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The States : red states in a race to the bottom
- Thread starter Deutsche Gopher Fan
- Start date
ScoobyDoo
NPC
This right here has always been top of my list as to why these people could not win this election. I feel awful for these people, but their neighbors voted for it.
St. Clown
Ideas Posted are Likely Not My Own
I’ve been in Arizona this week, leaving late tomorrow. My visit has been down in the Tucson area, considered the “Blue Island in the Sea of Red,” per the Deadhead driver who took us from the airport to our vacation “home,” as we named it to our daughter.
The Good:
1) The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It’s basically a mix between a zoo of local wildlife and vegetation. It has a few cool attractions, like the Desert Loop, which is a 0.5 mile hike where you will pass through a section that has coyotes.
The ASDM Zoo also features a hummingbird area, like a giant bird cage that focuses on all of the hummingbirds native to the Seguaro National Park, if you can see them as they flit about the exhibit. You can hear them easily enough, but it was very hard to see them though the dense trees and shrub foliage.
2) Seguaro National Park. It’s flat out beautiful, showcasing the Sonora Desert, which is the greenest desert in he world - cacti and other arid plants are everywhere, growing like a never-ending patch of weeds. These weeds almost all want to hurt you in some way or another, except for the agave plants.
3) Children’s Museum of Tucson. I assume all children’s museums are built around the same concept, but that place had my daughter engrossed for four hours, and she would’ve stayed longer we hadn’t forced an end so we could go eat dinner. There was a bunch of practical and entertaining science exhibits, some arts and trades content, and some locally focused historical stuff, too. The Telsa Sphere grabbed her attention, but the Jacob’s Ladder didn’t do much for her. The air pressure exhibits really enthralled her - some air jets used to hover ball-pen balls in various directs, the air cannon used to shoot the same balls at some cymbals, and a set of vacuum tubes with dampers/valves (blanking on the correct term) used to shoot some scarves into the air for the children to catch.
4) The Reid Park Zoo. For the Minnesotans out there, it very much feels like the Como Zoo, but more of a focus on African animals. The elephants’ space is going through an update, so they’re not at the zoo right now, but the big cats, zebras, giraffes, the African white rhino (estimated age >50yo), and other animals were a good selection.
5) The Tucson Mountains are gorgeous. The shape of the peaks look like an artist designed them for the sole purpose of inspiring the Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons. Seriously, some of those bits make much more sense to me now.
The Bad:
1) Everything is so spread out that the roads are constantly congested with vehicles at all hours.
2) Road designs. This covers the insane manner of how the left-turn lanes force you into making your decision a solid 300’ before you can read the road signs, the semaphores for the left-turn lanes not being hung over the actual left-turn lanes, but instead one of the lanes designated for none-turning traffic. I’ll take Wisconsin’s horizontal semaphores over Arizona’s incomprehensible design choices. And the speed bumps. They’re huge and seem to be everywhere. To me, it speaks volumes about how the locals drive when you consider those two factors.
3) All the man-babies driving around with gun-humping propaganda on their mostly trucks and Jeeps. It’s shocking how many of the non-commercial vehicles all had something gun-loving on their vehicles. They’re clearly compensating for lacking something.
The Good:
1) The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It’s basically a mix between a zoo of local wildlife and vegetation. It has a few cool attractions, like the Desert Loop, which is a 0.5 mile hike where you will pass through a section that has coyotes.
The ASDM Zoo also features a hummingbird area, like a giant bird cage that focuses on all of the hummingbirds native to the Seguaro National Park, if you can see them as they flit about the exhibit. You can hear them easily enough, but it was very hard to see them though the dense trees and shrub foliage.
2) Seguaro National Park. It’s flat out beautiful, showcasing the Sonora Desert, which is the greenest desert in he world - cacti and other arid plants are everywhere, growing like a never-ending patch of weeds. These weeds almost all want to hurt you in some way or another, except for the agave plants.
3) Children’s Museum of Tucson. I assume all children’s museums are built around the same concept, but that place had my daughter engrossed for four hours, and she would’ve stayed longer we hadn’t forced an end so we could go eat dinner. There was a bunch of practical and entertaining science exhibits, some arts and trades content, and some locally focused historical stuff, too. The Telsa Sphere grabbed her attention, but the Jacob’s Ladder didn’t do much for her. The air pressure exhibits really enthralled her - some air jets used to hover ball-pen balls in various directs, the air cannon used to shoot the same balls at some cymbals, and a set of vacuum tubes with dampers/valves (blanking on the correct term) used to shoot some scarves into the air for the children to catch.
4) The Reid Park Zoo. For the Minnesotans out there, it very much feels like the Como Zoo, but more of a focus on African animals. The elephants’ space is going through an update, so they’re not at the zoo right now, but the big cats, zebras, giraffes, the African white rhino (estimated age >50yo), and other animals were a good selection.
5) The Tucson Mountains are gorgeous. The shape of the peaks look like an artist designed them for the sole purpose of inspiring the Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons. Seriously, some of those bits make much more sense to me now.
The Bad:
1) Everything is so spread out that the roads are constantly congested with vehicles at all hours.
2) Road designs. This covers the insane manner of how the left-turn lanes force you into making your decision a solid 300’ before you can read the road signs, the semaphores for the left-turn lanes not being hung over the actual left-turn lanes, but instead one of the lanes designated for none-turning traffic. I’ll take Wisconsin’s horizontal semaphores over Arizona’s incomprehensible design choices. And the speed bumps. They’re huge and seem to be everywhere. To me, it speaks volumes about how the locals drive when you consider those two factors.
3) All the man-babies driving around with gun-humping propaganda on their mostly trucks and Jeeps. It’s shocking how many of the non-commercial vehicles all had something gun-loving on their vehicles. They’re clearly compensating for lacking something.
Kepler
Cornell Big Red
I love the way the AZ interstates are laid out.
OTOH, the surface roads must have followed mule train paths because they have absolutely no pattern. Every unfamiliar road is Choose Your Own Adventure. Lots of fun at night (AZ surface roads have no street lighting).
The ASDM is one of the finest nature experiences available to an American.
Saguaro is as unique for its fauna as flora. I am eliding that 78% of its occupants want nothing more from life than to kill you. But that's basically NYC so I felt at home.
From experience: don't get caught on Mount Lemmon in fog. It's a white out but it extends to the z-axis on a road with a cliff-like vertical drop.
God dammit you made me homesick.
Have you seen the RAFI billboards yet? He's a Harvard graduate, dontchaknow?
OTOH, the surface roads must have followed mule train paths because they have absolutely no pattern. Every unfamiliar road is Choose Your Own Adventure. Lots of fun at night (AZ surface roads have no street lighting).
The ASDM is one of the finest nature experiences available to an American.
Saguaro is as unique for its fauna as flora. I am eliding that 78% of its occupants want nothing more from life than to kill you. But that's basically NYC so I felt at home.
From experience: don't get caught on Mount Lemmon in fog. It's a white out but it extends to the z-axis on a road with a cliff-like vertical drop.
God dammit you made me homesick.
Have you seen the RAFI billboards yet? He's a Harvard graduate, dontchaknow?
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