Hunkering Down in the Dark
After our electric power went out for two days during the latest onslaught of an Atmosfearful River, we had an opportunity to revisit the magic of candlelight—and the frustration of discovering that most of our flashlights didn't work. 

Also: we had no way to tell which of our scores of back-up batteries were still working. 

A neighbor was able to let us use an ancient rotary-dial phone to reach PG&E, but the utility's recorded message offered little comfort: it suggested that customers who had questions about the extent of the outage and an expected time for restoring service could simply "go online" for the latest updates. 

Only one problem: You can't "go online" when the power's out. 

Ghostlighting
Late in the second day of our outage, the power suddenly returned to our house. The lights lit, the radio boomed, the microwave beeped, and you could almost hear the entire neighborhood cheering—for the six seconds the power was restored. 

Having been titillated, we were once again found ourselves plunged into darkness. With one perplexing exception: A single globe light hanging in the living room continued to glow. Not at full force (maybe one-sixth of its regular brilliance) but with a spooky flickering effect. 

Checking the other switches and outlets, we discovered that—despite the overall outage—the electric heaters that we had been using to thwart the cold, still flashed their red "on" light when plugged in (cries of joy!) but that was it—they wouldn't operate and produce any heat (cries of disappointment). We'd have to continue huddling in front of the open door of our gas oven—sucking up the heat along with the nitrous oxide. 

A Loco Move: Too Many Cars on the Tracks
Since the partial derailment of a 212-car (that's more than 2.5 miles long!!!) Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio, the public has been alerted to health hazards posed by shipments of toxic vinyl chloride. Vinyl chloride is a deadly compound that threatens the lives of anyone living alongside or near railroad lines. A government that allows such risk-heavy operations to continue may find it accused of allowing people to be sacrificed for profits. It could be argued that a mass-gassing atrocity that mostly targets poor communities could be called "The Vinyl Solution." 

The eco-activist group Food & Water Action is calling on the EPA to ban vinyl chloride. You can sign on to this appeal here.
A Mural for the Times: The Madonna of Refugees
For much of the past month, a lone artist could be seen standing atop a stool on the south-facing wall of the Bi-Rite Liquors store at the southeast corner of Sacramento and Dwight Way. This remarkable mural is now finished and it's stopping pedestrians in their tracks and drawing art-lovers from afar. 

The artist, Mokhtar Paki, has created an incredibly detailed testament to the global plight of impoverished refugees. They are represented by hundreds of hand-drawn figures seen clinging desperately to the robes of a Mother of Migrants shown navigating a rescue ship as the waves of an massive ocean reach out and threaten to pull the desperate passengers back into the sea. 

A visit to the artist's website reveals that he frequently displays his work at Berkeley's Firehouse Art Collective. 

Car Squawk
In the tradition of Car Talk—National Public Radio's beloved on-air-auto-repair-call-in show hosted by Tom and Ray Magliozzi (aka the Tappet Brothers)—the good folks at Dana Meyer's Auto Care in Albany have posted a handy list for customers who drop in to complain about strange noises haunting their vehicles. In the NPR version, car-folk would dial-in live and, at the invitation of Tom and Ray, do their best to mimic the weird sounds they were hearing. 

With the show long gone from our airwaves, Dana and crew have posted a sign to help distressed drivers identify noises that are linked to certain common car-related problems. And here's that list—suitable for framing or tucking inside that sunshade above the steering wheel. 

Tell Us What You Are Hearing! 

BOOM—A sound like a drum roll or distant thunder 

BUZZ—Like a bumblebee 

CLICK—A light sound like a ballpoint pen being clicked 

CLUNK—A metal-to-metal sound like a hammer striking steel 

CREAK—Like walking on an old wood floor 

GRIND—An abrasive sound, like a grinding stone 

GROWL—A low sound, like an angry dog 

HISS—The sound that a leak in a tire makes 

HUM—A low-pitch steady sound like the note of an organ 

KNOCK—Like a knock on a door 

POP—A sound like opening a bottle of Champaign 

RATTLE—Like shaking a baby rattle 

RUMBLE—Low, heavy, continuous sound, like thunder 

SQUEAK—Like tennis shoes on a clean flood 

SQUEAL—A high-pitched sound like fingernails against a chalkboard 

TAP—A crisp, dull sound, like tapping your fingers on a table 

THUMP—Heavy, muffled, knock noise 

TICK—Like a clock's second hand 

WHINE—A high-pitched sound like an electric motor or drill 

WHISTLE—A high-pitched sound like a note on a flute. 

Fashion Plates
White Subaru: LUV HY ("Love HYways" or just getting high on love?)
White Nissan: A1 SUN 4 (The plate frame reads: "Solar Leaf: Power For the People"). 

Persimmon-colored Mini Cooper: PERSMMN (Emphasis on the "MM!")
Grey Tesla: DSAPAR8 (No such word as "Disaparate." Maybe Disparate? As in "no basis for comparison.")
White Toyota: S[heart]PHIRA ("I love Sophira"?)
White Honda: BND2CVR (Bend to Cover?)
White Honda: SIK FON (Sick Fun? And is that a handcuff hanging above the front bumper? The frame reads: "Dragon Heartless"]
Big black van: BJ4EVA (No comment on this one. My lips are sealed) 

Bumper Snickers
I've got 99 problems and White Heteronormative Patriarchy is basically all of them 

"I will feast on your corpse" (Uttered by a cartoon mushroom) 

"OMG You Guys. That's Not What I Said" (Uttered by an image of Jesus on a cross) 

Ban the Bible: Too Much Illicit Sex!
The Daily Kos recently posted a story with a headline I thought I'd never see: "It's Finally Happened! A Call to Ban the Bible for Pornography." 

The Daily Kos explains: 

"Anyone who has actually read the Bible can tell you it’s full of stories that should not be read by children. Here is a quick—and very incomplete—list: 

• Samson and Delilah: Delilah seduces Samson, then robs him of his masculinity.
• Judah has sex with his widowed daughter-in-law, thinking she is a prostitute.
• Amnon rapes his half-sister Tamar.
• Lot’s daughters get him drunk and have sex with him
• Noah (the “righteous man in his generation”) gets drunk and is found naked by his son Ham.
• The Song of Songs is an extremely powerful paean to sex between two people who are not married.
• David commits adultery with Bathsheba, then has her husband killed so he can marry her."

This short list leaves out some really wretched illicit wenching on the part of Biblical figures. It all starts with Adam and Eve, who had two sons and two daughters. After Cain slew Abel, he seized Abel's sibling/consort and set about propagating the human race by procreating with, not one, but both of his sisters. 

And then there's Lot who opted to protect his male houseguests by offering his daughters to be gang-raped by a randy pair of visiting angels. 

Here is a biblical scholar trying to explain why this (and many other examples of sexual depravity) are found in the Bible. 

 

Apparently unconvinced by these rationalizations for "divine depravity," a parent in Utah, after watching other books being tossed from school libraries, has demanded that action be taken to ban the Bible—“one of the most sex-ridden books around.” The aggrieved parent went on to provide a list of Biblical Porn that included presentations of “incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide.” The parent claims the Holy Writ, under Utah Code Ann. § 76-10-1227, has "no serious values for minors" because "it’s pornographic by our new definition.”
Comparing Putin's Invasion of Ukraine and Bush's Invasion of Iraq 

On the 20^th anniversary of the WMD Big Lie that unleashed "Shock and Awe" on Iraq and the first anniversary of Russian invasion of Ukraine, here are some statistics to contemplate: 

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: "at least 8,006 civilians have been killed and 13,287 injured over the past 12 months in the Ukraine fighting." 

According to Brown University's Costs of War project: "Since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, between 550,000-580,000 people have been killed in Iraq and Syria—the current locations of the United States’ Operation Inherent Resolve—and several times as many may have died due to indirect causes such as preventable diseases. More than 7 million people from Iraq and Syria are currently refugees, and nearly 8 million people are internally displaced in the two countries." 

And here are some videos that are also worth contemplating. 

Marking 20 years since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq 

 

WMD Inspector: Bush should have faced a war crimes court over Iraq invasion

 

Iraq, 20 years on: Fallujah bears brunt of legacy of a brutal war

 

Iraqis reflect on country 20 years after the US invasion

 

Fallujah birth defects: A toxic remnant of the US invasion of Iraq