Forum ignites interest in county plan
By Scott Nicholson
A local conservation partnership hopes to spark discussion between Watauga County and its towns as the next county comprehensive plan begins to take shape.
The Partnership for Watauga’s Future, a non-profit organization not formally affiliated with county government, formed in 2001 to address and discuss land-use issues, sparked mostly by debate over a high-impact land-use ordinance drafted by the county.
The partnership sponsored a program Saturday in Boone to bring together several different planning issues with the goal of building interest in the comprehensive plan.
The program featured presentations on steep slopes, flooding, “walkability” and promoting more sustainable techniques in local businesses.
Kathy Copley, president of the Partnership for Watauga’s Future, said the group was interested in the county’s comprehensive plan and hoped to stimulate more citizen participation. “We had people at the meeting to describe how the plan was shaping up, to become acquainted with the process and what we hope to do,” Copley said. “Our meetings are designed to encourage participation.”
//more//
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
All about waterboarding
One project which was rolling around in my head was to find an authoritative source that supports the premise the waterboarding does not yield useful intelligence. Through the serendipity of the internet, in this case chatting in IM with a dear net friend, I was led back to one of my earlier web 'homes' from whence I was led to this goodie. It is hard to find anyone more qualified to speak on this issue.
Waterboarding is Torture… Period (Updated)
//more//
Want to hear the same thing from some heavy brass?
It's Our Cage, Too
Torture Betrays Us and Breeds New Enemies
By Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar
Thursday, May 17, 2007; Page A17
Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.
Waterboarding is Torture… Period (Updated)
I’d like to digress from my usual analysis of insurgent strategy and tactics to speak out on an issue of grave importance to Small Wars Journal readers. We, as a nation, are having a crisis of honor.One passage stands out in support of my propositon.Last week the Attorney General nominee Judge Michael Mukasey refused to define waterboarding terror suspects as torture. On the same day MSNBC television pundit and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough quickly spoke out in its favor. On his morning television broadcast, he asserted, without any basis in fact, that the efficacy of the waterboard a viable tool to be used on Al Qaeda suspects.
Scarborough said, "For those who don't know, waterboarding is what we did to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the Al Qaeda number two guy that planned 9/11. And he talked …" He then speculated that “If you ask Americans whether they think it's okay for us to waterboard in a controlled environment … 90% of Americans will say 'yes.'” Sensing that what he was saying sounded extreme, he then claimed he did not support torture but that waterboarding was debatable as a technique: "You know, that's the debate. Is waterboarding torture? … I don't want the United States to engage in the type of torture that [Senator] John McCain had to endure."
In fact, waterboarding is just the type of torture then Lt. Commander John McCain had to endure at the hands of the North Vietnamese. As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.
On a Mekong River trip, I met a 60-year-old man, happy to be alive and a cheerful travel companion, who survived the genocide and torture … he spoke openly about it and gave me a valuable lesson: “If you want to survive, you must learn that ‘walking through a low door means you have to be able to bow.’” He told his interrogators everything they wanted to know including the truth. They rarely stopped. In torture, he confessed to being a hermaphrodite, a CIA spy, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Bishop and the son of the king of Cambodia. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French. He remembered “the Barrel” version of waterboarding quite well. Head first until the water filled the lungs, then you talk.
//more//
Want to hear the same thing from some heavy brass?
It's Our Cage, Too
Torture Betrays Us and Breeds New Enemies
By Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar
Thursday, May 17, 2007; Page A17
Fear can be a strong motivator. It led Franklin Roosevelt to intern tens of thousands of innocent U.S. citizens during World War II; it led to Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt, which ruined the lives of hundreds of Americans. And it led the United States to adopt a policy at the highest levels that condoned and even authorized torture of prisoners in our custody.
Fear is the justification offered for this policy by former CIA director George Tenet as he promotes his new book. Tenet oversaw the secret CIA interrogation program in which torture techniques euphemistically called "waterboarding," "sensory deprivation," "sleep deprivation" and "stress positions" -- conduct we used to call war crimes -- were used. In defending these abuses, Tenet revealed: "Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through: the palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know."
We have served in combat; we understand the reality of fear and the havoc it can wreak if left unchecked or fostered. Fear breeds panic, and it can lead people and nations to act in ways inconsistent with their character.
The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp. Regrettably, at Tuesday night's presidential debate in South Carolina, several Republican candidates revealed a stunning failure to understand this most basic obligation. Indeed, among the candidates, only John McCain demonstrated that he understands the close connection between our security and our values as a nation.
//more//Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Brain food
One of the benefits gained from attending YearlyKos was that a sample copy of Seed magazine fell into my possession. Featuring stories like 'What is Life?', 'Beyond Biodiversity', 'The Living City' and 'Before the Big Bang', it provided both distraction and amusement for what was a tortuous journey home. If my coffers were in better shape, I would get a subscription but I am going to have to be content accessing it online.
A Profound Sense of Time
PZ Myers on the process that prompts the growth of all vertebrates from embryos to unspecialized segments to multicellular animals.
by PZ Myers
One of the fundamental features of the organization of multicellular animals is segmentation: We are initially built by subdividing a relatively undifferentiated embryonic tissue into smaller, repeated elements, like a stack of mostly identical building blocks. Look at an earthworm or a caterpillar or a maggot, and the organization is clear, with the wormlike animal showing the obvious seams and subdivisions that constitute its assembly from rings of similar chunks of tissue. Another property of this pattern
of organization is that individual segments can then acquire specializations. In a caterpillar, the front end is modified with mouthparts and sense organs to form a head, while other segments will bear stubby limbs or be festooned with bristles or colored spots and patterns. Specialization is carried further when a maggot becomes a fly. Segments become much more obscure, retaining their visible identity in the abdomen, but are otherwise fused, elaborated upon, and display new features, such as wings or legs or mouthparts, that make the segments, ultimately, look very different from one another.
We vertebrates were also overtly segmented animals early in our embryonic development. As with the fly, the nature of our construction from similar blocks of tissue has been obscured by later additions in development, with limbs patched on and some segments (like human tails) reduced to near invisibility. Others (like significant portions of our brains) have been telescoped, contorted, and fused so that the boundaries between the original segments are detectable only to sensitive molecular probes. As with the fly's abdomen, we also retain some still apparent vestiges: the chain of vertebrae in our backs and the muscles of our torsos.
//more//
A Profound Sense of Time
PZ Myers on the process that prompts the growth of all vertebrates from embryos to unspecialized segments to multicellular animals.
by PZ Myers
One of the fundamental features of the organization of multicellular animals is segmentation: We are initially built by subdividing a relatively undifferentiated embryonic tissue into smaller, repeated elements, like a stack of mostly identical building blocks. Look at an earthworm or a caterpillar or a maggot, and the organization is clear, with the wormlike animal showing the obvious seams and subdivisions that constitute its assembly from rings of similar chunks of tissue. Another property of this pattern
of organization is that individual segments can then acquire specializations. In a caterpillar, the front end is modified with mouthparts and sense organs to form a head, while other segments will bear stubby limbs or be festooned with bristles or colored spots and patterns. Specialization is carried further when a maggot becomes a fly. Segments become much more obscure, retaining their visible identity in the abdomen, but are otherwise fused, elaborated upon, and display new features, such as wings or legs or mouthparts, that make the segments, ultimately, look very different from one another.We vertebrates were also overtly segmented animals early in our embryonic development. As with the fly, the nature of our construction from similar blocks of tissue has been obscured by later additions in development, with limbs patched on and some segments (like human tails) reduced to near invisibility. Others (like significant portions of our brains) have been telescoped, contorted, and fused so that the boundaries between the original segments are detectable only to sensitive molecular probes. As with the fly's abdomen, we also retain some still apparent vestiges: the chain of vertebrae in our backs and the muscles of our torsos.
//more//
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
In browsing about the net you run across things which reinforce your beliefs, things which challenge core assumptions, things which delight with beauty and things which astound. This link, providing a recounting of an encounter with a real life (skepticism suggested) ET, gets filed under "Proof Required".
Extraterrestrials Among Us
A University of Mexico tenured medical professor who met with an extraterrestrial, posing as an ordinary civilian, helps corroborate claims of Human Extraterrestrials living among us. This professor was also a senior member of the Mexican Atomic Energy Commission. The Professor used the pseudonym of ‘Prof Hernandez’ and worked with a Mexican journalist, Zitha Rodriguez to release details of his contact in the early 1970's.
It all began in 1972, with a voice in his head, leading him to scientific breakthroughs in his own medical research in immunology which brought him special recognition by his peers.
Professor Hernandez knew the ideas were not his own, because he had no background in developing them. They came to his mind full blown, as though someone who knew perfectly well what he was talking about had explained them to him in detail. Later in that year he was approached by the author of that voice in his head, and it turned out to be a beautiful extraterrestrial woman who said he could call her Elyense, which he changed to LYA for short. She met him several times on the University Campus before she went any further.
LYA wore a dark pantsuit of some very fine material that the professor could not quite identify. She had dark eyes and wore dark hair shoulder length. She walked our streets and breathed our ambient air with no difficulty. She even drank fruit juice with him at a sidewalk lunch table as they talked. She was obviously far better educated than Hernandez, and he was considered one of his country's foremost scientists.
When the professor questioned LYA's extreme intelligence and the source of her superior knowledge, she took him into her confidence and told him that she was not from this planet -- that she came from another world in a group of stars we called Andromeda. He thought she meant the Andromeda Galaxy at first.
//more//
Extraterrestrials Among Us
A University of Mexico tenured medical professor who met with an extraterrestrial, posing as an ordinary civilian, helps corroborate claims of Human Extraterrestrials living among us. This professor was also a senior member of the Mexican Atomic Energy Commission. The Professor used the pseudonym of ‘Prof Hernandez’ and worked with a Mexican journalist, Zitha Rodriguez to release details of his contact in the early 1970's.
It all began in 1972, with a voice in his head, leading him to scientific breakthroughs in his own medical research in immunology which brought him special recognition by his peers.
Professor Hernandez knew the ideas were not his own, because he had no background in developing them. They came to his mind full blown, as though someone who knew perfectly well what he was talking about had explained them to him in detail. Later in that year he was approached by the author of that voice in his head, and it turned out to be a beautiful extraterrestrial woman who said he could call her Elyense, which he changed to LYA for short. She met him several times on the University Campus before she went any further.
LYA wore a dark pantsuit of some very fine material that the professor could not quite identify. She had dark eyes and wore dark hair shoulder length. She walked our streets and breathed our ambient air with no difficulty. She even drank fruit juice with him at a sidewalk lunch table as they talked. She was obviously far better educated than Hernandez, and he was considered one of his country's foremost scientists.
When the professor questioned LYA's extreme intelligence and the source of her superior knowledge, she took him into her confidence and told him that she was not from this planet -- that she came from another world in a group of stars we called Andromeda. He thought she meant the Andromeda Galaxy at first.
//more//
Sunday, October 28, 2007
This issue deserves attention
The author is a local activist. He is the founder of a group that has Mountain Top Removal as a focus issue.
Demand for coal destroys mountaintops
BofA and Duke Energy contribute to practice that hurts environment
Demand for coal destroys mountaintops
BofA and Duke Energy contribute to practice that hurts environment
This week's protest of Charlotte-based Bank of America's practice of financing companies who strip mine coal in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia raised concerns that should be of interest to all North Carolinians. The Rainforest Action Network hung a huge banner off a crane in front of the Bank of America building that dominates the skyline of downtown Charlotte. The sign read, "Financing Coal, Killing Communities."
Many of us are not aware of all the mining practices of coal giants such as Arch Coal and Massey Energy. Besides the familiar underground mining, they blow up mountains in Appalachia to get down to the coal, and push the waste and debris into surrounding valleys.
Known appropriately as mountaintop removal, this practice has leveled more than 470 Appalachian mountains and buried or polluted thousands of miles of mountain streams -- streams at the headwaters of the drinking water supply of millions of Americans. Blasting and flooding from mountaintop removal are also devastating families and communities in the mountains and leaving the economy of central Appalachia in shambles.
//more//Where I was Saturday
As a board member I felt obliged to attend but I truly was interested. My contribution was to bring a platter of finger sandwiches. Attendence was between 35-40 and I volunteered to be one of the evaluators for the 'Green Business' program. My mind is whirling with ideas and I need to make a couple of contacts this coming week.
“The Future of Watauga County Planning and You”
Saturday, Oct. 27, 2 p.m.
Boone Town Council Chambers
Sponsored by the Partnership for Watauga’s Future
The Program at a Glance:
Welcome & introductions … Kathy Copley
Boone’s Walkability Assessment … Blake Brown
Creating a “Green Business Plan” … David Ponder
Hazardous Slope Mapping … Rick Wooten
Hazardous Slope Legislation … D.J. Gerken
New Watauga River Flood Maps … John Callahan
Comprehensive Planning in Watauga
“The Future of Watauga County Planning and You,” a program organized around some of the county’s most pressing land-planning issues and the practical impacts of those topics on ordinary homeowners, will be presented on Saturday, October 27, at the Boone Town Council Chambers on Blowing Rock Road.
Attendees will be given basic overviews of a number of hot topics, to be followed by informational Q&A with authorities. “The idea is for our members to get all the basic points on steep-slope issues, for example, or the upcoming comprehensive plan,” said program organizer Kathy Copley. “It’ll be like ‘Community Issues for Beginners,’ with additional resources available for people who would like to learn more.”
A highlight of the program will be a presentation by Rick Wooten of North Carolina Geologic Survey (NCGS), whose team has been gathering detailed information for its current Watauga County landslide hazard mapping project. Wooten will discuss mapping methodology and preliminary findings from the project (which will be formally delivered to the County Commission in a public session at a later date). For example, in the infamous 1940 flood in Watauga County, when some 10 inches of rain fell over the course of six hours, there were over 2,000 documented “slope failures” in the county, with rock, dirt, and vegetation moving rapidly and catastrophically down-slope as debris flows. Many of those flow tracks have been located and will be mapped.
D.J. Gerken of the Southern Environmental Law Center will update the group on Saturday about the status of the statewide hazardous slope bill introduced in the N.C. legislature in 2007 and now referred to a study commission.
Also on Saturday will be an explanation and overview of the county’s new comprehensive planning process being launched this fall. Ordinary citizens will have several ways to participate and influence the “visioning” of what Watauga County should be in the future.
Also on the program on Saturday will be updates on the newest flood maps for the Watauga River basin in western Watauga County presented by Dr. John Callahan, and Boone’s “walkability assessment” and its implications for traffic flow presented by Boone’s Director of Public Works Blake Brown, and an update on the “green business plan,” launched in 2007 by the Watauga County Economic Development Commission, presented by David Ponder.
The meeting on Saturday, sponsored by the Partnership for Watauga’s Future (PWF), will begin with refreshments at 1:30 p.m. The program will begin at 2:00 p.m. It is free and open to the public.
“The Future of Watauga County Planning and You”
Saturday, Oct. 27, 2 p.m.
Boone Town Council Chambers
Sponsored by the Partnership for Watauga’s Future
The Program at a Glance:
Welcome & introductions … Kathy Copley
Boone’s Walkability Assessment … Blake Brown
Creating a “Green Business Plan” … David Ponder
Hazardous Slope Mapping … Rick Wooten
Hazardous Slope Legislation … D.J. Gerken
New Watauga River Flood Maps … John Callahan
Comprehensive Planning in Watauga
“The Future of Watauga County Planning and You,” a program organized around some of the county’s most pressing land-planning issues and the practical impacts of those topics on ordinary homeowners, will be presented on Saturday, October 27, at the Boone Town Council Chambers on Blowing Rock Road.
Attendees will be given basic overviews of a number of hot topics, to be followed by informational Q&A with authorities. “The idea is for our members to get all the basic points on steep-slope issues, for example, or the upcoming comprehensive plan,” said program organizer Kathy Copley. “It’ll be like ‘Community Issues for Beginners,’ with additional resources available for people who would like to learn more.”
A highlight of the program will be a presentation by Rick Wooten of North Carolina Geologic Survey (NCGS), whose team has been gathering detailed information for its current Watauga County landslide hazard mapping project. Wooten will discuss mapping methodology and preliminary findings from the project (which will be formally delivered to the County Commission in a public session at a later date). For example, in the infamous 1940 flood in Watauga County, when some 10 inches of rain fell over the course of six hours, there were over 2,000 documented “slope failures” in the county, with rock, dirt, and vegetation moving rapidly and catastrophically down-slope as debris flows. Many of those flow tracks have been located and will be mapped.
D.J. Gerken of the Southern Environmental Law Center will update the group on Saturday about the status of the statewide hazardous slope bill introduced in the N.C. legislature in 2007 and now referred to a study commission.
Also on Saturday will be an explanation and overview of the county’s new comprehensive planning process being launched this fall. Ordinary citizens will have several ways to participate and influence the “visioning” of what Watauga County should be in the future.
Also on the program on Saturday will be updates on the newest flood maps for the Watauga River basin in western Watauga County presented by Dr. John Callahan, and Boone’s “walkability assessment” and its implications for traffic flow presented by Boone’s Director of Public Works Blake Brown, and an update on the “green business plan,” launched in 2007 by the Watauga County Economic Development Commission, presented by David Ponder.
The meeting on Saturday, sponsored by the Partnership for Watauga’s Future (PWF), will begin with refreshments at 1:30 p.m. The program will begin at 2:00 p.m. It is free and open to the public.
Sharing
One of my objectives in doing this blog is to share. This morning's web prowl serves as an excellent ample and for that reason I will take you along with me on the first real trek of the day going beyond my normal routine.
It starts in my in box where I found the daily offering from the NYT. I usually just note the headlines but today I was attracted to this item:
Rethinking Fire Policy in the Tinderbox Zone
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/us/28threat.html?th&emc=th
This section caught my eye :
On the department page I found he had nine articles with links and and six without. Thinking the title bespoke the focus I was seeking, I picked Minnich, R.A. 2006, "California climate and fire weather". Fire in California's ecosystems (N.G. Sugihara, J.W. VanWagtendonk, K.E Shaffer, Joann Fites-Kaufman and A.E.Thode (eds.). University of California Press.GRRRRR. That takes me to a .pdf file and those kick this copy and paste'ers ass. It does offer, however, an informative primer on weather with a concentration on the forces at work in forming California's climate. I still needed, however, to find a linkable source...
Which took me to a site definitely worth saving, Conservation Biology. From there, and I do not recall how that happened, I ended up at AGORRA and that produced the link I wish to share, perhaps the motherlode of all techno links... Link.
Alas, good news and bad news. To access those 1,132 journals you have to be registered. The good news is that you can arrange with a school library to dig through all that material. The bad news is that the US does not appear to be a participant in the program. I immediately wonder why. Such a tease!
It starts in my in box where I found the daily offering from the NYT. I usually just note the headlines but today I was attracted to this item:
Rethinking Fire Policy in the Tinderbox Zone
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/us/28threat.html?th&emc=th
This section caught my eye :
What were they doing in Baja to remove that underbrush? I though Minnich might a paper available on that very subject so I Googled him. As an aside, in different circumstances I might have used Vivisimo as the search enging. The Earth Sciences link gains a much better return than the faculty link as is usually the case.“California has lost 1.5 million acres in the last four years,” said Richard A. Minnich, a professor of earth sciences who teaches fire ecology at the University of California, Riverside. “When do we declare the policy a failure?”
Fire-management experts like Professor Minnich, who has compared fire histories in San Diego County and Baja California in Mexico, say the message is clear: Mexico has smaller fires that burn out naturally, regularly clearing out combustible underbrush and causing relatively little destruction because the cycle is still natural. California has giant ones because its longtime policies of fire suppression — in which the government has kept fires from their normal cycle — has created huge pockets of fuel that erupt into conflagrations that must be fought.
On the department page I found he had nine articles with links and and six without. Thinking the title bespoke the focus I was seeking, I picked Minnich, R.A. 2006, "California climate and fire weather". Fire in California's ecosystems (N.G. Sugihara, J.W. VanWagtendonk, K.E Shaffer, Joann Fites-Kaufman and A.E.Thode (eds.). University of California Press.GRRRRR. That takes me to a .pdf file and those kick this copy and paste'ers ass. It does offer, however, an informative primer on weather with a concentration on the forces at work in forming California's climate. I still needed, however, to find a linkable source...
Which took me to a site definitely worth saving, Conservation Biology. From there, and I do not recall how that happened, I ended up at AGORRA and that produced the link I wish to share, perhaps the motherlode of all techno links... Link.
Alas, good news and bad news. To access those 1,132 journals you have to be registered. The good news is that you can arrange with a school library to dig through all that material. The bad news is that the US does not appear to be a participant in the program. I immediately wonder why. Such a tease!
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