Yup, we’re still there.

Via atrios, we hear from Michael Savage, who agrees with so many other radical right-wingers that al Qaeda was doing God’s work when they blew up the World Trade Center.

SAVAGE: And God, who is the center of this monotheistic religion, has said, “Oh, you don’t worship me anymore? Oh, you don’t like me anymore? Oh, I don’t exist anymore? Really? All right, I’m going to show you boys in Hollywood and you girls in New York City that I do exist. But since you’re very hard-headed, stiff-necked people, and you don’t really believe that I exist because you’ve gotten away with everything you’ve done all your life without any repercussions, I’m going to show you I exist in a way that you can’t believe.” Down came the World Trade Center towers. That was God speaking.

See Dinesh D’Souza say the same thing. This entry is part of an ongoing series.

These guys sure are scared of liberals.

A while back, I was talking to a guy who was new to Seattle. He grew up in Mississippi and lived in Michigan for a while. Then he came out here a couple months back.

He pointed across Lake Washington to the east. “What’s that mountain range?” “That’s the Cascade range.” “How far does it go?” “Well, it goes north into Canada, and south through Oregon and into California.” “No, I mean how far east does it go?” “Oh, not far. Maybe seventy-five miles or something, depending on where you’re crossing.”

And then he asked me: “How far is it to Washington, DC?”

And I answered: “Oh, about three thousand miles I guess,” I smiled and pointed, “Straight that way.”

“Three thousand? How big is Washington state?”

The obvious hadn’t occurred to me yet…. “A few hundred miles.”

“That way?” He pointed the same way I had just pointed when I was joking.

“Yeah.”

“What state is Washington, DC, in?”

All became clear. I explained.

How can someone grow up in the US and not know the difference between Washington, DC, and Washington state?

An interesting ‘blog by Kathleen Dahl, an anthropologist from Eastern Oregon University, dealing with the way the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition is presented to the public.

I got to it because I was searching for info on DeVoto Grove, on US 12 in Idaho, near Lolo Pass. 2,000 year old red cedars make us happy.

She also has a more generalized ‘blog about the way the west is perceived, beyond simply the L&C story.

See especially this entry on the Disney-fication of the history of the West:

This reminded me of a passage in a text I once used when I taught a course on the anthropology of capitalism and commodification. In Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism (1999, first edition), anthropologist Richard Robbins discusses the general idea of “distory” and then offers some of the animatronic historical figures at Disney World’s EPCOT by way of illustration.

The oratory coming out of the figures’ mouths has been heavily edited and reworded (when compared to their original speeches or writings) to better fit Disney’s interpretive goals. These goals include “not telling history like it really was but as it should have been,” according to a Disney spokesperson. An exhibit designer explains that at Disney World, they “program out all the negative, unwanted elements and program in the positive elements.”

One of the EPCOT figures is Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. I have provided C. E. S. Wood’s dramatic version of Joseph’s 1877 surrender speech in the previous post. Here is Disney’s version, from Robbins’ book:

“Enough, enough of your words. Let your new dawn lead to the final sunset on my people’s suffering. When I think of our condition, my heart is sick. I see men of my own race treated as outlaws, or shot down like animals. I pray that all of us may be brothers, with one country around us, and one government for all. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

No matter who really came up with what we now call the surrender speech–Chief Joseph or Lt. Wood–there is no doubt that Disney softened the “negative, unwanted elements.” As Robbins writes, “Instead of freezing children, the death of the elderly, and a military campaign that ended only after the deaths of hundreds of American and Nez Perce soldiers, Joseph’s surrender speech has been turned by Disney into a testimonial to brotherhood and the nation-state.”

Youtube user gameday has a whole series of videos on Japanese culture.

I offer this one as exemplary:

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite movies is ‘The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,’ which came out in the mid-70s. One of my favorite things about it is the music, which is a big, muscular jazz funk thing.

Well, apparently Steve Horowitz liked it, too. And being a composer working in film scoring, he did a re-imagining of the themes. Then he got ahold of a video artist to shoot some subway footage, and did a performance.

I really wish he were releasing a recording of this performance, but I’ll make do for now.

If you go to the top level of his web site, there’s a shuffle play of material you could do much worse than.

It was nice today, so I took a little trip up into the mountains.

I’ve been wanting to head out Forest Service Road 62 (6200 on some maps), since it connects with a logging road that goes almost to the top of Mt. Persis. So I did.

I didn’t make it to the top of Mt. Persis, only about half way. The road was getting kind of hairy. Mostly just steep. I didn’t take any pictures, because I was too busy obsessing over the coolant temperature and oil pressure.

I did, however, get a bunch of pictures of clearcuts at lower elevations.

This is a clearcut. Note that the whole area has been cut clear. Hence the name.

Some little trees are tagged to prevent them from being completely decimated in the process. Usually very small ones. These will grow up to be the next farm forest.

Once upon a time, loggers had to leave stumps like this behind. The forest was so dense, and the trees so large, that they had to make notches in the trees and put planks into the notches, just to have a place to stand. Modern loggers don’t do any of this. But they leave behind some of the history of the forest, even if they don’t leave behind the forest itself.

The valley you see below is the Skykomish River valley, which runs east to west (right to left in the picture). The peak on the right is Mt. Baring, and the peaks on the left are Jumpoff Ridge. All these pictures were taken in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

Liverpool is putting robotic Peregrine falcons in places where pigeons congregate. Which is kind of silly because they could just use the call.

But anyway. They’re putting the roboraptors on poles and buildings because the pigeons are unhealthy from eating too much junk food. They don’t want the pigeons to go away, so much as they want the pigeons to lose weight and not look ‘scruffy.’

Just when I thought I understood the English…

I was also thinking that perhaps they might do well to, oh, I dunno… put extra conservation effort into Peregrine reintroduction? Like, endangered species and stuff..? But that’s just me.

When I look at Tesla Motors‘ electric sports car, I can’t help but think: How do I transplant the engine into a Vanagon?

The Tesla’s watermelon-sized engine is a 70-pound job that can outperform a Ferrari. It’s got two gears. It’s a rear-drive, rear-engine setup. For four-wheel drive, perhaps just add another engine, right? It’s all computer controlled anyway.

If there were a reliable retrofit kit, I’d drop my savings and drive a plug-in Vanagon.

OK, so Viacom took it down. But here’s the iFilm version.

And while we’re on the subject…