Programming Alert

We’re out tearing around the desert starting this morning taking in the wildflowers and beer and lifestyle off-roading moments so you’ll be “treated” to a variety of scheduled posts and re-runs this weekend.

We’ll catch up with you all later Sunday or Monday morning. Ciao!

Photo images of the day

Someone was having themselves just a little bit too much fun out in the desert over the weekend.
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More cool metal sculptures popping up in the vacant fields outside of Borrego Springs. (click on image to enlarge)
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Check out more pix of these sculptures here.

You Just Can't Make up This Sort of Thing

If you want to build it, they will already be there…

Headline: Shrimp to delay school’s opening.

The discovery of endangered fairy shrimp on a vacant lot in Otay Mesa will delay the opening of a school for at least a year, San Ysidro School District officials say

It is expected to take 18 months for the school district to come up with a plan that will protect the endangered fairy shrimp that were discovered in vernal pools on the land the school was to be constructed.

Vernal pools? Fancy enviro-speak for mud puddles. Mud puddles that are also breeding grounds for West Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes. And all evidence suggests these “pools” are not naturally occurring but are merely tire ruts from off-road vehicles. See. Off-roading: good for the environment.

A biologist with a company that surveyed the site said that the fairy shrimps loss can “reverberate up the food chain.” Can you feel it? Its noted that neither the name of the biologist nor the company is given in the article.

Estimates to “save” this critter that at 8-16 millimeters, can’t even be of benefit to a cocktail is estimated to be $27 million.

And this fairy shrimp is so endangered, it popped up out at the proposed site for a military cemetery at Mira Mar.

But we aren’t holding our breath to see any placard-carrying protests like we’ve seen over the past few months over budget cuts that are supposedly going to axe teaching positions. It’s a lot easier to get upset at politicians than fairy shrimp that are just so darn cute.

…and speaking of axes…

You know, there’s a reason why we could never get into politics or city/county/state-level bureaucracy. We’d be in jail for a carnage of disembowlments and severed limbs in our wake.

“Your Honor, I guess we just got carried away when we said we wanted to “slash” our way through all the red tape and bureaucracy. Our bad.”