Welcome To Badlands Journal

Virus note: September 9, 2020: possible local improvement

Posted by Badlands Journa... on Thursday, 10 September 2020

 

MERCED (BLJ) – On September 9, the Merced County Public Health Department reported 125 deaths (5 new) from Covid-19, and a radical drop in the percentage of positive test results, from nearly 18.27 percent down to 7.5 percent. The difference is due to the larger figure being a cumulative amount while the smaller amount represents only those tested in the last seven days. Nevertheless, it appears to be an improvement.

California reported 13,990 deaths (147 new).

What does moral journalism look like?

Posted by Badlands Journa... on Monday, 7 September 2020

What does moral journalism look like?

In a word: WikiLeaks.

What is to be done about it?

Now, its founder, the Australian Julian Assange, is being torn apart by a lion in the zoo and a Bald eagle.

Who among journalists defends Assange?

Fellow Australian John Pilger. Consortium News published Pilger's defense.  Damn few others have had the courage to either write or to publish defenses of Julian Assange during his years' long, epic captivity and fight for freedom. -- blj

 

9-6-20

Consortium News

UC Merced's win-win public-private partnership: who gets bilked?

Posted by Badlands Journa... on Sunday, 6 September 2020

UC Merced’s newest chancellor, Juan Muñoz, told the Merced Sun-Star on August 23, that about 500 students will be returning to dormitories owned by third parties, in the university's win-win public-private partnership for growth with the Australian developer, Plenary, and other national and international corporations.

A community response to UC Merced's new chancellor and its dubious 2020 LRDP

Posted by Badlands Journa... on Thursday, 3 September 2020

“The university used to be a ‘grazing land,,’ Chancellor Juan Muñoz said, and seeing the campus now “the word that comes to mind is ‘transformation.’

“You come up Lake (Road) or Bellevue (Road), and you see the campus. Everyone has the same reaction,” he told The Bee during a Zoom interview. “It’s sort of like coming out of the tunnel, and you see Yosemite for the first time. It emerges like the city out of a prairie.” -- Monica Velez, Merced Sun-Star, August 23, 2020

 

Tags: 
Bad CEQA

Three cheers for Colin Kaepernick

Posted by Badlands Journa... on Monday, 31 August 2020

Four years to the day after Colin Kaepernick first sat out the National Anthem on the 49ers bench, the NBA began a series of playoff boycotts, which spread to other sports including for a day or two Major League Baseball and tennis star Naomi Osaka. Kaepernick and the other athletes, or Civil Rights workers 60 years ago, were all protesting the same issue, the oppression of African-Americans, which gone on in this country in one form or another since the beginning of slavery.

On basketball: A Dull-Witted Boy story

Posted by Badlands Journa... on Thursday, 27 August 2020

A Dull-Witted Boy story, for your entertainment only.

From the offices of the Badlands Journal editorial board.

On Basketball 

It was Wednesday afternoon and four masked boys were playing basketball at the last public basketball court in town that didn’t have lids on the baskets. Somebody in Parks and Rec thought the whole idea of fitting lids on basketball hoops was baloney.

Tags: 
Entertainment only

Virus notes: August 25, 2020 -- You'd never know it from the Republican Convention

Posted by Badlands Journa... on Wednesday, 26 August 2020

MERCED (BLJ) – One August 25, the Merced Public Health Department reported 106 total deaths, an increase of seven for the day.  We aren’t sure of the numbers on the rest of the departmental “statistical dashboard.” We believe that the deaths have been recorded by more responsible agencies.

California reported 12,257 deaths, an increase of 123 for the day.

The United States reported 180,375 deaths, an increase of 640 for the day.

The global total deaths is 814,354, an increase of 1,332 for the day.

The state of the climate emergency: review of The Last Warning, by Mark Lynas by

Posted by Badlands Journa... on Sunday, 23 August 2020

Bill McKibben’s masterful review of Mark Lynas’ Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency is a timely update on the state of the climate emergency. This is  not exactly a strange subject to Californians at the moment, whose state is under an emergency order due to the dire effects of 12,000 lightning strikes last week. -- blj

 

8-20-20

New York Review of Books

130 Degrees

Bill McKibben

August 20, 2020 Issue

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