Thanks to Charlotte Jusinski for this picture. Thanks even more to Scott, for sucking. Thanks the most to the owner of this car, who is magnanimous enough to recognize that even though Scott sucks, it’s OK. Keep on trucking, Scott. Everything will be alright.
But dear Scott, some questions:
Why do you suck?
Why is your sucking OK?
Whose car is this?
WTF?
Hello, New Mexico. Julia gave me permission to jump back on the ol’ Reeper for a one-time post about my favorite, favorite TV show: Doctor Who. Why? Because in the latest animated serial, the Timelord solves the mystery of the Roswell crash.
A few years ago, I wrote a brief about the Doctor’s adventures in New Mexico, which pretty much boiled down to a short battle in 1957 with his arch-nemesis, The Master, at a fictional Air Force base. That happened in one of the spin-off books and as far as I know, he’s never had a televised adventure in the Land of Enchantment (which is strange considering NM’s interstellar ambitions and extraterrestrial mania).
Well, in Dreamtime, which ran in five parts last week, the Doctor did not visit New Mexico in the animated flesh. The adventure only starts there with a flying saucer getting shot down by other flying saucers and crashing into the desert outside of Roswell.
This isn’t the first time Roswell has come up in Doctor Who and it seems at odds with what Who-nerds call the “canon.” Previously, it was described as a cosmic “fender-bender” by the Doctor and later shrugged off by his companion, Sarah Jane, as only a minor event in human-alien history.
This go around, Doctor Who gets it wrong, big time, as illustrated by the above screen capture. The Roswell crash did not occur on June 13, 1947 but on July 8 of that year. Secondly, as anyone in New Mexico knows: though I-25 bisects the state, it doesn’t come nearly that close to Roswell. And let’s not even delve into the cave-dwelling, bows-and-arrows portrayal of Native Americans.
Spoiler Alert: The “little grays,” as Roswellians call them are from species that was nearly obliterated by a race of giant cockroaches called the Viperox; they had developed a genetic poison capable of exterminating the entire Viperox race from the universe. Obviously, the anti-genocidalist Doctor won’t let that happen, but he does help rescue the shot-down Grays from Area 51–with the help of a diner waitress and a Native American rockabilly–and uses their technology to chase the Viperox out of the solar system before they can savage the Earth.
Dreamland (which you can watch at Life, Universe and Combom), is one of the last adventures of the 10th Doctor, played by David Tennant, who will meet his doom in the two-parter scheduled for Christmas and New Years. It’s a much lighter, kid-oriented serial, compared to the November special, the Waters of Mars (airing in the US on BBC America on Dec 1q), which saw the Doctor pull an Anakin Skywalker and that’s all I’m gonna say.
As Sandoval County’s experimental desalination plant nears the end of its pilot run, the age-old question of where New Mexico will get enough water to sustain it appears to have some new answers. For some people, anyway. Bruce Thomson, the civil engineering professor who heads UNM’s Water Resources Program, may not be one of them.
El Paso’s desalination plant pumps out 27.5 million gallons of drinking water a day. The difference: higher quality saline groundwater, plus backup freshwater.
Thomson calls the desalination pilot “a very useful project; I congratulate Sandoval County planners for having the foresight to undertake this thing.” He says it’ll help Sandoval and its surrounding counties—Bernalillo, McKinley and Santa Fe—better understand how much brackish water lies in the ancient aquifer beneath them, how much it’ll cost to access that water, and what kinds of treatment methods will be necessary to make it potable.
“It’s one of the cutting-edge projects of this type in the Southwest,” Thomson says. But, he adds, “I don’t think we should allow residential growth that depends on a non-sustainable water supply.”
Miguel Olivas installs weatherstripping to my side door.
Last week I exalted the virtues of getting stuff without asking for it (while direly needing it), in regard to an EnergyWorks flier placed on my door.
This past Saturday, an EnergyWorks crew of three showed up at my door as promised. After handing me a power cord and two boxes of compact fluorescent light bulbs (I had to do some work, I guess), each crew member set out to a different task—insulating my water heater, changing faucet heads to the low-flow variety (I can’t tell the difference, so low-flow is fine by me), installing weatherstripping on my doors (the outside doors now make a satisfying suction sound upon entering the house).
Sadly, I was informed that my large, drafty single-pained windows—er, historic adobe house windows—are not the kind to be caulked. The group’s leader, Javier Gonzales, did, however, offer me an application to have newer and efficient windows installed at a discount.
In with the new out with the old: I installed compact fluorescent light bulbs, while the EnergyWorks crew did everything else.
Like another Housing Trust program, YouthWorks, of which many of the EarthWorks members are part, EnergyWorks fosters a symbiotic relationship. Therein, disadvantaged young adults acquire skills in the ever-more-necessary field of green construction, while homeowners have their homes modified to save on energy costs. There’re also the benefits to the environment that come from curbing the destruction an inefficient home wreaks.
EnergyWorks requires that you sign a release, which gives the group permission to compare your energy costs, before and after the modifications. In that way, EnergyWorks can prove its viability when it seeks more funding. With my windows a no-go, the EnergyWorks crew zipped through its procedures and was in and out in little over a half-hour. The energy-cost results aren’t in yet but, as far as I can tell, the crew did a great job.
According to the crew, last Saturday they had completed updates on 160 houses. According Housing Trust Resource Development Manager Daniel Werwath, EnergyWorks plans to do work on 250 homes and, with the results from the energy releases, will seek funding for more.
Call 470-5892 to set up your own appointment.
Santa Fe’s Youth Media Project, under the direction of Judy Goldberg (as featured in SFR Talk on 7/1/09: Radio Rising) started as a local group of high school students with a passion for expressing themselves through radio broadcasts. Over the summer, two star pupils of the program, Carmen Gallegos and Dolna Smithback, traveled with Goldberg to Mystic, Conn. to gather information and material at the Global Youth Leadership Institute’s three-day leadership summit. In addition to YMP’s regular broadcasts on KSFR (101.1 FM), Gallegos and Smithback used the material they gathered to report extensively on the GYLI’s summit. (At right, see Goldberg, Carmen Gallegos and Dolna Smithback in June 2009, just before they left for Connecticut.)
Sponsor John Braman (who has been involved in film and youth media through YMP, the Santa Fe Public Schools and United World College) submitted Gallegos and Smithback’s work to the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions. As a result, the girls were invited to the council’s annual conference in Melbourne, Australia as youth media representatives. The conference is to be held Dec. 3-9, and Gallegos and Smithback will be there with bells on.
“The gist of the conference is that these are world leaders and youth [gathered together] who are dealing with the larger issues, with the environment, with indigenous communities and rights and survival,” Goldberg tells SFR. “[They will talk about] how we can make these bridges through interfaith communication. Anyone who would be coming to this is really open. It’s a way to open the conversation so people can see what they can do in their own communities.”
In addition to trying pretty darn hard to score an interview with the Dalai Lama, Smithback and Gallegos will each focus on a particular subject throughout the conference. Smithback’s coverage will focus on water issues; Melbourne is dealing with extensive drought, so discussions on the topic should be particularly ripe. Gallegos, who is working on a degree in elementary education at Central New Mexico Community College, will be looking at ways that world issues are communicated and taught in schools. The conference has a large youth component—one entire day of the conference is devoted entirely to youth participants—so it would sem that the CPWR has its priorities straight when it comes to communicating with the future.
Goldberg couldn’t be happier with YMP’s successes. “This year we have grown from being regional,” Goldberg says, “and then we went national, and now we’re international. All in one year!”
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