The Dunce Cap President

Let's see, tastes good? Or less filling? President Bush on "natural" or "human-caused" global warming. As the gang at RealClimate say, this is not a debate in science, only in wingnut media and thinktank circles where proven cranks get deference over his own scientists at NASA. Our old nemesis Woody, the ravingly conservative accountant from Atlanta, chooses the former and continues to mock the real science. This is sad but predictable. The RC crew handed him his hat, but he had a schedule conflict and had to run. The readers of Marc Cooper, who after the heated immigration imbroglio is no fan of mine, sadly, will recognize this fingers-in-ears la-laing.

My novel on global warming is coming along nicely, although I doubt it will run as long as Crichton's, and certainly it won't reach the same conclusion that radical, hysterical greenies are making things up. Reality is more than enough.

Into the Abyss

The employment chasm that is. The big immigration rally dengenerated into a knock down drag out on certain blogs where anyone who wasn't for it was against it. It being humanity in general. Robert Samuelson gets it. With rare examples of individual successes, the rampant wave of illegal immigration is a race to the bottom. "Here. Have a block of concrete. Now swim."

Conservative Plagiarists

Another conservative non-college graduate plagiarist The trend continues.

Despite the pattern of plagiarized articles, Domenech still maintains that he did not knowingly use other people's writing without attribution. He said most of the allegations, from his time at the William & Mary student paper, were from his freshman year, and that while he believes the unattributed material was inserted by his editor, he cannot prove it. "When I was 17, I was certainly sloppy," said Domenech, who did not graduate from college. "If I had paid more attention, none of these problems would have happened."

He even plagiarized the Washington Post who hired him. I suppose checking clips is unnecessary at this level. They never seem to graduate from college like Deutsch at NASA, yet land high level journalism jobs while I can't get even an entry level reporter job at any paper in the country.

Rewriting Science

Well James Hansen is talking now. Good man. I told him awhile back he'd have to or this bunch anti-science wingnuts would snow and smear him under forever. We can't afford to let that happen. Salute.

The Big Alone

It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people were so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much.
The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed.

Robert M. Pirsig And by here Pirsig meant the West Coast. It's true. Things, and people, are hostile here. It's the competition known as population stress or "shock" disease: Too crowded, disconnected, and competitive. Animals die under such conditions known to biologists as carrying capacity decimation factors. Life lived at carrying capacity is tough. Fewer residents, means better Quality of life, something third world countries don't have, and neither will we as the coasts fill to overflowing. In Idaho we waved at any vehicle coming down the road. It was like a duty. That doesn't happen here. A wave in LA means the middle finger is involved trailing the real sentiments of hominids confined to close to one another. But I'd wager Mexico City is much worse.

Kempthorne at Interior

Yeah this is perfect for this list. The Idaho Governor who I ridiculed at the end of my Alaska book because he was ranting at the time about Idahoans being afraid of grizzly bears and against reintroduction along the Bitterroot divide. He's perfect to head a massive department of environmental conservation agencies. This is no Cecil Andrus. Pfftt..conservation absconservation, what's the difference?

The Real Anti-Environment President

Is George W. Bush who is unscrupulous in slipping in private craposis into government science. And this beaut: Imitation smoke jumpers! And of course biologists. That way they won't have to account for the law.

The Radical Straw Men

I had someone actually tell me Clinton had the worst environmental record ever and believed it. Apparently this was something the late David Brower said in a fit of hyperbole in 1996. Advocates like Brower are important to shoot for a noble goal that is unachievable. Policy on the ground comes in increments with compromises and sometimes failures on the micro-level, but this list here is over the top, and evidence of absolutists disconnected from the ecosystem they purport to protect. As a biologist who worked and still works for the agencies I find these claims farcial. Clinton preserved more land than anyone since Jimmy Carter and TR. A couple obscure missteps and concessions can't negate the gains we made during his tenure, and unfortunately lost since 2000. That's the legacy of Nader radicals as much as the clueless Bush voters.

Vanity Press Editing

Is nonexistent. If you miss typos and other mistakes of omission, the staff will too and even add their own after correcting the ones you do find.

Dan Brown Speaks

"Mr Brown acknowledged reading the claimants' book but said he had not done so until the ideas and storyline of his theological thriller were already in place."

This is what they all say. Yeah they were in place and he went after the details later. Pick what you want like at a ready-made salad bar and voila. A novel from nonfiction flawed as that nonfiction is.

Snow in LA

I still have snow in my yard in LA. Actually it came in the form of thunder-hail but turned to corn snow, about two inches fell.

Making Wood Ducks

I worked on this nest box program with Jim Dorso, now retired, in my home territory of central Maine in 1987. The story is featured in my book Against a Strong Current in a John McPhee-esque ride-a-long.

At Long Last Norton Is Gone

At DOI. And Abramoff-related according to some. All of these corporatecrats are crooked and especially Steven Griles, who will probably takover so happy days are a long way off.

The "Death Squads"

Let me try to paint the picture a little more clearly, Mr. Peters [Ralph]: When Sunnis cheer the Americans, it’s not because things are rosy, it’s because they’re more scared of the Shi’ites than they are of you. Sunnis in Baghdad I’ve spoken with have told me they would rather be arrested by the Americans than by the government forces, because at least now the Americans won’t torture you as badly. They have no love for Americans, they just know who is best able to protect them from their neighbors.

Chris Albritton with the brutal honesty. The idea that the US is sanctioning thse squads because they train the Iraqi army is ludicrous. It sure sounds as if the Iraqis can't say the same thing. Close to civil war is how he sees things now.

The Real Crash

Bravo. I never had a lick of trouble working in some of the worst areas of Los Angeles as an actor for five years at ungodly hours. I had trouble driving there sometimes but that's a very different problem. A real one.

The Clinton Letters

I've linked my letter responses from President Clinton on the blog. He fully implemented all of my suggestions at the time, 1992-94 including hiring Jack Ward Thomas as the first wildlife biologist ever as Chief of the U.S. Forest Service and followed him with a fish biologist, Michael Dombeck. This was reversed five years ago. Make no mistake about it, we are in a night and day difference between these two heads of state on every issue.

I've written to both Bushes more than once and in every case an intern writes back a long laundry list of their policies. In short you get surrogate "McClellaned." No Bush ever sees a letter except from high ranking friends wanting and getting money. But to the far left foreign radicals many living here as immigrants, there is no difference, only the same white imperialist racism. Bush further fuels this sort of thing and the myth continues. There is little doubt there would be no war in Iraq in this fashion under the other administration. Taking over Arab and Shiite countries has always been too tricky a situation and ill-advised as we can see now. It's the perfect myth-enforcer for the radical bombthrowers.

Dick Dictates

Cheney's spouting more orders today at the IPAC convention, an Israel lobby. No matter what these guys do, the whacko leaders just become more radical in these countries. I think there's little doubt they would attack Iran, and maybe even want to. Make no mistake about it, these anti-semetic Middle Eastern countries are unlikely to accept anything these naive Westerners are offering. The more they dig the worse things are. Just talk to some far left radical and see who they think is the enemy. And that would be the view of the world in general, false as it is.

Oscars

Well I'm not happy about Crash being picked Best Picture. We'd seen a similar and I'd argue better film before in Grand Canyon by Lawrence Kasdan about life in LA. Brokeback Mountain was clearly the best film, but the best actors were solid as was the adapted screenplay, score, and director Ang Lee. Canadian Paul Haggis is an industry staple since 1975 despite the stories he told about being unemployed and struggling. The mansion in the film is his so. Department of "yeah right." The feel good statement of the rich takes the prize. As others have said it will be forgotten fast.

The Ethnicity of Brokeback

I just read a quickie review in the LA Times by the hispanic author of the Dirty Girls Social Club claiming Ennis Del Mar was a Mexican character as described by Annie Proulx in the short story. It can be found here.

"Ennis, high-arched nose and narrow face, was scruffy and a little cave-chested, balanced a small torso on long, caliper legs, possessed a muscular and supple body made for the horse and for fighting. His reflexes were uncommonly quick and he was farsighted enough to dislike reading anything except Hamley's saddle catalog."

This doesn't sound like any Mexican-heritage male I've seen lately. In fact it sounds just like Heath Ledger. Now Aguirre, the Randy Quaid character sounds like he could be. Then, after savaging Larry McMurtry and his writing partner on the screenplay who also had Ennis as a hispanic, she claims, and his wife Alma too, whose maiden name in the story was Beers, Ms. Valdes turns her attention to Jared Diamond and Guns, Germs, and Steel.

She writes: In "Guns, Germs and Steel," Jared Diamond contends that the Spaniards were able to conquer what became Latin America primarily because they had horses. Horses, in fact, came to the Americas from Spain."

Yeah, they came with the Spaniards. Hello. And they printed this. Brokeback Mountain is not an hispanic gay movie. And something tells me they don't want it to be either. It's a film about uncommon love. And it happens between two unlikely characters. It's not a gay film per se as in the "gay cowboy movie" tag used to describe it quickly on TV.

This is just carping based on personal ethnic bias and an unfortunate degradation of a fine and accurate portrayal of the story. Proulx thinks so too.

Global Warming is Here

"'It's a rapid warming' that is increasing the beetles' range, said Carroll. All the data show there are significant changes over widespread areas that are going to cause us considerable amount of grief. Not only is it coming, it's here."

The manifestations are many and this is one more nail.

Calling Blythe Brown

Brown's wife copied passages from Holy Blood Holy Grail for Dan to use in DVC. It seems she must have done so from Lewis Perdue's books too since the plot points, character profiles and scene wallpaper are taken directly from them. Yet she isn't in the courtroom and the judge noticed.