• Allyson Bennett
• Ringtail

"Ringtail," by Allyson Bennett, is among the works on display in Mysterious Strangers, continuing through the end of February at Epic Café , 745 N. Fourth Ave. The café is open from 6 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week.

Flandrau: The UA Science Center is holding its next “Science Café” at Cushing Street Bar & Restaurant in downtown Tucson on Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 6:00 p.m. A science café is a casual forum for people to meet and discuss a particular science topic with a UA scientist in the relaxed atmosphere of a local restaurant.

Michael A. Shupe, a University of Arizona professor of physics, will give a short talk entitled, “Simply Smashing: The Large Hadron Collider Ramps Up.” Shupe, a member of the UA’s Large Hadron Collider team, is part of the LHC’s worldwide scientific effort to answer fundamental questions of the universe.

The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest scientific experiment, will zip beams of sub-atomic particles around a 17-mile underground tunnel beneath the border of France and Switzerland. The machine, shut down for the winter, is scheduled to resume operations in March.

But at the same time, voters aren't ready to give up all the government programs—from classes for gifted students to state parks—that are now on the chopping block.

We want everything, and we don't want to pay for any of it. And we don't understand the tax system, so we can't come up with a better system that reflects a 21st century economy.

Here's an interesting take from Jacob Weisberg over at Slate:

The usual way to describe such inconsistent demands from voters is to say that the public is an angry, populist, tea-partying mood. But a lot more people are watching American Idol than are watching Glenn Beck, and our collective illogic is mostly negligent rather than militant. The more compelling explanation is that the American public lives in Candyland, where government can tackle the big problems and get out of the way at the same time. In this respect, the whole country is becoming more and more like California, where ignorance is bliss and the state's bonds have dropped to an A- rating (the same level as Libya's), thanks to a referendum system that allows the people to be even more irresponsible than their elected representatives. Middle-class Americans really don't want to hear about sacrifices or trade-offs—except as flattering descriptions about how ready we, as a people, are, or used to be, to accept them. We like the idea of hard choices in theory. When was the last time we made one in reality?

The politicians thriving at the moment are the ones who embody this live-for-the-today mentality, those best able to call for the impossible with a straight face. Take Scott Brown, the newly elected Senator from Massachusetts. Brown wants government to take in less revenue: He has signed a no-new-taxes pledge and called for an across-the-board tax cut on families and businesses. But Brown doesn't want government to spend any less money: He opposes reductions in Medicare payments and all other spending cuts of any significance. He says we can lower deficits above 10 percent of GDP—the largest deficits since World War II, deficits so large that they threaten our future as the world's leading military and economic power—simply by cutting government waste. No sensible person who has spent five minutes looking at the budget thinks that's remotely possible. The charitable interpretation is that Brown embodies naive optimism, an approach to politics that Ronald Reagan left as one of his more dubious legacies to Republican Party. A better explanation is that Brown is consciously pandering to the public's ignorance and illusions the same way the rest of his Republican colleagues are.

• Laura Moriarty
• How Mountains Are Made

"How Mountains Are Made," by Laura Moriarty, is one of the works in Geologic Time, continuing through Feb. 27 at the Conrad Wilde Gallery, 439 N. Sixth Ave., Suite 171. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Video Interview:

Sergio Mendoza of "Mendoza Y La Orkesta" talks about the future of his band, his sound and his love for music.

The University of Arizona School of Journalism produces four student-run publications ranging from community newspapers to online magazines to 15 and 30-minutes TV-news magazine shows for KUAT and the Web.

Among them: BorderBeat.net, an online student-run magazine that focuses on border-community news and issues, ranging from stories from the migrant trail to profiles of local artists and musicians, such as mambo sensation Sergio Mendoza.

Border Beat reporter Nicky Hamila tell us:

Although Mendoza was raised by his family in Nogales in both Sonora and Arizona, he has walked the line between the roots of his culture and the environment of rock music in the United States. With that, he managed to infuse both influences of rock and indie mambo to create his sound. For the last two months, Mendoza Y La Orkesta has been touring all around Europe, from Italy to France, and are now back in Tucson gearing up for a new year of performances in the spring at the Rialto Theatre.

This semester's staff includes former Tucson Weekly intern Amanda Portillo who serves as one of the leadership crew of the student publication. The publication is advised by Jay Rochlin, a UA assistant professor of practice a the School of Journalism.

Visit the site now to get a good range of feature stories about the people and the culture of a being a border-town.

His name was Chief Petty Officer Timothy McVeigh (he later became a Senior Chief) and he was a member of the crew of the USS Asheville, the Los Angeles class fast-attack submarine I first reported to in 1993. He was one of the more experienced members of our crew. He was especially respected for his knowledge of shipboard operations and ability to function in stressful situations, of which there were many.

Years after I transferred off the Asheville, I picked up a copy of USA Today and saw McVeigh on the cover. He had been outed at a base in Hawaii for being gay and was being kicked out. Read about it here and read about how he won the case here. I’m glad it worked out for him, but the whole thing still pisses me off.

McVeigh was an asset when it came to operating a submarine. He was smart, hard working, dedicated and reasonable in crazy-ass situations. Life on a submarine can be trying. There is very little sleep, and you live in a metal tube that dives thousands of feet beneath the ocean. Nuclear energy, flooding and the threat of fire are omnipresent. You sleep inches from your crew members and there is no natural light. It’s surreal and dangerous, and McVeigh had been doing it for a dozen or more years when I first met him.

But my point is this: Submarines only allow men onboard, and they spend months on end together underwater. Nobody had any problem with McVeigh while we did all this, and not only did we work together; we were proud to work with him. We looked to him for guidance, and the Navy lost that guidance when they kicked him out because he happened to love men instead of women.

I hear all of this shit about how gay people in the ranks will mess everything up. It’s bullshit. War and the military are not games. It’s about every person doing their job well and about staying alive. This “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” debate is about machismo and homophobia — basically, soldiers and sailors and airmen don’t want to sleep next to or work with men or women with a different sexual preference than theirs. Replace the word “gay” with “black” or “Native American,” and the debate becomes offensive.

Not only that, but the powers that be say it’s about time, so maybe we’ll finally get over this ridiculous bullshit, like so many other countries have.

Watch it after the jump.

Arizona's legislative chiefs frustrated a majority of Tucson-area legislators by writing the U.S. Forest Service a letter friendly to the proposed Rosemont Mine without consulting them - yet saying they were writing "on behalf of the Arizona Senate and the House of Representatives."

Tuesday's letter from Senate President Bob Burns and House Speaker Kirk Adams praised Rosemont as a "tremendous economic opportunity for the State of Arizona," cited Arizona's rich mining history, and encouraged the Forest Service to "allow Arizona to continue to move forward responsibly to utilize our rich and vital copper resources."

But late Thursday, Burns backed off, under criticism led by Jonathan Paton, a Tucson-area state senator and mine opponent of his party who is running for Congress against another mine opponent.

We caught the stylish vampire thriller Let The Right One In when it played at the Loft back in 2008 and thought it was great. It's back this weekend for some late-night shows, so if you haven't seen it yet, here's your chance. Show times are 10 p.m. tonight and tomorrow.

BTW: Tonight is also First Friday Shorts with Max Cannon.

• NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

A new batch of Mars photos from the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab's HiRISE camera are up this week.

The above shot features Martian dunes on the northern plains.

Here's a note from Ken Herkenhoff, a HiRISE science team member at the USGS in Flagstaff:

This image shows dunes on the northern plains of Mars, and appears similar to images taken when the surface was covered by frost.

However, CRISM spectra taken at the same time do not show

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]]> Science Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:53:53 -0700 Tucson Weekly Jeff Rogers, chairman of the Pima County Democratic Party, tells us he's preparing to roll out several proposed changes to the City of Tucson charter at the Monday meeting of Democrats of Greater Tucson.

Rogers, who calls the program "Strong Voter," will advocate for a public election to create a "strong mayor" form of government, which would mean the mayor would essentially take over the job of the Tucson city manager.

"I think it addresses the need for accountability," Rogers says. "You have a strong mayor, you pay him a real wage—maybe not as much as a city manager, but there's probably somebody who would be willing to do it for $90,000 or something."

Rogers would also like to see ward-only elections; the city now is now in court fighting a new state law that mandates both ward-only and non-partisan elections. (Rogers wants the city to keep partisan elections.)

Finally, Rogers would like to scrap the current staggered elections every two years and elect the entire council for four-year terms in the same year.

Rogers says he hopes the City Council agrees to put the charter changes on the November ballot this year, but he says an initiative campaign is not out of the question.

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]]> Politics Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:09:27 -0700 Tucson Weekly Sandy Bahr of the Sierra Club has sent out her weekly bulletin from the Arizona Legislature. Our favorite part:

HB2538 federal mandates; proof of constitutionality (Gowan, Burges, Lesko, et al) states that the legislature cannot enact any statute that appropriates state monies pursuant to a federal mandate or that complies with a federal mandate unless the federal mandate contains a report or document prescribing reasonable and logical arguments based on United States constitutional law that the federal mandate is a function of the federal government and will pass a constitutional challenge if contested in a court of law. Who among them would even recognize reasonable and logical arguments? Those words appear to be extremely out of place in this bill. It is hard to know if it is even worth wasting breath on an argument on this one.

Here's the whole missive:

Hi everyone! Thanks to all who helped rally for parks at environmental day at the Capitol. We had over 200 people there and hundreds more wrote, called, and emailed their legislators. Bills to address future parks funding issues will be heard in the coming weeks, but in the meantime we need to keep the pressure on to support parks and reinstate dollars for operations. Please continue to contact legislators, write letters-to-the-editor, and tell your friends and neighbors about what is happening to our parks.

This week everyone at the Legislature was feeling really special again as the Governor called

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]]> Politics Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:01:55 -0700 Tucson Weekly A City Council adoption of the Phase II study of water principles and policies endorsed in the Feb. 4 Weekly Guest Commentary may be in serious trouble.

Scuttlebutt heard around the Tucson Water building recently was that the council is leaning toward "accepting" the report, not "adopting" it.

If true, this could mean a couple of things. First, if a majority of the council has already decided on how it will proceed, the public hearing on the Phase II report scheduled for Feb. 9 will be a sham. Second, the Phase III work that is needed to move the process forward wouldn’t be implemented.

Instead, the whole concept of the process would simply be allowed to die a quiet political death.

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]]> News Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:36:00 -0700 Tucson Weekly Are you ready to do your taxes? Arizona Illustrated, seen every night at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 6, will be having its annual week of tax tips next week. Here are the details:

Arizona Public Media is teaming with The Arizona Society of Certified Public Accountants and the National Bank of Arizona to answer viewers' tax questions free of charge for Arizona Illustrated's annual "Tax Tips Week" beginning Monday, Feb. 8 and running until Thursday, Feb. 11.

During this special week a team of volunteer Arizona CPAs are answering tax questions at the National Bank of Arizona from Arizona Illustrated viewers. The hotline number is 520-584-6220 and is available from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday. Viewers are also invited to post their questions for the CPAs on the Arizona Public Media Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/azpublicmedia

Arizona Illustrated Tax Tips Week also features

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]]> Media Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:13:24 -0700 Tucson Weekly

"Flirt," by Catherine Eyde, is among the works in Sweet Love, which continues through Wednesday, March 10, at Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St. Come to the artist's reception, featuring a performance by local cowpunk Al Perry, from 6 to 8 p.m. tonight.

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]]> Arts and Culture Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:36:53 -0700 Tucson Weekly State lawmakers have finally agreed to ask voters to hike the sales tax by one cent per dollar.

In general, we support the idea because the fiscal situation is so very dire. But it's hard to get too enthusiastic about the plan when Republicans in the House have already passed a whole new set of tax cuts that will continue to cripple state revenues once the sales tax money starts coming in. It's an utterly irresponsible act because the tax cuts won't even take affect for a few years, which means the people voting on them could be long gone before they need to deal with the consequences. Why not wait a few years to see if we can actually afford those tax cuts? Because then lawmakers couldn't claim that they cut taxes when they campaign. And these days, campaigning takes precedence over governing.

So now it's up to Democrats and what few responsible Republicans are left to stop the tax cuts in the Senate, because if they don't, Gov. Jan Brewer will surely have to sign the package to survive the GOP primary.

The system is very, very broken.

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]]> Politics Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:13:54 -0700 Tucson Weekly Dan Shearer of the Green Valley News, with help from a hardworking UA journalism student on assignment at the state Capitol, continues to follow the news that Republican leaders at the Legislature are pimping on behalf of the Rosemont Mine, much to the dismay of state Sen. Jonathan Paton, who is well aware that the mine is unpopular among his Green Valley constituents.

Shearer's latest update:

Arizona Senate and House leaders praised the proposed Rosemont Copper mine as “a tremendous economic opportunity” in a letter to a federal official this week, saying they were writing “on behalf of the Arizona State Senate and House of Representatives.”

But after a day filled with criticism from Southern Arizona lawmakers, they backpedaled, saying the issue was "not as simple as we first thought."

Making it even more politically touchy: Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who has been working to thwart the mine, also weighed in on the letter from state lawmakers:

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, whose Congressional District 8 includes the proposed mine site, criticized the letter in a statement Thursday, saying, “The legislators’ new-found interest in this open-pit mine neglects to address the serious and intractable economic, quality-of-life and environmental problems that would result if it were to go into operation.”

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]]> Politics Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:32:53 -0700 Tucson Weekly Hey, barkeep! Did you hear that Tucson was declared the ninth-drunkest city in America by Men's Health?

USA Today has the news.

We're still trying to figure out how Boston got ranked the "least drunk."

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]]> Booze Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:19:14 -0700 Tucson Weekly The Wall Street Journal takes note of J.D. Hayworth's challenge to Sen. John McCain:

It is the kind of intramural dodgeball playing out around the country as establishment-backed Republicans find themselves pelted by anti-big government, anti-spending, anti-tax populists. Among the battlegrounds are Senate primaries in Florida, where conservative darling Marco Rubio, a former state lawmaker, is taking on Gov. Charlie Crist, and in California, where Chuck Devore, a conservative state assemblyman, is challenging the establishment choices, ex-congressman Tom Campbell and former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Carly Fiorina.

"Arizona's Republicans deserve a choice and an alternative to Mr. McCain's moderate record on taxes, social issues, the border and bailing out the banks," Mr. Hayworth said in a robo-call his campaign said it would place to tens of thousands of Arizona Republicans.

Arizona political analysts say Mr. Hayworth may be able to capture the energy of the small-government conservatives, as well as anti-immigration voters. They are also the people most likely to show up at a primary held in the heat of the Arizona summer, Mr. Rasmussen said.

"Anybody who doesn't take J.D.'s race against McCain seriously is crazy," said Bruce Merrill, professor emeritus of mass communication at Arizona State University, and a former teacher of Mr. Hayworth. He predicted, though, that Mr. McCain will prevail.

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]]> Politics Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:39:00 -0700 Tucson Weekly

A report from Roll Call:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) was eager to eulogize ex-Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) — until, that is, he realized Kolbe wasn’t dead.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) proposed a measure Wednesday on the floor to name a post office after the 11-term former Congressman. She waxed so eloquent that Hoyer apparently thought the chamber was paying tribute to a fallen comrade. In somber tones, Hoyer wound up for a heartfelt tribute. “I had not heard of the death of my friend and colleague,” he began.

Almost immediately, someone gave him a sign that Kolbe was still alive. “Oh,” Hoyer said. “You’re naming a post office? I withdraw my remarks.”

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]]> Politics Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:19:47 -0700 Tucson Weekly Dan Shearer of the Green Valley News brings us this bulletin regarding the proposed Rosemont Mine:

State Senate President Bob Burns and Speaker of the House Kirk Adams said in a letter to the head of the Coronado National Forest that they support the Environmental Impact Statement process under way on Rosemont mine, and added that the proposed mine presents “a tremendous economic opportunity” for the state.

The letter dated Feb. 2 was sent to forest supervisor Jeanine Derby and copied to 11 people, including U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar and Tom Tidwell, chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

But Burns and Adams evidently didn't check with state Sen. Jonathan Paton, who represents the area and is well aware that his constituents are mostly against the mine:

But state Sen. Jonathan Paton, who represents District 30, where Rosemont is located, said the letter was sent out without his knowledge and that there was no discussion or resolution in the Legislature about the matter.

Paton, who has opposed the mine from the start, said it appears Rosemont is “going further afield looking for support” after finding little backing in Southern Arizona.

“You can’t really say it’s on behalf of the members when I don’t even know about the letter,” he said.

Paton said he is drafting a letter and considering calling for a resolution to measure support for the mine at the Legislature.

“I completely disagree with the mine and it’s very simple,” Paton said. “I don’t believe trading CAP water with ground water is a fair trade, and I don’t trust our good friends in California to always keep the (Colorado River) water flowing.”

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]]> Politics Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:56:37 -0700 Tucson Weekly As reported in Jim Nintzel's Jan. 21 cover story, Slashing the State, "adult education and GED courses would be zeroed out" in Gov. Jan Brewer's budget.

A rally has been scheduled for today from 5 to 6 p.m. at El Rio Learning Center (1390 W. Speedway Blvd.) to save adult education. Organizers would like to see at least 500 in attendance and encourage all to bring banners and signs.

Here's a social media release from Literacy Volunteers of Tucson that says Arizona would be the only state without GED classes.

The budget cuts Governor Jan Brewer is proposing are painful, but one will earn us national recognition. Not only will Arizona have one of the highest high school drop-out rates in the nation, if the proposed cuts are approved, GED classes and testing will no longer be offered in this state. Arizona would become the only state in the country without this service.

“The economic impact of NOT educating the nearly 800,000 Arizonans who do not have a high school diploma is enormous. The elimination of Adult Education will prevent the development and re-training of a prepared workforce that we urgently need to attract and keep existing businesses in Arizona,” says Paula Stuht, Vice President of Business Development of the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

Without a GED it is nearly impossible to go on to further training or

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]]> News Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:17:00 -0700 Tucson Weekly When Jesus said turn the other cheek, perhaps it was so he could kick your ass.

From a recent New York Times story on Christian cage fighters:

The outreach is part of a larger and more longstanding effort on the part of some ministers who fear that their churches have become too feminized, promoting kindness and compassion at the expense of strength and responsibility.

“The man should be the overall leader of the household,” said Ryan Dobson, 39, a pastor and fan of mixed martial arts who is the son of James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, a prominent evangelical group. “We’ve raised a generation of little boys.”

These pastors say the marriage of faith and fighting is intended to promote Christian values, quoting verses like “fight the good fight of faith” from Timothy 6:12. Several put the number of churches taking up mixed martial arts at roughly 700 of an estimated 115,000 white evangelical churches in America. The sport is seen as a legitimate outreach tool by the youth ministry affiliate of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents more than 45,000 churches.

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]]> Weird Stuff Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:56:43 -0700 Tucson Weekly