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San Diego future without water
You know Don, I never cease to be amazed and increasingly concerned about admissions by our preeminent climate scientists when they admit things like their supercomputer models are about 20 years off and global ice melting is occurring much faster than they ever predicted most recently. Then today the U-T published another quote by one of SIO’s best researchers Tim Barnett “We were stunned” when discussing a report on the rapidly dwindling levels of reservoirs that supply Sorthern California water. Most sadly, this proves one more time what Freeman Dyson exposed “The main social benefit provided by pure science in esoteric fields is to serve as a welfare program for scientists and engineers” and this fact defines one of the greatest threats to humanity today. Since this is Sunday, it is most appropriate to say May God Help Us! and save us from the fact that “pure scientists have become more detached from the mundane needs of humanity, and the applied scientists have become more attached to immediate profitability” another Dyson quote from his book “Imagined Worlds” that has applied far too often to UC scientists who excel in producing hydrogen bombs and making $500 Million alliances with BP oil giant, etc. instead of protecting and preserving humanity as their highest priority with a sense of urgency if IPCC climate change tipping points warnings are real, which polar ice caps and glaciers appear to be proving today. At this rate, bells will not only toll for humanity but we shall all be stunned “at the magnitude of the problem and how fast it was coming at us” indeed. Science needs to gain credibility with a sense of urgency, today.— February 17, 2008 12:30 p.m.
San Diego's Police State: Blogger Flannery Booted Out of Dumanis Press Conference
Response to post #6: Actually it is Dumanis's corruption and the corruption of far too many San Diego judges that is the root cause of Aguirre's, Frye's and San Diego's problems. Great column Don, it's time to purge legal and judicial corruption that is destroying the San Diego system of justice. Corrupt lawyers like Dumanis are among the biggest threats to public safety in San Diego. They prevent our fire and policemen/women in Harm's Way from doing their jobs placing everyone at increasingly unacceptable risk to our lives, health and property.— February 17, 2008 3:59 a.m.
Is Ailing Union-Tribune Crossing News/Advertising Line in the Sand?
Response to post #18: Re "The Reader does reach a younger market. That is one of our strengths. We intend to keep giving this readership important information." Yes, but are they being disturbed and ignited enough to go to the polls in record numbers and vote out the corrupt and incompetent democrats and republicans who have done far too many wrong things for far too long? For instance, my own congresswoman Susan Davis has been in the watch and do nothing but waste a seat in congress mode for far too long. She writes long newsletters full of B.S. because the country just keeps getting in deeper trouble economically, socially and politically while all she and the rest of the San Diego congressional delegation of good old boys/girls in both parties fail American Democracy. Your “younger market” and the rest of us in San Diego can't afford to allow our current crop of corrupt and incompetent politicians to continue screwing up America and San Diego any longer. So keep informing, plus exciting and igniting your readers Don. Now that the U-T has crashed and burned The Reader is the only journalism left in San Diego with integrity and dedication to make the right things happen. We must act as if this is the last election we have to make the right things happen to prevent chaos. Warren Buffett can only do so much to save America, and the subversive U-T establishment is negating the efforts of Aguirre and Frye to save San Diego so far.— February 17, 2008 3:44 a.m.
Is Ailing Union-Tribune Crossing News/Advertising Line in the Sand?
Response to post #14: Right On sdblogger, Don and all survivors from the U-T who are "Free At Last!" with your integrity in tact. For what it's worth, right now The Reader appears to be the only newspaper in San Diego with the highest standards of integrity, plus just as importantly, the right readership demographics that so far appear to be making the most signicant difference in the democratic primaries. It is the newest X & Y generations that can make the most difference in America today if they are properly informed, disturbed and ignited enough to protect their own future into their own hands by voting at the polls in record numbers.— February 16, 2008 2:27 p.m.
Is Ailing Union-Tribune Crossing News/Advertising Line in the Sand?
Response to post #10 Don, I really don't think "young people" today read and think any more or less than young people of previous generations. We have always had problems educating large numbers of young people with inadequate resources because of political corruption and incompetent administrators who do not support their teachers positively. I have known too many dedicated teachers with excessively high blood pressure because of incompetent administrators who do not support and protect them from destructive politicians. Regardless of the school you send your kids to, if the parents don't take or have the time to go to their school officials and demand the best for their kids, their kids will more than likely be let down by the system. My kids received a great education in San Diego because we demanded it of them, their teachers and the administrators, but it was our responsibility to make the right things happen. It’s too damn easy for good kids to fall between the cracks in America and it has been that way for far too long. Too many people don’t understand the reality of making the right things happen for their kids. Bad education and poor student performance happens with ALL demographics. Even the University of California has failed hideously to protect and preserve humanity because of the tenured welfare system that allows them to reach their level of incompetence and rot. We must teach our kids to make their own opportunities and make the right things happen for themselves because our colleges tend to graduate too many failed human beings, and there are far too many corrupt and/or incompetent politicians destroying the American way of life that prove the truth in that statement. The main problem today is not the workers of America or our “young people,” it’s the leaders who are corrupt and/or incompetent that America is suffering most from today. The bottom line is that all of our institutions have failed to provide adequate support for all of the “young people” of America for far too long. And the result of “No child left behind” is a tragedy.— February 16, 2008 1:51 p.m.
Is Ailing Union-Tribune Crossing News/Advertising Line in the Sand?
Response to post #3: Don, having compared the U-T to really good newspapers for decades believe me it is more than “decline in our interest in the written word,” it‘s the deranged rant editorial style they have used to mesmerize their lemming constituency, moronic rhetoric they have assassinated America’s Finest City with. And the most recently outrageous political consequences are their production of three of America’s worst-case scenario U-T Puppet-Mayors in a row. So the U-T Editorial Board is the root cause of the newspaper’s decline, and their legacy is that they did hellacious harm to San Diego, such as excessive firestorm deaths and property losses due lack of resources because of larceny of public funds by the U-T establishment. Winner and Kittle have followed much to close for comfort in the editorial footsteps of Goebbels and Streicher by destroying the future for their own readers.— February 16, 2008 12:31 p.m.
Is Ailing Union-Tribune Crossing News/Advertising Line in the Sand?
Don, as you have been reporting for years, this gives new application to John Donne's poem for emergent occasions "For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee." By coincidence, yesterdays LAT had a sidebar in a Front Page story "Stanton named editor of the L. A. Times" tolling for downsizing at NYT, LAT, Chicago Times, SDU-T, Detroit Free Press/News, and OC Register. And guess what, Stanton is mandated to merge LAT print with latimes.com as the third editor of LAT in less than three years. It's going to be an interesting, but sad ending to an era that I started getting upset about when LAT and U-T stopped using high school delivery kids on bicycles, especially since I had been one myself for the Times in San Pedro when I was a kid, and a former U-T kids delivery manager had been Scoutmaster for my own kids. There goes the community. There might as well be an obit for the entire “American Way of Life” that had been created after WWII when America truly was the Greatest Nation on Earth as industrial, agricultural, etc. producer for a world that had been totally changed by worldwide wars. Who would have dreamed that Korean, Viet Nam and Iraq wars would lead to China becoming a world power that America created by outsourcing our manufacturing, expertise and jobs!? Are we becoming “Brave New World,” or “1984” or something totally unforeseen to be reported by some pixilated “reporter” on a Dick Tracy wristwatch version of iPod? Our generation really screwed up everything Don. I sure hope The Reader's X & Y generations are learning from our unforgivable failures by going to the polls in the greatest numbers ever this year to create one more "Change" for the better to save what is left.— February 16, 2008 2:46 a.m.
San Diego future without water
Response to post #30: Yes that is an excellent source of information SDBill. Costco sells artificial grass. There is even a high traffic resistant ground up tires version used at the zoo orangutan enclosure that looks pretty good but you probably have to get used to the tire odor for a while. I read about one guy who got creative and tried what he called "dry river bed" Basically we must get serious and stop watering lawns as priority number one, see what dies, then experiment with drought resistant native plants. There are a lot of examples of solutions at the other end of I8 in Phoenix, Tucson, etc. that they have used for decades.— February 15, 2008 1:50 p.m.
San Diego future without water
Response to post #25: Actually Don, “economic and stock market projections” have been far better than climate change forecasts. It is true as you say that “the so-called experts are wrong more than half of the time” but far too many IPCC climate change forecasts are proving to be wrong far worse than you want to imagine. For instance, forecasts of melting ocean glaciers and ice sheets have recently been exposed as being too far into the future by about 20 years, and accelerating as newer observations keep documenting. It increasingly appears that a supercomputer room full of our more intelligent San Diego Zoo monkeys could have done a better job. So we are now experiencing a never-ending series stories of scientific discoveries of never-ending scientific failures to protect and preserve humanity. But fear not, regardless of what is really happening with climate change, UC is still producing hydrogen bombs after half a century of dedication to this “scientific” endeavor, apparently as their ultimate gift to humanity as political, economic and social problems continue to devolve because of UC’s failures to protect and preserve humanity because it wasn’t profitable enough to do so. The legacy of Dr. Strangelove lives on at UC.— February 15, 2008 1:18 p.m.
San Diego future without water
Response to posts #26,27&28: Actually both parties have earned a hell of a lot more than contumely, that’s much too polite and gentile for Washington. They have headed America so close to becoming a “third world country” that we should all be mad as hell. It’s time for the Under 40s to demonstrate their voting power and anger at establishment politicians “seldom seen in American politics” by kicking republican and democrat asses big time right out of Washington, Sacramento and San Diego, and it’s impossible to miss hitting most of those fat good old boy/girl asses. A little lesson in history Don: Prescott Bush committed treason when he invested in Nazi industrialists in the 1930s thus providing funds to support Hitler, WWII, concentration camps and the Holocaust. In 2004 The Guardian published “How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power”: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.s… As noted, this bit of history has been played down by Washington politicians and special interests demonstrating how far down power politics prostitutes have sunk today because they all share in covering up this outrageous crime against humanity by the Bush family.— February 15, 2008 12:43 p.m.