ALERT: Massive Aerial Pesticide Spraying Over SF Bay Area !

Open Letter to All Readers (especially those who reside in the San Francisco Bay Area):

Disclaimer:
I'm generally not a politically active or politically involved person. But the following issue really ruffles my feathers. Please take a few minutes out of your busy schedule to read this decidedly non-gaming-related entry about the potential health hazard millions of Bay Area citizens may soon face. I wish the information presented below were a video game or multiplayer online game scenario. Unfortunately, this is the real deal...

My roommate is planning on leaving San Francisco in the near future because of his opposition to and fear of the health-related repercussions of the scheduled aerial spraying of the city beginning August 1 (2008). In case you haven't heard, there's a lot of talk lately about the aerial spraying of huge sections of the Bay Area by the California Department of Food and Agriculture in order to stop the spread of the light brown apple moth (LABM)--a pest.

Areas scheduled to be sprayed are all of San Francisco, all of the East Bay from the Carquinez Strait (Crockett/Pinole/Hercules south to the southern border of Oakland. No exceptions. This includes cities like Richmond, Albany, Berkeley, etc that have not been explicitly listed in some news reports), Daly City, Colma, etc.

According to the California Alliance to Stop the Spray, this spraying will be done from planes up to 9 times per year for 3-10 years ! There is a large opposition movement to this operation. Over 600 health complaints were reported in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties--where spraying has already taken place. Among the groups who oppose this spraying are the Sierra Club, the City of Santa Cruz, the Breast Cancer Fund, Coalition for Clean Air, etc.

There is data to the effect that the "inert" ingredients in the pesticide cocktail are carcinogenic and not regulated.The California Department of Food and Agriculture is playing up the angle that the spray is composed of nontoxic "moth pheromone." The many groups opposing this operation insist that there are many additional highly-toxic chemicals that make up the pesticide "cocktail."

My roommate was planning on staying in San Francisco for the rest of his natural life and planning on buying a condo in town. He is a highly educated, well read, informed, politically active computer professional who has researched this issue and attended community meetings addressing the topic. He recently attended a meeting in which four California Department of Food and Agriculture reps would not address citizens' concerns or answer questions. According to these reps, they were only there to take statements of concern to factor into an environmental impact report and they absolutely would not answer any questions.

My roommate points out that If the goal of this spraying is supposed to protect crops, why are they exclusively spraying it in urban population centers? There are many theories about the " true nature" of this operation that range from the huge monetary gains by the key players involved, to contentions that "...the government of the United States, is conducting a human biological experiment, on a massive scale, breaking State, Federal and International laws." (Hopefortruth.com).

It is hard to believe that this massive aerial spraying is a harmless effort. This kind of stuff has happened before. When I was a kid in L.A. In the 1980s, the chemical Malathion was sprayed all over L.A. to combat a fruit fly. My mother came down with a mysterious illness that wreaked havoc on her system for several months. Doctors didn't know what to make of it. My mother is convinced her illness was a result of Malathion exposure. She had never experienced anything of the sort before or since the Malathion spraying.

For the first time in forever, I am going to contact my representatives, although I fear my concerns will befall deaf ears. My vision may be selective, but more often than not, I see bad things happen to good people and the forces of greed and power reigning supreme.


ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
FAQ about the spraying:
http://www.lbamspray.com/00_Flyers/FREQUENTLY%20ASKED%20QUESTIONS.pdf

SF Chronicle Q & A by Richard Fagerlund (Scientist/Columnist):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/23/HO4OUNNC6.DTL&feed=rss.news

Article by Hope for Truth:
http://www.hopefortruth.com/Lbam_Articles/75_for_aerial_spray.htm

Stop the Spray:
http://www.stopthespray.org/

Hope for Truth:
http://www.hopefortruth.com/

California Alliance to Stop the Spray:
http://www.cassonline.org/

Don't Spray California
http://www.dontspraycalifornia.org/

Lbam Spray Info:
http://www.lbamspray.com/

Me vs. The Virus

Shitty Shitty Week Week.

The cold/flu thing that's out in full force this season hit me like a brick a couple of weeks ago. I'm only NOW--12 days later--starting to feel better. No fun and games for me lately. I've spent a greater part of the past week starting at the glitter on the ceiling and Building My Own Virus. I did not, however, turn my sickness into a retarded, yet amusing, lo-tech video such as these folks did (one of many videos on You Tube with a sick-in-bed theme, incidentally).

I work in a people-rich environment. Thousands of people walk across my workplace corridors on any given day. I touch surfaces that thousands of others have touched: keyboards, door knobs, mice (the electronic kind), pens, phones, staplers, coffee urn levers, microwave ovens, communal room keys, faucets, etc. I also ride public transportation to/fro work, which adds another dimension of contamination possibilities. I also touch misc. other doo-dads that virus and bacteria ridden peeps have touched: dice, washer/dryer controls, shopping carts, etc. Germs travel fast.

Touching any one of the aforementioned surfaces and then proceeding to accidentally touch any one of my facial mucous membranes is what did it.

My doctor says he gets sick 4-5 times a year. He has considered wearing a mask when seeing patients, but feels it would be too off-putting and impersonal. Instead, he shakes every patient's hand upon seeing them, then proceeds to wash his hand in scorching hot water, with a special virus-nixing liquid soap.

A family friend got a flu shot which proved to be useless for this season's flu virus. Well, things could be worse. At least I'm not one of those poor shmoes who caught the Killer Cold Virus that did some healthy adults in.

Even tragic and serious topics are made into entertaining games these days. Seems like anything and everything is fair game. Who knew that helping one's body fight invading bacteria could be fun and games? And that microbes could be so cute?

Geeks, Girls, and Game-Store-Gamers

D and I hit a bunch of game stores in Sacramento (sometimes, I need to leave San Francisco in to really appreciate it. Sac has a way of really instilling in me a profound appreciation of the bay area).

The gaming scene is HUGE! in Sac (could it be because there's nothing else to do that doesn't involve a strip mall?). The game playing areas at the back parts of the stores are much larger than their SF and e.bay counterparts. The shops themselves are, on average, ten times more spacious than their SF counterparts. I guess business owners get more bang for their buck in the land of endless-endless-endless-endless-endless-endless-endless-endless sprawwwwwwwwwwwwwwl.
I've been to many game and comic book shops, all over the western world. And I've never seen them as large as they are in Sac.

I also noticed older (much older) players. Thirty-something men. And middle-aged men. In San Francisco, I had only noticed teenagers and early twenty-somethings going at it with their miniatures and terrains in the seedy rear sections of wholesome game shops.

Some of these dudes were super geeky (of the middle-aged, big gut, bald with a ponytail variety). Others were young and jockish (and quite handsome, I might add) in that all American baseball-cap-wearing, pseudo redneck (but not really redneck) marginally geeky way (the kind of guys you see a lot of in the central valley) . Others were kind of alterna, but not in the Bay Area way. Alternative in a more home-spun Sacramento county type of way. Like maybe an Invader Zim t-shirt , but otherwise clean cut (short hair) sans tattoos and facial piercings to the naked eye (as opposed to the more grimy/grungy/sickly/displaced/ you-wouldn't-want-to-use-the-same-towel-I-did look that many SF alterna/goth boys sport).

Women were actually working the counter in a couple of stores. In both cases, the women were youngish feisty Gen Y (possible Z) gothy alterna chicks (suprise, surprise), also not of the Bay Area variety (more wholesome overall, like girls who actually live at home with their parents).

My overarching observation was that of a complete absence of Burning Man overlap in the Sac. gaming scene. This was most welcome.

Note to foreigners, non-native English speakers, and the clueless and/or uninitiated: if the above makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever to you, don't sweat it. I'll attempt to explain it in a future posting [STAY TUNED].

D and I were on a minor mission to locate a certain type of RPG literature. We returned empty-handed. The Sac gamers are hardcore and had already cleaned the establishments out. We also surmised that Sac isn't a good place for us to search for the limited-edition stuff we're looking for, because those Sac dudes (yes, 99 out of 100 of the demographic in question are male) would certainly get to it before we did.

Nonetheless, the trip was not in vain. I interviewed D (for a web design class assignment) about his exciting work on incorporating miniatures into a fantasy themed adventure board game.
Some good photos of his miniatures were gotten. I got the scoop on painting miniatures, buying miniatures, and forcing one's self to like miniatures. The assignment calls for formatting the interview into a simple web site with links. I'll probably repurpose it into something else down the line.

Millions of fantasy board game miniature painting hobbyists can't be wrong.