Memoria de...

I guess you could consider my family to be "lucky" when it comes to wartime. I have had a number of family members in the military; but when it came to war in the age of conscription, most were either too young or too old (my great grandfather would have been old enough to have served in the U.S. Civil War, but he was yet in the Old Country so he doesn't really count). There were a few notable exceptions:

There's not a whole lot known about my mother's family. The only two of whom I am certain were two cousins (brothers, in fact) involved in WWII. Joe was a pilot in the Pacific Theater and later also served in Korea; his brother, Frank, was killed on the U.S.S. West Virginia at Pearl Harbor.

On t'other side, I had three great uncles conscripted into the AEF in 1917. Uncle Joe C. planned on being an aviator, but after his first flight he reconsidered; he was lucky enough to avoid being sent "over there." Ditto with Uncle Anthony Simas; my grandmother was scant with information, and I was young enough to be complacent with scant information while her mind remained sound, yet I seem to recall her saying that he had landed a cushy desk job. Uncle Joe Simas was less fortunate, returning to the Western Hemisphere shell-shocked and weary. He survived the armistice by a mere fourteen years. Although living in the Azores at the time, my great grandfather would have been old enough to have served in the U.S. Civil War.

Others may have more spectacular family war stories, but that is mine. On this Memorial Day, here's not only to the fallen soldiers, but to the survivors, the desk jockeys, the message runners, the factory workers, miners, farmers...all those of the great American infrastructure who have kept and continue to keep our nation rolling, especially under duress, as well as the families who love and support them.

"Cardozaisms"

Now the lighter side:

If I were to be memorialized in one of those "...isms" books, I think that it would go a little something like this...

(You probably have to be a Nevadan to get most of these...this does NOT include people from The City What Shall Not Be Named, as they have demonstrated time and time again that they really don't care to be part of our great state, and I really don't want them here.)

Some people call it a "false spring;" around here we call it "February."

(in a similar vein...)

So-And-So made reference to our freak snowstorm...Renoites call it "Memorial Day."

Yes, I ride my bike to work and wear an old U.S. Army haversack; this does not mean that I am a #$% %&*@ hippie, it means I'm a cheap son-of-a...

There is a Satan, and unions do his bidding.

I feel so...Warren Harding.

Here's one: not a verbal expression, just a big, waggling middle finger at some sludge donkey not using a turn signal; this would be the cover page, and is the quintessential "me."

Sludge donkey!!!

G. W. does not equal Stalin; nor does he equal Hitler. When I see brown shirts on the streets rounding up brown people, running them into boxcars at the tracks, tens of thousands of people "disappearing" or coming down with a bad case of North Dakota, and one of them comes to get you for making that very comment, then maybe, MAYBE I'll agree.

It's PINE NUT SEASON!!! Let's dance 'round the September Pole!

Thanks, Harry Reid, for granting me the opportunity to watch a grown man sweep the interstate with a PUSH BROOM in the middle of the flippin' desert. Glad to know that pork barrel is going somewhere useful.

Punt on third down...they'll never see it coming! (This was a Chris Tormey brainchild, apparently.)

Okay, I'm tired and this is not going nearly as well as I thought it would. Some impartial observer should just trail me with a notebook, because I KNOW I'm good for some kookey crap (not including my Portuguese rants).

Earthquakes and Human Stupidity

I have been ill for a time, but have now sufficiently recovered to resume blogwork, thanks to a miracle elixir called "V8 Fusion." Move over, Nerve Tonic!

As a result of my convalescence (coinciding with a much-needed three-day weekend, as cruel fate would have it), I have been passing several days waiting to make this post. Normally this would serve as a cool-off time for me after which I would decide that the subject just wasn't worth the effort after all. Not so this time. Since our earthquake swarm has intensified, many people have been trying to ask "Why?" Some have been reasonable but way off base; and some of them have been insanely concocted by left-wing leafblowers.

On Friday, the RG-J posted two letters to the editor, "Possible we brought this on ourselves?" and "Draining aquifers could be the cause." I was able to link to the first, but was unable to locate the second via the RG-J website; possibly some intrepid reader may have more luck than I. It is OK, I will merely have to copy it out. But first things first.

"Possible we brought this on ourselves?" brings attention to the recent explosion of residential development in the area of the recent Reno earthquake swarm. I will not dwell upon this letter, but will mention a quick point. The author notes two things: one, that the landscape has been altered, in some places rather significantly (The mountain could now easily pose for the cover of Strip Mining Quarterly.); two, that changes in the landscape have already caused other, more visible/provable problems (Anytime it rains or snows heavily in this area, the county dispatches large vacuum trucks to keep the silt from reaching the Truckee River). This author then poses the question asked in the title. At least he phrases it as a question. I will point out that there are an abundance of real mines all over the west (including Nevada) , and there is no conclusive evidence linking them to similar seismic activity. Also, the largest of the swarm, so I am told, released approximately the same amount of energy as an atom bomb. So, in order for "we humans" to have done this we would have to, well, detonate an atom bomb, not remove relatively small portions of hillside (yes, relatively small; for comparison visit the Carlin Trend). Not to mention the bombing done at the Nevada Test Site. Simply put: no, mankind would have to rape the earth far more than we could ever imagine to even coerce the planet into this kind of retaliation. It is far more likely that we will meet our Waterloo by toxic gasses of our own design long before that (and that is a stretch unto itself).

Now on to the second. This is not something I do too often: rant. But I feel that the author of the second letter has earned a most earnest, vile, and caustic diatribe.

Draining aquifers could be the cause

"Earth tremors at unusually shallow depths" and the scientists wonder why.

Let's see: Deep water wells necessary to support endless housing developments drain the valley's underground-based aquifers of the driest state in the union.

The mountain runoff is unable to restore the volume of incompressible water necessary to support the walls of the emptied aquifer caverns, and gravity does what gravity does. The result might just be "earth tremors at unusually shallow depths.

Works for me until an answer so complex that the public can't understand it comes along.

I almost don't know where to begin with this one, but I may as well do it in the manner now famous amongst my friends and acquaintances...

What kind of bad blow have you been snorting? Seriously...maybe if we sacrifice a virgin to the mountain she'll relent; makes just as much sense! You know what works for me? You moving your stinky hippie self out of my state!!! Seriously, I have heard some dumb, ignorant brain sludge in my day, but that has got to be one of the most unfounded and ignorantly stupefying loads of liberal guilt-ridden tripe to come out of my hometown since the last time Jack Carter spoke here. In fact, I'm still not sure I'm completely grasping your unfathomable idiocy. But let me try, try, to take this thing point-by-grueling point...

(Okay, I have finally regained enough strength to continue; sooooo...)

Wells:

First of all, wells dredging the aquifers are nowhere close to the depths of the earthquakes. Yes, the earthquakes are shallow...by earthquake standards. Yet they exist at a depth, shallow though they are, of between 1-3 kilometers (the sciency types chose the metric system, not I, so don't hold me accountable). The deepest wells reach barely half that depth. This does not include projects such as remediation, which endeavor to replenish aquifers in the area...these wells also do not reach a depth of 1+ kilometers. These are also 'round the Truckee Meadows, the "valley" portion of our metro area, not so much the hills.

Aquifers:

In these parts, aquifers tend to exist in what we call "gravels" and other porous sediments, not in fanciful caves. Even if they did, rock is not what we call "buoyant," and the mere existence of water does not guarantee that such "caves," if they did exist, would not fail. There are, I will concede, examples of wells draining water resulting in such collapses; we see this occurring in Texas right now (saw an article about a 20+ foot sinkhole which is now home to a healthy alligator), and has been common in places like Florida for a long time. These sinkholes are not associated with any kind of seismic activity (at least not what we'd consider to be seismic activity) and result in, well, sinkholes. Do you see any sinkholes developing? DO YOU!?!?

Faults:

Which brings up another point: this is occurring along faulting...never before discovered, and possibly never before active, but faulting none the less. For every fault out there, it had to have a first time, and humans are relative newcomers to the planet, let alone in a "learned" state. Also, the faulting occurring as a result of this swarm are what are called "strike-slip," meaning that the ground is moving laterally. If this were caused by draining massive quantities of water then the temblors would be caused by the downward shift of a section of ground...not a lateral movement.

Now, allow me to indulge myself for a moment. Let's pretend you are right, and that it's mankind's "fault" (sorry for the really bad pun, but I just had to do it) for bringing this on ourselves. Then, sir, don't you dare patronize me by pretending you are not a part of the problem! If this is the case, then you live here right along side the rest of us and would be considered as guilty as the remaining nearly half million of us in Western Nevada...unless, of course, you are being brought your water from mysterious space aliens who appear only to you and your family bringing you water from Mars or some crap, in which case you are leading to the same catastrophic ecological problems on that planet as you are here!

I'm not going to rant like this often, but sometime I just gotta.

Face it, Mr. Person-Whose-Name-I'll-Leave-Off-But-People-Can-Look-Up-If-They-Really-Wanna: you are a total choad.

Carded! parte dois...

I have heard a great deal of discourse of late pertaining to the impact of the immigration debate upon this year's election season, or the nearly total lack thereof. Here's a story what may just change that dynamic altogether.

I have long been of the opinion that, in places where they feel stifled and outnumbered, the left tends to react by making as much noise as humanly possible, and where would they feel more stifled and more outnumbered than in the state of Nebraska? Even Idaho had one blue county in the 2004 election. In this land of corn, cows, and...corn, it would appear that the ever faithful Nebraskan left now has it's vanguard...housing discrimination and its relationship with illegal immigration.

Anne Hobbs was angry. The head of the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission had just learned of a Hispanic couple who said their landlord asked for their driver's licenses - but didn't ask the same of non-Hispanic tenants.

Hobbs said it sounded like the couple were "treated differently than everybody else because of national origin," and sent the case to the state's top prosecutor, hoping he would sue on their behalf under fair housing laws. (http://www.cbsnews.com/ May 1, 2008.)

This is a legitimate grievance, if it can be proved. I have yet to divine any evidences to incriminate the landlord, but as this story is fresh I admit that such evidences may yet be forthcoming. However, the outcry stretches far beyond the outcry of the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission.

When Attorney General Jon Bruning received the case, he was angry, too - for a different reason than Hobbs.

Did I mention that the couple were in the U.S. illegally?

"I'm not going to use taxpayer dollars to file lawsuits for illegal aliens," said Bruning after learning the couple was in the U.S. illegally. "You're not going to get a free lawyer" from his office, he said, "if you're not a citizen of this country."

Bruning cites the 1996 welfare reform law to validate his stance, specifically the refusal of "any other similar benefit for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household or family eligibility unit." According to Ron Haskins, who assisted in the drafting of the 1996 law, said that it was intended to deny legal services to illegal immigrants.

But it is appropriate to spend public money on issues that "advance the interests of society," he said.

"If I was a citizen of the state," he said when told about Bruning's position, "I'd think, what's in the interests of the community?"

"Even if a person is here illegally, we should enforce the law." (http://www.cbsnews.com/ 05/01/2008.)

Exactly; we should enforce the law. This article fails to mention whether or not their housing was denied, but does refer to the person who "carded" the couple as "their landlord," not "potential landlord," nor "property owner," nor any other moniker by which we may infer that the couple were attempting to gain housing; by the use of "their landlord" this insinuates that they were, at the time, tenants of that said landlord. Another source describes the event in a bit more detail:

The case involved a Lincoln couple that filed a complaint with the commission alleging they were discriminated against by their landlord. According to both Hobbs and Bruning, the landlord asked the complainants to provide drivers' licenses after becoming concerned that too many people were living in the apartment. (www.siouxcityjournal.com, 04/18/2008.)

Ergo, this is not a clear-cut case of housing discrimination; without the landlord making specific, stereotyped comments regarding the matter then there is no basis as such. It is also not about the couple's housing rights: it is about the landlord's property rights.

If the landlord had not asked others to produce their drivers' licences or other forms of state identification, then clearly he/she had not asked this of this couple when they first rented, lest such documentation would have been on file. If this be the case, then the fault in the landlord is that no such measures were taken with any tenant at any time in the first place and had no proofs of identity for any tenant; this is clearly poor judgement. But the manner in which this has escalated is ludicrous: the landlord did not evict the couple and their immigration status had no bearing on their rental status; the landlord merely acted, naively and with only minor inflection, in what he/she determined to be the best interests of a perceived concern his/her own property.

There is obviously a great deal of information absent in this story, yet we can make a preliminary conclusion: the couple were not treated differently because of national origin, they were carded because the landlord perceived a potential code violation in the form of too many persons dwelling within the single apartment. We do not know if any of the other apartment dwellers were carded along with them in order to determine whether or not they were party to the lease agreement; nor do we know if there were examples of similar circumstances amongst non-Hispanic tenants. Therefore I declare this outcry to be absurd.