Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Check out these wild photos of flying mobulas. Michael Albert took them in Cabo Pulmo, which is about an hour or so drive south of where we live, down the inward shore of the Baja. As a point of trivia, some of the fish tacos that you buy here on the streets of La Paz are made of mobula.

Other than that, I recommend this two part (one, two) interview with Bill Clinton.

Above is a before and after photo of some of the construction at Arak, Iran, one of the locations of Iran's nuclear program. This is just one example of the multitude of concealed facilities they've constructed over the last five years for their “peaceful” nuclear program — a nuclear program that costs far more and creates far less energy, than, say, upgrades and repairs to their current infrastructure. Iran has no uranium domestically, so they are not able to achieve energy independence using nuclear, and their current reserves are not enough to supply them with energy in any long-term, but are more than enough to produce a large pile of nuclear warheads.

They've recently upgraded the Shahab III IRBM (two thousand kilometer range) delivery system, Pakistan has delivered full schematics and testing information on their own weapons program, and given their pattern of concealment (and the politics of the region), I think it's very reasonable to assume that they're developing a full nuclear arsenal complete with the ability to deploy it.

Iran has said that it's willing to share this nuclear [weaponry] with other Muslim states, and in a recent speech to the UN essentially called for the death of the Great Satan and insisted that the UN needed Muslim states on the Security Council. In my opinion, as soon as a state declares itself as guided by delusional psychopaths religion, it instantly voids any right to any ruling positions.

If religious extremists simply wanted their own territory or the right to practice their religion, I wouldn't be one bit concerned. What people do and believe in their own private space is 100% fine by me… but the problem with far too many Muslims is that they seek out an Islamic state — that is, forcing their religious code on others by law — and they seek to expand these states ultimately worldwide, and at times, by force (not that Christians are any better — organized religion is singularly the most pure expression of evil that exists). This is doubly complicated by aggressive and imperialist US foreign policy that goads the process into needlessly escalating and turning rational liberal Muslims into extremists.

Now, hopefully all of the above is just needless fear-mongering, and there's no threat at all. But what if it's right? What if Iran is the seed of the nuclear sword of Islam pointed at the heart of the West? Certainly they helped manipulate the “intelligence” that goaded America into squandering a massive pile of money and lives into a needless war in Iraq — a war that destroyed the only major Arab nation that was in many ways pro-West and opposed to the extremes of Islam.

But resources keep getting thrown away. Karl Rove has been put in charge of Katrina efforts (to do political damage control, not to fix the real problems), friend of Bush get rich off disaster, and incompetent agencies are running around like chickens with their heads cut off — giving millions to Pat Robertson and delivering supplies to the wrong cities. In other charming “oh what a wonderful world” news, terror cells are adapted to a multi-generation war, global warming may well have hit a point of no return, weaponized plague mice are roaming the streets, and energy poverty promises an “epochal period of contraction and strife around the world“.

I'm mentioning this because voters need to seriously think about the possibility that real threats lie ahead, and that if we waste our time and money on fraud and violence, we may well see everything the West has achieved disappear during our lifetimes.

But I'm not all downer this morning. I have a solution for you: Buy a bicycle, cook some bread, grow some vegetables, and take a nice bike ride and have a picnic somewhere pretty. If everyone could do that at least once a week, all of the world's problems would be solved.

Real simple breakfast. Slabs of ghetto-steamed sweet pepper with a light coat of garlic on bagels topped with a cascabel-guajillo-lime tahini. Total cooking time was about five minutes.

Now, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but this stuff is outrageously simple to make, but every time I post it I get requests for exact recipes. Seriously, have faith in yourself. This stuff is really easy to cook. Assuming you understand the basics of how to operate your stove and use utensils, you can cook your own meals (and they'll quite likely be much better than the ones I post here). There's nothing to it. You just have to try.

So please, don't send me requests for recipes. It's very flattering that you think this deserves a recipe, but really, it doesn't. It's just a sandwich. I'll do this recipe as precisely as I can to illustrate how ludicrous the concept of posting a recipe is.

Take two poblano peppers (feel free to substitute green peppers) and quarter them into slabs.
Take a frying pan and fill with about two cups of water. Turn on the stove so the water will boil and put the peppers in the pan. Sprinkle with powdered or minced garlic.
Break apart a cascabel pepper and half a guajillo pepper and powder them in a grinder. Alternately you can just use powdered cayenne if you're really lazy, but it won't taste as good.
Put two tablespoons of tahini in a cup. Add the powdered pepper, the juice of two limes, and a teaspoon of oil. Mix it up.
Take two bagels, cut them in half, and toast them. Put them on a plate.
Spread the tahini butter on both halves of the bagels.
By now the green peppers should be lightly steamed. Turn off the stove and put the peppers on the bagels. Close the bagels, let them cool a few minutes, and eat them.

You see? Writing this stuff down is a waste of time. You're a lot better off just experimenting and learning the basics of preparing food… Once you do, whenever you see something you like, you'll be able to take it as inspiration and make your own dish without a recipe. If you want to read anything, read general instructions and see where you're inspired to take it… It's really easy and you should try.