A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

Reno's earthquakes continue:

RENO, Nev. (AP) - Scientists urged residents of northern Nevada's largest city to prepare for a bigger event as the area continued rumbling Saturday after the largest earthquake in a two-month-long series of temblors.

More than 100 aftershocks were recorded on the western edge of the city after a magnitude 4.7 quake hit Friday night, the strongest quake around Reno since one measuring 5.1 in 1953, said researchers at the seismological laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno.

...Seismologists said the recent activity is unusual because the quakes started out small and continue to build in strength. The normal pattern is for a main quake followed by smaller aftershocks.

...Reno's last major quake measured 6.1 on April 24, 1914, and was felt as far away as Berkeley, Calif., said Craig dePolo, research geologist with the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology.

A rockslide triggered by Friday night's quake was blamed for causing a 125-foot breach in a wooden flume that carries water to one of two water treatment plants in Reno, a city of about 210,000.

A backup pump was used to divert water to the plant, and the breach was not expected to cause any water shortages, said Aaron Kenneston, Washoe County emergency management officer.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Friday night's quake was centered around Mogul, just west of Reno. The area of upscale homes along the eastern Sierra was rattled by more than 100 quakes the day before, the strongest a magnitude 4.2 that caused high-rise casinos to sway in downtown Reno.

The strongest aftershock measured 3.7 and was recorded after noon Saturday.

...Hundreds of mostly minor quakes have occurred along one or possibly more faults since the sequence began Feb. 28, said Ken Smith, a seismologist at the Reno laboratory. The quakes have occurred along an area about 2 miles long and a half-mile wide.

"We can't put a number on it, but the probability of a major earthquake has increased with this sequence," Smith said Saturday. "People need to prepare for ground shaking because there's no way to say how this will play out."

Among other things, scientists urged residents to stock up on water and food, to learn how to turn off water and gas, and to strap down bookshelves, televisions and computers.

"It's getting a little bit frightening," Daryl DiBitonto of Reno told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "I'm very concerned about this increase in not only activity, but also in magnitude."

The quakes around Reno began a week after a magnitude 6 temblor in the northern Nevada town of Wells, near the Utah border. The Feb. 21 quake caused an estimated $778,000 in damage to homes, schools and historic downtown buildings, dePolo said.

Scientists said they're unsure whether the seismic activity at opposite sides of Nevada is related.

Nevada is the third most seismically active state in the U.S. behind California and Alaska. The Wells quake was the 15th of at least magnitude 6 in the state's 143-year history.

A magnitude-7.4 quake south of Winnemucca in 1915 is the most powerful in state history.

Squirrel #6

Joins the illustrious ranks of former squirrels.

Late!

The story of my life!

Something new from Deborah McMillion-Nering, who is May's featured artist at Art One Gallery, in Scottsdale, AZ.

It Will Be Obama

This encapsulates my thoughts on the subject:

Notwithstanding the plentiful commentary to the effect that the Pennsylvania primary must have shaken superdelegates planning to support Barack Obama, causing them to rethink their position, key Democrats on Capitol Hill are unbudged.

“I don’t think anyone’s shaken,” a leading House Democrat told me. The critical mass of Democratic congressmen that has been prepared to endorse Obama when the timing seemed right remains prepared to do so. Their reasons, ones they have held for months, have not changed – and by their very nature are unlikely to.

Essentially, they are three:

(a) Hillary Rodham Clinton is such a polarizing figure that everyone who ever considered voting Republican in November, and even many who never did, will go to the polls to vote against her, thus jeopardizing Democrats down the ticket – i.e., themselves, or, for party leaders, the sizeable majorities they hope to gain in the House and the Senate in November.

(b) To take the nomination away from Obama when he is leading in the elected delegate count would deeply alienate the black base of the Democratic Party, and, in the words of one leading Democrat, “The superdelegates are not going to switch their votes and jeopardize the future of the Democratic Party for generations.” Such a move, he said, would also disillusion the new, mostly young, voters who have entered into politics for the first time because of Obama, and lose the votes of independents who could make the critical difference in November.

(c) Because the black vote can make the decisive difference in numerous congressional districts, discarding Obama could cost the Democrats numerous seats.

One Democratic leader told me, “If we overrule the elected delegates there would be mayhem.” Hillary Rodham Clinton’s claim that she has, or will have, won the popular vote does not impress them – both because of her dubious math and because, as another key Democrat says firmly, “The rules are that it’s the delegates, period.” (These views are closely aligned with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement earlier this year that the superdelegates should not overrule the votes of the elected delegates.)

Furthermore, the congressional Democratic leaders don’t draw the same conclusion from Pennsylvania and also earlier contests that many observers think they do: that Obama’s candidacy is fatally flawed because he has as yet been largely unable to win the votes of working class whites. They point out something that has been largely overlooked in all the talk – the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries were closed primaries, and, one key congressional Democrat says, “Yes, he doesn’t do really well with a big part of the Democratic base, but she doesn’t do well with independents, who will be critical to success in November.”

So, the fact that Mrs. Clinton has shown herself to be a remarkably resilient, tough campaigner, an attribute that the Clintons hope will carry much importance, this Democrat says, “is irrelevant.” This person added: “Many of the superdelegates are not going to be naïve enough to not realize the handwriting on the wall that this thing is going to Obama” – barring, he added, some major event like the Wright matter that he can’t seem to manage. They consider this unlikely. (There’s almost always a “something-might-happen” factor in elections.) As for the Wright matter, a key Democrat on Capitol Hill says, “Though it makes [his Democratic colleagues] a little nervous, it’s not enough to change their minds.” Moreover, the Wright matter may be old news come the general election.

...This pressure may not be enough to get the tenacious Hillary Rodham Clinton to quit the race, but, says a leading Democrat, “Sometime in June we will make it clear to her that this thing isn’t going to the convention.”

McCain's "Straight Talk" Can Boomerang

Now, McCain does have a point here, something well-worth discussing, but he couches it in exaggerated and undiplomatic language that can only hurt him:

DOBBS: A room full of construction workers gave Senator John McCain a little straight talk of their own yesterday. And it was almost more than he could bear. The AFL-CIO's construction and building trades booed Senator McCain when he said illegal aliens fill jobs that Americans won't do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Now, my friends, I'll offer anybody here $50 an hour if you'll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So -- OK? Sign up. OK.

You sign up. You sign up, and you'll be there for the whole season, the whole season. OK? Not just one day. Because you can't do it, my friend.

Undiplomatic Language

The whole point of diplomacy is to get parties at odds with each other to negotiate, and thus avoid or mitigate open warfare. Jimmy Carter has never engaged in bigotry, but he has been willing to shuttle between warring parties, to make sure these negotiations occur. This is what the State Department should be doing. It's not a matter of rewarding terrorists, or whatever useless moral category one wants to put necessary work into. It's unfortunate, and perhaps inevitable, that a nation like the U.S., with an Administration that prizes privatization, now has to conduct urgent and necessary diplomacy through private channels, because the government officials who should be conducting the diplomacy are too lame and incompetent and frightened to do it themselves.

Now, people can differ about whether negotiations may be helpful, or not - there are times when poorly-timed negotiations can backfire - but this is not one of them. Throwing panic-stricken insults around is not a productive or useful approach:

NEW YORK (AP) - Israel's ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday called former President Jimmy Carter "a bigot" for meeting with the leader of the militant Hamas movement in Syria.

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, "went to the region with soiled hands and came back with bloody hands after shaking the hand of Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas," Ambassador Dan Gillerman told a luncheon briefing for reporters.

The diplomat was questioned about problems facing his country during a wide-ranging discussion with reporters lasting more than an hour. The briefing was sponsored by The Israel Project, a Washington-based, media-oriented advocacy group.

The ambassador's harsh words for Carter came days after the ex-president met with Mashaal for seven hours in Damascus to negotiate a cease-fire with Gaza's Hamas rulers. Carter then called Mashaal on Monday to try to get him to agree to a one-month truce without conditions, but the Hamas leader rejected the idea.

The ambassador called last weekend's encounter "a very sad episode in American history."

He said it was "a shame" to see Carter, who had done "good things" as a former president, "turn into what I believe to be a bigot."

...Gillerman said Hamas is armed and trained by Iran, whose president once called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

"The real danger, the real problem is not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the real threat is Iran," he said.

Gillerman spoke with reporters from around the world at the Times Square offices of a New York law firm on the day Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was in Washington meeting with President Bush.

...Gillerman called Syria a "destabilizing influence" in the Middle East.

"You see Syria's hosting, very hospitably and warmly, over 10 terror organizations in Damascus," the ambassador said, adding that the country also supports Hezbollah, an anti-Israeli Shiite group in Lebanon with close ties to Iran and Syria.

"Basically, Syria and Iran, together with Hamas and Hezbollah, are the main axes of terror and evil in the world," the Israeli ambassador said.

Back From The Brink

With a vengeance:

The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.

The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.

Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently.

Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction."

Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the globe, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Upcoming - RSP's "Thoroughly Modern Millie"

Starring Andrea St. Clair and Scott Woodard.

Pam's on choreography too!

YPT "Music Man" Thursday Evening Rehearsal

Left: Cody Craven as Professor Harold Hill.

Left: Ice Cream Quartet. Megan Aube, Camille Totah, Kristine Hager, Lisa Parente.

Left: Kennedy Wenning, Cody Craven, Jasmine (?), Ashley Hickman, and others.

Left: "Marian, The Librarian"

Waiting For E. At The Dentist

Left: With my memory difficulties regarding names, I could totally see retiring here in a few years - if I could just remember the name of the place.


E. needed a tooth extracted, so I took her over to the dentist. I had half an hour idle time to walk around the neighborhood of Professional Drive (kind of a doctor ghetto), just northwest of the intersection of Arden and Watt, in Sacramento.

Left: Resource allocation in the suburbs seems better than downtown. This location is somewhat removed from the supermarket across (and down) the street, but one can pick up, or leave behind, shopping carts here. It's almost like the hub-and-spoke approach to allocating airliners. So, if the supermarket is the analog to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, this location is like the airstrip in, say, Vernal, Utah.

Left: This is my favorite business on Arden Way.

Left: Ooooooooo!

A co-worker saw this photo, and said: "Is that my husband's vehicle there?" but it was all a mixup....

Left: Flower bed, with tire rim, on Professional Drive. There was a fascinating-looking store selling tires and tire rims on Watt Avenue, but they were having a sale, and I was afraid that if I started taking pictures, they would figure I was with the competition, and come on over, and bust my jaw.

Left: When I returned to the waiting room at the dentist's office, I could hear E. caterwauling loudly down the hall "I'm dying! I'm dying!" Ah yes, the sound of progress! I suggested to the apprehensive-looking receptionist that I could go back and help calm her down, but she replied: "Workplace insurance requirements prevent yada, yada, yada..."

In a few minutes, E. appeared, with a tale of how the dentist tried to asphyxiate her by spilling anesthesia down her throat. But her molar was gone, which just means the dentist did his work efficiently, effectively, and painlessly, and really, what more can you ask?

Anemic Victory

Thursday night/ Friday morning, couldn't quite close the deal. But at least I barely managed to scrape five wins in a row. Better than losing....

Win: $1,287.50, minus $1,100.00 initial stake, minus $120 E. stake, minus $30 ATM charge = $37.50

Went With The Wind

Apropos of nothing I can figure out, Steve notes that the musical "Gone With The Wind" was something of a failure. Critics complained:

"How do you cram a 1,000-page novel into three-and-a-half hours of stage time?"

Well, this is how best to do it.....

A Conflation Of Conspiracy Theories

Joe The Plumber was beside himself with excitement as he waved the DVD around: "This proves everything I've been saying for years!" "What is it?" I wondered. "A new theory regarding the assassination of JFK!" I had just one word for the new theory:

N-O-O-O-O!

Especially after reading the book "Case Closed" by Gerald Posner, I'm a firm believer in the Warren Commission's Oswald-was-the-only-assassin theory. "Don't jump to conclusions. Give the DVD a look," Joe urged.

Well, OK. Joe didn't give me much time (he had to lend the DVD to someone else) and he urged me to fast-forward through the beginning part. I didn't follow Joe's advice, though, and trudged through the tedious early part of the DVD.

After carefully reassuring his audience about the earnestness and purity of their intentions in searching for the truth, author William Cooper seemed to focus on extraterrestrials and events in Roswell, however, not the JFK assassination. I had to return the DVD too early to get to the JFK parts.

Was I supposed to get the message that aliens and the JFK assassination had something in common?

Apparently, yes!

Won The Battle

Lost the war:

Tally so far; Clinton 1,585; Obama 1,715; needed to nominate 2,025.

Hillary can't quite do it......

"Secret Garden" Callbacks

Left: From left to right; Rick Eldredge, Bret McLaughlin, Aaron Rothleder, Kaylynn Rothleder, Richard Lui, Joshua Smith, and Emily Jo Seminoff.

Left: The only one of the Mary/Dr. Craven pictures I took that came out - Rick Eldredge and Kaylynn Rothleder.

Bev's Review Of "Pajama Game"

Is on-line.

Keep An Eye Out For This Guy

Because he could be anywhere....:

SAO PAULO, Brazil - A Roman Catholic priest who floated off under hundreds of helium party balloons was missing Monday off the southern coast of Brazil.

Rescuers in helicopters and small fishing boats were searching off the coast of Santa Catarina state, where pieces of balloons were found.

Rev. Adelir Antonio de Carli lifted off from the port city of Paranagua on Sunday afternoon, wearing a helmet, thermal suit and a parachute.

He was reported missing about eight hours later after losing contact with port authority officials, according to the treasurer of his Sao Cristovao parish, Denise Gallas.

Gallas said by telephone that the priest wanted to break a 19-hour record for the most hours flying with balloons to raise money for a spiritual rest-stop for truckers in Paranagua, Brazil's second-largest port for agricultural products.

...A video of Carli posted on the G1 Web site of Globo TV showed the smiling 41-year-old priest slipping into a flight suit, being strapped to a seat attached to a huge column green, red, white and yellow balloons, and soaring into the air to the cheers of a crowd.

According to Gallas, the priest soared to an altitude of 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) then descended to about 8,200 feet (2,500 meters) for his planned flight to the city of Dourados, 465 miles (750 kilometers) northwest of his parish.

But winds pushed him in another direction, and Carli was some 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast when he last contacted Paranagua's port authority, Gallas said.

Carli had a GPS device, a satellite phone, a buoyant chair and is an experienced skydiver, Gallas said.

"We are absolutely confident he will be found alive and well, floating somewhere in the ocean," she said.

"He knew what he was doing and was fully prepared for any kind of mishap."

Mind That Temper....

Take a deep breath and put away the gun....

A man accidentally shot himself in the stomach after waving his gun in anger at a fellow driver in Tempe, and police said Monday he will face charges.

David Lopez, 33, is expected to survive and could face charges including disorderly conduct, reckless display of a firearm and felony flight from police in the Friday night incident, Tempe police spokesman Brandon Banks said.

Banks said soon after Lopez shot himself, he tried to evade police by driving into a nearby neighborhood, but he crashed his car into a canal embankment. Lopez then ran on foot, but police soon caught up with him.

Banks said it's unclear what sparked the incident and that Lopez has been evasive in police interviews.

The other driver, David Billy Jones, 33, was uninjured but also fled the scene. He was soon after arrested on a charge of misdemeanor drunken driving.

Banks said if drivers find themselves in a road-rage incident, they should always back off. “Just back off, slow down and let that person go where they need to go,” he said.

When Will Albuquerque Movies Be Released?

I want to see the upcoming movie called "The War Boys" because they filmed a portion of the movie in my Dad's trailer court in Albuquerque's North Valley. My dad doesn't like trigger-happy drug dealers, though, so he will *not* be seen in the movie: it's just nice knowing that he's peeking outside through the curtains, from the comfort and safety of his trailer, very, very close by, as the drug smugglers betray each other, or kill each other, or whatever nasty things they do to each other in the movie. According to a post on imdb.com:

The director just taught a class of mine at NYU for a couple of weeks and happened to talk about the current state of the film. It's been submitted for entry to Cannes and so will most likely be taking that route of finding distribution.

And what about that other Albuquerque movie, "Game"?:

Game is a near-future action/thriller starring Gerard Butler (Kable) as the champion of an on-line game called "Slayers". Mind-control technology has taken society by storm and "Slayers" allows humans control other humans in mass-scale, multiplayer online game. With his every move tracked by millions, Kable's ultimate challenge becomes regaining his identity and launching an attack on the system that has imprisoned him.

Not released yet (apparently it's coming out this Christmas season), but here's a teaser trailer!

Yes, this is downtown Albuquerque, just as I fondly remember it!

The Black Man With The White Dog

Monday night, I walked Sparky so late I actually ran into a neighbor, "The Black Man With The White Dog", walking his dog early, before going to work (I, of course, am his photo-negative, "The White Man With The Black Dog").

The white dog (a Bichon Frise) is eleven years old, and even though younger than Sparky, is hobbled to the point of barely being able to walk. But we all know how much dogs love their walks. Who can deny them? So these days, "The Black Man With The White Dog" carries his dog in his arms all around the neighborhood, putting his dog down every now and then to visit favorite spots.