David Montgomery, a UW geomorphologist, is an authority on dirt. Don’t laugh. His new book, “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization,” links the decline of great civilizations to the loss of their soil.

Things are getting worse, he said in an interview posted on the Celsias Web site:

Modern agricultural soil erosion rates are as many as 10-100 times faster than soil creation – a minority of farms are a net soil source, but very few, so we are consuming ourselves to death. It’s like a bank account. If you spend money 10 times faster than you make it, you go broke. Soil is no different.

Tacoma’s City Club plans to host David Montgomery at its Wednesday dinner meeting 6 p.m. at the University of Puget Sound’s Wheelock Rotunda. Call the City Club 272-9561 by noon Monday if you want a seat. (It’s not a cheap date: $30 for non-members.)

I tagged along yesterday for the Tacoma School Board's tour of the new Science And Math Institute (SAMI) at Point Defiance Park and was impressed.

It's not fancy – just a series of recycled portables set up in a gravel lot near the park's go-carts and batting cages. The desks are salvaged, the cabinetry built by district staffers. The computers at least look new.

Come September, the place will be packed with 140 kids who make up SAMI's inaugural class. The school kicks off the year next week with a two-night stay at Black Lake Camp in Thurston County.

The district's latest experiment has a lot to offer a student: the chance to attend class in the great outdoors, the opportunity to hone in-demand math and science skills and the advantage of entering high school at a place where no one is the "new kid."

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Blogger/author Diana West takes issue with all the plaudits for Ted Kennedy. She had a similarly jaundiced view upon the passing of newsman Walter Cronkite.

By Diana West

Something about the death of a famous liberal person turns the media into grieving widows whose dictum against speaking “ill” of the dead eliminates all sober analysis of the life in question.

Once, death in the passing parade came to us, more or less, in “just-the-facts, ma’am” obituaries. Now, breaking, live and for the duration, a celebratory loop plays on about even the most mixed and controversial public lives.

Notice I said “mixed” and “controversial,” restrained terminology to describe the life and times of Sen. Ted Kennedy, whose death triggered a media dump of Hallmark-curlicued tributes that all begin with “lion of the Senate” — as though that were his official title — and finish with “the end of Camelot,” as though that were his actual residence, not the tagline of an ancient PR campaign.

Question: How does the 1969 death of Mary Jo Kopechne — whom the married, panicked and first-term Sen. Ted Kennedy left to drown in 7 feet of Chappaquiddick water — apply to the “lion” from “Camelot”?

Answer: It doesn’t.

Remember: Don’t speak ill of the dead. Kennedy fixture Ted Sorensen’s gloss in Time magazine is typical, depicting “the Chappaquiddick incident” as merely ending Kennedy’s “bright prospects for still higher office.”

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After posting an editorial last week defending the carbon benefits of four dams some people want removed from the lower Snake River, I found this quaintly worded message in my email:

I'm curious to know where you got the figure that 20% of Washington State's electrical power comes from coal. I looked it up and every source I found has Washington getting around 8% of its energy from coal.

And could we please stop with the stupid straw men.... "Many opponents of the dams brush off the carbon problem." Just who are these many opponents? A few minutes of work with The Google turned up information addressing replacement power for the dams.

There's enough stuff going on in the world to worry about, you don't need to make shit up.

'Oh and you might want to check this website out: http://www.google.com/

It might come in handy when writing future editorials.

The writer, to his credit, signed his name. I was fascinated by the anger; I guess some people really really hate those dams and anyone who speaks up for them. My response:

I get much of my power-data information from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. Try this link:

http://www.nwcouncil.org/maps/power/overview.htm

Here's the exact quote:

"About 20 percent of the region’s electricity comes from plants that burn coal, and about 21 percent comes from plants that burn natural gas."

I find it curious that you would call me a liar for using a number you thought I had gotten wrong. I wouldn't call you a liar for citing the 8 percent number. I would assume you'd made an honest mistake.

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I am old enough to remember when the nation learned of the My Lai massacre in 1969.

The fact that U.S. troops had killed so many women, children and elderly Vietnamese was shocking enough. What shocked me more was the response of many Americans, who ferociously defended the massacre. Some of them vilified several soldiers who’d tried to shield the civilians.

The officer on the scene, Lt. William Calley, wound up convicted of multiple counts of premeditated murder. Many believe he was scapegoated by higher-ups. In any case, his conviction again triggered public outrage that anyone would dare second-guess anything U.S. soldiers did in a combat zone.

As it turns out, Calley has done plenty of his own second-guessing over the years. See this account of his remarks at a Kiwanis meeting last Wednesday. Excerpt:

There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. His voice started to break when he added, “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.

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An epiphany occurred during a recent oil change and with the help of my auto mechanic I think I may finally have a grasp on the health care crisis.

“While we were under the van we saw something”

“Saw something?” I say to Bill. The name Bill was embroidered on his shirt above the oil smudge.

He clears his throat. “Transmission fluid.”

“Transmission fluid?” I echo back. My faltering voice confirms Bill’s suspicion: This lady don’t know nothin’ about cars.

“Is it fatal?” I ask, knowing my ten-year-old van has already lived past its 200k-mile expiration date, plus it already survived one transmission transplant, could it survive another?

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As Labor Day approaches, the "town hall meetings" are at last coming to an end. In case you haven’t heard, these meetings between members of Congress and their constituents have seen remarkable protests against the Democrats’ “Obamacare” health care reform bill(s).

There are two opposing interpretations of the significance of these meetings. On the right, folks point to this vociferous protest as evidence that Obamacare is wrongheaded and doomed. On the left, we hear that the protesters are in fact only a well-organized, disruptive minority stirred up by extremist conservative radio hosts.

The truth, of course, lies somewhere between these two analyses. But the truth is nevertheless bad news for Democrats. Why? Because these protesters have moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats in Congress very worried. And without the Blue Dogs, this installation of the health care battle will halt (see “Whence the Blue Dogs?").

The reaction of Congressman Allen Boyd, D-Fla., to the protesters is telling. “They may be in a minority, but they are a larger minority than we’ve seen in the 20-plus years that I’ve been doing this,” Boyd said in response to angry Obamacare opponents who shouted, booed and handed him a stack of "pink slips." “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he concluded.

Boyd has been in Congress for two decades, and he fully intends to stay there, "pink slips" notwithstanding. That means he will vote against Obamacare. And he will probably be joined by 40 or 50 more Democrat moderates.

For some reason, our president decided to roll the dice and try to force a health care bill in the middle of a major economic downturn. He wanted the bill passed before Congress' August recess to avoid exactly the kind of protests we have seen over the past three weeks.

It didn’t work.

Many still believe that President Obama is a brilliant politician whose policy expertise and oratorical skills will restore hope and bring change we can believe in. But increasingly this assumption appears to be overly generous. It is entirely possible that our president does not know what he is doing and that he is in way over his head.

Surprise winner emerges from Afghanistan's presidential election: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Keven Rojecki, who’s running one of the slickest campaigns for the Tacoma City Council I’ve ever seen, has broadcast a press release that begins:

TACOMA – Over the weekend in a one day city-wide food drive Tacoma firefighters and City Council candidate and firefighter Keven Rojecki raised 1,428 pounds of food for Tacoma’s local FISH Food Banks. In addition, over $2400 worth of food in cash contributions was raised to benefit the food bank.

Well, fine. I can’t begrudge any candidate a little self-promotion. That’s what running for office is all about, right?

But here’s how the press release ends:

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Readers of the print edition are familiar with the grizzled face of regular contributor Richard S. Davis, who also writes for this blog. But now he's shaved his beard, and he looks completely different. Actually, now he looks a lot like Larry "Curb Your Enthusiasm" David.

I pointed out the resemblance to him when he e-mailed his new mug shot.

"It looks to me like Larry needs a haircut, but I do see
the resemblance," Dick writes. "I realized last week that the beard I'd grown to make me look older back in the day was now doing its job waaay too well."

To see Dick's new look, and to compare him to Larry David, click on READ MORE. Dick is on the left, in case you have trouble telling them apart.

Now if I can only talk Bill Hall into losing the beard . . .

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Twenty-five dollars a ballot.

That's how much it cost Pierce County to keep the polls open in yesterday's election. Auditor Jan Shabro proposed going to an all-mail election to help save money, but the County Council insisted on preserving the in-person option.

Roughly 3,000 voters marked their ballots at polling sites, which cost the county $75,000 to operate. That's a paltry 5 4 percent of Tuesday's paltry turnout.

Meanwhile, the Pierce County budget is bleeding red ink.

Perhaps we do need the Legislature to save us from ourselves.

An eight-foot-long boa's on the loose in Lake Tapps, and it ain't made out of feathers.

So says Pierce County Auditor Jan Shabro, who came by yesterday as part of her election campaign.

Under an odd arrangement, the county’s chief elections officer happens to also be the county’s chief dogcatcher. Shabro oversees five animal-control officers and dispatchers.

Shabro – an animal lover – says she likes that part of the job. She talked about getting a good deal on a trailer to transport abused horses, the officers' rescue of starving cattle and their dealings with animal “hoarders” – including a woman who kept 83 cats.

Then there are the exotics: monkeys, an alligator, “a few tigers.”

“My staff was after a runaway emu at one point. You need two people. They’re very dangerous."

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