,000 pounds of bread, canned milk and other food to the ship. The supplies are being flown from North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado to the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan. The carrier's helicopters will then transfer the supplies to the cruise ship.

...While air-conditioning, hot-food and telephone services remain inoperable, the flush toilets have been restored to service, the company said.

The Teevee Weather Is Hyping The Possibility Of Rain

But NOGAPS says little, if any, in the valley near Sacramento.

Post-Mortem On The Nevada Senate Race

Preparation!:

But the plan worked. The Reid organization’s Terminator-like single-mindedness, relentlessness and discipline turned preparation into the most satisfying victory of Reid’s career, a resurrection unthinkable most of the year by the Beltway cognoscenti.

...In 2009, the team dedicated itself to one goal — raising enough money to scare off Rep. Dean Heller or Porter, considered their most formidable opponents. June 16, 2009, helped — the day Sen. John Ensign cast a pall over the Nevada GOP with his stunning revelation of an affair, which left him crippled and Heller frozen in place, perhaps seeing an easier path to a Senate seat in 2012 or if Ensign resigned. Porter received a cushy offer from a lobbying firm; Reid’s letter of recommendation will never be found.

...With the team assembled, the campaign began to prepare at the beginning of 2010 to face Sue Lowden, the deep-pocketed, telegenic former anchorwoman and state senator. She was the person, as one insider put it via e-mail, “we were least interested in facing so we set out to make sure that she either 1) came out of the primary bruised and battered or 2) didn’t come out of the primary at all so we would face Sharron Angle or Danny Tarkanian.”

...(One other preparation note: Democrats had lobbied for the primary to be moved back to June from August, thus giving Reid more time to pound whoever won and Republicans less time to rally behind one person. Thus, a dozen candidates caused the entropy that helped Angle emerge.)

As Republicans raised each other’s negatives, the Reid folks weren’t napping. They were hiring more staff, honing the turnout model that would prove the only accurate one this cycle (kudos to pollster Mark Mellman) and targeting Hispanics. “We knew that increasing the share of the electorate who were Hispanic was a key to winning so we invested heavily and ran an aggressive Hispanic program,” a Reid operative told me.

...In the end, Team Angle didn’t know what hit it. Despite the internal tension between the local yokels and the political pros, despite a campaign manager (Terry Campbell) who chose elective knee surgery during the middle of the biggest race in the country and despite having a thrown-together get-out-the-vote operation, they thought they were crushing Reid among independents. They thought they had the race won, as one insider informed me after I predicted Reid would win the Sunday before the balloting. They believed the public polls that drove the “Angle will win” narrative; they believed their own surveys.

They had no idea.

Cruise Ship Fire

Is this an omen? Different cruise line, but same port of calls!:

A luxury cruise ship on its way to Puerto Vallarta from Long Beach will instead be taken by tugboats to Ensenada after an engine fire that knocked out its air conditioning, hot food service, flush toilets and telephones, company officials said Monday night.

The Carnival Splendor, with 3,299 passengers and 1,167 crew members, was on the first day of a seven-day trip to the Mexican Riviera when a fire broke out in the aft engine room. No one was hurt but the fire disabled several systems.

In late afternoon, the tugboats were said to be en route to the 952-foot ship.

..."Conditions on board the ship are very challenging and we sincerely apologize for the discomfort and inconvenience our guests are currently enduring," said Gerry Cahill, president and chief executive officer of Carnival Cruise Lines.

The ship's scheduled itinerary was to include stops in Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas.

Crybaby Big Ag

This opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee hit home:

I've been a California commercial fisherman for almost three decades. For most of that time, Chinook salmon constituted 70 percent or more of my business.

...Then in the past few years, everything changed. California's 2008 and 2009 salmon seasons were closed following a catastrophic crash in the stocks.

...What caused this disaster? Lack of water. Diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta south to corporate farms have deprived salmon of water they need in their spawning streams. Further, huge government-run Delta pumps that send taxpayer-subsidized water south destroy great numbers of young salmon trying to migrate downriver to the ocean.

The biological facts are bad enough. Even worse are the power plays of Big Agribusiness. Faced with modest restrictions on subsidized water deliveries to protect fish, Big Ag bleated like an old sheep, claiming economic ruin. Politicians rewarded their calculated hysteria, augmenting their supplies with "emergency" deliveries.

...From all the wailing, you'd have thought Westlands was in worse shape than the salmon fishing ports. But – surprise! Westlands not only had enough water for their crops – they had leftovers. In fact, they had a 2010 surplus of about 450,000 acre-feet, enough water to supply 1.8 million urbanites for one year. So, they decided to trade 150,000 acre-feet to the Metropolitan Water District and generate $30 million of benefit for themselves.

...Salmon are resilient, but they can't live on sunlight alone. They need water, and we should give it to them. Salmon fishing is one of America's most regulated industries. Fishermen understand the necessity for resource protection – but we demand a level playing field. The regulations that apply to us must also apply to the westside's water buccaneers. It's a matter of law and fairness.