knurl

What a mugshot, huh?  Speaking of the Nevada time lady, though;  I wonder how many people attending the Burning Man festival in Black Rock Desert, Nevada are going to be calling the time lady in order to regain a sense of reality? Well, you know, whatever reality is, man. Duuuuude.

"At the tone Pacific Daylight time will be......" Lol. Oh, boy.

So yeah, this guy in the picture is Paul Adiss and he set the burning man structure on fire four days ahead of "schedule". I think it's pretty funny.

From here:  

"I am disturbed that the Man is burnt. As I looked at it, I was going, 'This can't be happening,' " said Bob Harms of South Lake Tahoe, a seven-time burner.

Kyle Marx of Eugene, Ore., said the fire started from the Man's left leg and spread to engulf nearly his entire body.

"Some people were chanting, 'Let him burn, let him burn!' and some were chanting, 'Save the man, save the man!' " Marx said."

Is that kinda the funniest Monty Python skit ever?

Anyway, I've never attended, but my oldest sister thinks it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. She goes with a group that designate themselves with clever, original nicknames like "Burning Fred" or "Burning Linda" or "Burning Billy". You get the idea.

This is too good, though: Last year, the group got together one night at one of their houses and gathered around some fire-pit deal. My sister got too stoned or something, and fell into the fire-pit and no one noticed. I guess that's where the clever "burning" moniker comes from. I'm crying from laughing, but it was pretty suck. She had to go to U.C. Davis burn center. Lol.

But this really sucks. Someone killed their self at this years festival. The friends or cohorts thought it was an "art performance".   Why am I laughing?  Really, though, that's a bummer, man. Bummer Man festival.

More info on the event from Wired and Valleywag and Laughing Squid.

Brian Doherty is the fellow who writes the Wired blog  and is an editor for Reason Magazine. He wrote a book on Burning Man and  also gives a pretty interesting interview about his new book "Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the American Libertarian Movement" at the Luke Ford weblog.

"Good evening! At the tone, Pacific Daylight time will be 9 :25 , exactly."

  I think her name was Jane Barbe. 

"Along with her interpretations of the time and current temperature, Barbe delivered the bad news too, telling you that circuits in a specific area were busy, please try again later, or that your call cannot be completed as dialed."

I don't know why, but it was always reassuring to hear her voice when I dialed "POP-CORN". Now, she will only be heard in Nevada.

Farewell time lady.

It might cost up to $1,000,000  to notify people of the San Francisco Bay Bridge closure during Labor Day weekend.  Huh?

The seismic upgrade has become kind of a boondoggle. Costs have grown from $2.6 billion to $6.3 billion. A new committee overseeing the project had to be organized.

"The construction committee, which has already started meeting, was formed after the state auditor said Caltrans failed to account for risks and took too long in notifying the Legislature of overruns."

Picture from the great Telstar Logistics  Flikr group.

Flash map of hegemony in the Middle East.

Pretty interesting program that I watched the other night called Arctic Son.

Story of a youngster struggling with alcohol and drug addiction who reunites with his father in the  austere Yukon Territory village of Old Crow .

It was 4:20 and I was sitting in my garage "chillaxing" , as the kids call it, and I got to thinking about how this skunky Humboldt green bud was grown. But then I got the munchies and fell asleep. Hohoho, no, I'm just kidding. I smoke marijuana a couple times a year. I'm not really into it. I'm more of a boozer, which is weird, because my body hates it. I'm smart. One of these days I'm going to get sober.

Anyway, Here's a compelling article about the marijuana industry in Humboldt County from an attorney from Redway, California.

A couple clips:

" Some of the growing community dispute the impact of the diesel, claiming it's just a few irresponsible people giving the whole community a bad name. Some of them see the matter as a conjured up culture war wedge issue to batter Southern Humboldt. It is remarkable that the hippies start sounding like industry apologists, while the right wingers pushing the issue sound like tree huggers."

"Even more taboo is discussion of social consequences, such as the repercussion of the industry on Southern Humboldt's younger generations - an impact that has occasionally been lethal. When my wife first applied for her former job as middle school teacher at the Whale Gulch Schools she was asked how she would respond to a student who told her that he or she didn't have to study because s/he would be growing anyway. My response would have been "you know, they got Al Capone on his taxes. You might want to learn your math." Many of the kids do go to college, but others will be completely unprepared if they're busted and subsequent convictions become a much greater risk, or if (God forbid!) the substance is actually legalized."

That's what I say. Why not just legalize the whole thing?

Wow. This story in todays L.A. Times brought back some memories.  The young lady had just got her license to drive. She barreled into a wooden fence on a turn, and one of the posts went through the windshield. Her head got banged up real bad.  Anyway, she wasn't supposed to live, but she pulled through. It is quite an ordeal.

When I was 13, my mom was creamed by a bicyclist and hit her head pretty hard on the pavement. There was bruising and bleeding on the back left side of her brain and the Doctor had to take some of her brain out. She was in a coma for a couple months. She pulled out of it, but is brain damaged.  It's a tough deal. It's very traumatic. I feel for this family.

Cowan. "Cow-wah" or "cow-wayne".  Anybody ever eat snapping turtle?

The other journal entries are  interesting, as well.  He and his wife are writing a book on New Orleans and the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

 I don't know... they're sort of Colorado yupsters. They don't stand for that "Ayn Rand tommyrot" and Clear Channel is taking over the universe. America is a faceless machine sort of thing. "America IS a faceless machine! What are you talking about!" Okay, okay, okay.

the water quality report is here. Boring? zzzzzzzzzz. No it's not.  Redding uses 5.61 billion gallons/ year from Sacramento River and Whiskeytown Lake. 2.32 billion gallons/ year comes from groundwater via a system of 14 wells.

Aluminum -- 1000 parts per billion (ppb. One ppb = one second in 32 years)

Nickel -- 100 ppb

Arsenic -- 50 ppb

Barium -- 1 part per million (ppm. One ppm = one second in eleven days)

Flouride -- 2 ppm

Nitrate -- 45 ppm

The Foothill Water Treatment Plant  treats the Sacramento River.  Buckeye Water Treatment Plant treats Whiskeytown Lake.

In other water news;  lake levels on Shasta Lake are creeping lower , and it's funny how the peanut gallery gets all riled up about how all the water goes to southern California. It doesn't.  California has been talking about a peripheral canal for years, but northern California votes it down.