Our dog Otto continues his celebrity career by being featured on the front of a “save the date” postcard for a fundraiser for Altered Tails, a local charity that provides low-cost spaying and neutering for dogs and cats. The image is a painting done by local artist Susan Barken. ...
Tempe’s Stray Cat Theatre is performing “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant,” December 5-20. The East Valley Tribune has described the show, and more details may be found at the Stray Cat Theatre’s website. UPDATE (December 19, 2008): A few of us went to see the show last night, which I’ve described in a separate post. Historical Comments Schtacky (2008-12-04): Jim,Are you and Kat going to attend? If so, let me know and perhaps we will join you.Joe ...
Yesterday the Arizona Republic had an interactive foreclosure map and document of data (PDF) which includes the monthly foreclosure statistics for the last eighteen months: April 2007: 553 May 2007: 475 June 2007: 579 July 2007: 676 August 2007: 806 September 2007: 1,093 October 2007: 936 November 2007: 1,344 December 2007: 1,617 January 2008: 2,052 February 2008: 2,249 March 2008: 2,365 April 2008: 2,969 May 2008: 3,402 June 2008: 3,717 July 2008: 4,104 August 2008: 4,013 September 2008: 4,378 October 2008: 4,587 Total foreclosures per year: 2004: 4,444 2005: 1,370 2006: 1,070 2007: 9,920 2008: 33,836 through October This is not good news for a state where construction and real estate provide a large share of the employment opportunities. It is good news for those who do not own homes and have been waiting to buy at lower prices–it looks like next year will offer significantly better prices than this year, but there are still a lot of delusional sellers out there asking way too much. (There’s a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house on a half acre in a quiet neighborhood near us that looks very nice, but is probably worth about half of the $429,000 asking price, based on comparable sales and the current downward trend. Zillow says it’s worth $277,000.) See their summary article, which has links to the map and other documents. ...
The latest ApostAZ podcast is now available: Episode 011 Atheism and Feces-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Shyness, Group News,Election Post-Mortem, Email from Shawn of Tough Questions Podcasts, Winter Solstice, Musings on Rhetorical Debate Styles, Ridiculous Marriage Amendment.My comments: Duane Gish was vice president of the Institute for Creation Research. Nice listener email on the FLDS members pretending to be truck stop hookers–I like the listener feedback. Obama opposes same-sex marriage. On proving a negative, please see this and/or this.
October set a new record of 8,503 notices of trustee’s sales in Maricopa County, of which 900 were duplicates of previous notices. The number of pending foreclosures has dropped, as Bank of America cancelled numerous foreclosures after acquiring Countrywide. 3,516 foreclosures were cancelled in October, about double September’s rate. At the end of October, there were 27,874 pending foreclosures in Maricopa County. (Back in the summer of 2005, the total inventory of homes for sale was around 5,000. Today it’s around 50,000 34,000, which obviously has the potential to go much higher.) Trustee’s sales hit 4,587 in October, up from 4,378 in September. (Via azcentral.com.) UPDATE (November 26, 2008): Updated the inventory number to October 21, 2008, which is down from a peak of over 50,000, but which has been climbing back up from a recent low of just under 26,000 at the beginning of August 2008.
Good: Washington joins Oregon in allowing doctor-assisted suicide, South Dakota rejects further abortion limits, Michigan allows medical marijuana and stem cell research, California rejects further abortion limits, Colorado rejects the definition of person as beginning at conception. Bad: California, Arizona, and Florida ban gay marriage with constitutional amendments, Arkansas bans gay couples from adopting children. (Results at CNN.) UPDATE: Ed Brayton notes at Dispatches from the Culture Wars that the California result on gay marriage was evidently due to religious bigotry: In California, exit polls showed that those who attended church regularly voted against marriage equality 83-17%. Those who attended church only occasionally voted for marriage equality 60-40%. Those who do not attend church at all voted for marriage equality 86-14%.The same was true in Arizona, where exit polling found that: Protestants generally supported the measure but that Catholics were fairly evenly divided. Nonreligious voters were solidly against it. … Proposition 102 had slight leads among Whites and among Hispanics. … The youngest voters were split for and against, with support for Proposition 102 increasing among voters in older age groups. Voters age 65 or over were solidly for the amendment.Prop. 102 will ultimately be overturned as the older generation dies off. ...
Arizona will now have a majority of Democratic Representatives in the House, as Rick Renzi is replaced by Ann Kirkpatrick in District 1 in a close race. The other close race is District 5, where Harry Mitchell has defeated David Schweikert. This means the Arizona delegation will be Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl (both Republicans), and Representatives Ann Kirkpatrick (D-District 1), Trent Franks (R-District 2), John Shadegg (R-District 3), Ed Pastor (D-District 4), Harry Mitchell (D-District 5), Jeff Flake (R-District 6), Raul Grijalva (D-District 7), Gabrielle Giffords (D-District 8). Bad news: Andrew Thomas was re-elected as Maricopa County Attorney, and Joe Arpaio was re-elected as Maricopa County Sheriff. And Arizona went for John McCain as president, though he has graciously conceded to Barack Obama. Some bad results on the propositions: Prop. 102 is passing, amending the Arizona constitution to ban same-sex marriage, Prop. 101 on medical choice is failing. But there’s also good news: the payday loan industry-backed Prop. 200 is failing (that would add barriers to entry to new payday loan companies, as well as prevent the current payday loan legislation from sunsetting), and Prop. 100’s ban on additional home transfer taxes is passing. UPDATE (November 5, 2008): Prop. 101 is still too close to call, with “no” votes leading by 2,195 votes (867,924 no, 865,729 yes). There should be a conclusive result tomorrow. UPDATE (November 6, 2008): Still counting on Prop. 101–it’s now a 2,944-vote lead for no, 887,821 to 884,877. UPDATE (November 12, 2008): Prop. 101 has been defeated, 961,567 no votes to 950,440 yes votes. ...
ApostAZ podcast #10 is out: Episode 010 Atheism and Dogma-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Quiverfull, Innocence, Over-population, Which Came First, Religion or Ignorance? (Some of David’s artwork: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidbessent/), Fear and Dogma, Ignosticism, Priming the Gish Gallop.There’s some discussion of what the legal standards should be for government prevention of abuses by separatist religious groups like Warren Jeffs’ FLDS group. It’s a tough problem, especially when various child protective agencies themselves have a poor reputation and cause harm themselves. In the FLDS case in Texas, the state raided the FLDS compound on the basis of a hoaxed complaint, adult women were taken and held as minors, and the Texas CPS repeatedly misrepresented the facts to try to justify its actions (links are to several of numerous blog posts by economist David Friedman, who blogged the FLDS situation in detail). ...
Amy Silverman’s “Love the War, Neglect the Warrior: His fame’s based on his POW status, but Senator John McCain’s made a point of voting against fellow veterans," tells the story of McCain’s voting record on support for war veterans, and how various veterans’ groups and retired military personnel feel about him: Most vet special-interest groups decline to officially take sides (even VoteVets hasn’t made a presidential endorsement). But VoteVets is among many veterans groups to note the discrepancy between John McCain’s talk and his actions. ...
Last night Otto was barking at something while inside the house. This isn’t unusual, but what was unusual was that he didn’t run out into the backyard to bark. I was trying to get to sleep early in order to deal with 4 a.m. irrigation, and he came upstairs and continued to bark. Kat went outside to see if there was an animal outside (such as a cat that spends a lot of time in our front yard), and heard a dog barking nearby that was too close to be one of the neighbor dogs. She got a flashlight and went out to find a dog trapped in the Highline Canal, struggling to get out, but the sides were too steep. The dog’s front paws were bloody from the effort. She managed to get a leash around its neck to try to pull him out, but he resisted. She called the Arizona Humane Society to get someone to come take him (and help get him out if we were unable to manage it)–since he’s an injured dog, this was a case they are permitted to deal with. (If a stray dog is over 6 months old and uninjured, Maricopa County Animal Care & Control is the only entity legally permitted to take them.) I went and got a ladder and put it into the water to see if he could use it to pull himself up, but he just used it to hold himself in place. When the Arizona Humane Society arrived, they had a dog snare which, combined with the leash, we were able to use to pull the dog to safety. He was dried off and willingly jumped into the kennel on the truck. The dog had a collar, but no tags. Kat will be putting his photo up on Pets911 this morning. Thanks to Otto’s barking, this dog avoided the fate of another whose skeleton was pulled out of the canal by our house, in the same location, earlier this year. ...