Big Day of Giving 2018 at DMTC

May the Third with Mayzie La Bird! Fun time. Lots of potatoes, and other food. I led the Yopp contest. Ella won for ages 12 and under, and Tate for the older crowd. My understanding is that DMTC got $23,500, plus an additional $3,000 in offline donations.

Underworld - Cowgirl (Footage from BBC Deep Blue)

Electronica, with fish (the crabs at 8:14 are amazing).

I'm guessing it's a mashup of BBC nature video with Underworld's House style. According to Wikipedia, the music dates to 1994. I love the music, and I especially like the hyperfocused crabs. Not sure what kind of crab they are - not the red crabs of Christmas Island, nor the Cuban crabs:

Fire Brings Down The Building

Just like with the WTC, explosives not required to bring down the building:

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — A high-rise tower in São Paulo, Brazil, collapsed early Tuesday after a fire raged through the building and spread to two other structures nearby. At least one person was believed to have died.

The collapsed building, which reached more than 20 stories high, was a former federal police facility that was inhabited by about 150 squatters, city officials said, but it appeared that the vast majority of them escaped the blaze.

May The Third With Mayzie La Bird

Don Miguelo - "7 Locas"

This is Zumba!

Burro Banton - "Lyrics Daddy"

Pepper uses this song for Zumba, but its hypnotic rhythm seems more-suitable for Dancehall. I just like it!

"Finding Your Feet"

I was bored, so I went to the Tower Theater to see this film, "Finding Your Feet," about which I had heard nothing.

I was alone in the theater, so I guess no one else had heard of it either.

I was hoping it would prove to be an English version of "Strictly Ballroom," but it wasn't that. It was a clash of lifestyles: stuffy lady moves in with her freewheeling sister, and laughs occur. Someone somewhere said that the English used to be the most proper people in Europe, but now they are the most emotional, and that seems right somehow. So, a bit formulaic of a movie, somewhat amusing, but not an epic by any means.

"I Can Only Imagine"

As a heathen, I generally avoid the Christian subculture in America, but I did see the J. Michael Finley/Dennis Quaid movie "I Can Only Imagine," which tells the tale of Bart Millard, lead singer of a Christian band named 'Mercy Me.' To my surprise, the movie's actually quite good. The acting is excellent, and the theme of father/son conflict is universal. Plus, excellent cinematography, reflecting lots of capital investment and artistic thought. Even though the song "I Can Only Imagine" is apparently very popular on the Christian side of things, I had never heard of it before, no doubt due to my heathen status. Apparently the band 'Mercy Me' was honored at a recent Presidential dinner, and a clip from the dinner was included in the movie, but they didn't show Trump, which shows good judgement on the moviemakers' part.

In An "Arcade Fire" Mood Today

Happy Beltane Everyone!

The Slow Death of Rural Kansas

Commodity agriculture is to blame:

That’s the thing about rural Kansas: No one lives there, not anymore. The small towns that epitomize America’s heartland are cut off from the rest of the world by miles and miles of grain, casualties of a vast commodity agriculture system that has less and less use for living, breathing farmers.

U.S. census data tells the story. The population in most of Kansas’s rural counties peaked 50 years ago or earlier. The state’s annual population growth rate is among the slowest in the country, steadily falling from 1.2 percent in 1960 to 0.9 percent in 2016, with nearly all of that meager growth concentrated in a handful of eastern urban areas—Wichita, Kansas City, Topeka, and Lawrence.

Population is also growing in the areas around the state’s massive slaughterhouses and feedlots, which have built communities largely around immigrant labor. But that’s nowhere near enough to stave off the decline, which is only expected to increase more rapidly.

World's Oldest Known Spider Dies

Forty-three years!:

The world’s oldest known spider has died at the ripe old age of 43 after being monitored for years during a long-term population study in Australia, researchers said Monday.

The trapdoor matriarch comfortably outlived the previous record holder, a 28-year-old tarantula found in Mexico, according to a study published in the Pacific Conservation Biology Journal.

The spider did not die of old age but was killed by a wasp sting, researchers said.

...Number 16 was monitored in the wild. Female trapdoor spiders stay in and around the same burrow virtually all their lives, so researchers marked her burrow and went back to check on it regularly.

...Trapdoor spiders traditionally have a lifespan between five to 20 years. While females stay in or near their burrows, males leave once mature and go in search of a mate.

Life Out in the Country

Fun video.

Try Subtraction!

Something doesn't add up.

My Photos of DMTC’s “Guys and Dolls” are Posted

Link.

Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Sunday Zumba Fundraiser

Fundraiser at California Northstate University Events Center in Elk Grove.

Toy Boat

Dropping That Hot Potato

Catastrophic Rainfall in Kauai

Unbelievable numbers:

Since the 1940s, the Hawaiian island of Kauai has endured two tsunamis and two hurricanes, but locals say they have never experienced anything like the thunderstorm that drenched the island this month.

"The rain gauge in Hanalei broke at 28 inches within 24 hours," said state Rep. Nadine Nakamura of the North Shore community. "In a neighboring valley, their rain gauge showed 44 inches within 24 hours. It's off the charts."

Actually, it was even worse. This week the National Weather Service said nearly 50 inches of rain fell in 24 hours.

Now, as Kauai continues to recover, scientists warn that this deluge on April 14 and 15 was something new — the first major storm in Hawaii linked to climate change.

"The flooding on Kauai is consistent with an extreme rainfall that comes with a warmer atmosphere," said Chip Fletcher, a leading expert on the impact of climate change on Pacific island communities.

He noted that the intense rainfall not only triggered landslides, it also caused the Hanalei River to flood and carve a new path through Hanalei. Homes, cars and animals were swept away in raging waters, but no residents or visitors died. Some were airlifted to safety or rescued by boat.

Members of a bison herd were displaced or carried off by floodwaters, and some were rescued from the ocean after swimming for their lives. "Poor buffalo," said Sue Kanoho, executive director of the Kauai Visitors Bureau, who saw video and photos of the animals roaming around businesses and neighborhoods.

The picturesque North Shore communities of Wainiha and Haena are considered the hardest-hit because the only road that leads to them, Kuhio Highway, is now blocked by landslides. Officials say it may not fully reopen for months.

...For about a week after the storm, the normally aquamarine ocean around the island was an eerie orange — a sign of the volcanic soil. The more iron in the lava, the more orange the soil, said Dolan Eversole, a coastal geologist with the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program.

Since Kauai is the oldest of the Hawaiian Islands, the mountains are exceptionally steep and the distance between the mountaintops, where it rained, and the sea is relatively short. There was no time for the red-orange clay to settle as water raced out to sea, he said.

We Made This

Stark Rain Divide Between Northern and Southern California

And so, the California 2017-18 rainy season is over. Sacramento Executive Airport ended up with 89% of average precipitation, which is nearly-identical to the 2015-16 rainy season value of 91% two years ago. Northern California's nearly-normal rainy season contrasts with Southern California's terrible rainy season. It will be a long, hot summer this year in the South Coast and deserts.

Five Bat Species

I was out underneath the western end of the I-80 Yolo Causeway again shortly before sunset on 4/29, listening to the batspeak in the vast colony there with my Bat Echometer. Once again, Mexican Freetail Bats were common (as the Echometer ID'd in the picture below), as were Hoary Bats, but as sunset approached, the squeaking chatter grew louder, and other bats began drowning out the more-common bats, namely the Yuma Myotis, the Canyon Bat, and the Western Red Bat. These five bat species are common enough in the Davis, California area, but I didn't realize they all live right next to each other, cheek by jowl. It must be bat heaven there under the Yolo Causeway. Once again, I never actually saw the bats (although one apparently pooped on my head). The rising cacophony was exciting. The mass flights of summer are approaching. I can hardly wait!

I'm worried about the small Midtown Sacramento colony of Mexican Freetail Bats. They've begun a large construction nearby, and although the bats aren't directly affected, all the noise and fuss nearby might be problematic.

Spending Too Much Time at Awesome Video’s Going-Out-Of-Business Sale.

Visit to Gunther’s

Time To Fight The Donuts

A Clip from Salvador Dali's Film

Comet 67P

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko:

The video clip (below) shows roughly 25 minutes of flight past Comet 67P on June 1, 2016. The scene looks like something out of a science-fiction film:

Sneaking Up on the Sloths of New Mexico

Prehistoric encounter out at White Sands:

Last April, Matthew Bennett was lying on a white salt flat in New Mexico, uncovering fossilized footprints that had been preserved in the white rock. The print belonged to a ground sloth—a bulky animal, whose large feet and curved claws left apostrophe-shaped impressions wherever it walked. There were many such tracks around, but Bennett found one that was very different.

Inside the outline of the sloth’s 20-inch-long foot was a human footprint.

He looked at the next track in the series and found the same thing—a human footprint, perfectly nestled inside a sloth one. There were at least 10 of these, all in a row. “It slowly dawned on me what was happening,” he says. Thousands of years ago, a ground sloth had walked along this site, and a person had followed it, carefully matching its every step. “There was a lot of profanity [from me],” Bennett adds. “That’s what geologists do when we discover something.”

White House Primatology

Sean Hannity, Welfare Queen

All that money!:

The Guardian found that Hannity owns millions of dollars of real estate through more than 20 shell corporations, which shield his identity. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, The Guardian notes, insured the mortgage loans with which Hannity purchased the properties. Let's be clear: This is a subsidy. This is a benefit. This is big government aiding a very wealthy man. This is welfare.

Karma Comes For The Troll

He earned it:

Milo was apparently at a bar in Manhattan recently when the bar patrons (many of whom were members of the Democratic Socialists of America) began chanting “Nazi scum get out.”

Milo eventually left the bar in a perfectly calm and collected fashion, and no physical intimidations appear to have been made. However, he later recalled the incident on his Instagram, claiming that he was afraid of getting “hurt or killed” and that the situation “was about to escalate into something ugly.”

Dairy Queens of the Southwest - Canaries in the Coal Mine

DQs have always been more vulnerable than other fast-food outlets:

The old saying that every Texas town has a Dairy Queen is no longer true for many communities, especially the agricultural hamlets of the Panhandle, which have been disproportionately affected by a spate of closures. On October 30, Vasari LLC, which operated about 70 Dairy Queens across Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, filed for bankruptcy and announced it was closing 29 stores, 10 of them in the Panhandle.

...The old saying that every Texas town has a Dairy Queen is no longer true for many communities.

Vasari’s explanations for its troubles are puzzling. Its bankruptcy filing claims that many of its restaurants are located in “prime oil country” and were hurt by declining oil prices. Yet only three—in Hobbs, New Mexico; Denver City; and Seagraves, all southwest of Lubbock—are close to the oil patch. Most are in cities like Post, Claude, and Perryton, in the heart of cotton country. Vasari also blamed its demise on Hurricane Harvey, claiming that it ruined inventory and damaged stores. But most store closures weren’t in areas battered by the storm. (Neither Vasari officials nor their bankruptcy attorneys responded to requests for comment.)

Deep in the bankruptcy documents, in a subsequent filing, Vasari hinted at a more deep-rooted problem: while some of its stores were profitable, the company “as a whole [was] facing net operating losses that [could not] continue unabated.” That might have left the Panhandle locations particularly vulnerable. Though most seemed to be doing a healthy business, at least in the eyes of locals, supplying remote towns miles from the interstate is an expensive proposition. Vasari doubtless burned through a lot of money paying for gas, cargo space air-conditioning, and truckers’ salaries in order to get frozen burger patties and soft-serve ice cream to restaurants that weren’t exactly booming. “In small-town fast-food restaurants, the profit margins are small,” said Mary Dawson, an associate dean at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management, at the University of Houston.

Fire At The Albuquerque Rail Yards

Stupid arson:

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A fire ignited inside a vacant building at the historic Albuquerque Rail Yards Monday afternoon, spreading to the roof and two other adjacent buildings before it was contained, according to a spokesman for the Albuquerque Fire Department.

Officials believe the fire was intentionally set. The AFD Fire Investigation Division along with the Albuquerque Police Department are following several leads, said Tom Ruiz, a spokesman for the fire department.

“There was a pile of pallets, and a pile of trash and rubbish – that was where the point of origin was,” Ruiz said.

In a news conference held in front of the building on Second Street, south of Downtown, Mayor Tim Keller said highly flammable logs soaked in creosote left over from when the Rail Yards was operational caught fire and contributed to its spread. He said the buildings that were affected had been closed to the public and no one was injured in the blaze.

It also is not expected to affect the Rail Yard Market, which opens for the season on May 6.

“The Wheels Museum has not been harmed,” Keller said. “The building where the Rail Yards Market is held is also fine and not affected by this fire.”

Damage was limited to three buildings, Ruiz said.

Short Zumba Stretch With The Barreto Brothers

Dancehall Powerup Promo Video

Kate writes:

The promo piece you posted on dancehall powerup looked fun, so I googled to see when/where the classes are, and this popped up. You probably saw it at the time, but in case not … you’re in it J

Whoa! No, actually I had NOT seen this! Thanks, Kate!

My Neighborhood

"Lean on Pete"

I was stunned with the hillside that opens this preview for "Lean on Pete," because I passed along this exact road near Burns, Oregon when I was traveling back from the Idaho eclipse trip in August. What are the odds of that?

I was very impressed with the beauty of the country near Burns. If the Pueblo Indians had even seen Malheur Country, they would have given up the Southwest in an instant.

Impressive movie! The perilous journey of a 16-year-old homeless kid in the Pacific Northwest. Plus, horses!

The Addams Family - Sheldon High School

A surprising fact, since I knew Craig Howard, but it was the first time I'd ever been out at Sheldon High School. I wanted to support Choreographer Katie Rogers, and her students. The dancing did not disappoint!

Like it a lot. I particularly liked Fester, Pugsley, and Morticia.

This Video Has Been Out For Years, But I Still Find It Disturbing

Not as disturbing as googly-eyed animated cars, but disturbing enough.

Second Foray with the Bat Echometer

I went under the western end of the Interstate 80 Yolo Causeway, shortly before sunset. The device was flagging about 2/3 of the bat calls as Hoary Bats, and the remainder as the expected Mexican Freetail Bats.

I eventually attracted the attention of a Wildlife Area volunteer. He explained that there were a number of different bats here, but that the main body of mature Mexican Freetail Bats were at the eastern end of the Causeway. Later in the year, juveniles would move out here towards the western end. Both ends have spectacular and distracting bat displays at sunset in the summer. I don’t know why the juveniles would choose to live apart from their elders. Maybe their ultrasonic rock and roll grates on the ears of their parents.

I never saw any bats, but I knew they were there. I could hear them a bit. Something whirred past my head. I looked up and saw midges floating above me. If I attract insects, it’s logical I’d attract bats too.

As I left the Causeway in the gloaming, in the distance, I could see a midge tower forming. In June 2011, I saw a spectacular series of midge towers out here. I hope they come back.

Now, time to look into the spectral analysis software.

I'm impressed with the loud pings of Hoary Bats. In the lower display, the horizontal line is at 20 kilohertz, which is the upmost range of a young person's hearing range, and exactly the frequency at which the Hoary Bats were loudest. I couldn't hear them, though. My ears are just too old.

Namibia's Fairy Circles

Interesting. Deserts around the world have similar patterned landscapes:

A new study published in Nature has found that Namibian Fairy Circles are the product of not one, but two ecological forces. By combining field observations and computer models, researchers from Princeton University, the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, and several other institutions, have shown that the interaction between both termites and self-organizing plants (i.e. plants that either clump themselves together or disperse according to the availability of resources) is sufficient to explain this enigmatic landscape feature. Importantly, this new theory could be used to solve similar mysteries around the world.

One Toke Over The Line - Lawrence Welk Show (1971)

Kafkaesque

Break a Leg to the Cast of DMTC's "Guys and Dolls," Premiering Tonight!

I'm beginning to look at the 1,701 pictures, all of which I hope to have uploaded to DMTC's Smugmug Website by Monday. I'm attracted by some of the more offbeat ones:

‘These Kids Should Be In School Instead Of Protesting,’ Say People So Tantalizingly Close To Getting The Point

The Onion.

It's 4:20 on 4/20

And I'm hungry....

Bargain-Basement Toxicologist

Bill Cosby’s toxicologist isn’t top drawer. More like that hard-to-reach bottom drawer with all the junk.

At one point during an exacting cross-examination, Maryland toxicologist Dr. Harry Milman suggested to a prosecutor probing his credentials that he distribute copies of Milman’s two fiction thrillers to jurors in the stately Pennsylvania courtroom.

Monty Python Conquers America

Very much enjoyed this documentary. It brought back many memories of learning about Monty Python late at night on PBS in the early Seventies:

Promo Video For My Fave, Jamaican Dancehall Power Up Class

Cleaning Trash From Water

The States Race to the Bottom in the Competitive Business of Biosolids

The languid Southern summer approaches:

PARRISH, Ala.— A stinking trainload of human waste from New York City is stranded in a tiny Alabama town, spreading a stench like a giant backed-up toilet — and the "poop train" is just the latest example of the South being used as a dumping ground for other states' waste.

In Parrish, Alabama, population 982, the sludge-hauling train cars have sat idle near the little league ball fields for more than two months, Mayor Heather Hall said. The smell is unbearable, especially around dusk after the atmosphere has become heated, she said.

"Oh my goodness, it's just a nightmare here," she said. "It smells like rotting corpses, or carcasses. It smells like death."

...Alabama and other Southern states have a long history accepting waste from around the U.S.

A former state attorney general once described a giant west Alabama landfill as "America's Pay Toilet." It was among the nation's largest hazardous waste dumps when it opened in 1977. At its peak, the landfill took in nearly 800,000 tons of hazardous waste annually.

Plans to dump coal ash in Southern states have been particularly contentious. Each year, U.S. coal plants produce about 100 million tons of coal ash and other waste; more than 4 million tons of it wound up in an Alabama landfill following a 2008 spill in Tennessee.

In Parrish, the mayor hopes the material in the train cars is removed before the weather warms up.

"We're moving into the summer, and the summer in the South is not forgiving when it comes to stuff like this," she said.

Smart Moves by Both Cardi B and Bernie Sanders

Sanders needs to mend fences:

In pure “feel the Bern” fashion, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) postured his affinity for millennial culture on Wednesday by retweeting a quote from rap sensation Cardi B, who recently dropped her encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. presidents in an expansive interview with GQ.

In that interview, Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, took a deep dive into her self-professed obsession with the 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom she said was the “real ‘Make America Great Again’ President because if it wasn’t for him, older Americans wouldn’t even get Social Security.”

Sean Hannity’s Idea of ‘Attorney-Client Privilege’ Was Right Out of ‘Breaking Bad’

Ain't that the truth!:

“I might have handed him 10 bucks [and said,] ‘I definitely want your attorney-client privilege on this,’ ” Hannity told listeners Monday afternoon. “Something like that.”

Online, the “handed him 10 bucks” line immediately launched comparisons to an infamous scene from AMC’s smash hit “Breaking Bad.”

In a memorable exchange, one of the shadiest lawyers in television history, Saul Goodman, played by Bob Odenkirk, tells the show’s meth-dealing main characters to “put a dollar in my pocket” to ensure that their conversations about criminal misdeeds remain protected.

...But at this point in the chaotic legal mess swirling around Cohen, Trump and now Hannity, another bit of dialogue from that “Breaking Bad” scene in the desert might be worth keeping in mind.

“The way I see it, someone is going to prison,” Goodman tells his new clients. “It’s just a matter of who.”

Keith Whitley - I Never Go Around Mirrors

Downtown and East Sac Bullseye

Precipitation totals from yesterday suggest the storm had its biggest impact on downtown and East Sacramento. The downtown Sac reading was 0.65 inches.

Astonished by the Ferocity of the Thunderstorm

Very unCalifornian:

The storm cell was apparently fairly small. We got hit, but the National Weather Service rain gauge four miles away at Sac Exec Airport didn't get hit. On the other hand, they got rain yesterday, but no rain fell here. Maybe it evens out a bit.

Yeast is Chinese

Who knew?:

When scientists in France set out to sequence 1,000 yeast genomes, they looked at strains from all the places you might expect: beer, bread, wine.

But also: sewage, termite mounds, tree bark, the infected nail of a 4-year-old Australian girl, oil-contaminated asphalt, fermenting acorn meal in North Korea, horse dung, fruit flies, human blood, seawater, a rotting banana. For five years, two geneticists—Gianni Liti, from the Université Côte d’Azur, and Joseph Schacherer, from the Université de Strasbourg—asked for samples of Saccharomyces cerevisiae from nearly everyone they met, whether doctors in French Guiana collecting human feces or Mexican tequila makers.

...The results of their analysis, published in Nature, suggest that yeast came from, of all places, China.

On Russian Troll Farms

Trying Out My New Bat-Monitoring App

I've recently obtained three apps for the iPhone that promise to act like Shazam for wildlife, including two apps for bird calls. Tonight, though, was test run for the app designed for bats. If you want to listen in to those high sound frequencies, you first have to buy the ultrasonic module (about $200).

I headed down to the Midtown bat colony I first noted when I used to walk Bella. It's a perfect place for bats.

Got some nice recordings of bat chatter! The app identified most of the recordings as being from Mexican Freetailed Bats, but some recordings were identified as being from Big Brown Bats. I don't know if it means both bats were present, or if the app has trouble distinguishing between them.

I was a little surprised at the large gaps between episodes of bat activity, as if their numbers were small and scattered. It's a little early for bats. Mexican Freetailed Bats (the same bats one finds in the huge colony under the I-80 Yolo Causeway) only start arriving from their Mexican wintering spots in March. By July, there should be more.

Jump Rope, One of Hip Hop's Foundations

Furious With The Scooter Libby Pardon

Trump pardons American traitor Scooter Libby, in a Mafia-like effort to keep Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Jared Kushner from betraying his secrets.

Traitors run the United States right now:

Trouble Keeping Up With All The Bullshit

NOW Trump decides the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a good idea:

But the point is that the things President Trump has focused most on, intellectual property rights, is actually something TPP is pretty aggressive on. The point really isn’t the rights or wrongs of TPP. The point is that Trump had zero idea what TPP even was when he decided to peremptorily pull out of the agreement. It may have been bad for the US or good. But his decision was based on ignorance and impulse. Because there was nothing behind it in the first place, an about-face is completely possible.

For the record, I’m with Sasse: Trump “likes to blue-sky a lot.” That is to say, he was just spouting off and it probably means nothing. But it’s just one more example of the toll of a militantly ignorant President.

Goldman Sachs, everyone’s favorite Great Vampire Squid, notes that there isn’t much money in medical cures, only in endless courses of medical treatments:

"Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" analysts ask in an April 10 report entitled "The Genome Revolution."

"The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies," analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. "While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow."

Richter cited Gilead Sciences' treatments for hepatitis C, which achieved cure rates of more than 90 percent. The company's U.S. sales for these hepatitis C treatments peaked at $12.5 billion in 2015, but have been falling ever since. Goldman estimates the U.S. sales for these treatments will be less than $4 billion this year, according to a table in the report.

Mark Zuckerberg memes.

Ban Targeted Advertising

This strikes me as a really good idea:

Then, over the last decade, this form of marketing became seen as insufficient—or rather, the rise of digital media made a more invasive form of marketing too irresistible. Instead of having to cast a wide net in searching for potential customers, advertisers now could know every intimate detail about those customers beforehand. They began targeting people geographically and behaviorally, based on common interests or things they liked in social media or what they wrote in emails to friends. The surveillance economy was born.

The surveillance economy should die. This manner of advertising doesn’t serve the public and it’s not even clear it serves advertisers. It facilitates monopoly, as those with the biggest data troves receive all the ad dollars. That centralizes the potential for and magnitude of abuse, with Big Data used to discriminate against groups, steer vulnerable people to financial scams, and meddle in U.S. elections. Cambridge Analytica’s scraping of 87 million user profiles through a simple personality quiz, and then weaponizing that information on behalf of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, revealed how information on social media is inherently insecure.

Tohono O’odham Nation Rejects National Guard Deployment

About time the stakeholders called bullshit on Trump:

Tohono O’odham Nation – On April 9th, 2018 the Tohono O’odham Nation issued a statement to its Tribal citizens ensuring them that no National Guard troops will be deployed to their lands. The response comes on the heels of President Trump’s request for National Guard troops to be deployed to the US and Mexico border.

The Tohono O’odham Nation traditional lands lay on both sides of the US and Mexico “border”. They have consistently fought against any attempts by the US government to build a wall across their lands and have resisted any efforts that would impede on their citizens right to freely travel throughout their traditional homelands.

It's About Time

In the Sixties, I was a big fan of the Space Age. This comedy didn't even live up to the standards of its cousin, Gilligan's Island, and so disappointed, but still, it had the better theme song.

Automation Comes to Interstate 40

Ten Years of Lady Gaga

She changed a few things!:

Female pop icons have long formed a core part of gay culture, and much has been written about why. Some say we live vicariously through their sexuality; more Freudian theories suggest they’re our surrogate mothers. Less controversially, one could simply say their bright pop ballads about overcoming love and loss have historically provided a light-hearted, strobe-lit, glittery escapism from a world darkened by the shadows of HIV and homophobia. Before Gaga there was Madonna, Cher, Diana Ross. You may think Gaga didn’t do anything over and above what these performers did: provide glamour and camp value. But the special place she carved in the hearts of gay people cannot be reduced to her penchant for changing wigs – Lady Gaga queered the mainstream.

It's AMLO's Time

Mexican electorate will likely bank left on July 1st:

Campaigning for Mexico’s upcoming presidential election, on July 1, has officially begun. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the left-wing candidate and former mayor of Mexico City is the clear front-runner with an 18 percentage point lead. The two candidates from the mainstream parties that have dominated Mexico for decades., José Antonio Meade of the ruling PRI party and Ricardo Anaya of the opposition PAN have had difficulty gaining traction with voters in an anti-establishment mood.

A longtime fixture in Mexican politics—this is the third time he’s running—AMLO, as he’s known, has benefited from growing tensions with the United States under President Donald Trump, which have only grown more acute since Trump ordered troops to the border and began raising fears of a “caravan” of migrants passing through Mexico. In contrast to Mexico’s recent presidents—including the current one, the dismally unpopular Enrique Peña Nieto—who have defended NAFTA and security cooperation with Washington, he has pledged to take a harder line with the U.S.

I Deserve A $25,000 Taco

I'm hungry. How about you?

Ergonomic Fail

Sitting down to the computer, I had a realization about the pain near my shoulder blade. The pain comes from mouse-clicking. I've got some kind of ergonomic fail going on.

Lake Arthur Pulls The Concealed-Carry Permits For Cops

The bright light of publicity:

The mayor of the tiny town of Lake Arthur, New Mexico, has shut down his town’s volunteer reserve-officer program after it was reported they awarded a badge to Trump-backing billionaire Robert Mercer, reports Bloomberg.

According to the report, Mayor Ysidro Salazar issued a statement saying he has shuttered his town’s volunteer reserve-officer program and has instructed current officers to return their credentials which allowed them to concealed carry in all 50 states.

Responding to a Businessweek story that reported that out-of-towner Mercer was given a badge that also allowed him to carry a weapon, the mayor said it was time to shut the whole program down.

“Because of the notoriety this was bringing, I decided to go ahead and disassemble the unit,” Salazar said, before adding the report, “didn’t put the town in a very good light.”

Along with shutting down the program, Salazar put Police Chief William Norwood, who oversaw it while serving as the town’s only full-time paid police officer, on administrative leave, pending a hearing by city officials represent the town’s 433 residents. Previously 150 volunteers were authorized by the the department, but that number had been decreased to 84 badge-carriers.

Reorganizing The DMTC Extra Programs

As DMTC Archivist, I've been indiscriminately saving extra DMTC programs for the last sixteen years, and I had accumulated about ten boxes of them in the basement. Too many. I have finally organized them by show, allowing for just 30 per shows (some shows had more than a hundred each), and I've pared the ten boxes down to just four.

For the future.

DMTC 30th Anniversary Video

I didn't realize this interesting video was out there. It was from the DMTC 30th birthday celebration in 2014. Short snippets of many shows (I started doing shows at DMTC in 2000). Notable Broadway stars include Mara Davi (at 7:23) and Jessica Crouch (at 7:50 - apparently she opens a show in NYC in a few months). I momentarily appear at 9:52.

NEW RULES - DUA LIPA - by Blacka Di Danca & Laure Courtellemont

Two of my fave dancers!

Happy 90th Birthday To Tom Lehrer!

He's still going strong!My mom had his first album (they show the album cover in the article at the link):

Lehrer — who grew up on New York City’s Upper East Side — certainly sees a connection between his mathematical training, which began at Harvard at the prodigiously young age of 14, and his compositions. He was drawn to songwriting in his teens; after failing to respond to classical-music training, he switched to the study of popular music. In an interview in 2000, he summed up the fields’ dual impact. “The logical mind, the precision, is the same that’s involved in math as in lyrics,” he said. “It’s like a puzzle, to write a song.”

Lehrer agrees with mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (one of the builders of the atomic bomb) that rhyming “forces novel associations … and becomes a sort of automatic mechanism of originality”.

Weekend Zumbathon With the Barreto Brothers, Pakko, and Rosalie Fortner (From Santa Maria)

More Conservative Horseshit

Because I'm a liberal, I didn't get to see this horseshit Facebook was offering conservatives in the 2016 election:




Mexicans disagree about priorities:

MEXICO CITY (The Borowitz Report)—Hoping to resolve the seemingly intractable conflict over immigration, Mexico surprised the world on Thursday by agreeing to pay for Donald J. Trump’s psychiatric care.

...While some Mexican taxpayers argued that a full course of psychiatric treatment could prove more costly than a border wall, Peña Nieto warned against skimping on such a necessary expense.

“When the safety and security of the world is at stake, eight hundred dollars an hour is a bargain,” he said, but added that Mexico would try to find a therapist who takes insurance.

Meanwhile, the Soros Rewards Program is doing well:

Dear Valued Soros Protester™,

We’d like to thank you for your participation in the recent March for Our Lives and for being such a loyal Soros Protester™. Together, we sent a message to Congress and the NRA, and we are fostering a real conversation about sensible gun control in our country. Throughout our storied history of compensating work-shy millennials to protest in favor of the Soros Liberal Agenda™, we’ve set unprecedented crowd size records, made nearly 3.5 million clever posters, and paid out nearly $25 million in Soros Bucks™. However, effective today, we will be restructuring our Soros Protest Rewards Program™ to offer you better incentives as a thank you for your time, your Instagram posts, and your delightfully clever protest signs.

New Mexico is my home state. Don't tell ICE.

Zombie Raccoons in Ohio

I've seen aggressive raccoons when they are in a group, but I've never seen a zombie raccoon:

Witnesses describe the furry black-masked creatures assuming aggressive postures toward humans, showing no fear and impervious to attempts to scare them off with noises or movements.

Robert Coggeshall, a retired banker turned nature photographer, described the “extremely strange behavior” of a raccoon that entered Coggeshall’s front yard as he played with his dogs.

“He would stand up on his hind legs, which I’ve never seen a raccoon do before, and he would show his teeth and then he would fall over backward and go into almost a comatose condition,” Coggeshall told WKBN.

Libertarians Are Defunct

For the moment, Libertarians are basically defunct.

Kevin D. Williamson was just fired at The Atlantic - for good reason. I don't think we'd get along. I don't agree with the last sentence of this article. Still, I like the rest:

The GOP’s political situation is absurd: Having rallied to the banner of an erratic and authoritarian game-show host, evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell Jr. are reduced to comparing Donald Trump to King David as they try to explain away his entanglement with pornographic performer Stormy Daniels. Those who celebrated Trump the businessman clutch their heads as his preposterous economic policies produce terror in the stock markets and chaos for the blue-collar workers in construction firms and manufacturers scrambling to stay ahead of the coming tariffs on steel and aluminum. The Chinese retaliation is sure to fall hardest on the heartland farmers who were among Trump’s most dedicated supporters.

On the libertarian side of the Republican coalition, the situation is even more depressing: Republicans such as former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who once offered important support for criminal-justice reform, are lined up behind the atavistic drug-war policies of the president and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose big idea on opiate abuse is more death sentences for drug traffickers. Deficits are moving in the wrong direction. And, in spite of the best hopes of the “America First” gang, Trump’s foreign policy has not moved in the direction of Rand Paul’s mild non-interventionism or the more uncompromising non-interventionism of his father, Ron Paul. Instead, the current GOP foreign-policy position combines the self-assured assertiveness of the George W. Bush administration (and many familiar faces and mustaches from that administration) with the indiscipline and amateurism characteristic of Trump.

Some libertarian moment.

James Vandeventer is Running For Congress From Oklahoma

James was a fellow candidate for the 2003 California Gubernatorial Recall Election, so his race for the Second Oklahoma Congressional District (Tulsa area, and NE Oklahoma) piques my interest:

Oklahomans 1ST! It's time for NEW Visionary Leadership!

We don't have to live like this!

KIDS, Teachers, Vets, Elderly, Poor, 1st Responders & those in need ARE #1!

Time 2 GO MARKWAYNE! 3 TERMS ARE UP!



Take Oklahoma to the TOP!

YES ON SQ788 Medical Marijuana!

Protect Our 2nd Amendment but we need SENSIBLE Laws TO KEEP Guns out of the HANDS of the WRONG People!



Gateway to Native America! Miami, Sallisaw, Durant!

Claremore, how about a Boardwalk at Claremore Lake? Oolagah? Eufala? Or? We have a BEAUTIFUL STATE! LET'S Showcase it and make some $$$$!

Grove, how about a theme park to showcase Grand Lake?

All Religions Protected!

STOP the HATE! Rebuild Our Churches!

Let's Put God back in Our Hearts, Homes, & Churches!

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR!


...I am running as a HYBRID Candidate! I was a lifelong Reagan Republican until approx 2003. I have VOTED for many Candidates REGARDLESS of PARTY!

WHY? BECAUSE Oklahomans/American Patriots like you, COME 1ST! I don't care what your Religion is, what color you are, and I REALLY DON'T WANT to know about your sex life! WHO you love and MARRY IS YOUR BUSINESS! NOT THE GOVT OR CHURCH! LOVE THY NEIGHBOR!

WE ARE NOT SENT OUT AS POLICE FOR Christ! We WERE SENT TO SPREAD LOVE, FORGIVENESS, AND THE TEACHINGS of GOD!

Clueless Dog

The Real Reason For The Trump-Bezos Rivalry

Money:

President Donald Trump’s net worth declined by more than $600 million in the past year, according to the Forbes 400 List of the richest people in America. However surprising Trump’s loss may be, the reason for it is even more unexpected. Trump’s real estate holdings, specifically those in New York City, have taken a big hit in the past year, as retail values are struggling in response to Amazon’s e-commerce gains.

...Appearing on CNN Tuesday, Forbes assistant managing editor Kerry Dolan leveled blame for Trump’s real estate losses on e-commerce’s domination over retail, mentioning Amazon. Specifically citing the lease of the Niketown store and the Trump Tower property, Dolan said that retailers are suffering—even on the high end. It would appear that Amazon’s strategy of e-commerce over brick and mortar retail is winning, and that is having an effect on real estate values, she added.

91% of Average

After the last spell of rain, the 2017-18 rainy season (Nov. - Apr.) at Sacramento Executive airport is now 91% of average - nearly a carbon copy of the 2015-16 rainy season two years ago, which ended at 91% of average. There are chances for more rain over the next week, however, so maybe we'll just barely edge rain totals two years ago.

Meanwhile, SoCal is in bad shape. The LA Times reports the rainy season at Los Angeles is just 37% of average.