Idaho Conversation League

The powerful nuclear industry has been campaigning to construct new plants in Idaho and many in our desperate energy state are anxious to buy it. Some have written letters beseeching Idahoans to embrace nuclear power, so that we can be first in something for once. To paraphrase Lee Halper from a recent radioactive-hot forum , “ Idaho is already first in many things. We're almost first in cow-pies. We're first in lack of ethics in the Legislature. We're first in ignoring what doesn't work in other states will work here and we're first in having the most NUCLEAR waste seeping into our drinking water. We could be first in geothermal, wind, solar, hydrogen and conservation of energy but people who look for the silver bullet like NUCLEAR, are those who want us to be first in line for Superfund status.” I agree with Lee; let us not be first in foolhardiness. The poisonous nuclear industry kills much more than charging windmills do birds. For the next 40,000 years,

The Express sent out a news alert today mentioning a poetry reading by High Schoolers at the Ezra Pound house. There was a phone number to call for more information and when I called, Darlene Dyer, picked up the horn. She said that the reading is set for Friday evening and then asked with sincere earnestness if I would be attending. I mentioned that Two-Skies birthday celebration would be occurring at the same time, so as much I want to, I was uncertain if I could be at two places simultaneously. Then I took advantage of the opportunity to mention our Idaho Conversation League website, edging in the fact that Sun Valley City Councilman Nils Ribi has recently added us to his blogroll. Darlene tried to look at out website, but said that her school’s “Websense” blocked it. She said that she would try again later from home. I mentioned that if she judged our site was a suitable fit that we are actively seeking one or two contributors from the school in earnest hopes of making the site b

It’s refreshing to get out and breathe some fresh air, when springtime in the Rockies hits, after our long winter slog. Normally, 3V3TZ and I will go out searching for bits of nature in the desert, before the sage turns too snaky. After all, there was that one year during the QX-Air highway cleanup, when a rattler darted like lightning to bite my pants leg at the crease, before coiling back into his cave and then rattling. That spring afternoon, our crew had planned to sip a few Weinhards Ales to celebrate the completion of our cleanup quest. However, after the close snake encounter, I dipped into the Weinhards a bit early “to calm my nerves.” While the sage and grass is still low, seasonal rains dust sand off old stones and sometimes even ancient arrowhead points or chips. Sunny afternoons immediately following these cyclic downpours are prime opportunities to see with piecing clarity a rainbow of beauty unearthed in the glistening desert stones. One Idaho spring, when the season w

I can tell that this is going to be a great book to read and talk about. Great and terrible flesh eating beasts have always shared landscape with humans. They were part of the ecological matrix with which Homo sapiens evolved. They were a part of the psychological contect in which our sense of idenity as a species arose. They were part of the spiritual systems we invented for coping. The teeth of the predators, their claws, their ferocity and their hunger were grim realities that could be eluded but not forgotten. Every once in a while, a monsterous carnivore emerged like doom from a forest or a river to kill someone and feed on the body. It was a familiar sort of disaster- like auto fatalities today - that must have seemed freshly, shockingly gruesome each time, despite the familiarity. And it conveyed a certain message. Among the earliest forms of human self-awareness was the awareness of being meat . http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2003/10/20031002_b_main.asp

Today's pearls of wisdom from Eloise Christensen @ The Natural Space There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music. If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire. The fog clears, and new energy makes you run up the steps in front of you. Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry. Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen. When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue in place of the Kaaba. When you fast, good habits gather like friends who want to help. Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it to some illusion and lose your power, but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control, they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants flying above them. A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table. Expect to see it, when you

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/6267 "The education of our children is (and should be) of paramount importance to any parent (or any one who lives next to any one who is a parent…think about it: Even if you never have a child, the kids of today will be driving on your streets, living in relative proximity to you, voting, and perhaps taking care of you in your dotage in order to earn a paycheck), but the entire education system in this country seem, at the least, broken. Did you ever wonder why? Zappa did: “It pays to make the U.S. school system a crock of shit because the dumber the people are that come out, the easier it is to draft them, make them into docile consumers, or, you know, mongo employees. There are plenty of yuppies out there with absolutely nothing upstairs. Graduate airheads with PhDs and everything but they don't know anything”."

The road-rage lobby couldn't have been more wrong. Organisations such as the Association of British Drivers or Safe Speed - the boy racers' club masquerading as a road-safety campaign - have spent years claiming that speeding doesn't cause accidents. Safe Speed, with the help of some of the most convoluted arguments I've ever read, even seeks to prove that speed cameras "make our roads more dangerous". Other groups, such as Motorists Against Detection (officially known as Mad), have been toppling, burning and blowing up the hated cameras. These and about a thousand such campaigns maintain that speed limits, speed traps and the government's "war on the motorist" are shakedown operations whose sole purpose is to extract as much money as possible from the poor oppressed driver. Well last week the Department for Transport published the results of the study it had commissioned into the efficacy of its speed cameras. It found that the number of drivers

Thank you Jodi Zarkos, for writing about racism in sports . Racism and hidden personal prejudices are among our worst weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, for many reasons it is one of our most challenging subjects to address. According to research from the University of Texas at Austin , “Umpires for Major League Baseball are more likely to call strikes in favor of pitchers who share their race or ethnicity.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070813091112.htm One of the longtime MLB rules states that an umpire should not make a call to ‘even things up’ from an earlier bad call. This regulation is one of the most ignored rules on the books and it sounds like the Pocatello umpire disregarded the “even things up” rule. In a second related story, last week the Idaho Statesman picked up an article about sportsmanship from Ogden Utah ’s Standard-Examiner called, 'They say it starts with a prayer and ends with a fight' http://www.idahostatesman.com/localnews/story/34

http://www.newsweek.com/id/130637/output/print They ride on Gulfstreams, set the global agenda, and manage the credit crunch in their spare time. They have more in common with each other than their countrymen. Meet the Superclass.

From the Sunday Times: THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds. At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds. The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call. David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cann

Wednesday morning, while driving north, as my furniture-moving colleague began to read aloud Dick Dorworth’s Tibet –the conscience of the world column, I couldn’t help but to glance over at the paper, when he started reading about the elaborate plan for the Olympic Torch relay up Mount Everest , as he and I had just been talking about this. Then when he got to the part, where Mr. Dorworth mentioned the 1936 Olympic torch flame, I had to pull the big rig over to the side of the road to finish reading the article and became immediately overwhelmed by a compulsion bring this brief story to light: Brad Nottingham , who used to work at the Express from 2000-2003, now works as museum courier, transporting valuable pieces between auction houses and collections throughout the country. A few months ago, Brad and his moving partner, were called to package up the Olympic Torch used by Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics. The first time I told this story , I had disrembered some of the facts since t

Recently uncovered from an old brown shoebox Sun, July 11 Hot day again, but I took it better.... Hard 13 station drive through usual area, Merle's reel crossed SD / Wyo border, some rough washout cuts, and truck had some crazy routes to get through. Did some 660s and later a parallel 17-station run over very dry hot country on knoll w/in view of Igloo. Wore cut offs, got confused with some crazy terrain, Jim arrived to read pulses in "hot-rod" ( GMC got high-centered and muffler got "ripped off" by nature ! ) Had a great talk with the family: Mark, Arlene, Mike, about Momma working so hard and making bread. The band played tonight and Denny played too. We all smoked during SNL and later Denny and I teased Nancy a little. (?) <--- don't remember about what. Wed July 14 As with Tuesday, you did most of driving, Merle and Mark ran one star line across highway but had flat tire, we stayed on Porters Ranch, then went E. to old airport strip area. Saw hang g

Why did the influential CNN business anchor undergo an abrupt metamorphosis from corporate sycophant to fire-breathing populist? LUKE MULLINS found the surprising answer in Rupert , the hardscrabble Idaho town where Dobbs grew up. http://www.american.com/archive/2006/november/lou-dobbs

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/03/does-the-human.html