Dorothea Lange captures Coolidge on cotton harvest day, during the Depression.
Pinal County today is known for many things, mostly appalling. It was mauled by the housing crash of the Great Recession, a "bedroom community" to Phoenix with cheap, shoddy tract houses and miserable commutes, the place whose lack of planning or sense of decency allowed subdivisions to profane one of the most glorious mountains in the West. This lack of any respect extends to consenting to a Super Wal-Mart right next to the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. Pinal boasts one of the ugliest drives in America, on Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson.
And, of course, it was where Paul Babeu was sheriff. Babeu was disgraced, not because of his department's racial profiling, whoppers about beheadings, anti-immigrant hysteria or allegations that Babeu threatened to have his Mexican ex-lover deported. No, this once rising star in the Arizona Republican Party was forced to admit he's gay, torpedoing his hopes of being elected to Congress.
Yet these 5,365 square miles — five times the size of Rhode Island — contain so much Arizona history. Personal history, too: I attended kindergarten in Coolidge. We lived there for a year, for reasons too complicated to deserve a detour, but ultimately coming down to Arizona's fight against California for Colorado River water — what else?
My memories of Coolidge center on its elegant little Spanish revival railroad depot, which had a semaphore signal on a pole to advise whether a train should stop or not. Trains were frequent then on the Southern Pacific northern main line, including many passenger trains.
My uncle taught me to put a penny on the track to see it get mashed by a passing train. (Any hint of the depot was bulldozed long ago.) The day we graduated from kindergarten, we were given cardboard caps and taken to a restaurant in the little single-story downtown. Like other towns in the county, Coolidge was compact, dusty and, on a summer's day, appeared deserted.
Another day, at the Victorian court house in Florence, I met a courtly Ernest McFarland without any sense of who he was. Many years later, I spent months as an EMT-paramedic sometimes stationed in Apache Junction, where we often responded to calls in Pinal County, a long way from any backup.
Pinal's history is Western legend, lawlessness and outsized influence. The ruins of Casa Grande, which became the nation's first protected prehistoric site in 1892, were a reminder of the Hohokam's ancient presence. In 1848, the Peralta party may (or may not) have been massacred near the Superstitions by Apaches. It's an integral part of the Lost Dutchman gold tale. Without the Gadsden Purchase of 1850, most of Pinal County would have remained in Mexico (thank you, Jefferson Davis). The cotton crop brought a migration of African-Americans, and then desperate Okies during the Depression. In 1940, cowboy actor Tom Mix was killed in an auto accident near Florence.
From Prohibition to the early 1960s, Eloy, Casa Grande and Coolidge were considered "the devil's triangle" for their wide-open, corrupt reputation. Sacaton was (and is) the capital of the Pima reservation (now the Gila River Indian Community). Before Interstates 8 and 10, the county was linked by railroads and two-lane highways. It was isolated and far from the exurban mess it would become. Florence was the notorious home of the state penitentiary, before the prison-industrial complex built lockups throughout the state, including the gas chamber.
The reach of Florence as county seat didn't go far in such a large land. This was especially true because the real power rested with the copper mining companies in the eastern end of the county, from Superior to Hayden, and the big ranchers and cotton farmers. Pinal was not populous — in 1960, about 63,000 people lived here, out of a total state population of 1.3 million. But especially before the Supreme Court's "one man-one vote" ruling, Pinal's legislative delegation wielded huge power at the capitol through lions such as Ben Arnold.
McFarland, who began his law practice in Casa Grande and became county attorney, would prove to be the county's most important public figure. As a U.S. senator, Mac rose to be majority leader and is considered the father of the G.I. bill. After being defeated by Barry Goldwater, he ran and won as Arizona's governor. Throughout, he was a vital but now forgotten force in the water war with California.
Topography is as varied. Western and southern Pinal are desert basins prone to severe dust storms. Want to see dust devils in their purest form? Spend a few minutes here. The eastern and northern stretches are mountainous, with the showpiece being the majestic Superstitions, rightly sacred to the Apache. The Boyce Thompson Arboretum, established in 1925, remains one of the gems of the state.
Pinal induced big dreams even before the exurban ooze. One was the Francisco Grande "baseball resort," opened in the early 1960s as a spring training site for the San Francisco Giants. The Giants eventually moved to Scottsdale but the hotel and golf course remain. On the other hand, the big airport to serve Phoenix and Tucson in Eloy never happened — Sky Harbor was too convenient and Phoenix would never give it up — and now never will because of subdivision encroachment.
Water missteps have plagued the county. Coolidge Dam, built upstream in Gila County, "tamed" the storied Gila River in 1928, but at a terrible price. The Apaches opposed it, not least because it would desecrate a burial ground. For Pinal County, the river was dry except for times of flood discharge. (All this ultimately played a part in the historic water-rights settlement with the Gila Indian Community).
Unlike the Salt River Project, the resulting San Carlos Irrigation District was never an adequate fit as large-scale cotton farming was begun (the Hohokam grew it on a small scale). Pinal became Arizona's biggest cotton producer (an experimental station established nearly a century ago at the tribal capital Sacaton gave the name "Pima cotton" to the fine plant created). Yet more and more water came from aquifers. Decades of this have severely depleted groundwater, leading to sinkholes, the dead look of the desert along I-10, as well as giving the lie to the notion that farmland can be replaced with massive, single-family developments with no water consequences.
Pinal County was a hotspot for Arizona's old land swindles. With the completion of I-10 in the late 1960s, however, the real-estate hucksters dreamed of subdivisions. Sun Lakes was among the first. Elsewhere, retiree growth in east Mesa spilled across into Pinal and never looked back. The pristine slopes of Superstition were destroyed by wildcat building and then wrecked for good by the obscene Gold Canyon. All this, and everything to come, was heavily subsidized by taxpayers who paid for the roads and infrastructure — never enough to keep up — that made the land barons and developers rich.
By the time the housing bubble was really going, Pinal had slipped the leash of any history, much less sustainability. Its population increased 109% in the 2000s, to more than 375,000. By 2020, it was more than 425,000. Subdivisions and "master planned communities" proliferated, all in the dreary look-alike of industrial-scale building. The good ole boys in the little towns coveted the incredibly modest construction fees, even though they never covered the infrastructure costs, much less the externalities, that resulted. The Johnson developments along Hunt Highway are an especially stark example.
Big land owners pushed this enterprise ahead, and any real planning or environmental mitigation was never allowed. I-10, inadequate when it was built, was still a rural, two-lane interstate. The two-lane Hunt Highway, built for a rural county, was a traffic disaster every day.
The talk was big: the speck that was once Maricopa would become "the next Scottsdale." But the character and form of the little Pinal County towns was largely lost. One example is the strip from the freeway interchange into Casa Grande. In Casa Grande proper are the bones of a wonderful little town, which until recently included a desert moderne SP depot (it was allowed to fall into disuse and then burned). But there's no creative class to cherish and revive it. All the investment has been sucked out to the commercial ugliness stretched out on the highway leading to I-10.
Then it all blew up in 2008. My initial assessment was that it would take years, if not decades, to sort out. But it bounced back, especially with plans for huge developments in Superstition Vistas, even though the water is lacking, much credit or the ability to build even minimal infrastructure. They talk of a "great planning opportunity" in this state land, but we know what would result if it were ever built.
The desert always wins? Well, yes and no. Pinal County's future might echo the Hohokam. But the damage done here by the past 30 years of reckless and horrendously ugly development will take eons to erase. And no future civilization will preserve the ruins of the Super Wal-Mart. But the county's history is rich and worth remembering.
Gallery: Click for a larger image:
Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in the 1930s (National Parks Service).
Superstition Mountain, unspoiled in the 1940s.
The adobe post office in Florence, derelict by the time of this 1938 photo (Library of Congress).
The Pinal County Courthouse in 1938 (Library of Congress).
The restored courthouse in 2018 (Carol Highsmith/Library of Congress).
Pinal County's most famous citizen, Ernest McFarland, center. As a U.S. Senator, he was the "father of the GI Bill." He served as Senate Majority Leader. Later he was governor and state Supreme Court chief justice.
Coolidge Dam on the Gila River. It was completed in 1928 and dedicated by former President Calvin Coolidge in 1930. This is a 1984 view (Library of Congress).
Casa Grande Valley Farms was a New Deal project in the Great Depression. The federal government then loaned the cooperative association the funds to lease the 5,000 acres of land that became the Casa Grande project. The Works Progress Administration built roads, homes, and farm buildings on the land, 60 families were recruited to live there. Above, a grocer at the project (Russell Lee/Library of Congress).
A lending library at Casa Grande Valley Farms (Russell Lee/Library of Congress)
A dude ranch in Coolidge, 1940 (Russell Lee, Library of Congress).
The Southern Pacific depot in Coolidge. When it was still open in the 1960s, I spent happy hours watching trains pass through.
Casa Grande's art moderne Southern Pacific depot. When most SP passenger varnish was routed north through Phoenix with the 1926 opening of the Northern Main Line, the Argonaut was the sole daily passenger train serving Casa Grande. At the foot of a shady, walkable downtown, the depot was allowed to burn and was demolished.
After years of decline, an effort is under way to restore downtown Casa Grande. Here's a vintage car show on Main Street.
The Old West coexists uneasily with expanding sprawl. This is the 2018 Junior Parada Rodeo in Florence (Carol Highsmith/Library of Congress).
Pinal County today as a Phoenix bedroom community. This is Maricopa (confusingly in Pinal County). Its population was 1,040 in 2000. By 2020, it had ballooned to 58,125.
Downtown Florence in 2022 (Michael Joseph Baca photo).
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My book, A Brief History of Phoenix, is available to buy or order at your local independent bookstore, or from Amazon.
Read more Phoenix history in Rogue's Phoenix 101 archive.
Maybe Jon can help us understand why the tribes’ water rights are a forbidden subject. They now own rights to nearly 50% of Arizona’s Colorado River flows . . whatever that turns out to be. To provide the “assured 100 year water supply” for a development, the Big Dogs have to do a deal with one of the tribes. Rumor has it that they’re not too accomodating. Strangely, this subject seems to be off limits for the media . . even truth-tellers like the Republic’s Shaun McKinnon. (if I could successfully portray myself as part Native American, I’d change my handle to “morecleanBEAR”!)
I was at the Melrose Street Fair on Saturday and talked to a city worker at a booth dealing with redistricting the City Council seats. I asked if the city would ever annex Anthem and his response was telling for this discussion: never. The infrastructure of the development is so bad that it would end up costing the city dearly to retrofit it to city standards.
One of the reasons we celebrate the idea of the “free market” is that a lot of times it really does seem like we get something for nothing. Just believe! Deregulate! Deny every environmental concern and the externalities disappear. If someone disagrees, call them a job-killer, or a socialist, or an elitist. But once you start degrading the process, you degrade the outcomes as well. Pinal County got to the orgy fairly late and it ended up with a disproportionate share of STDs.
It’s ironic (everything is, it seems) that the fiercest defenders of this secular faith are the well-protected elderly. They lived and prospered in a country that invested in them. Now, they want to pull up the drawbridge because there are too many brown faces outside the castle. The tender mercies of Social Security and Medicare granted them were deserved. Others shall get what they deserve, which is much less.
From Sun Lakes to Sun City to Kingman, you see gerontocracies of privilege based on the primacy of placement in our domestic food chain. Let the free market mediate outcomes for everyone else. The two Americas shall not commingle as long as Real Americans still live.
Pinal County is now a haven for “Meth Heads”.. not only in Eloy, Florence, and A.J… but the Copper Basin towns such as Superior, Kearny, Mammoth and San Manuel.. have all but been abandoned by the Pinal County Sheriff. (and any other Law Enforcement agency for that matter, DPS included)
His (Babeu’s) agenda has taken the “crime fighting” duties of the deputies, off the streets of these towns and moved them into uninhabited vast desert expanses like the Vekol Valley. (all to hunt “Brown Folk” coming to work)
Crime has risen in all these areas, as it is now a sanctuary county for felons. Response times are documented well over two hours for a PCSO deputy to respond to a any crime including felonies.
The residents of Pinal can thank “…racial profiling, whoppers about beheadings, anti-immigrant hysteria…”
CAGRD is the States “fleecers” of water supplies funding. They fall under the Az. Replenishment District, the Dept. of Water Resources, and the CAP.
It is the States attempt at “privatizing” the water issues, under the guise of being a bureaucracy that is in charge of water supplies for the next hundred years.
They claim to deal with issues like “aquifers getting depleted”.
They do nothing to “replenish” the water table, but in fact they line their pockets with profits, as they sell off the water to reservations and other “buyers” at no cost and still “tax” all subdivisions built after 1995. (Double dipping at its finest.)
Meanwhile, the taxpayers get their property tax statement (of which they pay little to no attention to), as it continues to rise year after year–due to the bill charged to them by the CAGRD..(this is how they have gotten away with it thus far)
Water issues in Az., are just the beginning, as CAGRD, the CCA, and ALEC take control of State to fund profiteers and use “taxes” to launder and fleece the States Coffers and line their pockets..
See related link in today’s Op-ed section of the AzRep..
https://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2012/03/05/20120305taxpayer-money-senate-finance.html
Regards,
Truth
I always took 79 between Phoenix and Tucson to avoid I-10 and also to drive past Tom Mix. It was a nice place to stop and just take a moment. I also once rolled to a halt with car trouble right in front of the Arizona State Prison in Florence. A guy there said not to worry. It was the safest place in Arizona if there was a breakout. The inmates would try to get away from there as fast as possible. Of course, there was the Gary Tison gang escape in 1978. Shiver. Anyway, here’s the Tom Mix memorial: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2425
Jon, The Sonoran desert has been desecrated but eventually it will win. Man is on a collision course with the planet and the human species will soon border on the brink of extension. Or as SC calls it Shrinkage. The Indians are hard to deal with as they finally figured out that “God is Red” and the white dudes are satanic monsters. They have even got to the point of doing away with high priced Anglo attorneys by turning to recently educated Indian lawyers.
For a great short read on a similar situation in Pima County I recommend “Escalante” a chapter in the book Blue Desert by Charles Bowden.
Gay is not a celebrated thing in Pinal County but the great sin here is Gay Mexican Lover. Had Paul been tapping a brown woman that worked in the county court house he would have survived. Even, if there was a question about her visa.
And is there such a thing as a 10 year US visa that does not allow one to work in the USA while here on your visa? Maybe you are really working for the government or maybe DEA is using the old FBI mafia witness protection program, hide them out in Arizona?
Great post Truth.
Organized crime is well and surviving in the Southwest. And will as long as the criminals keep make their 10 percent tithing.
Here was my response to Taz Loomans Blooming Rock Blog on the Talton interview.
Unlike Dave Bickford I did not quit reading Talton and I disagree with Jon more often than Bickford.
To quit reading Talton would like quitting reading Ed Abbey or James Baldwin, Joseph Conrad or Charles Bowden. I still read the Arizona Republic and I disagree with almost everything they print. So Talton got a lot of folk’s attention with what some consider offensive statements. That’s like saying cartoonist Steve Benson is offensive. I have yet to be offended by Talton or Benson. I am not offended by Bob Robb even though I think he is a paid mouth piece. But maybe Bickford is right if you don’t like it turn it off.
PS. Taz I hope you and your optimistic groups are right about the future. If it’s a negative view point you pine for you can find that posted by myself and others and particularly a very eloquent writer that posts on Talton’s blog as Soleri and Walter Hall.
Talton just published a blog on Pinal County devastation. Following was a comment I posted on that blog.
Jon, The Sonoran desert has been desecrated but eventually it will win. Man is on a collision course with the planet and the human species will soon border on the brink of extension. Or as SC calls it Shrinkage. (Regarding water rights) The Indians are hard to deal with as they finally figured out that “God is Red” and the white dudes are satanic monsters. They have even got to the point of doing away with high priced Anglo attorneys by turning to recently educated Indian lawyers.
For a great short read on a similar situation in Pima County I recommend “Escalante” a chapter in the book Blue Desert by Charles Bowden.
The desert may win, but perhaps not the Sonoran Desert. One of the things that makes it among the most magical places, with so many varieties of plant (including “sahuaros”) and animal life, is its water table. That’s being severely depleted. The same is true of the monsoon rain, which may likely continue to diminish because if climate change and the heat island. I don’t want a Mohave or Chihuahua desert to win where there was this enchantment.
Oh, was that a “negative” comment?
Do you realize we have a generation alive who has never seen Nov-Dec-Jan. rains that fell non-stop until all the vacant land in Phoenix had lush green weeds growing six feet high?
In the Southwest, we call this condition a “drought”.
Apparently, the Mayans had a phrase for it, “Oh crap, we’re toast!”
Negative: I gotta tell you U all, I love negative. I have spent a life time working on the negative. The more negative I get, the more positive I feel. I developed a financial career around being ugly to the point my goal was to look like a cross of Richard Boone and Jack Elam. So I will leave positive to Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and all the other dreamers out there. The book store is full of “positive” self help books and tapes. Here’s to hoping. Like god, a myth!
Speaking of Negatives. I walked Central avenue from Indian school to McDowell and back up third street to Thomas from 7:30 to 9 AM this morning and I counted five guys with leaf blowers. By the time I got back to the house I could barley breathe. Even I think this is a BAD negative. A filter mask next time.
Leafblowers: The loud, obnoxious, polluting, particulate suspending asthma generating solution to eliminating the need to pay one or two more guys to rake your fucking leaves.
Can I get an amen, Mick?
Petro: you can get an AMEN from me because the unregulated leaf blowers are a symbol that we’re not really serious about addressing the elements of dust that we should be able to control. On “no burn” days, only ban on leaf blowers is on state land, as I understand it. Retired Sen. Carolyn Allen tried, but even the landscapers have their lobby. How pathetic is that?
On a positive note I just picked up a copy of Physics of the future by Michio Kaku, and old acquaintance of my girl friend.
Maybe I can hire Emil and Soleri to translate Kaku for me and his journey into the year 2100.
Jon, I’ve been back in AZ now for about six months most of that in Casa Grande.
Everything you wrote about Pinal County appears to be spot-on, except that the SP depot in CG burned a year or so ago.
I spent ’69-’75 in that little farming town, and going back is heart-breaking for all the reasons you cite.
It was a nice little town to grow up in.
Gary, I’m heartbroken about the depot. It could have been preserved as something great. In this neglect and loss, the microcosm of the problem.
Sur do miss Casa Grande! That’s where my sister and I had our first baby! Or, was that Gila Bend? Dunno.
Might we have a little dialog about Pinal County and its water future? For example: I’ve learned that “assured 100 year water supply” doesn’t mean GUARANTEED. They play with weasel words. They lie. They wax rhapsodic over the “Sun Corridor” wet dream that would put 9 million people from Prescott to Tucson. God knows who’ll try and rescue “Superstition Vistas” from the ash can!
I grew up with a Clem Diddle Hopper but he was from down
I o way.
OT somewhat but a good read: https://www.truth-out.org/scorched-earth-politics-americas-four-fundamentalisms/1330979344
The title recalls Michael Lind’s essay from last year:https://www.salon.com/2011/07/05/lind_three_fundamentalisms/
What’s important in both essays is the reliance on belief over reason, and certitude over doubt. People who call themselves conservatives today are actually right-wing populists whose Expulsion from the Garden ideology is cartoonishly lurid and addictively potent.
morecleanair, may be this will help you.
“The southwest is a place where almost everyone slips their moorings and just drifts. The cities and towns are ugly, the populace footloose, the crime frequent, the marriages disasters, the plans, pathetic gestures, the air electric with promise. There is so much space and so much ground that no one can for a single moment doubt the American dream.”
From Tortoises in the book Blue Desert by Charles Bowden.
Morecleanair, I will write more about water later today. In the meantime, a refresher:
https://.typepad.com/rogue_columnist/2009/05/phoenix-101-water.html
“Other people will do the thing that we must not do.
Namely kill the earth.
And you will not be the ones to kill the staying earth.
I will leave it to them.
And they will do it.
and these will kill the staying earth
And even if you don’t know anything
and you feel just fine
and you will see it when it happens.”
The words of Elder Brother (I’itoi),
according to a Piman shaman
who repeated the prophecy to whites
on the Gila River in the 1920s.
soleri,
here is a good example for Kunstler’s formula “delusion ~ distress”. But I wonder how much of that is simply well-sheltered ignorance. You mentioned the retirees who want to pull up the drawbridge behind them. There are apparently quite a few older people who complain about the ‘whiny sense of entitlement’ of the millenials who did everything they were told to do but can’t find jobs to pay back their overinflated college loans. Funny to think how the older generation went to school basically for free and landed well-paying jobs without having to send hundreds of resumes. The following blog link describes a certain “Mr. Clueless Baby Boomer, Esq.”:
https://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2012/03/things-they-do-seem-awful-cold.html
Can’t wait for the day when the higher education loan bubble/scam finally pops.
To stay on-topic, is this feasible?
https://www.cagrd.com/Portals/3/Docs/projectednew.gif
Mr. Clem Obert,
With all due respect and just out of curiosity, did yours and your sister’s baby daughter end up becoming Governor of AZ? Just asking. It would explain quite a bit.
Interesting, Cal – Elder Brothers (Colombian):
Kogi Mama’s Speak
AWinter, because I’m an early Boomer, I’m pretty much aware how my cohort feels about politics and life. They tend to believe two utterly opposite things at the same time. One is that they’re “winners”. They live in nicer houses than those of their parents. Also, they’ve had good careers and usually saved enough in advance of the crash to have secure retirements. The second is that they’re “victims”. As hard as they worked, they have to live in a country that looks different from the one they grew up in. Their free speech is checked by codes of political correctness and a liberal double standard. They worked hard, played by the rules, and now Mexicans are stealing their Social Security!
There’s a tendency to think Boomers invented sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. But the truth is that most got married out of high school and went to work. Of those who went to college, most weren’t studying the humanities but business, engineering, and marketing. And for all of us who got drafted into the military, 90% never saw combat.
It’s a staple of conservative opinion that narcissistic Boomers ruined America with free love and drugs. Charles Murray has made a career out of that tired “insight”. But most of us were just passengers in this runaway train to Endless Pleasure. We disembarked before the crash because we valued security more than mind-blowing experiences. Now that we’re old, we tend to ignore just how fortuitous our timing was. We got in under the wire before the social compact began to crumble. Somehow, we didn’t quite learn a necessary lesson in humility.
Man, that can’t be stressed hard enough.
“Cal Lash” wrote:
“Maybe I can hire Emil and Soleri to translate Kaku for me…”
Could this be a typo?
Nan deska! Hunan deska!
Emil pay attention and read the whole sentence.
A copy of Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku,
Kaku begins with a review of Moore’s Law, but he foolishly forgets Mary Tyler Moore’s Law: all those ever more miniaturized circuits will develop claustrophobia and a silicon version of what the Japanese politely term “monthly problems”.
As a result, instead of humans controlling computers with tiny brain sensors, a la Kaku, computers will move humans around with tiny brain sensors, a la Stanislaw Lem after a bad hair day.
This, no doubt, explains Lem’s pessimism in such works as One Human Minute: see the essay therein titled The Upside-down Evolution, in which technology blurs the line between natural and artificial — a camouflage exploited by governments for political ends — or the type of warfare practiced in the novel Fiasco in which information technology is used to obscure the truth and render the population apathetic, since a confused, ever multiplying set of versions of the truth (none of them from any definitive source) is the only way to undermine facts in the age of digital technology. Also see “The Internet” and “The Blogosphere” in Wikipedia (irony).
Morecleanair,
Pinal’s water situation is very complex. It’s been pumping ground water for sixty-plus years, mostly for agriculture, although that started to change in the 2000s exurban housing boom.
Pinal does get an allotment of CAP water. Most of it is used for agriculture. The conceit in the Real Estate Industrial Complex is that this can be used to turn fields into subdivisions, and that the tract houses use less water. This is open to debate, because the old calculations don’t account for lakes, golf courses, higher water use in new houses and the resulting heat island.
Although there have been a few attempts at groundwater recharge with CAP water, they haven’t made much of a dent in the depleted aquifers. In addition, CAP water is very “hard” and not easily adapted for home use, vs. SRP water.
The 100-year requirement is very squishy and open to all sorts of swaps and shadowy games. Enforcement is lax and questionable. Even where it is “real,” the end-game for the 100 years is…what? Originally it was to get these users on renewable supplies, such as the CAP. But there’s not enough water. Or in a few decades, we’ll have cheap desalination etc. But there’s no progress that way since the water law came in during the 1980s. California and D.C. are not going to build a desalination plant for Arizona.
The water-rights settlement with the Pimas complicates things, because it gives the tribe a larger allocation, and the “first straw” in the Colorado.
Finally, as I wrote before, the CAP canal can only hold so much water. And the feds aren’t going to build a second ditch. Even if they were, the Colorado is oversubscribed and facing depleted flows from climate change’s effects on upstream snowfall.
The Sun Corridor hustlers will explain all this away. But the reality is there’s not enough water for continued sprawl development with any future. Arizona would greatly benefit from a completely independent assessment of its water supplies and the methods and regulatory effectiveness of ADWR. Ain’t gonna happen.
Kaku endorses a kind of robotic kill-switch in the event that robots have “murderous thoughts”. Unfortunately for Kaku, he fails to comprehend that robots, ipso facto, do not have thoughts, or any version of intentionality. Because “murderous thoughts” is a primitive term (i.e., necessarily undefined and acquiring meaning only by virtue of the understanding of the mind considering it) there is no way to convert it into a rigorous algorithm resulting in a behavioral set consistent with human understanding of the term, and it is only a matter of time before the artificial, finite, and inadequate limits of the algorithm are crossed, with murderous robotic behavior (not thoughts) as the result.
(Note: if this isn’t clear, consider the fact that all languages, whether vocal or programming languages, are finite, and have a finite number of terms. Those terms cannot be used to define each other circularly, since in saying that A = B we know that A and B are in some sense the same but we still do not know what A or B is. So, all language depends upon primitive (i.e., undefined) terms whose meaning is acquired only through the experience and direct apprehension of a mind considering them.)
KOGI MAMA’s SPEAK, thanks Petro.
If U all want I can ride the rail to Tempe for coffee
maybe we can get the Rebel to join us.
Emil did U mean Hunan Duck?
Kaku’s idea that nanotech sensors in a room will check for various kinds of diseases is valuable so long as the sensors understand the difference between the disease organisms and the host. Since the sensors understand nothing, it remains to be seen whether in some cases the sensors attempt to cure the disease of the host rather than vice-versa. Combined with so-called self-modifying artificial intelligence computers supervising the operation of such nanosensors, the possibility becomes terrifyingly possible.
No doubt you’re familiar with the “berserker” story by Fred Saberhagen about a man captured by an alien killing machine, who managed to get it to biopsy his tumor when it was taking tissue samples, so that the “lethal” virus it created was instead a cure for his cancer. The reverse is also possible. Stupid rabbit, tricks are for kids.
Here are a couple of views of the old Southern Pacific station in Casa Grande that was allowed to become abandoned and then burn down:
https://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/5913525.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/84263554@N00/321636925/
What does it say about our society that we consent to such waste, vandalism and civic malpractice?
Kaku predicts “energy from the stars” but he does not explain whether this involves solar or fusion energy, or how to make these technologies practicable enough to allow them to easily replace petrochemicals and coal.
I predict that we will somehow use the vacuum energy of the universe to create a cheap and limitless source of power. I laugh at Kaku’s naive hopes for primitive classical energy sources such as hydrogen fusion. As soon as I work out the details, I will apply for a Nobel Prize. Meanwhile, you may enjoy copies of my soon to be published futurist romp, which is tentatively titled “The REAL Future of Physics”.
Lot’s of very interesting commentary.
cal, I’m currently out of commission. Back issues. I’ll let you know when I’m available for coffee.
There are deserts and then there are deserts.
The desert in Pinal county has gotten deader and deader. I hadn’t connected the death of the desert with the loss of the underground water. Now it makes sense.
Emil, Being a book collector, I look froward to obtaining a signed copy from you mano a mano. Maybe we can meet at the Galaxy Cafe at the top of the Space elevator.
Seriously, I believe that there is a link between the electromagnetic and gravitational forces. My theory is that this involves spinning electromagnetic fields and that this is why UFOs are always spinning (i.e., in order to generate countergravitational fields).
So, all we have to do to get limitless power from nothing is spin some things appropriately. How we get the power to spin them appropriately will be discussed at a future seminar. (Seating is limited so please reserve your tickets today.)
Note: gravitation is not regarded as a force in the General Theory but rather as the result of a kind of quasi-geometric spacetime manifold.
However, gravity IS considered a force within quantum theory (see for example the hypothetical “gravitons” or at least particles such as Higgs Bosons which are postulated to control mass and related properties).
Einstein’s primitive pseudo-logical arguments (e.g., “God does not play dice”) cannot possibly withstand the pseudo-rigorous hyper-complexity that is the Standard Model (and even more so given the string-theoretical versions that Kaku argues for to replace it); so my prediction is that Einstein will get a pat on the head by the History of Science texts and gravitons will, as a result, not only be hypothesized but discovered. Science rocks!
Jon, sorry about getting off topic but I think I caught a berserker virus from Hal.
cal
Hal, er, Cal, no, you cannot meet me. I knew as soon as you offered, some time ago now, to bequeath your personal library to a complete stranger with whom you have engaged in numerous contentious disputes, despite your clear personal antipathy towards me, that this was yet another ruse to collect personal identifying information for your right-wing private political database project. Ditto your persistent attempts to meet everyone in person and collect email and other addresses, background information, and so forth. (Note: this claim is actually an amusing conceit which I hereby formally identify as being presented for entertainment purposes only. Enjoy!)
It’s difficult to phonetically represent the sound known in some quarters as a “raspberry” and in others as a Bronx Cheer, but typographically, I attempt to represent this thus: “tpthpthpthpth!”
Petro that was funny!
Good post, Mr. Talton and there were lots of interesting and appropriate comments.
Emil, U have me confused with Mark Kennedy, aka Mark Stone. I am still willing to ship U some old books but U must pay the postage to get them to England. However I am keeping my signed copy of a book by James Baldwin.
The liberal Obama will never be.
https://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kucinich-gone-20120308,0,3516058.story
Downtown Devil Discussions: Public spaces with Mayor Greg Stanton
OT, but some important news regarding a historic downtown Phoenix building. The old Valley National Bank (1931 building) on Monroe looks like it will finally be redeveloped into a boutique hotel. Unique restaurants and nightlife will be a part of the project. This is a nice departure from the neglect of other historic properties like the depot in Casa Grande.
https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/blog/business/2012/03/hotel-monroe-deal-to-bring-in-boutique.html
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