An editiorial in the Kansas City paper about Bush's visit to Argentina is one of the most asinine, insulting, condescending pieces of dreck that I've ever read about Latin America. excerpt:

he [Bush] recently learned that he is unpopular among some Latin Americans.

Violent protests greeted him this month at a meeting of Western Hemisphere presidents in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

But neither he, nor we, should lose any sleep over this. It was the product of the unholy triumvirate of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and over-the-hill soccer star Diego Maradona.

The three of them are the personification of the most common failing of Latin American nations: perpetual adolescence.

I'll be condescending back, Shirley, and say, I should have expected this kind of think from Kansas.

An really great article in the LA Weekly about all that goes into bringing a Ceasar salad to your plate encompasses a plethora of social problems of today: genetic engineering, labor, immigration, health, pesticide pollution of the environment, gentrification, urban sprawl... It's all there.

I feel responsible for wasting the fistful of romaine left on my plate. All the work that went into getting those leaves here

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A study reports that chronic exposure to noise increases the chance of heart attacks. Oddly enough the average noise level of a typical busy large office, 60db, is about the threshold that researchers have found for an increased risk of heart attack. Even more oddly, they've found that noise in the workplace doesn't effect women. This doesn't seem right. Why would the type of noise matter? whether it's a jet plane or xerox machine, noise is noise. and why would it matter between the sexes?

I hate these kind of articles where they just present these weird findings without even a theory for the reasons. In Harper's magazine on the back page it's funny, but in general I want more sense made from the datasmog being pumped at me.

A right-wing song called "Bush Was Right", by a band called "The Right Brothers," is out and wow, it is BAD. MSNBC has made a silly video (making fun of it) to go with it.

I've just been informed that there is something to do with combatting the forces of creationism called Project Steve (sic) that is being done by the National Center for Science Education. If I was a scientist I would definitely join that. Even though I'm not a Steve but a Steev, they'd probably take me...

The Blogosphere, or the little corner of it that I regularly monitor (read: that I subscribe to in my feedreader), seems to be slowing down, probably for Thanxgiving.

I bunch of Tucson folks I know went to the Seri Coast for the week. (I just spelled that phonetically espanol-style, because I don't know how it's really spelled.) It's on the land of a Mexican Indian tribe, the Seri, on the coast of the Sea of Cortez, about 8 hours from Tucson. Apparently it's really beautiful and completely primitive - you have to bring absolutely everything with you, water and all. I maybe could have gone, and wanted to, but I couldn't justify leaving for a whole week when I really should be concentrating on finding housing and work. I'm sure they're having a wonderful, "Y Tu Mam

I'm not sure where this came from originally but it's pretty dang funny.

yes, there's a riot porn web log now. There's a blog for everything.

This one has pretty great photos. (via onto and lotus)

Well, I didn't end up going to Ft. Huachuca afterall, today. I was up way too late last night.

Here's what I did yesterday:
9am - looked at a house I was interesting in renting. even though it's 2 bedroom i think it's too small for 2 people, and too expensive for just me.
rest of morning - caught up on internet stuff, made breakfast etc.
1:30 - rode to the Salt of the Earth Labor College to see the film "Salt of the Earth." It's a classic film dramatization of a miner's strike in New Mexico in the early 50s. It's a great film that I'd highly recommend. The other cool thing was that a man and a woman who were in the actual strike and in the movie were there at the screening and answered questions afterward.
7pm - met with some Earth First! people for a "debriefing" on the Sandhill Crane anti-hunt campaign. the hunting season just finished up last week.

9pm - saw a free outdoor performance of this cool firedancing, acrobatic, theatrical troupe called Flam Chen (pictured here). They do a lot of things around town, I guess. I saw them before already at the All Soul's Procession. Pretty accomplished, though I thought their attempt to make the show have a storyline was unneccesary and a failure. They should just rely on the cool surreality of what they do and not try to create a plot, unless they can really pull it off.
10pm - went to opening of annual BICAS bike art auction. Cool bands, great art and crafts and furniture made from bikes, and good homebrew beer.
12pm - went dumpstering with some friends. pretty lucrative haul. didn't get home till 2:30 or so. hence, not wanting to get up at 730 to go to the Fort Huachuca protest.

so, as you can, life is pretty full lately.

If you are or have been at all interested or involved with the anti-war movement, you probably know about the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the campaign against it. Few know about Arizona's version, near Tucson: Fort Huachuca.

Fort Huachuca is the home of the Army Intelligence Center and is where they produce the manuals and textbooks on interrogation and related topics that are used at the SOA. They also, I understand, train the teachers who teach at the SOA, and it's a major electronic surveillance center.

Tommorrow, Sunday, the 20th, in solidarity with the yearly protest in Georgia, there will be the second annual protest at Fort Huachuca, which I'm planning to attend. It should be interesting. I'm amazed that last year was only the first time It's been done.

For a little more background see an article from earlier this year about the new commander of the base, who was previously Army chief of intelligence in Iraq - during the Abu Graib affair.

So, if you're in the region, this year or in the future, instead of travelling all the way to Georgia, come to Fort Huachuca instead. Burn less fossil fuels and help bring attention to another important piece of the U.S. military atrocity machine.