Arizona

Maricopa County Animal Care and Control and the Arizona Humane Society regularly euthanize animals, not just because they are terminally ill, critically injured beyond the possibility of saving, or displaying uncorrectable aggressive behavior, but to make space for more owner turn-ins. (Another group which regularly engages in euthanasia of healthy animals is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a group which is very good at getting free publicity, raising funds, and polarizing opinions, but not particularly good at directly improving the welfare of actual animals. On occasion they indirectly improve the welfare of animals when they successfully stop cases of severe abuse.) Tuesday’s San Francisco Chronicle reports on the content of Nathan Winograd’s Redemption: The Myth of Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America, a book which claims that there isn’t a dog and cat overpopulation problem or lack of demand for them as pets, but that most animal control and animal shelter operations are simply not taking the most effective steps to care for their animals. Winograd’s book and his organization, the No Kill Advocacy Center, argues that by using effective volunteer animal fostering programs and behavior rehabilitation programs, and partnering with local animal rescue groups, there should be no need to euthanize any healthy, adoptable animals. He’s not just talking about it, he’s successfully done it as director of operations for the San Francisco SPCA and for a rural animal shelter in upstate New York. The No Kill Advocacy Center promotes the “No Kill Equation," a set of ten programs that it identifies as mandatory for any animal control or shelter operation to reduce euthanasia to a minimum: ...

In an interview with Beliefnet, Arizona Sen. John McCain said that the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation: A recent poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. What do you think? I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn’t say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.Apparently he, like Rep. Ron Paul, missed the fact that the only reference to God in the U.S. Constitution is the reference to the “year of our Lord” in the date. The Constitutional Convention voted not to open with prayers, Article VI says that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,” and the First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The Constitution establishes a democratic republic with a strong separation of church and state by comparison to other nations. The Bible, by contrast, speaks of theocratic political systems with rule by priests and kings. In 1797, the Senate unanimously ratified and President John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 of which began with the words “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” (This treaty was quickly violated by Tripoli, and the renegotiated treaty of 1805 did not contain this article, but the important point is that this language was approved by the entire Senate and the President in 1797.) ...

Higley, Arizona School District director of visual and performing arts Tara Kissane stopped a performance of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)” for 6th to 12th graders in mid-performance because she thought the content was “inappropriate and not a kind of performance that we want them to see." The performance, by Windwood Theatricals of New York, was attended by students who chose to pay $5 for a voluntary field trip to see it at the Higley Center for the Performing Arts. Kissane interrupted it 40 minutes in, but declined to identify what specifically she found to be “inappropriate.” She said that “I thought it was great for college-aged students … I just thought it was over some of our kids’ heads and it wasn’t appropriate for our kids. If I’m going to err on the side of anything, I’m erring on the side of caution." Erring on the side of stupidity, she should have said. So what if it was “over some of our kids’ heads”? What about those who were getting something out of it? Why deprive those children on behalf of the lowest common denominator? ...

Finally, we see a break in the past year’s almost relentless upward trend in Maricopa County’s Notices of Trustees Sales… September’s total was 2836 - well off from last month’s high. Something tells me, though, that this is not the start of a new trend downward, just yet. Oh, I should note that I’ve changed the graph this month so that the vertical axis starts at zero instead of 400.

Municipal wireless has been a failure. The City of Tempe projected 32,000 users, but only had 600 at its last published count, which was back in April 2006. It’s also failing in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago, and Taipei. (Also see Technology Liberation Front, which makes the same point.) UPDATE (November 8, 2007): Sprint and Clearwire have scrapped a plan to jointly build out their WiMax networks, and it looks like Sprint may scale back its own WiMax plans, as well. ...

Last October, I reported that Moody’s was predicting that the Phoenix housing market would see price declines of 9.3% between the first quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of 2008, which I called “wildly optimistic." Now Moody’s has issued a new report which claims the Phoenix housing market will see price declines of 17.8% between the second quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of 2008–they’ve doubled the percentage of drop for a time period that’s three months shorter. I’m guessing this will be closer to accurate–but still shy of the mark, unfortunately. The report also predicts a drop of 11.7% for Tucson, lower than October’s prediction of a 13.4% drop.

Last night, Einzige sent me an email (which I opened this morning) pointing me to a video of a song by Bob Log III called “Boob Scotch” (NSFW). Bob Log III is a guy who performs wearing a motorcycle helmet, singing through a telephone microphone, and simultaneously drums and plays guitar. The sound was very familiar, reminiscent of a band I saw perform at the University of Arizona Social Sciences Auditorium back in 1994 called Doo Rag. As it turns out, Bob Log III was half of Doo Rag, the guy I remember singing through a vacuum cleaner hose. The other bands who performed at UA that day (April 30, I’m a bit obsessive about collecting information) were Formica Bob, A Band Called Moss, Teeth, Click, Cortex Bomb, Irving, The Lonely Trojans, and the Fells. I was there with my friend Pam, who knew people in Irving and The Lonely Trojans, the latter of which included a student, Chris Morrison, from one of my philosophy classes, who’s now using the name “C.S. Morrison” for his music, probably due to the large number of other musical Chris Morrisons. Pam’s two friends in Irving were Greg Petix and Gerard Schumacher who were also in the Lonely Trojans. The two went on to form another band called the Weird Lovemakers, and Gerard still has a band called The Knockout Pills. Wikipedia seems to have way too much information about Tucson bands… I just learned that Schumacher was also in The Fells and intends to return to Australia this year, and that Petix formed a band called The Cuntifiers (no albums released yet). ...

The Arizona Republic has an online database of 2007 foreclosures and notices of trustee’s sales, searchable by community (mostly cities), region, or zip code. I’m sorry to see that my neighborhood (mostly built up in the last 3-4 years) has pretty high rates of 25.9 foreclosures per 10,000 households and 115.94 notices per 10,000 households. At least I’m not in Surprise’s 85388 zip code, which has seen 310.9 foreclosures per 10,000 households and 997.8 notices per 10,000 households. Ouch! That’s over 3% of the zip code foreclosed upon already, and another 10% in danger, and we haven’t even seen the peak of ARM resets yet.

<img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/07AugNTR.jpg" border=“0” alt=“Click for full size"id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5107270921523980290” /> August’s total was 3249, beating last month’s record high by an additional 746! Historical Comments houseofpain (2007-09-07): It defies gravity, holy moley!!!

Ted Haggard and his wife are moving to Phoenix, where they will be living and providing counseling at the Phoenix Dream Center, a faith-based halfway house. They will also both be full-time students in psychology and counseling. Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out that they are asking for donations to be sent to them through a Colorado Springs 501(c)(3) called Families With A Mission that no longer exists and was run by a convicted sex offender who has failed to register as such in Colorado. P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula points out that Haggard is far from destitute–his $138,000 annual pastor’s salary is still being paid through the end of 2007, and he owns a home in Colorado Springs worth $715,000. UPDATE (September 7, 2007): Now, apparently Haggard will not be moving into or working for the Phoenix Dream Center, which is associated with Tommy Barnett’s Phoenix First Assembly of God (they don’t go by their initials) church. ...