Indymac the Evil Empire

Okay, so no pithy wonderful little bits of information to tempt you with today. I'm on a rant again - and this time it's not because of some ecological injustice or asanine government policy... well, not quite anyhow.

This time its because I'm one of the nearly hundreds of thousands of Americans affected by the recent woes of the folks over at Indymac Bank in Pasadena. In case you hadn't been watching the news (like me) and you were taken by surprise (like me) when the bank began freezing people's assets and credit lines... Evidenly there were like 11 days of faltering before the bank crashed. Time during which wise customers pulled something like 1.3 billion in deposits. It's now owned by the FCC. That's not good news. Particularly if the panic spreads to other banks. Interestingly, one reporter noted that even though the bank lost $614 million last year, and $184 million in just the first quarter of 2008, Indymac was not even on the FDIC's list of 90 "troubled banks". There are banks in worse shape out there - some estimates are as high as 150 banks that are in imminent danger of closing in the next 18 months.

And the Bush administration tells us the economy is growing and things look good. Eee gads.

I suppose there is a down side to being the Queen of Useless Knowledge - when the key word is "useless", there are a few important things which slip your mind. Like how phenemonally f*ed up the whole Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) thing really is. So, blithely, you listen to the 22 year old selling you the loan, and begin planning for custom cabinetry, soapstone countertops and a 200lb fireclay sink. Ha! At least we're not talking about my checking account, like some of those poor folks in Pasadena. Or my life savings. I'm kinda happy about being a Credit Union customer right about now.

And here's the news that some people are still shouting "This is NOT the bottom". I'm beginning to believe the doom-and-gloom sayers. I think the mortgage crisis is only the tip of a very ugly iceberg that is floating right through the boiling sea of an election year. Hold on to your hats, folks, and make sure you're bootie is well covered. It's gonna be a hell of a ride.

On a lighter note, at least my problems made the Daily Show:



Give it a good watch - it's all good...

Oh, and just because I'm feeling a little evil today:

Bush at his Best | Viral | SPIKE.com

The World is a Very Strange Place...

Thought I'd share - since it make no sense to me.

More fun to watch...make sure you get past the first minute or so

Salmonella Madness

People keep asking me: Queen of Useless Knowledge, what's the deal with these deadly tomatoes? Should I fear for my life? Can something as innocuous and sweet as a little tomato, so full of anti-oxidants and helpful amino acids really hurt me?

So, a quick summary of this panic drawn from a variety of news sources and the CDC itself:

• The first cases of salmonella caused by a rare strain of the bacteria (salmonella saintpaul) were reported in April - many of them here in the southwest. Since then over 1000 people have gotten sick (one 80 year old cancer patient died - I don't make this stuff up). Officials began tracking their food intake and found many of them had eaten a risky foreign dish called "fresh salsa". Warnings against tomatoes were issued in early June, particularly red, round tomatoes (FDA wording, not mine) and Roma tomatoes - and the hunt for the perpetrators was on. Farmers and distributors were hard hit almost immediately, since tomatoes have a very short shelf life, and it can take weeks to test for the salmonella bacteria. The industry says the advisory has already cost them over $100million. These criminal fruits had to be found.


• Tomatoes can become addicted to, I mean contaminated with, Salmonella in one of two ways: either the tomato is immersed in cold, contaminated water and the bacteria enters through the wound where the stem was removed (the "nurture" theory of deviant behavior), or contaminated water comes in to contact with the stem or flower while the fruit is on the plant (the "nature" theory). The bacteria is not just on the skin, so washing the fruit will not remove the contamination. No matter how much bleach you use (ask some restaurant owners - they're trying). You would have to cook your tomato at over 145º for 10 minutes to break the addiction - er -kill the bacteria - and cooks agree that pretty much negates the "fresh" in "fresh salsa".


• About 2 weeks after the advisory was issued, experts realized that tomatoes could possibly be innocent in this whole fiasco. The FDA did not lift the advisory, however, since they couldn't prove it to be wrong (of course, they couldn't prove it to be right, either, but the 'reasonable doubt' clause doesn't apply to salad or salsa ingredients - an egregious hole in the bill of rights, if you ask me).


• As recently as June 27th, the CDC has been profiling jalapenos, cilantro and serrano chiles as possible culprits. They are known associates of the tomato in salsas and other exotic foods such as burritos, tacos and chalupas. Not to mention that their harvesting pattern more closely fits the outbreak's profile than any tomato. It is possible that salmonella saintpaul is being dealt in Mexican kitchens, farms and processing plants as a way to keep vegetables hooked on illegal substances.


• Basically, no one has a freaking clue where these delinquents are getting this stuff, or how they're smuggling it into the usually-bacteria free United States. But the tomato remains on the most wanted list.


• Since the outbreak was officially reported in May, according to the CDC's own statistics, there have been an additional 466,000 cases of salmonella not related to the outbreak - 13,000 of which would have lead to the identification of a cause not reported to the public via panicked media presenters. If it is the tomato, than it's 1000 victims constitute .07% of the cases of Salmonella poisoning occurring in this year. That's definitely worth bankrupting the tomato industry over.

But it isn't worth denying me my right to freakin' fresh salsa! Viva la revolucion! I'm gonna have a caprese sandwich, just to show I ain't afraid!

As an aside, salmonella got it's name because it was discovered by veterinary pathologist Daniel Elmer Salmon as the cause of hog cholera. It causes a disease called salmonellosis. You can, in fact, get it from turtles and iguanas. Children in developing countries without the CDC or FDA naturally develop antibodies against the bacteria. Hmmmm.

The Border Fence

(not-so) Brief rant today, sparked (quite deliberately) by Jasola... But you can't just send me a photo of poor little ungulates trapped on the less-green-grass-side of the freaking border fence and not expect a little steam to build up.

These poor deer will never diversify their genetic pool...where're their civil liberties?

There are sooooo many things wrong with the border fence that I'm having trouble even figuring out where to start. I mean, environmentally, socially, fiscally, feasibly, historically...it's a freaking fiasco on every level. If you think differently I invite you to comment here so I can bash you later.

• Environmentally: Most educated people are quick to realize that our little imaginary lines on the landscape don't respond well to the way that natural systems work. Animals like deer, rats, mice, birds, bats and foxes don't know that they live in Sonora, Mexico or Arizona, USA. They just know that there's a patch of habitat they want to inhabit, and now there's a "uncrossable" barrier through the middle of it. Not only does it reduce habitat size, it isolates genetic populations, prevents natural migration patterns and provides a potential physical hazard to animals desperate to cross. The DHS (Department of Homeland Security) had to set aside 19 (yup - nearly 20) environmental laws to build this marvel - just in Arizona alone. So, if you're building a hospital to cure cancer or a school to educate our children, you have to spend the money, do the impact studies and mitigate for damage. If you are trying to keep Pablo from picking your citrus, you don't have to follow any rules. Afterall - he's dangerous - he's here to steal our healthcare and suck our system dry. (Of interesting note is the fact that the DHS has set aside a portion of their budget as "compensation" for the damage done to wildlife by the fence. So when a jaguar buys the million dollar home with his settlement check, you'll know your tax dollars are at work).





First Photograph of a wild jaguar in Arizona (or in the US) - Taken in 1996 - The animals were trying to return to our wild borderlands, but the fence will make that much harder




• Socially: Man, where do I even start with this? Creating a barrier like a fence is only going to reinforce that 'we' are separate from 'them', that 'their' problems should not have any affect on 'us', that 'ours' is more important than 'theirs'. So much for thinking globally. This kind of attitude has been the start of nearly every war, ever.
  
  

Nothing says "we welcome your masses, yearning to be free" like concertina wire and ditches.

• Fiscally: Okay, so lets just say that the over $2billion (yes, with a 'b') price tag is something that is an acceptable cost for "stemming the flow of illegal immigration that is overwhelming our nation". That figure doesn't include maintenance costs, particularly the cost of maintaining a barrier that will be under constant attack by those trying to cross it (see feasibility below), or the maintenance of a structure that is located in the most remote and rugged parts of the borderlands. It also doesn't account for the electronics (or money lost in contracts when electronic fences turn out not to work), or the surveillance of the wall. We're talking about not just $2 bil now, but billions more spread out over the life of the fence. Since we're not looking at actually SOLVING the problem, that could be a really, really long time.

So, this looks kinda doable on flat land - but across the Huachuca Mountains?

• Feasibly: Okay, this is linked with history below, but it boils down to two very simple details: First, we aren't building a fence across all 2000 miles of border - only about 500. That leaves 3/4 of the border open. I'm no immigrant, but if I'm in a life-or death struggle and getting to America is my only hope for my children, something tells me I'll find a way on that other 1,500 miles of access. Second, lets say there is a fence that runs every inch of the border, and I (again) am that desperate to cross, I will. I'll tunnel, I'll break it, torch it, blow it up. I'll find a way over, around, through or across it or die trying. Thousands are proving that theory true already as they brave the deadly journey across the desert - and hundreds are dying trying each year. It is what people do, what people have always done when migration is necessary. Which brings me to...

Another great border fence in history - this one in China in 1907




• Historically: There has never, ever been a physical boundary that has effectively stopped people from migrating. It might slow them down - true. But these kinds of barriers give rise to amazing feats of ingenuity (the escape tunnel between East and West Berlin), bravery (the Mongols and the Great Wall of China) and determination (Hadrian's Wall). So, we're going to spend all this money, create all of these negative social images, and laugh in the face of logic so we can...slow people down. Mmmm..

Hadrian's wall in England - built to keep those nasty Picts from the refined English-Romans

Seems to me the money, time and energy would be much better spent actually looking for a way to make people want to stop coming here. Good psychology is nearly always more effective than brute force.

Hike of the Month...

This month's featured hike is in Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah. As I mentioned in another post, Bryce Canyon is a gem of the National Park system - less crowded and insane than nearby Zion, Grand Canyon or Yosemite, but still breathtaking and spectacular. It's a park that you can experience in a day, or spend weeks getting to know. And, best of all, it has a number of short, perfectly doable day hikes that get you down into the cool rock spires and formations.






The particular hike I'm featuring in this post uses the Wall Street trail to descend below the plateau rim (Bryce's formation is not technically a canyon). Then you hike along connector trails to the Peekaboo Loop. This brings you back to the connector trail and you ascend the Navajo Trail. The whole loop is around 5 miles, with around 700' of elevation gained and lost over the course of the trip - so it's easy enough to do after a morning of horseback riding and field data collection, and just challenging enough for you to feel like you earned your pie at the Bryce Canyon Pines Cafe.



So, you start out down one of the coolest short trails ever: Wall Street. Begin at Sunset Point down the Navajo Trail, taking the turn for Wall Street when you see it. You'll start immediately down a set of very tightly engineered switchbacks sandwiched between cool rock formations.








The descent is steep, but the trail is smooth so it's not punishing, and at the bottom you get to a cool rock grotto.



There was a landslide down here in 2006 that closed the trail for more than a year, and you can still see some of the evidence of it.





Also at the bottom of this particular formation are a pair of beautiful Douglas Fir trees that have stretched up to get to the sun.









Then the trail daylights to a delightful streambed - usually dry - with fantastic views of some of those cool hoodoo formations you were oohing-and-ahing over at the rim (only now you get to see them from the bottom!)





After about 1.3 miles you come to a junction in a relatively level, park-like area. Here you grab a quick connector to the west which will take you across the Bryce Creek drainage and connect up with the Peekaboo Loop. This short connector is a very easy (maybe) half mile - but still very scenic.








Soon you'll come to a sign for the Peakaboo Loop. You can do the loop clockwise or counterclockwise - it doesn't matter much. The loop is about 3 miles total. Either way, the trail will rise and fall as it climbs in and out of the amazing formations...





...sometimes even through them.




This trail is shared by the trail ride concessioners, so be polite and step aside when the horses approach. Many of these riders aren't familiar with how to handle their animals, and spooking them off the edge would be poor trail etiquette.





About half way around, you'll come to another junction with the Bryce Point trail. Now, you'd like to think that you have options here, if you had the trail map they gave us at the gate. You could hike up to Bryce Point and take the shuttle back to Sunset (during the summer when the shuttle runs), shortening your hike by a little over a mile. You could hike up to Bryce Point and hike back to Sunset along the Rim Trail, adding .7 miles to your hike. Or, you could continue along the loop. However, as the map above shows, the Bryce Point trail has been closed. I guess my whining to Management (or more likely lots of folks whining to management) got the map changed. So, unless they find a way for the Bryce Point Trail to stop eroding into even more hoodoos, you continue on...








There is a toilet at a rest area along the back of the Peekaboo loop. It's there primarily for the use of the trail ride groups, which stop at this corral for their lunch. But if you're in a pinch, it sure beats digging a hole.






So, once you've completed Peakaboo, hike back along the connector to the Navajo Loop and snake your way back up to the rim. This trail is not as "grotto-esque" as Wall Street, but is more of a ridge-hike with fantastic sweeping views and lots of singular formations.




The hike could take you an hour and a half - it could take all day. It depends on how much memory is on your digital camera card and how in-love you are with the contrast of those red hodoos against the crystal clear blue sky. Bryce is a noted Dark-Sky park, which translates during the day to some remarkably azure backgrounds that make your polarizer seem like overkill.



And please. Don't feed the squirrels.

More on the Monsoon...

So I'm looking out the office window at a wall of water falling from the sky, ducking each time the thunder rattles the plate glass and praying for a prolonged power outage. A particularly fun monsoon storm - hitting as it should right at the point where the afternoon heat was becoming opressive. I'm betting, however, that although I can't see past the gray curtain, that somewhere in town someone is basking in the glorious sun, wishing it would just go ahead and rain already. How can this be? How is that it can be pouring midtown and be scorched and parched in Oro Valley, just a 15 minute drive away?


In a nutshell, it all has to do with how the storms form themselves. Unlike winter storms which blow in on the face of a large-scale weather front, blanketing miles of land with gentle (if sometimes annoyingly persistent) rains, summer monsoon storms are built on-site, one at a time, by a combination of factors more complex than the plot of Lost. Here, does this diagram help?





Yeah, didn't think so. I kinda found it facinating but not very helpful, too. Basically, a summer thunderstorm has a pretty short lifespan. Heat is sucking in all this moisture, it's hitting the landforms all around Tucson (the Santa Catalina Mountains, the Rincon Mountains, the Santa Rita Mountains, even the Tucson Mountains, the Tortolitas and the Sierritas to name just a few). Because the air has to go somewhere, it goes up and we get that whole convective thing going. However, by creating different gusts, rain and movement, the storm sort of seals itself off by changing the very conditions that created it. So it becomes a self-supporting, evolving moster (above). Then it bounces around, not unlike a pinball hitting various kinds of bumpers and obstacles - sometimes even getting swatted back onto the playing field by another, older storm. From beginning to end, the average summer thunderstorm goes from developing to waning in about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, across town, the heat is at it again, only on a different slope in a different part of town. Maybe this one is a gusher, maybe it just fizzles when it gets over a piece of land that the first storm doused and cooled down (now the moisture's on the ground instead of the air, so it can't continue to fuel the storm). It's all a really cool puzzle. Click the weather underground link on the sidebar if you're really into this. You can look at weather stations all over town and see how variable the conditions are.


Now, then there's the storm events like the one on July 31, 2006 that flooded the Santa Catalinas (including Sabino Canyon) as well as slamming the Galiuro Mountains hard. This was not technically a monsoon storm. You wann know more? Well... then I guess you'll have to come back!

This is from the 1983 flood that changed the way Tucson deals with floods...

Ah, the Monsoon!

Alaska has the aurora borealis, Florida has hurricanes, Denver has winter blizzards, the mid-west has tornadoes and California has earthquakes, forest fires, debris flows, Santa Ana winds and Arnold Schwarzenegger. So what does a supposed barren wasteland like Arizona have to compete with such natural wonders?

Easy: the Monsoon.

Photo by Gene Rhoden

A two to three month long string of hot, humid weather punctuated by often spectacular, occasionally dangerous, always refreshing thunderstorms. Clouds blow into town like wild-west gunfighters: raising dust, cracking with thunder and pelting the land with bullets of water and (sometimes) ice... Then, just as quickly, they're gone, leaving a wake of cooler temperatures, broken tree limbs and muddy stream crossings. It's the reason the Sonoran desert is so much more awesome than the Mojave, it's the key to the existence of the saguaro and the mesquite bosques, and it's the ultimate reward for those who are able to withstand the onslaught of summer from May until July. Snowbirds just don't know what they're missing.


Now, over the years I've been asked a lot of questions about the monsoon. As the Queen of Useless knowledge and a 5th generation Arizona native, people seem to think I must be a repository of information about the nature of weather 'round here. Well, they're right - although I don't claim to be able to predict it. It is the very nature of the monsoon to be unpredictable, and by that I don't mean in the sense of a flaky friend or an unexpected plot twist, I mean 'not able to be predicted'. Those guys on tv are making educated guesses, and I kind of feel sorry for them. Talk about an impossible job.

Monsoon storm over the Rincon Mts.

First piece of important information is that the proper terminology is, indeed, 'the monsoon'. Storms that occur during this time might be called 'monsoon storms' or 'summer thunder storms' or 'hellacious squalls'. There are some who will call the whole season, or any individual storm within it 'the monsoons' - but they are losers. The term 'monsoon' actually refers to the change in wind patterns that brings warm, wet air from the south (either the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of California) - not the storms associated with it. This information will help you look super nerdy at parties, and you can always win points calling in and correcting radio dj's who will undoubtedly use the word completely wrong.

So, in a nutshell what happens is it gets freaking hot in the deserts of Mexico and Arizona (and to a lesser degree New Mexico, Nevada and Texas) over the summer, this hot air rises (explained: According to statistical mechanics, where air has greater kinetic energy it has a greater probability to occupy a higher gravitational potential than less energetic air. That is, the system tends toward maximal entropy ......from here). The rising hot air creates a vacuum of sorts, which sucks cooler, moister air from around it - primarily from the oceans to the southwest. Now you've got this cool swirling mass of cooler, moister and thus less stable air over your hotter than hell desert floor. The massive convection current continues and pretty soon that wet air is forced up to where it condenses into rain and viola. Rain. Moisture falling from the sky. Water in the air. 'round these parts, it's a pretty unusual thing... It brings out the worst in people (more on that later).

Interestingly enough, the existence of the monsoon in Arizona wasn't even a universally held truth until the 1990's. It seems that the relatively low population in the area and the respectively low cost of damages associated with these storm systems had created very little interest in finding out why it suddenly gets so rainy in the desert Southwest in late summer. Locals had called this a monsoon forever, but scientists were split. Many thought those dirty-toed Arizona hicks were just tryint to be cool with their talk of "tropical" weather patterns. You see (to get back to semantics and word history - one of my faves) the word 'monsoon' comes from the Arabic word "mausim" which means "season" or "wind-shift". This is because the first recognized monsoon was so much more obvious than ours. In the Indian sub-continent the change in wind pattern is triggered by the heating of the Thar desert. Again, it causes moist, cooler air to be sucked off of the ocean, which is uplifted by the base of the Himalayas, and bam. Rain. Rain like we never even seen before. This process alone is the root of Wendy's #3 life maxim: never live in Bangladesh (not that the monsoon is all Bangladesh has going against it, but it's enough).

The Indian subcontinent (not to make it feel inferior or anything...)

So, folks here were like - yeah, same thing happens here in Arizona - just without the cows floating by. So a climatological study was begun to determine if the pattern was the same, and, as I discussed earlier, a similar pattern was discovered - though the distance of the uplift from the ocean (Sierra Vista ain't exactly coastal), the smaller bodies of water involved and the less dramatic uplift (the Catalinas vs the Himalayas - I know who'd win) make our monsoons a little less wet and scary than those in India. Thank goodness, because I wouldn't want to be living in Tucson if it looked more like Dhaka.


Now, there's a lot more information about monsoons that I'd love to share with you - however because I actually do have a job I'm supposed to work at, and because some of you actually work for a living, too - I'll break this into a series. Today was just monsoon basics. Look for more cool monsoon info tomorrow... Or, if you can't wait, here's a good source that knows almost as much as me (not to mention, it's not half as entertaining).

The Arrival of the Office Chair...

So we had a little mini-party in our office today because the Office Max truck dropped off 4 rather large boxes labeled as "task chairs". Now, normally the delivery of boxes of furniture would not send an office into throes of extasy, but you have to understand our unique situation. The average age of the desk chairs in our building is only slightly younger than the fall of the Roman Empire, and I am convinced that at least one was the personal plaything of Caligula. They're ugly, uncomfortable, and smell of a mixture of body odor and solvent-based markers. Although the common folk 'round here had been bemoaning their sore backs and ruined white pants for years, there were always other priorities, as well as (I secretly suspect) some misplaced nostalgia for these relics among those with the final approval authority. Some took matters into their own hands and brought in their own personal chairs to avoid hours of torture at the hands of an antiquated piece of foam cusion. Others evolved special spinal muscles that prevented them from falling out of their broken, tilting, broken wheel seats.



Which makes it all the more clear why we brought out the champagne and cheese for the (very surprised) Office Max guy. At last! Salvation! Real chairs, with working wheels and little pneumatic systems that allowed them to be adjusted up and down with the simple press of a lever! Ah, the amazing advances made since the days of flint and stone! Mesh backs to encourage air circulation (air - you mean that stuff that doesn't smell like century-old petroleum-based foam?). They even boasted an even, clean, black fabric that didn't clash with the fabric or the walls, and looked as though it had been originally intended to be black.



We didn't even complain about the assembly or the instructions, which read as though they were written English, translated to Sanskrit through Icelandic and back to English. We fumbled with the confusing array of Allen wrenches, bizarrely shaped bolts and mysterious bits of plastic like kids trying to assemble their own bikes at Christmas. Wait for someone else to do it? Pah! We're designers, right, we can figure this out...



Too bad you all weren't there. It was darned funny.



Easy to laugh, though, sitting here in my new chair. Maybe now I can find some creative things to do with the old ones...



On a completely unrelated note, here are a few links I want to share:



Funny family pictures from a time we all remember too well...

This is a hilarous way to waste a whole day. Try looking at this blog (http://innerstitch.blogspot.com/) with the Sweedish Chef dialect. Read it out loud - loud enough for the guy in the next cube to hear. Come on, I dare you.

Here's a scan from another blog by GlenF with some of those "bad instructions" I mentioned earlier. These are classic. I especially like : "When you waste metal parts, keep away from small children to prevent from some injuries by them". I've always said kids are dangerous - it's about time someone listened.