Icky Nicky

I just despise any movie with Adam Sandler, but I most despise "Little Nicky."

IMO, that movie should never had been made.

It's pointless.

It's dumb.

It's just downright stupid.

The premise is not funny.

The "star" is not funny.

The whole thing is not funny.

Every now and again, it comes back on cable to give me heartburn and nausea.

I hate that movie.

More rain

Looks like it will rain, yet again, in an hour or two.

The temperature is OK, mid-70s, but it's so humid that the air is palpable. Looks like fog...

A.C. will go on pretty soon, just to take some of the humidity out of the air in the house. I really hate being shut up, though. Hard choice: sticky/sweaty or open to the outdoors? *sigh*

Wonder if I went back to bed and stayed there all day anyone would notice? I could read, watch some television if there would be anything on worth watching, nap and generally make myself scarce.

VWP Redux

OK, like an idiot I allowed myself to be enticed by an invitation to the local watering hole.

Friday night and, as I expected but hoped against, the place was cheek to jowl with Very White People.

I have an excess of optimism when it comes to hoping there will be at least one person, just one, that can carry on an intelligent conversation.

I had one beer and went out and sat on the curb by the truckmobile.*

The ants on the street were more interesting than the herd in the bar.

The VWP yesterday evening were a different bunch of VWP than the last gaggle I wrote about. Not as different as apples and oranges but more different like a macintosh and a red delicious apple. Same species, slight differences. Just as fatuous, though.

* It's been hot, muggy and raining. The heat is bothering me more than usual and one beer was all I could handle. I'm tired and not feeling real great and shouldn't have gone anywhere but to bed.

Naomi Klein vs. Fox News

Great clip:

Go Go Klein!

My observation is the Ms. Klein's intensity and intelligence make the purple-clad cleavage-bouncer look vacuous.

I also noticed that Ms. Klein could hardly get a point throughly verbalized before she was run roughshod by "other expert's opinions."

She is, of course, correct in her assertion that we need to develop energy diversity. We need to change our infrastructure. Is it any wonder that Faux News personnel didn't wish to hear her out?

"1 to 5 years" for new offshore drilling to produce? Where did he get that? I want documentation.

And, golly gee whiz shave my legs and call me a girl, Sen. McSame gets brought up... uh, why? How is the "holiday gas tax" likely to ease our serious energy problem?

And Dirk Dorkage brings up tapping into reserves. He then, seemingly, does an about face when Ms. Klein managed to utter a partial statement about "short tem solutions." Hey, Dirk, you seem to be besotted with the sound of your own voice. Let the lady speak!

Then Ms. Klein moves on to climate change and energy monopolies. Didn't get very far with that, either.

Next, totally out of left field, Purple comes up with a question about whether or not Ms. Klein is anti-capitalist. Whazzat? I fail to understand the relevance of that question to the "discussion."

Finally, FINALLY, Ms. Klein gets to state that the book is about policies and government, not off-shore drilling, anti-capitalists or lacquered talking heads.

My opinion? Naomi Klein presented herself with aplomb and dignity.

The Faux News dweebs? I'm at a loss as to how I would describe their performance. Only thing that comes to mind is... well, nothing comes to mind.

Here's one to think on...

Netroots Nation

Agricultural methods exacerbate flooding

From the Des Moines Register, June 22, 2008:

"In all of our reading about the floods and rebuilding Iowa, there is no mention of the role of agriculture in these recent events. Out of this catastrophe needs to come some understanding that industrial agriculture has caused many of the issues that happen downriver from cultivated land. A deterioration of good conservation and resource-management practices over the last 50 years has helped make these "rain events" even more catastrophic.

There was some discussion about this after the floods of '93, but agriculture policy continued to ignore the environment and implemented more policies that allowed Iowa to become the sacrifice area for agribusiness corporations, putting profit before stewardship.
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Sen. Tom Harkin worked hard to get the Conservation Security Program in place but has had to continually fight for appropriations for this project. A good many Iowans understand the importance of agriculture in this state, but few understand that while Mother Nature may send us gully washers, human beings have added to the devastation by draining wetlands, plowing up waterways and planting only corn and soybeans..."

Full story here: Flooding


This one from the Washington Post:

"As the Cedar River rose higher and higher, and as he stacked sandbags along the levee protecting downtown Cedar Falls, Kamyar Enshayan, a college professor and City Council member, kept asking himself the same question: "What is going on?"

The river would eventually rise six feet higher than any flood on record. Farther downstream, in Cedar Rapids, the river would break the record by more than 11 feet.

Enshayan, director of an environmental center at the University of Northern Iowa, suspects that this natural disaster wasn't really all that natural. He points out that the heavy rains fell on a landscape radically reengineered by humans. Plowed fields have replaced tallgrass prairies. Fields have been meticulously drained with underground pipes. Streams and creeks have been straightened. Most of the wetlands are gone. Flood plains have been filled and developed..."

That one is here: Act of Man

How can something that is so obvious to so many people be beyond the understanding of policymakers and farmers alike?

Between corporate farms, greed, ethanol and the USDA, things are a real mess.
Then there is no less a personage than Jerry DeWitt who says (in the Post article):

"I sense that the flooding is not the result of a 500-year event," said Jerry DeWitt, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. "We're farming closer to creeks, farming closer to rivers. Without adequate buffer strips, the water moves rapidly from the field directly to the surface water."

But officials are puzzled. Of course they're puzzled. They're officials and they aren't supposed to be smart. They are slogging around in a bog of presuppositions that will likely lead to nothing whatsoever but more of the same denial and head-in-sand outlook.

There are numerous bad things going on. Ethanol is a real BIG bad thing. This isn't just my opinion, either. Experts, not officials but real experts, have documented high levels of greenhouse gases produced by ethanol production. Then there is the issue of corn being planted on the same ground year after year after year. To do that and force the corn to grow, massive application of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers are necessary. Corn doesn't stop run off and all that chemical crap will end up in already polluted river, lakes and streams.* Many farmers know that. They are in a financial bid because they are squeezed between making a living and the damned federal government, namely the USDA.

Since agriculture is no longer localized, farmers can't afford to diversify in the manner necessary to preserve the land. They rely on federal subsidies, futures contracts and other fraudulent money-making ideas to keep their heads above water. This has all happened in the last 25 years and it's killing our land.

Listen to the experts, officials, would you? You're a bunch of paper pushers and plutocrats who don't know anything more than who to schmooze with and the best place for a power lunch. Morons. Short-sighted and foolish is what you are.


* A sidelight on this issue: When the levee here broke in June and drained the milpond a perfect opportunity was opened to dredge the area. This can't be done without a special hazmat company doing it. Why? 20+ years of chemicals washed downriver from fields. Thanks, guys, I know you're trying to make a living but you are killing the land you count on the survive.

Did somebody say "higher eddukayshun?"

That's a scan of a letter DS2 received yesterday from his Institution of Gross Incompetence.

There are a number of things that don't make any sense at all.

1. Why didn't they make this decision before a whole raftload of supposedly graduating sophomores had to sign up for it? It's likely there will be rioting in the office at IGI because that's the only class that was left to complete a number of students' credit hours.

2. What do Health and Nutrition have to do with Comm Skills 1? Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch.

3. How can a student be in two classes "simultaneously?" Someone have a call in to Stephen Hawking? Maybe he knows...

The real wanker part of this? They attached a statement telling DS2 he owes them $675.00.

morons.