No one knows why he lives like this.
Likes to smoke a pipe filled with animal dung.
From Breaking Bad Friends."Breaking Bad" is, in its heart, the story of the supposedly respectable, white, upper-middle class becoming the Other. I don't think it's an accident that those quasi-mythic drawings of Walt in the guise of his porkpie-hatted alter ego, Heisenberg, resemble old Project Bluebook sketches of extraterrestrial visitors. Walt is becoming as much an alien -- an undesirable Other -- as the illegals who have periodically sneaked across the border throughout the show's run.
Which reminds me of the only time I ever reported a UFO sighting.
It's time for Albuquerque Comic Con, and that means it's time for Jeff Brofsky! Here is brand-new profile of Jeff:Brofsky's love for comic books goes back to his days as a youngster, growing up in Far Rockaway, N.Y. He still remembers his father, a lieutenant with the NYPD, giving him a buck and telling him to select 10 comic books.I went on two Vegas weekends. Since what happens in Vegas ends up on my blog, here is that report.
Although his dad seemed to prefer that he pick out favorites like Superman and Batman, the youngster "wanted Marvel (brand) X-Men, Spider Man ("the first hero of the Silver Age of comics," Brofsky says), Fantastic Four." He wouldn't let his father read his new comics because he didn't like the way his dad bent the covers back when he read them, almost as if Jeff Brofsky anticipated a price guide coming out sometime in the future, with incredibly high prices for those in "mint" condition.
Some of those old titles are still some of his favorites.
"I still have a lot of stuff," he said. He keeps his best comics, including some top-dollar items, in a safe deposit box, and keeps his prized comics in mint condition by not reading them. Many of his old favorites have been reprinted in volumes of hardback books.
...Brofsky's parents moved the family, apparently part of that great Empire State migration, to Rio Rancho in 1972, right after Brofsky graduated high school. Brofsky said some Rio Ranchoans may remember his name in the Observer several decades ago, when he donned a costume to be "Chicken Man" at New Mexico Six Guns' hockey games at Tingley Coliseum.
He attended the University of New Mexico, where he ultimately obtained his bachelor's degree in psychology.
"I use it every day," he says of that degree, although a marketing degree might have suited him better for his Tall Tales Comics venture. Although his passion had once been stamps and coins - he remembered organizing his own show for those hobbies in New York - comic books remained a passion when he was an adult.
“What I've seen today for the first time is unacceptable," Christie said. "I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge."I like a tweet posted at Daily Kos:
If you think Gov. Christie wasn't involved in closing the lanes to the bridge, then I have a bridge to sell you.
— @zachbraff
We are having a record-breaking cold snap in many parts of the country. And right on schedule the media have to come up with a way to make it sound like it’s completely unprecedented. Because they’ve got to find a way to attach this to the global warming agenda, and they have. It’s called the “polar vortex.” The dreaded polar vortex.
Do you know what the polar vortex is? Have you ever heard of it? Well, they just created it for this week…They’re in the middle of a hoax, they’re perpetrating a hoax, but they’re relying on their total dominance of the media to lie to you each and every day about climate change and global warming.
"This Might Be The Sweetest Walter White Tribute Yet"
For as little as a half cent each click, websites hawk everything from LinkedIn connections to make members appear more employable to Soundcloud plays to influence record label interest.
...Italian security researchers and bloggers Andrea Stroppa and Carla De Micheli estimated in 2013 that sales of fake Twitter followers have the potential to bring in $40 million to $360 million to date, and that fake Facebook activities bring in $200 million a year.
...Dhaka, Bangladesh, a city of 7 million in South Asia, is an international hub for click farms.
The CEO of Dhaka-based social media promotion firm Unique IT World said he has paid workers to manually click on clients' social media pages, making it harder for Facebook, Google and others to catch them. "Those accounts are not fake, they were genuine," Shaiful Islam said.
...In 2013, the State Department, which has more than 400,000 likes and was recently most popular in Cairo, said it would stop buying Facebook fans after its inspector general criticized the agency for spending $630,000 to boost the numbers.
...In Indonesia, a social media-obsessed country with some of the largest number of Facebook pages and Twitter users, click farms proliferate.
Ali Hanafiah, 40, offers 1,000 Twitter followers for $10 and 1 million for $600. He owns his own server, and pays $1 per month per Internet Protocol address, which he uses to generate thousands of social media accounts.
...David Burch, at TubeMogul, a video marketing firm based in Emeryville, Calif., said that buying clicks to promote clients is a grave error. "It's bad business," he said, "and if an advertiser ever found out you did that, they'd never do business with you again."
As drug prices have soared in recent years and insurers have increased co-payments, a new type of charity has blossomed to fill a vital niche — helping patients pay the steep out-of-pocket costs for their medicines.
But the largest of these co-payment assistance charities, the Chronic Disease Fund, is now in turmoil after questions have arisen about its relationship with a pharmaceutical company that is itself under investigation for its marketing practices.
The practice is casting light on what has long been an open secret: The bulk of the contributions to these charities come from the pharmaceutical companies. The foundations not only help hundreds of thousands of patients a year, they also raise drug company sales and profits.
After all, if a patient cannot afford out-of-pocket costs of $5,000 for a $100,000-a-year drug, the drug company gets nothing. But if the manufacturer or the charity pays the $5,000, the patient gets the drug and the company receives $95,000 from the patient’s insurance company or Medicare.
...Critics say co-pay assistance helps keep drug prices high and circumvents efforts by insurers to control drug spending by making consumers bear part of the cost.
“These subsidies are unfortunately used to promote the overutilization of expensive brand-name drugs,” said Wells Wilkinson, a lawyer at Community Catalyst, a consumer advocacy organization.
The charities counter that any benefit to the drug companies is secondary to helping patients.
“Look at the alternative,” said Dana Kuhn, founder and president of Patient Services, one of the charities. “If they didn’t donate their dollars, people would die.”
Drug companies often directly subsidize the co-payments for privately insured patients. But they cannot do so for patients covered by federal programs like Medicare’s Part D drug benefit, because that would be considered a kickback, an illegal inducement to use a drug.
Trokanski is fixing to build an 18,000-square-foot, two-story building next to her current studio that will introduce what she calls “Life in 11 Dimensions,” which will bring together a spa, healthy meals, dancing, art, theatrical productions and a community meeting space.
...According to a professionally drawn site plan for the project, a full 3,438 square feet can be devoted to meeting places for community groups, business conferences and the community, with a dedicated nearby space for the healthy food vendor Stone Soup to provide on-site catering. Produce could come from an on-site organic garden. A theater will have 115 to 200 seats depending on the production.
“It’s kind of a gift to Davis,” Trokanski said. “Living a healthy, creative life in a healthy, creative community in a healthy, creative world.”
Collaboration is the name of the game. Acme Theatre Company, a longtime troupe for high school-aged actors, is just one of several groups looking to benefit from “11D,” as the project is being called.
“We’ve been thinking of a collaborative space, so when Pamela talked about 11D it seemed just like a dream,” said Emily Henderson, artistic director of Acme. Henderson first met Trokanski as her student at a dance class at Davis High School, an example of the roots Trokanski has in the community.
Denver Russell has the chance of a lifetime. She will star in what’s believed to be Oak Park’s first rendition of the classic ballet “The Nutcracker.”
“It means a lot to me,” the bashful 10-year-old said last week.
Denver is one of 40 girls in the Girls Self-Esteem Program Academy who are practicing their dance moves around the clock and honing their pointe technique by balancing on their toes.
...Girls in the program, ages 4 to 18, practice ballet three times a week and pay between $25 and $50 a month to participate. Most of the girls are black and hail from underprivileged families from across the Sacramento region, said Kandice Kelly, the program’s director.
“I’m of the belief that every girl in the world should take ballet once,” said Kelly, a former ballerina. “It helps with poise. It helps with grace.”
Kelly founded the program five years ago after volunteering at the Fathers Resource Center, a nonprofit for single fathers that she discovered while working as a television news reporter.
“There were a lot of girls who didn’t have mothers. And the little girls started following me on the weekends because I was the only female,” Kelly said.
This transaction in northern Mali shows what might seem an unusual preoccupation for a terror group: Al-Qaida is obsessed with documenting the most minute expenses.
In more than 100 receipts left in a building occupied by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in Timbuktu earlier this year, the extremists assiduously tracked their cash flow, recording purchases as small as a single light bulb. The often tiny amounts are carefully written out in pencil and colored pen on scraps of paper and Post-it notes: The equivalent of $1.80 for a bar of soap; $8 for a packet of macaroni; $14 for a tube of super glue. All the documents were authenticated by experts.
“My mother was a teacher in the Sacramento school district,” says Singerman, “so I knew how much performing arts were suffering in the schools. It was just horrible.” That first season, she spent 90 minutes a week for 10 weeks with students at Caroline Wenzel Elementary School in Greenhaven. They produced a review that was a huge success.
Five years later, Singerman is juggling shows at five schools—Didion, Crocker Riverside, Sutterville, Holy Spirit, and Shalom School—as well as a production of “The Wizard of Oz” at Sierra 2 Center for the Arts and Community in Curtis Park. That production will be taken to the participating schools, which simplifies the logistics of sets, lighting, costumes and choreography. Singerman—relying on her husband’s skills—has introduced the use of film to project the stage sets. “We rearranged our living room and set up a green screen, just like they use for weather reports,” says Plaza. “The kids came over and we shot footage.”
Singerman choreographs, directs and produces every show, with help from husband and assistant director Michelle Petro. Parents do everything from selling tickets and refreshments at the shows to ensuring that Young Actors Stage has a home at their children’s schools.
Posted on Sullivan’s site as mental health break – very fun (especially if you like/remember the song), and very well done.
Following reports that the Iraqi city of Fallujah had fallen into the control of an al Qaida-affiliated group over the weekend, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wasted little time in putting out a statement blaming the tumult on the Obama administration's decision to withdraw U.S. forces from the country in 2011.
...White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that the likes of McCain and Graham ought to be transparent about what exactly they're proposing.
"I've heard members of Congress suggest this, but if members were suggesting that there should be American troops fighting and dying in Fallujah today, they should say so," Carney said during his daily press briefing.
Cheney’s early 2014 struggles had a lot to do with the flaws of her own campaign, and now she says family concerns ultimately doomed her bid. But I think her already-flailing debacle of a campaign (before the family news came out) tells us something about the fizzling of the Tea Party as an oppositional force, especially when it comes to serious, entrenched conservatives like Wyoming’s Mike Enzi. It bodes well for 2014 that she flamed out quickly. Nepotistic sister-betraying Cheneys and other Tea Party opportunists just may not find Republican primaries as easy as they were in 2010. And that’s good for both parties, and for the country.
UPDATE: Alex is found! Thank you! Thank you to all who helped. He had located a river and was found following it. Stayed in the woods 2 nights. He is tired, hungry, and disoriented but otherwise well. Sooo many people came out for the search. Wouldn't have found him without you and the shares
My dear mountain friends: My brother Alex has been missing since last night. He may have just wandered off, but no one knows where he is and we'd like to know he is safe. Last seen walking towards Auburn Lake Trails. Please let me know if you have any info.
The popular Albuquerque-based hamburger chain will open its new El Paso restaurant the first week of January, according to a company executive.
It will be the only Blake’s Lotaburger located outside of New Mexico — at least for now. A second El Paso location is planned for the spring.
Lt. Commander Rebecca Jordan, hero of Smog Town troops in the Battle of Interstate 5.This week, in Southern Manitoba, the temperature reached a blisteringly frigid -31 degrees Celsius, or nearly -24 Fahrenheit. (Wind chill values in Winnipeg—in case you were curious and/or in need of some meteorological schadenfreude—dipped to -58 Fahrenheit.) Which is crazy, and which makes for, as Yahoo's Geekquinox blog puts it, "the coldest afternoon temperatures the area has seen in several years."
...And over the past month, Yahoo notes, REMS has been reporting daily high temperatures on Mars that range from -25 to -31 degrees Celsius. (Mars seems to be having its own cold spell: The -31 degrees Celsius temperature is the coldest daily high the rover has recorded since it landed on the planet in August 2012.)
A Chinese Long March 3B rocket on Dec. 21 inaugurated the Bolivian space program by successfully placing Bolivia’s Tupac Katari (TKSat)-1 telecommunications satellite into geostationary transfer orbit, Chinese and Bolivian officials said.
Bolivian President Evo Morales traveled to China to witness the launch, from China’s Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, indicating the project’s political importance in Bolivia.
...The satellite will operate at 87.5 degrees west longitude to provide Internet and telecommunications connectivity to the estimated 3.3 million Bolivians in rural areas that are currently not connected to the telecommunications grid, according to the Bolivian Space Agency (ABE), which was created to manage the TKSat-1 project.
ABE said the entire program cost $295.4 million, of which $251.1 million was financed with a loan from the China Development Bank. ABE said the loan is payable over 15 years, with no principal payments due until the fourth year after an initial payment of 0.75 percent of the loan.
The annual interest payment is the London Interbank Offered Rate plus 2.7 percent.
The remaining $44.3 million in project funding came from Bolivia’s general treasury, ABE said.
ABE said TKSat-1 services will generate sufficient revenue to fully cover the project’s cost, which includes the satellite’s construction and launch, insurance and a satellite ground station in Bolivia that Morales recently inaugurated.
“Oh, give me a break,” said Kashkari, a former Goldman Sachs executive and U.S. Treasury Department official. “You’re comparing this to Meg? Give me a break.”
Kashkari, 40, is expected to join a small field of Republicans bidding to unseat Brown next year. ... Kashkari, who ran the $700 billion bank bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program during former President George W. Bush's administration, has not yet said if he will run for governor. But he has been laying the foundation for such an effort for nearly a year. He left his job at Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Management Co. in January, assembled a team of advisers and started visiting food banks, schools and businesses throughout the state.
Kashkari said these experiences, which he has promoted on Twitter and, most recently, a series of newspaper interviews, have both inspired him and aided his understanding of poverty and education. His emphasis on poverty isn’t typical for a Republican candidate, but he said he wants to make it the focus of his campaign.
“I genuinely want to learn what people are facing,” Kashkari said. “I would want to be the candidate fighting for the poor.”
The California Musical Theatre notified city officials it would not take part in the Studio for the Performing Arts, leaving 25 percent of the project’s ongoing budget unaccounted for. The theater group did not provide an explanation for its sudden departure from the project.
The City Council has pledged $5 million to help renovate the former Fremont School for Adults on N Street into a space for the California Musical Theatre, the Sacramento Ballet and the Sacramento Region Performing Arts Alliance, a combination of the Sacramento Opera and Sacramento Philharmonic. The city’s contribution would come from the $2.5 million it generates for maintaining the Cal-EPA building next to City Hall and another $2.5 million in future loan repayments by the Crocker Art Museum.
...Without the California Musical Theatre’s role in the project, city officials are scrambling to find $67,000 in annual operating income to keep the 49,000-square-foot facility going.
...Still, the city and the arts groups are up against a tight timeline to find a replacement. The Sacramento Ballet’s lease at its current space on K Street expires in August. “We need to be open next fall,” Rich said.
...However, Ron Cunningham, the co-artistic director of the Sacramento Ballet, said he was confident his group could make up the difference. He said the new space will provide the ballet with at least two more studios, allowing the group to expand its class facilities and generate thousands of dollars more each year in tuition.
Unseasonably warm weather has made this a Christmas for the record books, pushing the temperature at Sacramento Executive Airport to an unprecedented 64 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
That broke the previous Christmas day high-mercury mark of 63 degrees, set in 1965, as a trend of clear and dry weather continued across the state.
The record high for downtown Sacramento on Christmas Day is 64 degrees, reached three times: 1892, 1955 and 1967.
While the weather downtown fell just short of that record on Wednesday, topping out at 63 degrees, that temperature still exceeds the historical average for the day, which is 51.8 degrees based on records dating back to 1877.
Tiny plastic beads used in hundreds of toiletries like facial scrubs and toothpastes are slipping through water treatment plants and turning up by the tens of millions in the Great Lakes. There, fish and other aquatic life eat them along with the pollutants they carry — which scientists fear could be working their way back up the food chain to humans.
Scientists have worried about plastic debris in the oceans for decades, but focused on enormous accumulations of floating junk. More recently, the question of smaller bits has gained attention, because plastics degrade so slowly and become coated with poisons in the water like the cancer-causing chemicals known as PCBs.
“Unfortunately, they look like fish food,” said Marcus Eriksen, executive director of the 5 Gyres organization, speaking of the beads found in the oceans and, now, the lakes. His group works to eliminate plastic pollution.
Without a doubt, Americans are the most generous people on earth. Even in a sluggish economy, people are willing to dig deep for a good cause – or just about any cause, come to think of it. Americans’ charitable giving underscores a truth as old as the republic: Government cannot, and should not, do everything. There are a whole host of social functions in this relatively free, mostly open, more or less self-governing society simply better left to private associations – or put more simply, you and me.
Government encourages people to be charitable by letting them deduct their contributions from their taxes. Here’s where things get unpleasantly political, because some nonprofit groups engage not so much in feeding the poor or curing disease, but spreading ideas. And ideas are nothing if not controversial.
...Some self-styled liberals would do away with such nonprofits altogether. Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s former secretary of labor, groused recently how America’s wealthiest 20 percent benefited from $33 billion of nearly $40 billion in charitable deductions last year. Those rich folks aren’t just giving to think tanks. They’re also underwriting colleges and universities, hospitals, and the arts.
...Oh, but it gets worse. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who has set progressive populists’ hearts aflutter, would very much like to intimidate businesses into cutting back their contributions to think tanks whose work she dislikes. Warren earlier this month sent a letter to six of the largest banks in the country, suggesting they “disclose” their contributions voluntarily – or else.
...In the face of charitable persuasion, coercion seems to be all they have left.
"Shortly after firefighters pulled out ... the roof did collapse on the flamenco business," said Albuquerque Fire Department spokeswoman Melissa Romero.
Firefighters were able to get a handle on the blaze and prevented it from spreading to nearby businesses.
Who holds Christmas in contempt? Who? Where are these people? I'm a secular humanist—there's an award from the Freedom from Religion Foundation on my mantel just inches from my Christmas tree—and here I am, at home on a Saturday morning, baking Christmas cookies for my family. Not holiday cookies. Christmas cookies. I'll be taking some across the street to share with my Jewish neighbors later today. They love Christmas. And no one is trying to "save" Christmas from its heritage.
...I was never a "happy holidays" guy. Christmas was a big deal in my home growing up, and it's a big deal in the home I share with Terry. December is Christmas. I've always wished people "merry Christmas" without really giving it a thought. Ho-ho-ho.
But that's over now.
Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly and Fox News and the Family Research Council and the woman who allegedly punched another woman outside Walmart earlier this week for saying "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas" managed to break me of the "merry Christmas" habit. I suspect I'm not alone. This constant bitching from the right about "happy holidays"—a perfectly lovely expression that embraces Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Pancha Ganapati, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Hanukkah, the Epiphany, Saint Nicholas's Day, Hogmanay, Twelfth Night, and Kwanzaa—has made one thing clear. Not that there is now, or ever was, a war on Christmas. But that saying "merry Christmas" is an asshole move. Just as conservatives made patriotism toxic during the Vietnam War by conflating it with blind obedience to authority ("My country, right or wrong!"), modern conservatives have made "merry Christmas" toxic by associating it with Christian fundamentalism, religious intolerance, and the politics of imagined persecution.
Unfortunately, the war on Christmas is a game Palin and O'Reilly and Fox News and the Family Research Council can't lose. The more they complain about people saying "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas," the fewer people will say "merry Christmas." This will be held up as proof that the war on Christmas is real. But people like me aren't replacing "merry Christmas" with "happy holidays" to be "politically correct," as Palin insists in the introduction to her stupid book, we're doing it because we don't want people to think we're assholes.
Kilgore, who legally changed his middle name to SECEDE last year, hopes that gay voters will support him and his bid to make Texas its own country to avoid what he says are the US Federal Government’s oppressive taxes and promises that he won’t try to introduce anything like the death penalty until Texas is independent.
...‘I am a Christian, and I have lots of Christian beliefs. However, I am trying to build a coalition of all different types of people. I look at the lesbians and the homosexual folks and I say, “Hey, DC is stealing my money just like they’re stealing your money.” After we get our freedom, then we can decide all that stuff — hopefully at a county level.
‘Right now, lesbians and homosexuals and Christians may have differences with each other, but we’ve got a bigger enemy.’
In 2007 in the lead up to a bid for the US Senate Kilgore told the Houston Chronicle that he supported the death penalty for adultery with a married woman and flogging for people who used profanity in public - while transvestites should be flogged even more severely.
However he told Lone Star Q that flogging transvestites was no longer part of his platform.
...‘I would very much approve of a biblical law that prevented homosexual behavior in the new nation,’ Kilgore said.
‘According to the Bible, it should be execution, if anyone participates in that activity.’
However Kilgore said he was open to the idea of different areas of Texas having different laws on homosexuality and would support candidates who were gay as long as they wanted to make Texas its own country.
...Kilgore last ran for governor of Texas in 2006 where he received nearly 8% of the vote - coming second behind Texas Governor Rick Perry.
The vessel dates back to the Pueblo III period, an era from about 1150 to 1300 CE when ancestral puebloans began to establish big, sophisticated multi-family communities. This was when Mesa Verde was built, for example, and when Pueblo populations peaked in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, before people moved south to settle what’s now Arizona and New Mexico.
Those who know their artifacts can tell all that just by looking at this mug: Its pattern of repeating triangles and horizontal lines are known as Mesa Verde Black-on-White, a style preferred around Sand Canyon in the 13th century.
But the mingling of diverse elements does not necessarily produce a virile strain. From a cultural background similar to that of other Tanoan speakers in the Rio Grande valley, the Jumano had developed a direction, a "slant," or cultural personality that was akin to that of the Rio Grande up to 1300. During this same period the people of the northern Jornada had become increasingly Puebloan in some aspects. The mingling of these two groups resulted in stagnation of the Jumano. The Jumano were henceforth Pueblo in material culture and architecture and largely Pueblo in the socioreligious use of the kiva. On the other hand, they contained regressive factors—traits that had limited the Mogollon to transmitters of culture, however important these may have been; traits that led them to adopt an increasingly Pueblo aspect and which finally permitted their disappearance as a cultural entity.Here's a cool Chupadero Black-on-White olla. One of the potsherds whose picture I posted has a pattern that looks like this:
After the development of Chupadero Black-on-white, a fairly widespread and long-lived local pottery type, the Jumano failed to participate in further ceramic developments spreading from the Rio Grande. At about the time Chupadero Black-on-white came into vogue, a widespread change from mineral paints to carbon paint—a change that had slowly diffused eastward from the San Juan region of the Pueblo area—reached the Rio Grande drainage. The new paint type was adopted there in all but the extreme north and east sections in the vicinity of Taos, and along the tributaries of the Canadian (Wendorf and Reed, 1955: 144). The use of carbon paint, however, was not adopted by the Jumano, nor was it adopted in the Saline area farther north or on the east side of the Manzano Mountains. Also neglected in this general region was the slightly later influence of Mesa Verde decorative style—the employment of heavier design, less use of hatched elements, a tendency toward panel layout, and ticked rims.
By 1300 early glaze paint pottery was making its appearance in the Rio Grande, and while its use spread to the Jumano area, it was not made there; the actual source of Glaze I Red was probably the Rio Grande, and of Glaze I Yellow, the Galisteo region (Shepard, 1942). We cannot date the point at which glaze-paint ware was first made locally in the Jumano area, but it was probably not until the advent of what Shepard calls the Late Group—typical Glaze IV and later, from about 1550. The Jumano were not only slow to adopt glaze-paint ware, but, more important, they also clung to the production of black-on-white pottery as long as they existed as a group. This is in marked contrast to the Rio Grande, where black-on-whites were abandoned with the advent of glaze paint in all areas except Jemez on the western frontier, and among the Tewa north of Santa Fe, where Biscuit Ware was followed by a matte-paint polychrome in historic times.
A completely surprising show! Ana and Dave Chan for music; roller skates, a somersault. Rather brief show, but fun! I saw the hearing-impaired signed show on Saturday.
Ana and her Papa on keyboard and drums. Jazz music is a perfect complement to Charlie Brown!Parts of Merced south of El Nido dropped more than 21 inches in just two years. That area – often called Red Top by locals – appears to be continuing to sink at a rate of nearly 1 foot per year.
Researchers warn that the area that’s sinking is gradually spreading across 1,200 square miles – from the cities of Merced on the north, to Los Banos on the west, Madera on the east and Mendota on the south.
...USGS officials said they fear sinking ground levels will wreak havoc on economically vital man-made structures like the Delta-Mendota Canal, the California Aqueduct and irrigation canals that serve Merced and Madera counties.
...“A foot a year of subsidence (near El Nido) is a very rapid rate,” said Michelle Sneed, the USGS hydrologist who was the lead author of the new report. “I think that’s alarming.”
Sneed said that’s “among the fastest subsidence rates ever measured in the San Joaquin Valley.”
Last year’s low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse.
...“There’s no question that the loss of habitat is huge,” said Douglas Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, who has long warned of the perils of disappearing insects. “We notice the monarch and bees because they are iconic insects,” he said. “But what do you think is happening to everything else?”
A big part of it is the way the United States farms. As the price of corn has soared in recent years, driven by federal subsidies for biofuels, farmers have expanded their fields. That has meant plowing every scrap of earth that can grow a corn plant, including millions of acres of land once reserved in a federal program for conservation purposes.
Another major cause is farming with Roundup, a herbicide that kills virtually all plants except crops that are genetically modified to survive it.
As a result, millions of acres of native plants, especially milkweed, an important source of nectar for many species, and vital for monarch butterfly larvae, have been wiped out. One study showed that Iowa has lost almost 60 percent of its milkweed, and another found 90 percent was gone. “The agricultural landscape has been sterilized,” said Dr. Brower.
With its dated aluminum awnings, the fading and peeling paint, cowboy wallpaper, velvet paintings and those Formica tables, it’s in serious need of an update....
...Trails is not a good restaurant, but neither is it a terrible one. It’s a place stuck in purgatory, anchored unceremoniously in a Sacramento food scene that no longer really exists.
...The menu is dated and lacks a coherent vision.... There are combinations that scream 1980s, like ribs and prawns or shish kebab and ribs or shish kebab and chicken. The salads, all iceberg lettuce and faded-red, flavorless tomatoes, make clear that Trails has yet to sign on with the farm-to-fork movement.
...The disconnect is all too obvious at Trails. The vegetables that came with our steak? Our skewers of desiccated chicken? Our decent roast chicken? There weren’t any. We got a sad baked potato or some competent French fries. When we asked about vegetables, our server plunked down our side salads and said, “You’re looking’ at ’em.”
...The beer list is stuck in 1979.
...Charming as it may be, Trails lost its way by refusing to set foot in the new and much more dynamic Sacramento, where we expect better food and know where to find it. There once was a time, many years ago, where Western-themed restaurants were all the rage in Sacramento, probably because Westerns were all the rage in movies and on TV. Folks even got dressed up in Western garb when they went out to eat here.
That Sacramento, cute as a button, no longer exists.
Impressive flock of crows at dusk.
The spread.
Allen from Michigan does the honors."A perfect fit. Like a glove. This match was made exactly to measure."
Last winter, I completely wore out my Dr. Seuss night cap, so I replaced it with another sort of cap, but this winter I can't find it. So, I cobbled together an Arab-looking assembly to replace it. It uses an extra scarf I've never used before, plus a headband. Oddly-enough, my mom assembled this headband, about 1980. She was going for the Jane Fonda/Olivia Newton John Aerobics look, which was trendy then and which she nailed, but that look isn't so trendy these days. At 2:30 a.m., though, trendy takes a back seat to comfort.
Sitting at my desk, I heard the wail of bagpipes, so I went outside to see what was up. I don't know who these folks are, but they were wailing away with gusto. In an attempt to keep shoppers coming, retailers are extending their Black Friday promotions into December — a tactic rarely employed to this extent. To avoid being caught in January with excess inventory from 2013, many are choosing to sacrifice profit margins by preemptively discounting this month.
Cohen said the type of bargains normally reserved for the week after Christmas are "now available a month in advance."
"This is the drowning man phenomenon — some retailers appear to be flailing around desperately trying to keep their heads above water," he said.
John Wright, wearing his Fuji-brand bicycle windbreaker. Along with the mythical Mr. Farouk, John owns the Pro Bike shop in Oklahoma City. He was in San Francisco for business, and to visit family. He came out to Concord on BART, and I drove down from Sacramento to meet him.
We had some pastries at Alpine Pastry in Concord. Later, we ended up at a diner, and shared conversation about old times, and new. 
Nearby was the Command Center. 'For Lease' signs festooned the building. The Command Center seems to have been abandoned. Which probably explains a lot.
Passing through Fairfield on the way back to Sacramento on Interstate-80, there was a fire in a neighborhood near the freeway. Was this? Yes it was! The very same neighborhood that saw a massive fire on August 31st! Why is this neighborhood always on fire? Does Katniss Everdeen, the 'Girl on Fire' live here?Dear Mr. Bletzer:He replied:
I read with interest your article on the Piros in NMHR, and was curious whether you had any information regarding (the ruins at site 1). Do they date from the chaotic times of the 1690's, or are they older?
Hello,I replied:
The main structures at (Socorro) appear to be much older than the Revolt Period. Some of the ceramics indicate at least a 14th-century occupation. Doubtless, however, the area was used until the abandonment, in 1680, of Pilabo/Socorro Pueblo.
There are also scattered about the foothills small sites with slag, 17th-century ceramics, and Spanish artifacts, which indicate prospecting by the Spanish. Nothing big came of this; there was never any large-scale mining during the colonial period.
Regards,
Michael
Thanks, Michael!
It's fun revisiting memories of when I was a freshman at NM Tech (1974-1976).
I'm attaching a few photos of some of the stuff we gathered (at Site 1).
Ceramic fragments, plus projectile point.
Closeup of projectile point.
Take a look at the ceramic fragments picture and see if you can make anything from them.
The ruins of these structures seemed strange to me. They didn't look like Puebloan structures, and so I thought maybe they were seasonal shelters of some sort, whether by Piro Indians, or others.
We also visited another interesting site (Site 2). An arroyo was actively eating through what had been a buried pit. It was a perfect, pre-cut profile, custom-made for the archaeologist in mind, but unfortunately it was in the process of being destroyed by the arroyo. Who knows how much of it lingers? There was also ruins of a European house on a nearby hilltop there.
Carbonized wood (around 1982, I gave these to the Tree Ring Lab at U of A in Tucson to see if they could date them, but they returned them, I think without looking at them).
Collected debris, including glass bottle debris.
Hello Marc,And indeed, he rendered a verdict:
It seems I misread your original question - somehow I was thinking of (another location) - an interesting site in itself but not the one you are referring to.
Now, the site you actually describe I haven't seen. I'll look at the ceramics and let you know what I think (whatever that may be worth, haha...)
Regards,
Michael
Marc,That's great!
As far as I can tell from the photos, your ceramics are old, pre-1300s definitely. Older by at least 200 years than most of the glazewares I'm dealing with on the sites I'm working on around Socorro.
(Regarding site 2) I did a site inventory with some colleagues, but other than limited survey no work has ever been done on any of those sites. They are out in the middle of nowhere, very cool locations! No wonder people are seeing aliens down there....
Cheers,
Michael
Special guests included the Leucistic (albino) Crow.
