If I PM You My Address......

we had a group of women here do a naked raindance last year.

Do you want their number?

Re: If I PM You My Address......


i think it was jesus christ who said "screw the hungry, **** the poor." at least, that's how we do christianity in america. why don't you go back to russia, you atheist commie scum?



do you really have to ask?

Re: If I PM You My Address......


too f*ckin' cold... how about Cuba?

I'd need to see photos first....

Re: If I PM You My Address......

actually I have seriously considered leaving early on my day off and driving my truck to a non drought area, filling it with water and bringing it home to stockpile in my garage.

then when I see the single mothers in my apartment complex with their little children with those big cow eyes and parched and cracked lips who want to cry but haven't enough body fluids on hand to manufacture tears, I can offer them a bottle of water in return for sexual favors. (sexual favors from the moms I mean... I may be a opportunistic prick but I'm not a republican)

stop to think about it, with that lack of body fluids thing maybe I'll grab some ky on one of my runs....

Now that's the kind of entrepenuerial spirit that built America into the steaming juggernaut it is today.

i just noticed you're in raleigh.

shouldn't we be concerned that one of the nation's top five financial centers can't find anything to drink or bathe in?

no one in America has had a problem with dirty money before....

As you probably know the Southwest has endured a decades long drought. This year we've gotten a whole lot of rain, and anticipate a snowy Winter. Here's why.

A small town west of Albuquerque had been suffering more than most from the lack of rainfall. The Town Council and Mayor were getting desperate as villagers left to escape the drought. Not far away on the Reservation was a Shaman whose reputation for bringing rain had been growing for the past 60 years. The Town could no longer afford to laugh at such superstitious nonsense and decided to consult the Shaman.

The shaman was invited to make a presentation before the Town Rotary Club, but declined. It took a month for the Town's leaders to go hat in hand onto the reservation to humbly ask the shaman to work his magic on the town's behalf. The shaman, whose oldest son has a MBA from Harvard, drove a hard bargain. It was agreed that the shaman would make all the arrangements and provide the people and rituals required to bring rain to the town. In return, the town had to agree to absolutely follow the shaman's instructions and make annual payments of $100,000 for ten years if the shaman was successful.

The townsmen were instructed to bring every car and truck within the county into town on a particular day. The vehicles were to be lined up along the interstate on each side of the road at 7 foot intervals. Beside each vehicle there must be two pails of clean, clear, pure water. It took some arm twisting, but by early February of this year the town was ready and the vehicles were in place for the rituals of the following day.

The villagers were up early to witness the ceremonies. Before dawn the Indian drums began a steady, arrhythmic beat not unlike distant thunder. As the sun rose in the east, so the dancers appeared out of the west. They came in two long lines in constant motion, swinging short towels and cloths as they danced down the center line of the road. When the lines exactly matched the two lines of vehicles, the drums stopped. The lines of dancers peeled off and positioned themselves beside the cars. The leader of each "team" poured some sort of liquid into one of the buckets as the drums recommenced their beating. The drums were a signal that spured every Indian into instant, frenzied activity. The covered each vehicle in bubbly water, and rubbed it around vigorously. A second group then doused each automobile with the clean, pure water. Each vehicle sat dripping wet for only a moment before being rubbed dry. The whole ceremony was so precisely timed that when the drums stopped beating, every car sat gleaming clean along the roadway.

The Indians reformed into their lines and danced to triumphant drums westerward back to their Reservation. The villagers were surprised by the bizzare rituals they had just witnessed. They had expected Indians in feathers, and had gotten cutoffs and wet T-shirts. Instead of shaking rattlesnakes at the heavens between clinched teeth, they had waving towels. Many felt gypped, but the shaman only shook his head and replied, "these are difficult times, and require only the most up-to-date technology".

The Indians had hardly vanished before a single white cloud appeared, soon to be followed by a dozen more. As the cloud cover increased they became heavier and darker with a decade's worth of lost rainfall. Then, the heavens opened up and rain began to fall and it fell in record amounts for the rest of the day. The drought was broken, because any fool knows that getting a car washed even on a sunny day is a provocation to the rain gods, and for every vehicle in the county to get a car wash at the same time inevitably resulted in drawing the attention of the neglectful rain gods.

You might want to see if any of your local tribes are willing to forget the past and help you guys out by doing a similar rain ceremony.

the tribes around here are mostly into casinos.....

... the unintended consequence for your forcing the Civilized Tribes onto the Tail of Tears. Just can't put the genie back into the bottle, or take back a wish.

me? I wasn't alive.... and my family was still in the UK old buddy

Collective guilt. Its enough that you are male of Anglo-Saxon ancestry. The same mad and chauvinistic rush to Empire was fundamental to American expansionism. The British plantation system was even more brutal than American version. The British Slave Trade was a booming business, and the model for later American Slavers. You made of Australia a continent sized prison that dispossessed the aboriginal population. You lot oppressed the Indian Sub-Continent, introduced opium into China, and stole the diamonds of Africa, we merely followed your sterling example. British factors and investors in American businesses often profited more than their American customers and clients.

You are as guilty of the extermination of Native Americans, the destruction of the buffalo and vast prairies as any American alive today. You forced the mass migration of Irish onto our shores by official policies resulting in famine. You were a leader in the Industrial Revolution, that made dehumanized wage slaves of the masses and despoiled the environment with pollution. Had it not been for the British Empire, it is possible that the current problems in Southwestern Asia wouldn't even exist.

Given the craziness of making modern people "guilty" for the crimes and stupidity (20-20 hindsight) of their ancestors, you can't escape your guilt. Now, what are you going to do about it? Give the land back to those who were dispossessed? Make millionaires of the descendants of slaves? Eliminate every machine and source of power that crushes the human spirit and destroys the environment? Good luck expiating your guilt.

that's just racist. anyway, my family came to the states far more recently, but as i'm disgusted with the history of exploitation and genocide in this country, i would support any *reasonable* means to give back to the native peoples still living in it- as well as reparations for the descendants of slaves.

there are some models that are completely voluntary, and still coordinated federally, those would be a good start- or maybe even all that is needed.

on the other hand, i like your idea (to a point) about restoring the environment and human spirit. we should make serious efforts to that end, but i think it's a cultural issue. until our mindset changes, politics will match our mindset.

Bear
Bear, you may find this interesting re California's seven year drought. It was very severe, worse in some places than others. Landscape died, no swimming pools, watering plants with bath water, no running water while brushing teeth, taking fewer baths and showers, flushing toilets only once each day, no water served in restaurants unless needed, etc. etc. The rice farms in California barely survived. Fruit orchards and forest land were badly damaged. People sighed as fire fighters used prescious water to extinguish home and business fires. It was tough but, eventually the rains came. ---BBB

February 15, 1992
U.S. Cuts Off California Farmers' Water Supply
By ROBERT REINHOLD,
New York Times

Six years of drought in the West culminated today in what farmers in California feared the most: The Federal Government announced that it no longer had enough water to supply farmers.

It was the first time in the 40 years since the Government opened the vast network of dams, reservoirs and aqueducts that made California the richest agricultural state in the nation that farmers have been cut off completely.

The action not only threatened to disrupt national supplies of tomatoes, lettuce, melons and other crops; it also seemed certain to intensify an emotional debate in the West over whether farmers get too much of the area's scarce water and over whether the 1973 Endangered Species Act causes needless hardship to farmers and city dwellers.

The move came as coastal California braced for still more drenching rainstorms that have caused severe flooding and damage in Southern Calfornia this week. But that water mostly ran out to sea while the snowpack in the mountains of Northern California, which provides most of the water to California farms and cities as it melts and runs off, remained well below normal. The main reservoirs stand at only about one-third of normal for this time of year, and there is no other source of water for the affected farmers unless they can pump water from the ground.

The decision was made by the Federal Bureau of Reclamation, an arm of the Interior Department that runs the irrigation system known as the Central Valley Project. The project, which consists of 20 dams and 500 miles of canals and aqueducts that lace through the farms of the San Joaquin Valley, is the single largest supplier of water in California. It supplies 25,000 farmers and provides 25 percent of all agricultural water in the state.

The agency said that barring heavy precipitation in the remaining two months of the rainy season, it expected to be able to deliver only two-million acre-feet of water to all the users along the system, compared with seven million in normal years. (An acre-foot is enough water to supply two typical households for one year.)

By contract and law, the agency said, all of the little available water had to go to urban users and to protect endangered environments. It cited the winter run of the chinook salmon, a threatened species that swims from the Pacific Ocean, through San Francisco Bay and more than 200 miles up the Sacramento River to spawn at the base of Shasta Dam in Northern California. The young die if the water is too warm, so if less water is released through the dam the reservoir water will be deeper and therefore colder. Farmers Are Stunned

The news stunned the Central Valley, where farmers said they were planning layoffs as a result of the cutback. "The cuts are devastating, if they hold," said Jason E. Peltier, manager of the Central Valley Project Association, which represent the major water contractors, adding that bankers would now refuse operating loans to thousands of farmers, which they need to plant and harvest.

Gil Ramos, an almond farmer in Arbuckle, 50 miles north of Sacramento, who is president of the Colusa County Farm Bureau, said that he had already laid off three workers and was teetering on bankruptcy, unable to borrow money to drill for ground water. "All we can do is pray for rain," he said. "Last year we got a lot of rain in March and the Bureau of Reclamation changed their assessment and gave us 25 percent. I can only hope that happens again."

Farmers have survived water cutbacks over the last three years by switching to less water-demanding crops and using more costly ground water where it is available. The effects of the cutbacks on consumers were difficult to predict. But in the past it has meant that the prices of some commodities go up and others down as farmers switch crops and growers in other regions of the country make up for the shortages from California. The major crops affected are tomatoes, lettuce, cantaloupes, sugar beets, almond, rice, grapes, broccoli and cotton.

The California Farm Water Coalition, which represents agricultural users, said that the direct loss to farmers alone could exceed $1 billion. The coalition's executive director, Stephen Hall, said that the cutbacks were "more driven by politics than environmental necessity." 'Recognize the Difficulty'

In Washington, a spokesman for Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr. said that the Secretary had been apprised of the decision, but that it had been made by the Commissioner of Reclamation. "The bureau had no latitude in its decision because of the Endangered Species Act and the extraordinary nature of the six-year drought," said the spokesman, Steven Goldstein. "We recognize how difficult it will be and what a hardship this will be on some. But we cannot make it rain."

The issue was inevitably entangled in the politics of the environment, especially since the Endangered Species Act is up for reauthorization by Congress this year. Environmentalists have long asserted that that farmers, who use 80 percent of the available water in California, waste it because it is so cheap. Subsidized Federal water costs farmers from $2 to $17 an acre-foot, compared with more than $200 paid by urban users.

The drought has made the conflict much worse between the various interests fighting for water. Reduced water flows in California rivers and the Sacramento Delta have drastically cut populations of the salmon, striped bass and the delta smelt. New Water Allocations Sought

Environmentalists were cautiously approving of the action. "They are doing the right thing, finally," said Laura King, a staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, who added that she remained concerned that the cutback would be used in a broader assault on the act being mounted by loggers, home builders and other groups who say protecting obscure animal species is causing economic hardship.

Tom Graff, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund in Oakland, said he hoped the action would spur much-debated changes of water allocations in California. The fund supports two bills in Congress, one sponsored by Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, and the other by Representative George Miller of California, both Democrats, that would require more water be left in northern California for environmental purposes and create a partial free market in water.

On Thursday in Sacramento, the Share the Water Coalition, made up of numerous environmental groups, asserted that the operators of the Central Valley Project had exacerbated the environmental damage of the drought by continuing normal deliveries to farmers during the first three years of the drought.

The Central Valley Project dams water in northern California and saves it in such reservoirs as Lake Shasta, Clair Engle Lake and Folsom Lake. It is then shunted south through the Sacramento and American Rivers, as well other rivers, which carry the water into the Sacramento Delta east of San Francisco, where it is shunted into aqueducts to the farms.

Just how much water will be available remains uncertain. The bureau forecasts snow runoff in the Sacramento River basis will be scarcely a third of the normal 18 million acre-feet. On that basis, it says it would supply urban contractors about half their normal supply. They said they would hope to supply wildlife refuges 50 percent of their normal amount.

The affected agricultural areas are mainly on the west sides of the Sacramento Valley and San Joaquin valleys, where alternative water supplies are very limited. "If farmers run out of options, they have no choice but to close the barn door," said Mike Henry, spokesman for the main farmer organization, the California Farm Bureau Federation.

At the Westlands Water District in Fresno, the Central Valley Project's largest customer, a spokesman, Donald Upton, estimated that unless the agency could buy water elsewhere, farmers would remove half their land from use, causing a loss of 7,100 jobs. Farmers With Own Wells

Many farmers have their own wells, but fear that the natural underground reservoir might be nearly depleted. Last year, when Central Valley Project supplies were cut 75 percent, growers pumped ground water at four times the usual rate. Still, the wells made up only half the shortage.

One-third of the Westlands district farmers have no access to well water, Mr. Upton said. Without purchases of outside water, he said, "Those folks are essentially out of business this year."

Gary G. Robinson, a farmer, predicted that he would secure most of the water he needs, but that it would cost two to five times what he usually pays. Mr. Robinson, who grows almonds and pistachios on 1,050 acres near the town of Huron, said he must buy water at any price. "We have a large, long-term investment in these trees," he said. "No water on almonds for a year would probably kill most of them."

Another farmer, Robert F. Viets, was more pessimistic. "How are you going to buy water when there is none?" he demanded. Mr. Viets, who grows a variety of crops on 600 acres near Coalinga, said he was not sure of making it through the year financially solvent.

"Thousands of people are going to be out of work, hundreds are going to be out of business, and all the businesses in towns around here are going to suffer," he said, "all for a couple of hundred fish."

The Federal Bureau of Reclamation, an arm of the Interior Department, runs the project and announced the new limits on Friday. The project is the biggest supplier of water in the state and provides 25 percent of all agricultural water in the state.

Before the drought, now in its sixth year, the Central Valley Project typically delivered 7 million acre-feet of water to all users in the system. Without heavy precipitation over the next two months, the agency said it expects to deliver 2 million acre-feet this year. (An acre-foot is enough water to supply two typical households for one year.)

Groups representing farmers in the Central Valley said that the new limits could cost farmers $1 billion in losses and disrupt national supplies of tomatoes, melons, lettuce and other crops.

Correction: February 19, 1992, Wednesday

A front-page article on Saturday about cuts in Federal water deliveries to farms in California misstated the extent of the cuts. Only farms that received new irrigation when the Central Valley Project opened in 1951 were cut off completely. This group of about 7,000 farms covers about 1 million acres. A total of 25,000 farms covering 3.2 million acres are served by the project.

The other 18,000 farms are to receive water from the project at levels ranging from 50 to 75 percent of normal. Those farms had water rights before the project was built, or exchanged those water rights for project water. When they joined the project decades ago they won a commitment from the Federal Government that their requests would be given priority during drought years.

Tinygiraffe,

I completely agree that the idea of collective guilt is racist and in just. However, after making that comment, you continue as if collective guilt is a valid point of view. If we aren't responsible for the injustices and inequities of the past, then why should we be penalized for them? Why apply the principle of reparations to the United States, and not Great Britain, France, Germany, and all of the other nations whose past actions were fully as reprehensible as anything done on the North American continent during the past 250 years? If you are going to turn the clock back and try to "make right" all of the "wrongs of the past", then you may be assured that you will be doing grave injustice to those living today. In fact, it is an impossible goal no more capable of doing than building a perfect Utopian society.

BTW, sorry my sarcasm missed the target, but then Idealists are mostly selectively blind to the negative consequences inherent to their grand vision of how human societies ought to be.

I'm a sociopath. F*ck guilt. :wink:

i never said we should. i may have replied too much, but the word "voluntary" was in there because i think it's probably the only way to avoid further injustices.



an excellent point. maybe the whole world should get involved.



not all of them, of course, but a limited effort might make the future a better place for everyone.



another good point, but as i said, there's a way around this.



they said that about manned flight, too. but as i already said, i think a limited effort might help more than just the victims.



perfection will be impossible, yes. utopia is the attempt at perfection, which usually fails or becomes fascist, while people go too far in the effort. a limited effort would be a safer, more beneficial one.



you notice that i implies that poltics won't solve anything until we solve a few cultural problems.

in the meantime, i wouldn't give up hope for the ability to right a few wrongs, now and again. if we don't "solve" things with a heavy hand, we just might find ourselves working together and in a better place.

or do you think it's impossible to improve on our current cultural paradigms? i'm just talking philosophy here asher, and occasionally a bit of charity- no takeover socialist regime. we can help each other without condemning ourselves, can we not?

never, is the best time to apologize.