Missoula Notebook

In response to the ban, several of Hebl’s past and present patients have been lobbying hospital officials to reverse their decision. Hebl says that there have been some positive developments.

The Idaho Group Blog

The radio news squawk lately has been about Global Warming, the latest in an endless supply of silly partisan battles.  As I hear one team arguing that a new Senate bill will create jobs and save the planet, I hear the other team telling us that same Senate bill will increase our taxes and crush the economy. Since we all side with the home team, it’s no wonder polls asking us – Global Warming, True or False? – are becoming red and blue in color.  And just like NFL football, I’m tired of the commercials…let’s get to the game!

We’re arguing a pointless debate.

Both sides are wrong because the very premise of the debate is flawed.

It’s not about “if” global warming is real or “who” is to blame.  How can anyone “know” that our planet is warming, let alone “know” humans are the cause of the warming?  To think that we understand how this living system we call earth operates is nothing but over-inflated human ego.  The fact is we don’t know what’s going to happen.  Every time we think we know what’s going on in nature, we get proven wrong.  Let’s stop the debate and get to the real problems.

This is my breakdown for all the proud-to-guzzle-gas-rednecks and all the entitled-Prius-latte-drinking-hippies….we’re going to have too many people on the planet soon and too few resources to keep our current economic system moving.

Missoula Notebook

I’m proud of how relatively little I contribute to “the economy.” Sure, I’m driving an eleven-year-old car, carefully planning my first new-shoe purchase in five years, and squinting at a non-digital, non-HD television, but it’s hard to imagine how I could be much happier.

A lot of the credit goes to just living in Missoula, and I’m not alone in feeling this way. A recent survey found 94 percent of Missoulians “satisfied with the overall quality of life in Missoula.” Even among these sunny folks, I’m an outlier, because 64 percent of them said they were unhappy with traffic congestion here, and the relative ease of getting around this town compared to the Baltimore area is something Amy and I still marvel at, two years into our Missoula residency.

What am I going through? Coughing, fatigue, some nausea, achy joints, headaches and thirst. Not enough to keep me from work. In fact, I’m writing this having just completed laying out the ads for next week’s edition of the Sanpete Messenger.  However, I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t rather be home in bed.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

“You got to caaaaarve that punkin, you gotta caaaaaarve that punkin…” I’m belting out these words to the tune of Southern Culture on the Skids’ “Carve That Possum” when the kids get off the school bus. Their friends, doing their best Kilroy-Was-Here impression, watch me from the bus windows as it pulls away.

“Dad, you’re embarrassing me,” says Speaker, stamping a foot. At 11 years of age, she is highly susceptible to mortification. Rusty remains stoic.

“Sorry, kiddo. I’m just full of…Halloween cheer!” I whip a ten-inch chef’s knife out of my coat. “Do you know what night this is?”

Rusty gives me his best baleful stare. “Goat sacrifice?”

“No, but close. It’s pumpkin carving night! I’ve already picked out some pumpkins for you guys.”

From the Panhandle with Cate Huisman

The fourth annual Lakedance Film Festival moves a little later into the fall this year, enabling it to kick off on Halloween night with four horror films: In addition to the classics “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Night of the Living Dead,” two short films entered in the festival will be included, including “FM,” a locally produced film involving blood-curdling screams interrupting music being played on the radio.

Father-and-son team Fred and Trevor Greenfield started this festival in 2006, with the hope of encouraging a nascent film-making industry in Idaho. In 2008, with the support of local banks, it started a grant program to support filmmakers in north Idaho. From just three north Idaho films in 2006, the festival had grown to include 13 north Idaho films by 2008.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

The U.S. Attorney General’s recent recommendation for federal prosecutors to lighten up on medical marijuana users and distributors has launched a cottage industry of media reviewers for marijuana dispensaries. Denver’s hipster weekly, Westword, has received over 120 applications for the position, a couple of them actually written in tiny script on a Zig Zag paper.

I could smell an opportunity for a journalist of my, uh, diverse background so I flew to Salt Lake City and got an audience with the city editor of the Deseret News, to persuade him that their paper needed a weed writer. The following interview was recorded with an iPod I had hidden in my Utah Jazz hoodie. Or maybe it was all a fever dream.

internet technology

In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, Congress appropriated $7.2 billion for broadband grants, loans, and loan guarantees to be administered by the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The deadline for submissions was August of this year.

Now, the applications from each state are posted, and in a number of Intermountain West states, the Governors have already taken the next step of reviewing and prioritizing the projects, and made their recommendations public.

A new DNA test on remains found in a makeshift grave near Comb Ridge has disproved the possibility they belong to a famous young wanderer who vanished in Southern Utah in the thirties, according to a story by Paul Foy of the Associated Press.

Missoula Notebook

Things have gotten so bad that the White House today declared a nationwide state of emergency and advised that it would be “taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic,” but of course this only raises new worries. With emergency powers, will the administration even need to await Congressional approval before empaneling tribunals to decide who’s too sick to be saved?

After all, while reports of President Obama’s “civilian national security force” roving the streets at night in FEMA vans—clad in clown masks and HAZMAT suits and urging flu sufferers to surrender “so we can take care of you”—are as yet unsubstantiated, perhaps it’s only a matter of time.