Brown-backed Solitaire trip report

Jeff Cowell, John Small, and I left Claremont on Friday morning at 05:35 a.m., for a Southeast Arizona birding trip that was planned over a month ago. After we had already planned the trip, one (possibly two!) Brown-backed Solitaire(s) showed up in the Huachucas at Miller Canyon, then at Ramsey Canyon.

We were supposed to bird Madera Canyon Friday afternoon, which we did, but we were robbed of 3 hours of daylight by the fatality truck accident on the 10 near Tucson (the truck driver died, and her load of toxic chemicals shut down the highway). We saw Black-throated Sparrows, Bell's Vireo, Hermit Thrushes, a Bridled Titmouse, and a Wild Turkey. We heard-only Whip-poorwill, Sulphur-bellied Flycatchers, and Whiskered Screech Owls. We also saw a unique desert hare called an Antelope Jackrabbit. It has white sides, like a two-toned car.

Saturday morning we birded Patagonia Roadside Rest, the Paton's backyard, and the Preserve. We only heard the Sinaloa Wren, but saw Black Vultures, Gray Hawks, Cardinals, White-winged Doves, Gambel's Quail, Brown-crested Flycatchers, Thick-billed Kingbird, Canyon Towhees, Curve-billed Thrashers, and a female Varied Bunting.

On the way to the Huachuca Mountains (the site of Miller, Carr, and Ramsey Canyons) Saturday afternoon we had Grasshopper Sparrow, Eastern Meadowlark, Botteri's & Cassin's Sparrows.

We then stopped at Mary Jo Ballator's B&B, in Ash Canyon, where we saw the male Lucifer Hummingbird (the little guy with a purple throat; in the photo, above), along with an Arizona Gray Squirrel, Mexican Jays, a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, and a Gray Hawk.

At Miller Canyon we sat at the hummingbird feeders at Beatty's Orchard, where we saw White-eared, Blue-throated, Magnificent, Anna's, Berylline, Broad-billed, Broad-tailed, and Black-chinned Hummingbirds. John Small and I hiked up the canyon, where we encountered the Black-tailed Rattlesnake in the photo. He held his ground, but never lunged at us. As a matter of fact, he only rattled once. We kept our distance, and that was good enough for him. He must be eating the local Rock Squirrels, which look just like the California Ground Squirrel.

That night, Jeff and I ate at The Mesquite Tree, a local steak house out in the middle of the countryside on Highway 92, at the foot of Carr Canyon Road. I like it because the food is good, and it's where the locals go out for a nice dinner. Usually it has businesmen in sports coats and Stetsons, but tonight there was an old Hungarian lady at one table, and an old German lady at another, both with their husbands, who were probably retired Army from Fort Huachuca, the economic engine of the area. A bunch of you reading this have eaten there, probably with me.

Sunday morning in Sierra Vista (which is full of Great-tailed Grackles, White-winged Doves, and Curve-billed Thrashers) we stopped at the Starbucks inside a Safeway (my usual grande mocha with extra whipped cream), and looked around for Chihuahuan Ravens. We didn't see any until Sunday afternoon, when we went to Wendy's; but we did see an adult Peregrine. Then we drove up the winding, narrow, rocky road to Carr Canyon, arriving at "The Reef", situated around 7,000 feet, where we saw Yellow-eyed Junco, a female Virginia's Warbler, and a calling Buff-breatsed Flycatcher. There were also lots of birds found in the mountains of L.A. County, like White-breasted Nuthatchm Acorn Woodpecker, White-throated swift, Hairy Woodpecker, Scrub Jay, Hutton's Vireo, Bushtits, and Band-tailed Pigeon.

We drove back down to Highway 92, and went over one canyon to Ramsey Canyon, where we finally got John good looks at Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher, and Bridled Titmouse (he kept hearing, but not seeing them). There was also a male Blue-throated Hummingbird in the parking lot. Inside the preserve, Arizona Woodpecker and Hepatic Tanager were more lifebirds for John (Jeff got his life Hepatic Tanager a month ago when I dragged him to Arrastre Creek, in the San Bernardino Mountains of California). We hiked up to the barberries, and within half an hour, the Brown-backed Solitaire showed up. I remember fondly the only other time I heard and saw this non-descript bird's fantastic song. You'd swear that a lunatic is up in the tree, playing a flute. It's the most beautfiful bird song I have ever heard, anywhere on three continents, except maybe Melodius Blackbird (another Mexican bird species). Listen to Chris Benesh's recording of the bird at: http://www.xeno-canto.org/recording.php?XC=37017 , then look at a picture of it at: http://www.kolibriexpeditions.com/birdingperu/blog/index.php/brown-backed-solitaire-myadestes-occidentalis-in-arizona/ .

Back in Sierra Vista we stopped for burgers at Wendy's (John jumped out of the car, and stared at the Chihuahuan Ravens across the street, while we ordered at the drive-through); then we drove straight north on Highway 90 towards the 10. Close to the entrance to Kartchner Caverns ( http://www.explorethecaverns.com/cave.html ) John noiced a pair of Swainson's Hawks. We pulled over, and got killer looks. We got back into the car, and headed to Tucson, where we stopped at Sweetwater Wetlands, and it was 108F. Tropical Kingbird, Common Moorhen, Sora, Cinnamon Teal, and Harris' Hawk (see the photo,above) rounded out the trip list, along with a Hispid Cotton Rat (a native rat that does not live near humans), and a Round-tailed Ground Squirrel. The hawk was John's 27th lifebird on the trip.

Phoenix was a frigid 111 degrees, and the thermometer stayed there for the next 3 hours i.e. 200 miles of desert, as we approached the Colorado River. All of the birds we saw were Eurasian Collared Doves, White-winged Doves, and Rock Pigeons. Jeff and John saw the Black-necked Stilts in the concrete ditch by the Tolleson Starbucks (I always stop there for a mocha and to see what shorebirds are lurking between the 10 Freeway and the mall). Once we crossed into California, we saw multiple Lesser Nighthawks flying over the freeway. In Indio it was only 104 degrees at 9:00 p.m.

LAS VEGAS NUCLEAR MEDICINE CONFERENCE, WITH THE OCCASIONAL NATURE HIKE BEFORE & AFTER

NOTE: TO MAKE IT EASY FOR THE READER, THE NUCLEAR PARTS ARE WRITTEN IN ITALICS, AND THE OUTDOORSY NATURE STUFF IS WRITTEN IN NORMAL FONT.

I needed to attend the Society of Nuclear Medicine's annual "Viva Las Vegas" meeting. For some ungodly reason, they hold it in July, when the temperatures are always over 110 degrees F (43 C). It was 114 degrees (45.5 C) Saturday and Sunday. How can we convince them to hold it in October?

All day Saturday and Sunday, my old friend Juan Mas and I sat in uncomfortable restaurant chairs with 350 other nuclear med techs, in a cavernous dark room. Like a real cave, it was bitter cold. While people out on Las Vegas Blvd were passing out from the heat, we were freezing our rear ends off, shivering from the ultra air-conditioned air. Saturday was spent listening to eight--count 'em, eight--boring lectures about basic nuclear medicine that any working nuclear medicine technologist should know. They saved all of the good presentations for Sunday.

Sunday we had one presentation about the supply chain of where 99m Technetium comes from. If you have ever been a patient in a hospital, or have any relatives or friends who have ever had cancer, you should care about this topic. Technetium is a radioactive element that is used to make a whole shelf full of radioactive drugs that are used for diagnostic scans. You show up at a hospital, they're not sure what's wrong with you, but they have a good idea (your CAT scan or Ultrasound was inconclusive, or you can't have an MRI for some reason), so they send you to nuclear medicine. In the nuclear medicine department, they inject you with a drug that is specific to the disease they are looking for. The drug is called the carrier molecule, and it carries the 99m Technetium to the target organ. Doctors look at the pictures on a computer screen, to see what your target organ (your liver, kidneys, heart, etc) did with the drug. There are nuclear medicine scans that are very sensitive and specific for different types of heart disease, liver disease, gallbladder problems, renal failure, blood clots in the lung (called a pulmonary embolism), breast and prostate cancer. The radioactive component of all of these drugs is 99m Tc, which has been either unavailable, or in limited supply for months, now, because of the heavy water leak in Canada at the Chalk River Research Reactor. They don't make this stuff in the U.S.

THAT'S RIGHT, THEY DON'T MAKE YOUR RADIOACTIVE DRUG'S MOST IMPORTANT COMPONENT IN THE U.S.

Why not? Well...Technetium 99 is a daughter product of Molybdenum 99, which is a daughter product of Uranium 235, the stuff they make atomic bombs out of. We have treaties with the Soviets--I mean the Russians--where we both promise to not make lots of atomic bombs. THIS IS A GOOD THING. Like the bumper sticker says, "One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day". Unfortunately, the side effect of this peace is that we have less Molybdenum (we call it "Moly") available for medical purposes.

The only place that makes Moly/Tc is the Chalk River research reactor, which is 54 years old. The few other research reactors in the world that make Molybdenum/Technetium are in Argentina, Australia, Holland, Belgium, and South Africa. All of these facilities are also somewhere between 45 and 55 years old. Currently, a percentage of the U235 used to produce Moly/Tc is from salvaged Russian atomic bombs that we bought from them. THAT'S RIGHT: YOUR MOM'S BREAST CANCER SCAN WAS DONE WITH LEFTOVER RUSSIAN ATOMIC BOMB PARTS

There are ways to produce Moly/Tc in LEU (Low Enriched Uranium) reactors. This is important, because it means that we could i.e. we need to build a couple of nuclear reactors in the U.S. that would not be useful for weapons production (for that you need a HEU [Highly Enriched Uranium] reactor, which is what the Argentines did in their own country, and also, when they designed and built the Australian OPAL facility). HOW EMBARASSING: THE COUNTRY OF EVITA PERON, THE TANGO, AND EATING DINNER AT MIDNIGHT IS BEATING US IN THE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF SAFE, PEACEFUL, USEFUL REACTORS FOR MEDICAL PURPOSES.

The other interesting presentation on Sunday was about great improvements in nuclear scans of the breasts for cancer, using a new type of gamma camera (this is a scanner that "sees" radiation i.e. where the radiopharmaceutical is in your body) that is built like a mammogram x-ray unit, so it takes images in the same positions as the mammogram x-ray machine, for direct one-to-one comparisons of anatomy (on the x-ray) vs. physiology (where the radioactive drug concentrated in the breast). Awsome detail, allowing us to catch ever smaller tumors.

A few comments about the meeting, itself:

1) The average age of the nuclear medicine technologists at this meeting was somewhere well above 50. Juan and I were the two young, sexy guys in the room, and we're in our 40s. Right now, the job market for nuclear medicine technologists is in one of its cyclical nose-dives (every 10 years, there are too many of us, and it's hard to find a job). Ten years from now, the typical boom-bust cycle is going to rupture, when all of the AARP-eligible people at the Vegas meeting retire, or drop dead. It'll be worse than 2002, when people were calling me up at the hospital where I worked, trying to hire me away.

2) As someone who teaches radiation safety, and other safety classes at a university, I was appalled by the PowerPoint slides. Many of the slides had too much text on them. A single slide would have 150 words on it, in a tiny, unreadable font, and the presenter would have it on the screen for less than 10 seconds. As a trainer, I want to make these doctors and pharmacists sit down with me, so that I can show them how to break up that one slide's worth of material into 3 or 4 slides, in a large, legible font. In a perverse case of inverse proportionality, the more important or interesting the material was, the less time that overstuffed slide was on the screen.

On the way to and from Las Vegas, I made several stops in the desert, to look for birds. After the first 200 miles from L.A. I arrived at Hole in the Wall Campground, in the deserts of San Bernardino County, California.

http://www.mojavenp.org/hole_in_wall.htm

I drove my wife's pickup truck, which was unnecessary: I could have made it there in the Celica. You could get there in a Porsche Targa, even the dirt roads are that smooth.

Hole in the Wall campground is fantastic. If you could care less about birds, dragonflies, or mammals, you would still love its bizarre rock formations. Imagine a gigantic rock wall that looks like Swiss cheese. The photographs on the official Mojave National Preserve website don't do it justice. While it was over 110 F on Highway 40, when I drove up into the mountains to Hole in the Wall, it must have been below 90. Around 90 miles east of Barstow, I got off Hwy 40 on Essex Road, and drove north, arriving at Hole in the Wall Campground, where I saw numerous Desert Cottontail Rabbits, and Black-tailed Jackrabbits. Both species have oversized ears, like African Elephants, so that they can radiate heat. It's like having your own external radiator. There were numerous all-black dragonflies, which I could not get a good look at, or photograph. I was surrounded by Rock, Canyon, and Cactus Wrens. I saw one Scott's Oriole before the campground, two Pinyon Jays, and a Crissal Thrasher 1/10th of a mile north of the campground. Lesser Nighthawks flew overhead, easy to separate from Common Nighthawks, as their white wingpatches were noticeably distal. The White-tailed Antelope Squirrels refused to pose for photographs.

From Hole in the Wall, I drove the short distance higher up into pinyon/juniper territory, to get Juniper Titmouse on my California list. No such luck. I think it was too late in the day. There were several small passerines that kept flying away from me, but I'll never know what they were. The only bird that cooperated here was a Gray Flycatcher.

I fully intend to return to this beautiful area to camp, and get Juniper Titmouse in the state, but at a time of the year when the temperatures are much nicer.


In Las Vegas, constant thunderstorms that provded no relief from the heat prevented me from visiting Mount Charlston, an alpine mountain area an hour from Las Vegas, that has pine trees, Virgina's Warbler, Juniper Titmouse, and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds that visit the feeders. Instead, I spent Saturday evening walking around Wetlands Park, http://www.accessclarkcounty.com/depts/parks/locations/pages/Wetlands.aspx , in southeastern Las Vegas, until well after 8:30 p.m.

I liked this place a lot. Apparently, the local birders have yet to find any good vagrants, but the basic desert bird there were cool. There were a lot of Yellow-breasted Chats, Black-chinned Hummingbirds, Verdin, Black-tailed Gnatcatchers, Gambel's Quail, and Lesser Nighthawks. More Desert Cottontails, and Black-tailed Jackrabbits. The Song Sparrows here are very strange looking: small, and a pale rufous in color. Very different from the blackish ones in California. I never saw a single coyote anywhere in Vegas (or in Mojave National Preserve, for that matter), which might explain the ridiculous numbers of tasty mammals running around. Hm...

Sunday morning I birded Sunset Park, across the street, and southeast of Las Vegas' big Mc Carran Airport, from 06:30 to 07:30 a.m. Apparently, the Vegas locals take their dogs to the park at 6:00 in the morning, before it gets hot enough to kill them (dogs tolerate heat even less than we do). You will not see a dog outside on Las Vegas between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Sunset Park had the same birds as Wetlands Park, and I finally found a pair of Lucy's Warblers. Park in the main parking lot, and walk south, into the mesquite desert dirt lots in the back. The Lucy's Warbler were only in the very dry, pale Russian Thistle, known from cowboy films as "tumbleweed". One bird I expected here was Crissal Thrasher, but since I saw one in the mountains of California, I didn't worry about it.

I had to sift through a lot of all-gray, juvenile Verdins, before I found those Lucy's Warblers.

On the way home Sunday afternoon, I got off the 15, and rove up the Cima Road to try again for Gilded Flciker (I also need this for my California list). The heat was so bad, that I feared passing out, and being found dead (I am serious.). I ran into Dany Sloan (that's "Dany" with one "n"). We agreed that the heat was disgusting, and left. We arranged to drive to the Baker Sewage Ponds, to look for migrating shorebirds. It was 112 degrees, and the sewage ponds were dry. we got in our cars, and headed for home.

Back on the 15, I realized that Zzzyzx was next, and remembered being there last fall with Steve Sosensky et al.

Zzyzx was founded by a con artist who was neither an ordained minister nor a doctor, but he claimed to be both. He built the place up around the natural springs, and transmitted his religious radio program from here for years, until the U.S. Marshals hauled him away. Apparently, he never owned the place, and after he had been there for decades, someone in the government figured that one out.

WOW! There were several hundred Western Kingbirds. They were EVERYWHERE. On the ground, in the trees, and even out on the dry lake bed, standing around like shorebirds. The dry lakebed isn't truly dry, like other desert lake beds: it is moist from the local natural spring, which feeds the pools that attract shorebirds, dragonflies, and anybody else who likes water, like the two Desert Bighorn Sheep that I photographed.

There were also over 30 adult male Bullock's Orioles (far too many for this tiny oasis to support as local breeders), 20 adult male Brown-headed Cowbirds in a flock, a Spotted Sandpiper, a male Wilson's Phalarope, Western & Least Sandpipers in breeding plumage, a Killdeer, Cliff, Barn, and Northern Rough-winged Swallows, a pale juvenile Red-tailed Hawk, and two White-faced Ibis.

Should an Evangelical Christian run NIH?

On Townhall.com Ken Connor opines on the liberal atheists’ objection to having Dr Francis Collins as the head of NIH. His full essay is at: http://townhall.com/columnists/KenConnor/2009/07/19/science_theists_need_not_apply

A few observations:

I The portrayal of Richard Dawkins as an atheist bogeyman who is campaigning against Francis Collins is typical of the cynical manipulation of partial data i.e. the use of half-truths that conservative pundits so heavily rely on: For starters, the main subject of his interview with Bill Maher is not Francis Collins; Collins is one of many topics discussed in the interview. During the portion where they discuss Collins, Dawkins repeatedly refers to Collins as being “a bright guy”. He goes on to state i.e. claim that most scientists who profess religious belief or faith are not literalists. Bill Maher, who is interviewing him, refers to belief in “the talking snake” i.e. the snake in Genesis that convinces Eve to taste the apple. When Dawkins keeps interpreting Collins’ religious faith as not being literalist or fundamentalist, Maher insists that based on his conversation with him (Collins), “Collins does believe in the talking snake” to which Dawkins responds “…in that case, he’s not a very bright guy.” There are two important points here: 1) the portrayal of Dawkins as the atheist on the war path out to get Collins is a deliberate misrepresentation, and 2) would you really want a guy who thinks that a snake talked to a woman in a magical garden (where there is no death) into eating some fruit to be in charge of important medical research???

II This is going to be an ad hominem attack, but I’ll be honest in admitting it ahead of time: the web page that hosts Ken Connor’s essay has a prominent ad in which a cute blonde is wearing a t-shirt that says “I’d rather be waterboarding”. Excuse me? How christian is that? In case you visit the web page, and that ad is not there, don’t worry: I saved a screen shot, and can email it to you.
The web sites’ credibility is further degraded by an ad featuring Glen Beck a.k.a. the male Ann Coulter: blond hair, and that crazy Charlie Manson look in their eyes. I fantasize about a Manson parole hearing in which Glen Beck and Ann Coulter are on the parole board, and the three of them sit there, staring at each other with their bulging, maniacal eyes.

III Just curious: would Ken Connor rush to Collins’ defense if he (Collins) was a devout muslim?

IV This should have been #1, but look at this sentence in Connor’s essay:
“Regardless of the specifics of Dr. Collins's christian identity, the idea that his faith impedes his fitness to serve as the head of the NIH operates on the absurd premise that only atheists and agnostics are capable of being good scientists.”

Talk about obfuscation. The "absurd notion” that Connor proposes is not the thought i.e. fear that Dawkins or others may have. Collins' job at NIH would not be to sit at a microscope in a white lab coat, and Connor knows this. Collins' job would be to administer, manage and make policy. The fear is that Collins’ religious beliefs would cause him to make decisions based not on science, but on his particular religious beliefs that are specific to his religion. What if Collins was an orthodox jew or muslim, and he objected to the use of pig hearts, kidneys, or stem cells? Wouldn’t the rest of us, who enjoy a good pork chop now & then, start screaming bloody murder, because our diabetic nephew could be cured of his diabetes, but that nitwit jew/mulsim won’t let us have islet cells derived from pigs? What about a hindu head of NIH who won’t allow cow stem cells to be used?

V This is the most egregious obfuscation in Connor’s essay: the article has a link that the reader assumes will take him to another article in which we will find out that Obama has hired a madman, Dr John Holdren, in favor of forced abortion. The problems are multifold: 1) the link is to an article that has to be read, in order to find the relevant link to another article that bolster's Connor’s claim. This is no accident. Clearly, Connors intent is to make his readers decide that this is too much work, and just take his word for it. The article i.e. book was written by Holdren in 1977, exactly 70 years after Indiana passed the world’s first eugenics law, and 50 years after Buck vs. Bell, in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of forced sterilization in Virginia. Virginia? Indiana? Aren’t those hotbeds of conservatism?

Does Holdren still believe these things today? Has he recently repudiated or confirmed his 1977 beliefs? I spent (wasted?) a bunch of time googling him, and I came up with links in two categories: 1) recent interviews or articles about his greenhouse gas issues, and 2) right-wing blogs harping on his 1977 writings. Hm, interesting…

I’d like to learn more about Dr Holdren and his radical population control ideas. I don’t agree with the idea of governments violating citizens’ rights in an effort to curb population growth, but Holdren’s presence in the Obama administration does remind us of the real cause of all our problems: too many people consuming too much water, petroleum, wood, coal, and arable land. People all over the political spectrum blindly hope that science will solve all of our problems, but I’m pessimistic: I don’t think that we can ‘science’ i.e. ‘technology’ our way out of everything, despite what my good personal friend Randy Weissbuch, the perennial libertarian congressional candidate thinks.

TWO WOODYS IN ONE WEEKEND

WOODY #1: Woody Allen is missing in body, but not in spirit from his latest. In Whatever Works http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/whateverworks/ the part of the neurotic New York Jewish hypochondriac is played this time by Larry David, who goes to town with the role. Imagine David as the love child of Woody Allen and a Gila Monster. He’s about as venomous, and unattractive. David plays a (former?) New York college professor who can't get rid of a blond Mississppi beauty queen/professional dog walker, and her wacky southern family. If you’re a Woody Allen fan, go see it. If you’ve never seen a Woody Allen movie, go see this one.

After the movie my wife and I sat outside the movie theater on a bench, enjoying the warm summer air—and the fact that her sister was babysitting for us (our first date in—what?—six months? a year?). I noticed something creepy crawling on the white concrete: the biggest Black Widow that I have ever seen in my life. This thing had license plates and a “spiders are people too” bumper sticker, it was that big. Consider this: I noticed it at midnight, from 50 feet away.

WOODY # 2: Woody Harrelson, Ben Kingsley, and a bunch of people I never heard of star in Transssiberian http://www.firstlookmedia.com/films/transsiberian/. The Trans Siberian Railroad is Russia’s train line that runs from the Pacific Ocean to Moscow, on a journey that takes 7 days. Consider this: Russia has 9 time zones, not counting the half hour time zone in Samara. In plain English, it’s 3 times wider from east to west than the U.S., and a lot of that Siberian forest and taiga held concentration camps where millions of political prisoners died. Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer play an American couple who visit post-Soviet Russia, and let the wrong two people share their sleeping compartment.

Side note #1: Apparently, the film's editors couldn't find their CD of Russian or European bird sounds, so they used Peterson's Western Birds CD. The Northern i.e. Common Ravens in the Russian forest sound like American Crows, and the Golden Eagle sounds like a Red-tailed Hawk. Okay.

Side note #2: The part in the movie where Woody explains the difference between the Russian and Chinese railroads is true. They have the same problem, and the same solution, when trains leave European countries like Hungary and Poland, and cross the Russian border. I was told by old guys in the 80s that they (the Russians) kept it that way, so that whenever anybody (like say…the Germans) invades, they can’t use the Russian rail system.

L.A. Times outsources reporting to barefoot children chained to their Macs:

An Open Letter to Ashley Powers of the L.A. Times

July 10th 2009

Dear Ashley,

We had an exchange of emails recently regarding your July 2nd 2009 L.A. Times Column One article about the illegal dumping of Australian "lobsters" that left me rather dissatisfied. I emailed you asking you a few simple questions, and in all honestly, your answers were so vague and insubstantial that they trouble me. Since we were not able to have the honest and open exchange of ideas that I was seeking, I feel compelled to address the problems in a public forum i.e. here on The Radioactive Birdwatcher. At the end of this blog posting I am placing our recent email exchange unedited, except for the email address that I used. Each email has a Roman numeral next to it, so that readers can work their way forward i.e. read I, then II, then III. The reason that I am doing so is that I feel compelled to document to the public the lengths of your evasiveness and prevarication. My reasons for doing so are not personal. I am doing so because I am deeply concerned to see that a major newspaper such as the Times is employing writers/reporters who are (a) either inexperienced, and don’t understand the role of the reporter in society [hence incapable of understanding the true nature of my query into your education and training], (b) do not want to admit their inexperience or lack of knowledge about a subject matter, and have decided to prevaricate, or (c) are biased.

Let’s start with the last accusation, (c): The L.A. Times is a favorite target of conservative organizations that attempt to portray it as flagship of the mythical Liberal Media. Ignoring the fact that the Liberal Media is a myth, let me say that your Column One article of July 2nd, 2009 does the conservative movement proud. It paints a detailed, emotional portrait of the Eddys that causes the reader to develop an emotional relationship with them. As a writer, I can see what you’re doing. After 18 paragraphs, you introduce the “bad guys”. You never give the name of any of the agents involved, or their agencies. This dehumanizes them, leaving them as mysterious figures (Government agents in bulletproof vests, oh my!) in the readers’ minds. You also point out that some of the agents were armed, but don’t mention why. This is an obvious attempt to portray the Nevada authorities as gun-toting bullies. After the raid and legal problems are discussed, multiple quotes from a secondary source are given that contain no facts, merely sarcastic statements by un-named individuals (did you attempt to contact these letter writers?). Quoting (anonymous?) letters to the editor of an unknown newspaper is a stupefying act lazy journalism.

Working our way backwards towards (b) and (a), let me just put into plain English: I asked you repeatedly what your degree is in, and whether or not you are educated in the biological sciences. I politely explained to you why I was interested. Despite the fact that I offered you a hand, and tried to lead you in a good direction, you ran off, and hid. Anybody who takes the time to read our exchange will see this is the case. The reason that I asked about your education was that I gave you the benefit of the doubt, that perhaps you are unaware of how important it is for us humans to stop running around, releasing non-native animals into exotic habitats. If you were trained in the biological sciences, you would/should be aware of these issues, and this would have been reflected in your article. If you are not trained in the biological sciences, it would have been refreshingly honest of you to say, “Hey, I didn’t know that. Tell me more. Who is an expert that you can refer me to, Tom” Instead, you come across as having the idea that you’re the big-shot L.A. Times reporter who knows what she’s doing, and doesn’t need input from some pushy reader. Oh, but if only that were true, Ashley. If only it were true. If your article was much better written, you wouldn’t have loudmouths like me questioning your qualifications.

Let me put it another way. The best doctor in the world isn’t the one who thinks he so smart, that he knows everything about every branch of medicine. The best doctors are the ones who say “Mrs. Goldfarb, I’m a cardiologist, I don’t do kidneys. I’m sending you to Dr. Gupta, the urologist down the hall.”

Moving along:

Newspapers—including the L.A. Times—should be neither liberal nor conservative; they should be neutral. To borrow a phrase from the Faux News Channel, your article should be “fair and balanced”. It isn’t. In a two page article, paying microscopic and vague lip service to a vaguely described worry about an endangered species that nobody in or out of Nevada has ever heard of, deep in the bowels of two pages of sobbing over the case of the Eddys, is about as biased as one can get. What is a Railroad Valley Springfish? Why should I—the reader—care? Why should the reader care about any endangered species? Why were the nameless, faceless Nevada “authorities” wearing guns? Did you interview them? Did they refuse interview requests?

The whole point of this letter is not to attack, or belittle you. It is written to admonish you for thinking that as the person who got lucky enough to get hired at the L.A. Times, you now have superpowers, and don’t need to ask questions. You don’t, and neither does Bob Pool, and the sad part is that neither one of you gets it. Consulting with experts helps you avoid sticking your foot in your mouth. This letter has been sitting on my hard drive for a couple of days, while I have been waiting for you to get back to me, but I think that you have decided that “this conversation is over” (my quotes) so you leave me no recourse than to take this public. If the L.A. Times is to survive as an institution, it needs to return to its previous standards of journalism. If the paper goes belly-up because of bad writing, then you’ll be without a job. I want the Times to be around 10 years from now. I want you to have a job 10 years from now, but you need to get better at this reporting thing.

Tom Miko
The Radioactive Birdwatcher

********************************************************************************

I.

From: Thomas G. Miko [mailto:XXX@XXX.edu]
Sent: Thu 7/2/2009 2:18 PM
To: Powers, Ashley
Subject: desert lobster question



Hi Ashley,



What is your education in i.e. what is your background, outside of journalism?



Tom



Thomas Geza Miko

Radiation Safety
University of
(XXX) XXX-XXXX
*******************************************************************************

II.
From: Thomas G. Miko [mailto:]
Sent: Mon 7/6/2009 9:09 AM
To: Powers, Ashley
Subject: RE: desert lobster question



Hi Ashley,

I am interested in your education and training before you became a writer for the Times. After reading your Column One article about the Eddys in Nevada, I surmised that your degree is not in the biological sciences, so I was curious as to what your degree and training/experience are in. The article was well-written, but there was an important part missing: why the State of Nevada is so insistent about not letting the Eddys carry out their plans. This is important, because the Times' readers will gain the impression that this is just another case of evil government bureaucrats keeping people from achieving their dreams, without their (the readers') understanding the important biological i.e. ecological issues involved. If your degree is in law, political science, or business, then it would be unfair of me to expect you to be conversant in such biological topics. On the other hand, someone above you in the Times organization e.g. the editor should have thought of these questions, and asked you to look into them.

Tom

Thomas Geza Miko
Radiation Safety
University of
(XXX) XXX-XXXX

-----Original Message-----
From: Ashley Powers [mailto:Ashley.Powers@latimes.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 5:32 PM
To: Thomas G. Miko
Subject: RE: desert lobster question

Hi: Um, I'm not sure what you're trying to get at ...

**************************************************************************


***III.

Ashley,
While I am composing an answer to your last email below, allow me to point out that you still haven't said what your background is in.
Tom

Thomas Geza Miko
Radiation Safety
University of
(XXX) XXX-XXXX


-----Original Message-----
From: Ashley Powers [mailto:Ashley.Powers@latimes.com]
Sent: Monday, July 06, 2009 10:25 AM
To: Thomas G. Miko
Subject: RE: desert lobster question

Tom: I think the story was very clear about the state's position: The crayfish had the potential to eat Railroad Valley spring fish eggs and thereby harm a threatened species. Officials went back and forth with the Eddys over their permit, which only allowed them to sell to licensed commercial operators. In the end, wildlife officials got a court order to extinguish what they perceived as an ecological threat. It's all in there.


III.

Ashley,
While I am composing an answer to your last email below, allow me to point out that you still haven't said what your background is in.
Tom

Thomas Geza Miko
Radiation Safety
University of
(XXX) XXX-XXXX


-----Original Message-----
From: Ashley Powers [mailto:Ashley.Powers@latimes.com]
Sent: Monday, July 06, 2009 10:25 AM
To: Thomas G. Miko
Subject: RE: desert lobster question

Tom: I think the story was very clear about the state's position: The crayfish had the potential to eat Railroad Valley spring fish eggs and thereby harm a threatened species. Officials went back and forth with the Eddys over their permit, which only allowed them to sell to licensed commercial operators. In the end, wildlife officials got a court order to extinguish what they perceived as an ecological threat. It's all in there.

An Open Letter to Roger Higson, or Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go Out in the Midday Sun

Hi Roger,
Ostensibly I'm writing to you, but in all actuality I'm writing to your readers (do you have any, besides me?). Having read your rants over the years, I have boiled down your issues with various groups to the following: You are stuck in a rural area where you interact with 3 categories of people: (1) Hispanic farm workers and their families. (2) rural African-Ammericans and (3) blue-collar WASPs a.k.a. rednecks & river rats.
What these three groups have in common is a deadly combination of lack of (a) education and (b) a culture of knowledge-seeking.
Roger, you need to move back to big-city L.A. so that you can hang out at your local Starbucks, in order to meet middle-class, educated Latinos and African-Americans. In other words, your sample is sorely skewed, my old friend. I clearly recall your polemic against the fundamentalist African American women who showed up at your school, and argued with you about your teaching "godless" evolution to their innnocent christian children. What you need to understand is those poor women get fed a bunch of baloney by preachers and politicians who cynically manipulate them. "Vote for me, and I'll get evolution out of your schools." Based on your limited, but highly homogeneous sample you have mistakenly formed the belief that all African Americans and Latinos believe the same things. Same goes for your perception of the drunken WASP hippies who show up each year, to party on the Colorado River. I know those party-goers: I x-ray them when they first get on the 10 Freeway in LA County, and start the road trip by drunkenly crashing their cars. Darwinian Natural Selection at work: the ones who make it alive to Blythe will pass on their genes. My cure for your dislike of drunken white people and all of your other targets is to invite you to hang out with me in Claremont in 'the village', sitting outside the Starbucks on 2nd and Yale. After the third black accountant, you'll beg for forgiveness.

As for the fire department's written test, that's complicated, and I think it's harder for you to understand, because you came to the U.S. as an adult. Unlike vicious Republicans I won't say "If you don't like this country, then why don't you go home where you came from?" (I love that phrase: where else would you "go home to", besides "the place that you came from"???). As a fellow immigrant (but I was a kid) from Europe, I can see deeper into your heart than the average reader. What I will say is that you grew up in Britain, where things are very different, and I think it's harder for you to sympathize with New Haven firemen than it is for others.
The Radioactive Birdwatcher
PS: You were supposed to put a link to my blog.

THE L.A. TIMES HATES YOUR MOTHER (EARTH)

As global warming causes sea levels to rise, the coasts will appear to sink—an optical illusion. On the other hand, the quality of the L.A. Times’ reporting on environmental issues has definitely been sinking to deeper and increasingly embarrassing depths.

Today’s L.A. Times has an article http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-desert-lobster2-2009jul02,0,1646681.story about a married couple in a rural Nevada town who want to sell live “lobster” in their struggling restaurant, and their years-long battle with state regulators. The human interest aspect of the story will cause readers—including yours truly—to sympathize with Bob and Pam Eddy, as they try to increase sales by offering “lobster” on the menu.

The word “lobster” is in quotation marks because the edible critters are actually freshwater Australian Red Claw Crayfish, Cherax quadricarinatus: a hefty red crawdad native to northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. In the online & print scientific journal Biological Invasions’ January 2007 issue, Ahyong and Yeo discuss the invasion of Singapore’s freshwater systems by this lobster from down under. They also list other locations around the world, including Mexico, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico that already have feral populations. The Times article’s author, Ashley Powers, sticks to the human interest angle in the story, occasionally veering off into the world of the Eddy’s legal battles with various Nevada State agencies and politicians.

So far, so good, but Powers fails to ask the obvious question: Why is the State of Nevada so determined to keep the Eddys from achieving their capitalist destiny? Simple: the Eddys don’t just want to serve fresh “lobster” on the spot; they want to bag & tag live Australian Red Claws, so that customers can steam the little beasties when they get home. The problem with that, of course, is that a certain percentage of customers who drive off into the infinite sagebrush desert with an eight-legged Australian singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ on the back seat have children who will nix dinner. The Red Claws will wind up in a goldfish bowl, and dad will find himself squeezing into a booth at Long John Silver’s, where a 19 year old waitress will introduce herself by saying, “My name is Wendy, and tonight I will be your wench.”

Eventually, some of the cranky crustaceans will wind up in the local lake, sewage pond, or wildlife refuge when the kids or some misguided aunt decide to “return them to the wild”. In their article Ahyong & Yeo mention some of the lovely diseases that native fish, mollusks, and crustaceans can catch when non-natives are introduced from other parts of the world. Said parasites might not affect humans who eat their hosts e.g. the Red Claw, but local water-dwelling populations can suddenly and inexplicably crash. Next thing you know, fisherman—the same law & order conservatives who, like the Eddys, mutter about the pending socialist apocalypse—are standing around their favorite fishing spots, grumbling about the disappearance of bass and catfish. After a while, the same Nye County NRA nutjobs who think that Obama is going to show up at their house in a black U.N. helicopter—to confiscate their firearms—start grousing about the diminished numbers of ducks and geese.

Speaking of ducks and geese, the Times completely dropped the ball on February 21st 2009, when it ran the ultimate fluff piece http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/21/local/me-goose21 (must have been a slow news cycle—no movie stars died that week) about a West L.A. electrician named Jesus Hernandez who bought a baby duck that turned out to be a domestic goose—much to his neighbors’ annoyance. Hernandez’ brilliant solution was to drive across town to East L.A., where he released the honker at Hollenbeck Park. Attempts to explain to the ecologically uneducated writers at the Times that they were endorsing the illegal introduction of non-native species were met with resounding silence, followed by obfuscation that showed a complete lack of any training in the biological sciences. Writer Bob Pool and his underling appeared unaware that the State of California’s Department of Fish & Game has people http://www.dfg.ca.gov/invasives/ that deal exclusively with the illegal introduction of non-natives. They’re trying to keep their heads above water, so chasing after a 60 year old guy in L.A. and his goose is a low priority. Needless to say, the clodhoppers at the City of L.A. Parks Department demonstrated their typical lack of spine, not wanting to be quoted by a reporter (I use the term loosely), they limp-wristedly declared that they “do not condone the dumping of pets in parks”.

Your tax dollars at work.