SF New Mexican: Bin Laden hideout replicated at old prison for Navy SEAL film.
You never know what you’re gonna see in this crazy state ...
Good morning, mountains.
SF New Mexican: Sandia Labs engineers create ‘self-guided’ bullet.
“According to Sandia Labs engineers, the bullet twists and turns to guide itself toward a laser-directed point. It can make up to thirty corrections per second while in the air, officials said.” I would assume that, at 2400fps, the amount of maneuverability isn’t high. They talk about accuracy at distance.
SF New Mexican: State to hold tours of 1980 prison riot site.
“The idea for the 90-minute tours followed Gov. Susana Martinez’s request that all state government departments organize public events in connection with the state’s Centennial celebration this year, Corrections Department spokeswoman Rosie Sais said.” Well, that’s one way to celebrate, I suppose. I would like to get in there and take some harrowing photographs.
NY Times: Drought and Cold Snap Cause Food Crisis in Northern Mexico.
As far as drought and cold go, we’re not much better off.
SF New Mexican: New TV Western to be filmed in New Mexico.
Omigod ... Father Vincent Sheahan from Ballykissangel as a sheriff? Cool.
YouTube: Laminar Flow, courtesy UNM.
A Continuous Lean.: 1978 Toyota Land Cruiser.
As I’ve expressed about a billion times here on the blog, an FJ40 is the perfect car for Santa Fe. Restored? DROOL.
SF New Mexican: After closing, Earth Works Institute leaves lessons, legacies.
A terrible shame. Yet it’s the story of so many nonprofits.
Rob Galbraith DPI: NASA releases stunning high-resolution photo of Earth from space.
You can see the Rio Grande quite clearly. It surely *is* a stunning photo.
SF New Mexican: CenturyLink customers ‘outraged’ by outage.
Hmmm. CenturyLink should pony up the ‘coffee tax’ price for these folks having to sit at coffeeshops, at the very least.
SF New Mexican: Governor’s moves frustrate even some in GOP.
“While the confusion likely won’t affect the final outcome of the 30-day session, some lawmakers are suggesting the episode shows Gov. Martinez’s continuing struggle to understand how the Legislature works.” No PeachPit QuickStart guides, then?
SF New Mexican: Damaged cable disrupts Internet service.
“Internet was inaccessible to CenturyLink customers in most of downtown Santa Fe and Tierra Contenta ...” I’m on Comcast. Redundancies, folks?
OHWOW Gallery: The fall, the ball, the wall.
Nope, residents of NM don’t have to travel to LA to see artwork in this style. Just go over to a neighbor’s, or downtown, to see a bad application of synthetic stucco. If not applied perfectly, pinholes develop which collect water, and then the synthetic starts to bag and sag with captured liquid, soaking the interior walls ... and ... you get the picture.
SF New Mexican: Access to legal abortions increasingly limited.
Sickening. Defend your rights, ladies, or it’s back to the Dark Ages for you. Yearly pregnancy and early death.
Is abortion death? Yes. Death is a part of birth - the older the woman, the more fertilized embryos (in conservative religious parlance, ‘lives’) are passed through the uterus without implanting (in conservative religious parlance, ‘murder’). As they get towards their late ‘30’s, women can have ~9 non-implantations (9 ‘murders’) for every one successful pregnancy. Noone mentions this, noone touches this fact with a ten-foot pole. Don’t believe me? Walk into any women’s health center or fertility clinic and ask.
And I will harshly remind idiotic anti-abortionists, that late-term abortions are NECESSARY (for many reasons, not just that single one). [Do NOT view if you are squeamish.]
There is no gentle way to educate on this subject, unfortunately. I respect the religious moral stance of individuals, but I will not agree to having their mores applied to nonbelievers.
SF New Mexican: Forecast gloomy for state ranchers.
SF New Mexican: City bumps pay floor to national high.
“The city announced Thursday that the wage floor will increase to $10.29 an hour — up from the $9.85 imposed on employers for the last two years and a nickel higher than San Francisco’s.” It’s difficult to discern the direct effects of the living wage, other than portion sizes going down, quality going down, and prices go up at local ‘affordable’ restaurants. Perhaps fewer sales clerks in small retail stores. Businesses that used to skim by on the edge of profitability are largely gone. I see a lot of moving, looking for cheaper rental spaces.
SF New Mexican:Suspected drunken driver hogtied by man.
“The 22-year-old pulled over next to a convenience store, where he was confronted by several witnesses who had followed him into the store’s parking lot. Canuto became belligerent and tried to run away, prompting another man to tackle and hogtie him before sheriff’s deputies arrived ...” We don’t like drunk drivers around here. Too many innocents have been killed. You drink, you drive ... you get hogtied. Great.
SF New Mexican: ‘Lone Ranger’ will ride again in N.M.
“Because it’s important to remember that the Lone Ranger never shot to kill, preferring to wound his adversaries and bring them to court instead. How this humanitarian approach would work with werewolves, should they remain in the new script, remains unclear. ” As I mentioned on FB, everyone in NM is probably on Depp watch.
ReadWriteWeb: Can We Rely On Social Media In An Emergency?
Not at present. As we found during our forest fires here, the initial tweet gets good coverage if the generating account has enough followers ... but after that, the signal-to-noise ratio goes exponential with everyone wanting to ‘brand’ the information to their own followers. As further studies are done, you’ll hear this again from other sources than myself. Unless Twitter allows a ‘solo’ channel or hashtag for one account (or a pre-approved number of accounts) to use, this will remain a problem.
SF New Mexican: Proposal would require background checks on foster parents, relatives.
Unfortunate, but necessary. Gone are the days when “Greatest Generation” families did it for love, not the pittance paid out by child welfare services.
NY Times: A Mining Law Whose Time Has Passed.
“Under the law, mining companies — not the government — decide whether and where to file their claims on public land. (National parks, monuments and wilderness areas are excluded.) Federal agencies review the plans, but they are approved as a matter of course. Mining companies pledge to protect rivers threatened by their operations. But the industry’s track record hardly inspires confidence.” We live in the tailing-piles and runoff from this particular law, a law that’s far overstayed its welcome.
SF New Mexican: New Mexico judge halts pit rule appeals.
Damn. Our water should be protected. Unfortunately, oil and gas revenues pulled NM out of a state budget black hole. Noone’s going to mess with them at the present time.
*Five* great Santa Fe sunset shots.
Click the photo above to see it on black, and then click “newer” at the top to run through all five. The sunset that just kept on getting better ...
Interesting night last night.
Another young lady wiped out on the road in front of my house just before midnight. She was shaken up, not hurt physically. Obviously driving way, way too fast for conditions (fine wet snow on pavement in dropping temps, becoming ice). This time, local EMTs and Fire personnel responded ... idling trucks and flashing red lights for about an hour and a half. Who needs sleep?
I’m tempted to make a hand-made sign that I can place out by the road when conditions deteriorate. “ICY ROADWAY - SLOW DOWN” or something similar.
