Cocoposts

George Carlin Gets Hated

Some parts from the curiously touching,  f*ck-filled Salon interview entitled Curious George: 

I'll go back to square one on this: We squandered a lot of gifts. Human beings were given a lot of great gifts. We were given the ability to reason, this extra-large brain, walking erect, having binocular vision and the opposable thumb, and all of these things, and we had such promise, but we squandered it on goods and superstition. We gave ourselves over to the high priests and the traders, and they are the ones we allow to control us. I think that's a huge mistake and it's disappointing to me.

Now, the corollary is, America was given great gifts, this ideal form of government, this most improved form of self-government that has ever come along up until that time, and we squandered it. And once again, on the same two things: gizmos and toys and gadgets -- goods, property, possessions -- and also this country is far too religious for its own good. ...

I do feel that when you're born into the world, you're given a ticket to the freak show, and when you're born in the United States, you're given a front-row seat. And some of us have notebooks. Some of us who sit there have a pencil and a notebook, and so that's what I want to do. Because we're dealing with an imperfect human animal and an imperfect human system.

Comments on the story are largely thoroughly hateful towards Carlin.

Then there was this one:

Unfunny was that excellent, serious, revealing interview.  Funny -- the laugh until you weep kind -- is watching the comments section explode with hatred because George ain't buying whatever it is the comment writers are selling, whether that's holding your nose and voting, or indeed sacrificing your principles and participating in any way, no matter what the cost.

That kind of irony is so rich it's almost physically painful.

 

Save the Cow Palace

Cow Palace. Yet another publicly-owned old stock show venue proposed for demolition - just like the Denver Stock Yards and probably our Tingley someday. 

Media awareness and appreciation of the physical manifestations of agricultural history are thin.  There is not one mention of rodeo or livestock or next month's Grand National Rodeo, Horse and Stock Show in this San Francisco Chronicle story - even though the original name was the California State Livestock Pavilion. 

State Sen. Leland Yee has introduced a bill to let Daly City purchase the Cow Palace property, which is owned by the state. He said he wants to fix up the neighborhoods near the Cow Palace and put more money in state coffers.  ...

"The Cow Palace has outlived its usefulness," said City Manager Patricia Martel. Events there "contribute nothing to our community. Why would we keep it?" ...

Some more talking points for her:

• This thing is a pain in the ass to maintain
• History, Schmistory 
• I hate circus clowns
• Cows scare me
• I don't like metal bands

O)pponents have gathered forces in a bid to preserve what they say is a Bay Area treasure. If anything, they argue, the Cow Palace - built in 1941 with funding from the Works Progress Administration - should receive special status as an officially designated landmark.

"I'm mad as hell," said Kevin Patterson, a San Francisco native whose Great Dickens Christmas Fair is held every year at the Cow Palace. Patterson, with other outraged residents, started the Web site www.savethecowpalace.com.

"It should not be sold to Daly City, and certainly should not be bulldozed. This is a real estate venture disguising itself as an attempt to improve the local community."

Wiki says the Cow Palace name probably came from a newspaper editorial that asked, "Why, when people are starving, should money be spent on a "palace for cows?"

Palo Verde Puppet Show

From the Arizona Republic we hear about Arizona State University engineering students at work on a marvelous scale model of the nuke plant.   The project is an excellent vehicle for promotion of the technology among the fluid-dynamics students at ASU, at least.  But that is only coincidental,  I'm so sure.   

Can ASU  fix Palo Verde? APS hopes school's scale model solves cooling-water problem

Arizona State University scientists are building in a basement of the Tempe campus a huge scale model of a nuclear reactor - minus the nuclear. The goal is to help Arizona Public Service Co. engineers investigate minor pressure fluctuations in the water system that cools Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station's reactors. ...

After the tests the ASU drama department will be use the model for a puppet show as part of an improved training program.  Kidding. More likely a video game.

A parallel press release must have come out for this story in the same paper the same day:

Palo Verde Efforts Please Regulators

The chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is pleased with efforts to improve performance at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station following a tour of the plant Friday. The plant 50 miles west of Phoenix fell into "Category 4," one level from being shut down, following mechanical problems dating to 2003.

Palo Verde provides a huge chunk of power to the western U.S., including nearly a third of the electricity delivered by its operator, Arizona Public Service Co. 
NRC Chairman Dale Klein said he asked the plant's Chief Nuclear Officer Randy Edington when he thought the plant could move out of the category, and Edington said by mid-2009.  "The NRC doesn't want to see plants in Category 4," Klein said. "But they have to demonstrate stable performance. They won't move out . . . just because they say they are ready."

The NRC won't simply take their word for it.  But then, they really don't want to see Category 4's.  And he's pleased as punch.   So expect more press releases heralding Category 3 soon and that video game.

The comments section contains the range of nuke views.  On one hand:

Nuclear power is one part of the growing energy portfolio that we must build to insulate our economic independence from foreign oil. Were exporting 1 billion USD per day in cash to the middle east, this must stop now. We need more nuclear, solar, gas, biomass and clean coal plants constructed in a US energy portfolio fashion to move us away from the carbon based fuels we are importing.

On the other hand:

Nuclear power generation is a flawed, dangerous, expensive and fraudulently represented technology.    It sets off a vastly imprudent risk for horrendous, almost incalculable, regional disaster against the desire for abundant electric power -- power which is fraudulently represented as being cheap, but which in fact only appears to be so because of its enormous hidden public subsidies, payable now and continuously into the remote future long after the plant is gone.

Colorado Ethics Law Prevails

Denver Post Editorial:

In a refreshing outbreak of common sense, the Colorado Supreme Court on Monday restored the voter-approved Amendment 41 ethics law — ruling that critics of the measure can't overturn the will of the people merely because they are afraid the ballot measure might be enforced in an unreasonable manner, if it ever were to be enforced. ...

The court, in a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey, [! ]  specifically avoided ruling on the underlying merits of the amendment Colorado voters approved in 2006 by a margin of 62.3 percent to 37.7 percent. Instead, the state high court simply ruled that the challenge to the law was premature — because "The amendment's ethics commission is not yet in existence, and it has not yet had the opportunity to implement the amendment."

Under the long-standing principle of "judicial restraint," courts don't waste their time writing term papers about hypothetical problems. They have enough to do resolving actual cases posing actual problems. For example, suppose you bought a new stereo and your neighbor sued you just because you might play it loudly at 3 a.m. and disturb his sleep.  It's hard to imagine a court would entertain such a frivolous suit in advance of any actual action on your part that infringed on your neighbor's rights. Yet, that's basically what a Denver district court did last year when it threw out Amendment 41 after plaintiffs, including a lobbyist, a legislator, a county commissioner, a university professor and others, challenged the ban on gifts as "overbroad and vague," and claimed it cast a "chilling effect" on their First Amendment rights.

Critics of the law made outlandish claims, including that it would prevent a university professor from receiving a Nobel prize or children of state employees from accepting scholarships. Such worst-case scenarios assume that anyone would file such absurd complaints in the first place and that the ethics commission would uphold them if they did.

But as the high court wisely noted Monday, Section 5 of the law establishes an independent ethics panel to hear complaints, issue findings, assess penalties and issue advisory opinions on ethics issues stemming from the measure. ...

Now, the ethics commission needs to get to work and translate the will of the people into reasonable and enforceable ethics rules that will help restore public confidence in state and local government.

In Colorado, at least. 

 

Polish Blanket Economy

Howard Kunstler's post this morning;

The maneuvers that the big banks are making nowadays, along with their enablers at the Federal Reserve and elsewhere in Washington, really amount to little more than the old Polish blanket joke -- in which (excuse my concision) the proverbial Polack wants to make his blanket longer, so he scissors twelve inches off the top and sews it onto the bottom.

Only in this case, the banks are shearing x-billions of losses off the top of their blankets and re-attching x-billions of new debt onto the bottom. This new debt, of course, goes to cover the old losses and only represents further losses-to-be-reported-later, since the banks are basically insolvent. Borrowing more money when you're broke doesn't make you less insolvent.

A Message to Nader

[there are] only two kinds of deadly sins in the field of politics: lack of objectivity and--often but not always identical with it--irresponsibility. Vanity, the need personally to stand in the foreground as clearly as possible, strongly tempts the politician to commit one or both of these sins. 

Daily Kos - from Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation.

 Now watch this video.

 

 

Durango Fire Seasons

Some favorite places in Durango are toast today.  Raw video from Sky 7 shows the destruction pretty clearly.  This from KOAT:

"The city of Durango set up a relief fund called the 700 Main Disaster Relief Fund through the First National Bank of Durango.  All the proceeds will go to the shop owners and employees of those businesses that were destroyed by the fire.  If you would like to contribute, you can call 970-247-3020.

The fire department said the blaze started at the Seasons restaurant on Main Avenue around 1:30 p.m. Officials said the fire apparently started in the kitchen of the restaurant then spread to adjacent businesses in three more buildings, including the Le Rendezvous Cafe and the 1/2 Price Tees T-shirt shop.  When the fire hit the fourth building, that building exploded."

Season's website photos and text about their theatrical grill is now a little sad and creepy.

The life of a restaurant centers on its kitchen. With Seasons’ open kitchen, diners are invited into the high-energy world of a restaurant kitchen in action. The centerpiece is a wood-burning grill and rotisserie. Chef’s Table seating provides a theatrical view of the culinary drama and the atmosphere created radiates a contagious energy throughout the restaurant. The dining room itself is bathed in warm tones of terracotta and ocher with natural wood finishes and hand wrought light fixtures.

And that beautiful wine cellar - toast too.   

Final Edition

Tribune Editor Phill Casaus  holds up the  final edition in the newsroom Saturday.   

San Ildefonso Women

From the Santa Fe New Mexican comes the story of a leadership dispute at this Pueblo and a little detail about women and tribal elections:   

A leadership controversy at San Ildefonso Pueblo is resulting in new ties between members of pueblo groups that have been at odds for the past century and could result in San Ildefonso women gaining the right to vote in pueblo elections, tribal council members said Thursday. (...)

[Councilman Terrance] Garcia said San Ildefonso is governed by a general council, which includes all male tribal members over the age of 18. That council elects tribal officers and a 13-member tribal council. Long-standing differences between traditional groups on opposite sides of the pueblo have complicated the process in recent years, Garcia said.  (...)

"Most men do consult with their ladies and their women to get a clear grasp of what the pueblo needs. Hopefully, in the next few years, this pueblo will go the route of letting women vote," Garcia said.

Presumably they let women and ladies vote in National elections, right?   

 

Current Settlement Patterns

Excellent excerpt from Ezra Klein - American Prospect on density and How We Live Now:

There's often a tendency to assume that the status quo is the most "natural" way for things to be, and that rejiggering the relevant subsidies is somehow more artificial and presumptuous. But the current system was built atop a massive structure of subsidies and tax breaks. The mortgage tax deduction advantaged bigger homes; funding schools through inequitable property taxes encouraged families to move out of cities where the property taxes were low and into richer suburbs where the schools would be wealthy; putting billions into costly and little-used roads made far-flung developments appear cheap to those who only saw the finished product; underfunding public transportation heavily influenced development patterns, and so on and so forth. And that doesn't even get into the racial unrest, social dysfunction, and crime levels that helped drive white flight -- and thus sprawl -- in the 60s and 70s.

Indeed, there's nothing natural about our current settlement patterns, and no reason preserving them should be seen as a nod to expressed preference rather than, as it actually is, a status quo bias in favor of the current subsidies and their associated winners. Nobody's saying we should make suburbs illegal. But we don't have to abide by public policy that makes them look far cheaper and more economical than they are.

After this nail-head hitting, a chorus of whining erupts in the comments.  The predictable responses include how density kills, planning sucks and New Urbanism will never work because there is no space for the Hummers.    

My favorite is the Bad Neighbor argument for sprawl.  "Ezra, you've never had a really bad neighbor, have you? One that drove you from your residence?"      I can't help but picture this unhappy critic in his college dorm room.