• Elena Filatova has been traveling by motorbike to Chernobyl for years "...because one can take long rides there on empty roads." She also takes wonderful photos. She reports that "The people there all left and nature is blooming. There are beautiful woods and lakes. In places where roads have not been travelled by trucks or army vehicles, they are in the same condition they were 20 years ago... Time does not ruin roads, so they may stay this way until they can be opened again... a few centuries from now".
I have been following her site since 2003. She continues to travel there and document what she finds. She is also selling copies of "Pluto's Realm" - a photo book of her journeys for $35 USD per copy. I'd love to join her on her rides, but first I'll have to get my own Geiger counter.
• Implementing Olmstead. The Americans with Disabilities Act is now 20 years old. The Supreme Court decision stating that people with disabilities should not be warehoused in institutions is now 11 years old. Discrimination is still rife. The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law continues to call for an end to segregated housing for people with psychiatric disabilities.
• Ever wondered about the differences between annual and perennial plants? Peripatetic blogger Al Fin shares with us his finds about developing perennial versions of major grain crops.• While on the subject of gardening, I'm impressed by the site developed by FAST, Faith and Sustainable Technologies. A group interested in spreading the Gospel while teaching people how to be self-sufficient. Here's links to a range of documents they have compiled on subjects from aquaculture to tanning hides as well as their remarkable Bio-intensive Approach to Small-scale Household Food Production Handbook.
• For my money Pam's House Blend has been providing the most insightful coverage of the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Elena Kagen. So far, the ideological opposition has lambasted her for her questionable support of Darkies having equal rights and by inviting Queer-baiting fag bashers to testify.
Not only is the president of the Family Research Council Tony Perkins [you know the former friend of rent-boy habitue Dr. George Rekers] to testify, but so is David Kopel,
who once wrote an op-ed opposing gay rights claiming straight people's children would be forced to be taught by a man in a dress.Ah yes! there's nothing like the stale air of bigoted predictability with the Opposition.
<- Opposition Party Loyalists gathering their support.
• Speaking of opposition, and philosophically troglodyte hermits the 2010 Texas Republican Party Platform does it's best to push back the sordid curtain of social justice that was the 20th Century. It is kind of weird reading a document that opens with the statement that "Throughout the world people dare to dream of freedom and opportunity.", then goes forth to trash the principles that would ensure those freedoms. Ron's Log has done an admirable critique of the foolishness inherent in this diatribe/treatise.
The entire document has been published free courtesy of the Texas Tribune.
IMAGE CREDITS TO: 1- Elana Filatova's 2010 Chernobyl photo album; 2- Faith + Sustainable Technology's [FAST] Bio-intensive Approach to Small-scale Household Food Production Handbook; 3- Historic Alleys and The Savages of Calicut.
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