October 28, 2012

Bill Hicks- The Elite (Last Performance) - Enjoy.

At:

One could wonder how an older Hicks, that had not passed on young, would have lampooned Fall 2012?

TMM - Too much material for one smart cynic.

October 21, 2012

Surprised to not see mention Design With Nature by Ian McHarg (published 1969)

Design With Nature is the seminal and pragmatic text that is the basis for modern landuse planning and today's GIS systems.

Editorial Reviews (from http://www.amazon.com/Design-Nature-Wiley-Sustainable/dp/047111460X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350860448&sr=1-1&keywords=Design+with+Nature)

From Library Journal
LJ's reviewer boldly contended that this "may well be one of the most important books of the century." Blending philosophy and science, McHarg shows how humans can copy nature's examples to design and build better structures. This 25th anniversary edition includes a new introduction and epilog. This remains "a pleasure to read" (LJ 10/1/69).
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Back Cover
"In presenting us with a vision of organic exuberance and human delight, which ecology and ecological design promise to open up for us, McHarg revives the hope for a better world." —Lewis Mumford
". . . important to America and all the rest of the world in our struggle to design rational, wholesome, and productive landscapes." —Laurie Olin, Hanna Olin, Ltd.

"This century's most influential landscape architecture book." —Landscape Architecture

". . . an enduring contribution to the technical literature of landscape planning and to that unfortunately small collection of writings which speak with emotional eloquence of the importance of ecological principles in regional planning." —Landscape and Urban Planning

In the twenty-five years since it first took the academic world by storm, Design With Nature has done much to redefine the fields of landscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecological design. It has also left a permanent mark on the ongoing discussion of mankind's place in nature and nature's place in mankind within the physical sciences and humanities. Described by one enthusiastic reviewer as a "user's manual for our world," Design With Nature offers a practical blueprint for a new, healthier relationship between the built environment and nature. In so doing, it provides nothing less than the scientific, technical, and philosophical foundations for a mature civilization that will, as Lewis Mumford ecstatically put it in his Introduction to the 1969 edition, "replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized, explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating and disappearing before our eyes."

September 11, 2012

Charlie Rose Show on PBS the evening of 9/11/01.

with Steven Emerson, Tom Clancy, John Edwards, Judith Miller, Samuel Berger, Richard Holbrooke, Wesley Clark and Ephraim Sneh
in Current Affairs

on Tuesday, September 11, 2001

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/2955

August 23, 2012

Navy SEAL's book will describe raid that killed bin Laden

Source: NY Times

A detailed first-person account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, written under a pseudonym by a member of the Navy SEALs who participated in the mission and was present at bin Laden’s death, will be released next month, the publisher said on Wednesday.

The book, “No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden,” which is scheduled to be released on Sept. 11, has been a tightly held secret at the publisher, Penguin. It promises to be one of the biggest books of the year, with the potential to affect the presidential campaign in the final weeks before the election.

The author’s name will be listed as Mark Owen by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin. For security reasons, he used a pseudonym and changed the names of other SEAL members.

cut

My Editorial:

seriously can anyone believe what we are told anymore?

Read more: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/48754703/ns/today-the_new_york_times/

August 15, 2012

The Strategy on the Fort Complex is already to back off to

secondary containment lines and burn out a good portion of Red Buttes Wilderness and nearby other National Forest lands on CA-OR border of the Klamath and Rogue River NFs.

The ICS Teams have led gutless, expensive, and ecologically incompetent landscape level fire suppression stratagies more often than not in the past 20 years in the Klamath Mountains. Shameful.

http://www.inciweb.org/incident/3117/

July 30, 2012

Russia seeks naval bases in Cuba, Vietnam

I am surprised that this is not bigger news.


Russia seeks naval bases in Cuba, Vietnam

Russia is in talks to set up naval bases in former Cold War allies Cuba and Vietnam as President Vladimir Putin undertakes the country's biggest military overhaul since the Soviet era.

"We are working on establishing navy bases outside Russia," Vice-Admiral Viktor Chirkov said in an interview with the state-run RIA Novosti news service and confirmed by the navy. "We aim to set up resupply bases in Cuba, the Seychelles and Vietnam."

Russian plans for overseas military expansion threatens to further strain relations with the United States at a time when the former superpower rivals are at loggerheads over American missile-shield plans and fighting in Syria. Putin's government plans to spend $712 billion this decade on defense spending.

Russia risks losing its only military base outside the former Soviet Union, a naval resupply facility in the Syrian port of Tartus, as President Bashar Assad fights for survival in the face of a 17-month uprising.


more at: http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Russia-seeks-naval-bases-in-Cuba-Vietnam-3742218.php#photo-3248734

July 11, 2012

The Obama Diary

Wish I had found this link before regards to keeping abreast of POTUS Obama.

The Obama Diary - Photos, Videos, and a word or two.

There is a day to day account and more pictures than one could ever want of POTUS and his family and activities.

http://theobamadiary.com/

July 1, 2012

Fantastic picture. Like your narratives over the last several years.

I was USFS 1969-1986 and have done consulting work in your area.

My experience in the USFS and corporate consulting grew my cynicism and despair.

There are far less USFS Lookouts than in the 1970s and aeriel technology has not kept up.

There is less local (USFS RD or Guard Stations with Engine Crews) and KV/BD crews that were also regional smokejumpers or hot shot crews as needed now than in the 1970s.

There are larger and less controlled wildfires because of negligence compared with prior to 1980 or so. One could even conclude that wildfires were allowed to grow to justify abusive timber salvage and removal of Federal lands within National Forests from Wilderness consideration. Many tracts of land have been treated post "wildfire" to preclude any economic use as timberlands and also greatly decreased the carbon storage potential within the soil and subsequent forest / vegetation for generations.

The fire suppression $$ could be more than replaced by net management $$ if silviculturists, engineers, and economists were not trumped by politics and short term cash flow.

The same is true for Tribal, BLM, and corporate forest lands with rare exceptions. Too many professionals do not even see much less comprehend their own institutional propoganda, the public is clueless for lack of understanding of scale and practice. The politics and PR trump reality.

July 1, 2012

Is "fuck 'em" mood regards to the USFS?

I was USFS from 1969 to 1986; a 460 series GS-11 Forester age 28 and resigned age 32 under Reagan.

Now live on my great great uncle and then great grandfather and then father's National Forest inholding as a senior citizen.

My adolescent rebellion was to go to work for the "Piss Fir Willies" rather than work for Dad in quarry or building road age 16 under YOC.

Graduated highest honors from a world class university and forestry program (UC Berkeley) and was a GS-11 professional age 28 that resigned age 32 under the federal corruption that was Reagan.

I would say "fuck 'em" all; the USFS, professional environmentalists (not professional scientists), and Federal. state, local, and Tribal politicians.

Broke my heart.

Siriusly (sic), I have scant respect for my (former?, as I no longer practice and years distant but still knowledgeable but am licensed and able but not active) profession.

June 30, 2012

I recall when KSR's Mars books were first issued.

I had quit new science fiction by then but also knew of KSR's PKD thesis as I was on academic/collector email lists for PKD circa 1992-1994.

However regards Mars and American fiction:

1. Bradbury's Martian Chronicles was one of the most influential books I read in grade school (during the time of Sputnik and Apollo).

2. John Carter Martian's novels are my favorite ERB and were read contemporay to Martian Chronicles.

3. The first PKD novel read belonged to my 67-68 boarding school roomate via scifi bookclub, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Later The Martian Time Slip blew my perceptions and led to other source material.

But quit new scifi about the time of the emergence of William Gibson.

Knew of the KSR - PKD connection and pawed the Mars books in retail outlets and chose not to buy nor read KSR. My awareness of the KSR Mar's books occurred because of the loose PKD - KSR connection.

Seems KSR was a Orange county homeboy and PKD lived his final and most secure years in Orange county (but most of life in northern California).

I have no idea of the KSR Mars books contents, assumed space opera.

Now have read the California Trilogy - I'm a native Californian. KSR uses much California ecology as frame and filler and he makes technical mistakes but to me the framing is a plus (as a Californian).

Psyching out KSR in the California Trilogy, I would ponder KSR had distant parents, an influential but sphinx grandfather, poor relations with women (often used or heartbroken, the second choice or fool), and used his high school and university friends as character models. KSR also used some PKD techniques in his writing.

Liked the California books as easy, comfortable, and familiar entertainment (and after getting 400 pages into Years of Rice and Salt and liking) work of an immature but talented novelist that that improved.

Think I will scan Leary, Alpert, and Metzger's The Psychedelic Experience (a sort of Cliff Notes version) rather the the Tibetan Book of the Dead English translation itself about the bardos et al after reading Years of Rice and Salt.