HoustonWade.com

For those of you out there lurking and waiting to kill me and take my booty I finally have some booty for the taking!

Dig day #1 took me to the Virgin Valley in Northwetsern Nevada to look for black opal. I was optimistic (as always) going in, but more realistic as to what to expect. I didn’t hink I was going to find much if only a few specs of highly precious black opal, only lucky S.O.B.s who aren’t me find the logs worth tens of thousands of dollars. Well, It turns out I really am a lucky S.O.B!

What you are looking at, friends and family, is about 10 pounds of the most valuable gemstone the lower 48 states has to provide. There is “fire” (a type of iridescence that flash through all the colors of the rainbow) contained in several of these big ass logs. Fire black opals sell for about $1000+ per carat, I now have almost 10,000 carats of black opal (not all of it fire opal–OK, only a little bit of it is actually fire opal, but it’s more than enough to make a big dent in my student loans; for once). The stuff without fire is still a good value (if you don’t believe me, just look it up on Ebay). And just so you know, ladies, I am still single.

Above is about a 10-20 carat piece of precious opal with some fire. I am sorry that the image is so blurry but my camera’s “macro” setting is apparantly a lie to convince me to take blurry pictures of things up close. That is a really good find right there.

Dig Day #2 took me to Topaz Mountain in Western Utah where I went to look for, well, topaz. Duh. I got dozens of the buggers while having a great time smashing rocks with my hammer and talking with a lovely couple, Karen and Pat, from Montana. They own a sapphire mine back home. Can you guess where I am going this summer?

Later in the day I climbed a big cliff, and didn’t fall off of it (this year), to look for the rarest gemstone in the world, bixbite, aka red beryl, aka red emerald. Behold!

Yes, that incredibly tiny thing took 4 hours to find. Four hours! But I got it. It was still in its matrix (the rock it was found in) but I showed it to a little cub scout and he plucked it right out, the little shit. So now I have a free-floating, extremly rare gemstone in a plastic bag that took me a lot of pain and misery clinging for dear life to the edge of a 200 foot face while wielding two, that’s right two, rock hammers. Do you want to know how rare a teeny little stone that thing is? Only one in 2 million will ever have the opportunity to own one. for every 150,000 diamonds found only one bixbite is found. It is that rare… and mine might be the smallest ever–but at least if someone ever says to me, “hey houston, you’re one in a million.” I can reply, “you bastard! You scoundrel! I measure no greater than one in TWO million!”

Dig day #3 I found myself at Sunstone Knoll in the middle of some godforasken salt flats in a tiny burg called The Middle of Nowhere, Utah (population 11,000,000 scorpions and one very terrified kangaroo mouse) where I collected of all things sunstones. I got hundreds of them. There were literally lying about the place. I basically picked them up off the ground until my thighs burned so much that I could no longer do any more squats. How many squats can Houston do, you ask? One ziplock bag’s worth, that’s how many.

I am glad I was smart enough to bring a bottle of Alieve with me. My dogs are barking.

Right now I am resting at my brother’s home in extremely beautiful Boulder, Utah for the next day or so and then the adventure continues.

Next up is some pink sunstones from New Mexico, maybe some auriferous pyrite (gold barring shiny, squishy rock), and some gold nuggets from AZ. If there is time, and my arms aren’t too sore from wielding tools all day I may try my hand at some tourmaline in San Diego.

Until the next internet connection, ta ta!

It’s Houston v. the Wild Spring 2009 edition. I am leaving for a few weeks of rock smashing around the American Southwest in hopes of finding booty!

On the agenda:
Black opals from Virgin Valley, Nevada. Probably the most valuable gemstone one can find in the lower 48.

Topaz from aptly-named Topaz Mountain, Utah. Something easy to find so I don’t go home empty-handed!

Bixbite, also called “Red Beryl” or “Red Emerald”. The rearest gemstone in the world; for every 150,000 diamonds there is only one bixbite. I will literally shit myself if I actually find one (good thing I will be alone because it would be quite embarrassing if someone were to observe this).

Sunstones (Labradorite), from Pueblo Canyon, New Mexico. Pretty, sort of valuable, and easy to find.

And finally, Gold (if there’s time), from the Quartzsite Arizona area.

I will do my best to upload pitcures and video of my ongoing adventure and discoveries (or lack-there-of) on an almost daily basis. Feel free to wrtie me, houstonwade@houstonwade.com.

It’s time to find me that retirement rock!

Look, the security apparatus that we have in place did not fail us on Christmas day when a Nigerian dude with a bomb strapped to his junk tried to blow up a plane. The Intelligence was there, he was on a watch list. The problem was that he was let through. That he had the exact same plan and M.O. as Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber”, had–and no one was the wiser.

Not having beefy-enough security is not what failed us on 9/11 either. What failed us was the fact the FBI and CIA didn’t share information and the President never read the August 6th, 2001 memo entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike within US.”

If people would just do their jobs we wouldn’t have these problems. Plus, al Qaida keeps using retards and their poorly constructed explosive devices to blow up airliners. It is hard to make a binary explosive work in a controlled lab environment, let alone an 18″ wide, cramped airliner seat at 30,000ft.

I remember being in line at the airport after the liquid bomb suspects got busted in London and watching bottle, after bottle of liquid get poured out into a trash can by TSA employees. If you are so concerned about inert chemicals that when combined make and explosive then why are you pouring them out, thus combining them in a trash can?!?!

How much physical and human damage did the 9/11 hijackers cause us? The World Trade Center destroyed; a side of the Pentagon destroyed; four airliners destroyed; and 3,000 lives lost. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $19-25 billion in damages total. We have since spent several T-R-I-L-L-I-O-N dollars and an addition 5,000 or so lives on the wars and defense and security contracts to ensure that we don’t lose $20 billion again.

We could have focused on nothing but commando raids in Afghanistan to get Bin Laden and the Taliban would still control the 80% of the nation they control today.

Think of the “War on Terror” like mortgage securities derivatives. We spend trillions and end up a headache and less than we started with.

Here in Seattle we have Coastguard boats with 50cal machine guns chase the ferries to save us from bombers. We also have security sweeps and state troopers on the boats looking for suspicious materials left behind by disembarking passengers. In the automobile waiting line, bomb dogs sniff all the cars waiting to load onto the boat. This is nothing but a gigantic waste of time, money and resources. First, no one is going to bomb a ferry. Why? Because there are no passenger ferries in Middle America that everyone can be afraid of riding. Second, the Coastguard boats are useless because if anyone is going to blow up a ferry, they are going to do it from the inside. Third, security sweeps are pointless because we are dealing with SUICIDE bombers. They aren’t leaving any packages behind, they are going to be sitting with it hoping to blow up with everyone else and get their 72 virgins.

We are spending millions of dollars and wasting everyone’s time by putting all of our efforts into “feel good” security rather than actually doing what works. Things like detective work, intelligence gathering, sharing information, nation building…

Let’s make 2010 a lot less like the last decade, and start by just doing our jobs and being efficient about it.

General Motors savior may be in it’s illegal aquisitions from 70 years ago. From the 1920s through the 1950s GM and Firestone bought up all the private commuter rail they could, including subways, cable cars, electric trollies, etc… So that they could crush it forcing people to buy cars to get around. The Supreme Court fined them botha whopping $5000 for violating antitrust laws and single handidly destroying the American metropolitan area. Today, much of that old infrastructure still exists, albeit in a dilapidated state, and GM still owns thousands of miles of rail easments in dozens of cities across America.

Obama put over $8 billion in the stimulus bill for commuter rail, why not give GM a few billion bucks to renovate and reopen the old subways and trollies? Los Angeles used to have one of the largest networks of subways and cummuter rail in the world before GM destroyed it, and most of the old tunnels still exist and only need some renovation to be functional again.

By doing this we can save GM and it’s vast capital infrastructure, help the environment by removing cars from the road and force one of the slowest-to-adapt manufacturing giants to finally diversify.

We need infrastructure improvements more than we need tax cuts. There are ten thousand bridges and overpasses in America that need replacing and refitting. Think about that. What if in the next twenty years even one percent of those bridges fail like the I-35 bridge in Minnesota? That would mean hundreds, if not thousands dead, billions of dollars in goods and services lost. how about, instead, we put millions back to work replacing and refitting these aging structures and reap the benefits of a more efficient transportation infrastructure?

We need to open domestic air service to foreign-owned carriers. Force them to meet FAA standards and not allow them to use subsidies to operate here. Along with that we need to open up small airports to national carriers. Here, in the Seattle area, Bremerton National and Payne Field in Everett should be picking up some of the slack and offer a cheaper alternative for discount carriers.

We need more colleges and universities that are not in the South and not in the middle. Students want to go to school where there are jobs and people. Washington State alone needs several more universities that offer Masters and PhD programs that aren’t located in the desert where no one wants to live. The University of Washington is bursting at the seams and yet is squashing any attempt to ease their burden by enlarging current satellite campuses and opening new institutions. When the economy is down and people are out of work they return to school to update their training. Let’s put some stimulus money into a new round of landgrant institutions.

Stimulate me

Chrysler and Gm want us to give them more money to straighten out thier finances. OK, it’s theirs, under one condition: They give us all the rail and trolly lines they bought up in the 40s and 50s. in return we give them tons of cash to renovate and reopen these integral rail systems.

Los Angeles had a huge subway system that rivaled New York in the first half of the 20th century, then GM and Firestone bought it up and tore it up. Let’s give them billions to put it back to work. Much of the concrete infratstructure is there and the easements are all owned by these few companies, we need rail desperately, and they need cash desperately. Let’s do this.

While we are at it: We need to create at least seven high-speed rail/maglev train lines in this country. Four North/South and at least two that are East/West.

The first North/South Line from Vancouver, BC to Cabo San Lucas, Baja that connects Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, LA and San Diego together.

The Second that starts in Winnepeg, Manitoba that goes to St. Louis through Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Des Moines. There should be a fork on this line that starts in Milwaukee and travels through Chicago on its way to St. Louis. From there it is on to Memphis and then it skirts Southwest and travels through Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, on its way to Mexico where it connects with Jaurez and terminates in Mexico City.

The third North/South Line Begins in Timmins, Ontario and terminates in Mobile, AL connecting Toronto, Detroit, Toledo, Columbus, Cincinatti/Louisville, Nashville and Birmingham.

The forth, largest, most important, and final North/South line would begin in Montreal, Quebec and terminate in Miami, FL while connecting Boston, New York, Philedelphia, Baltimore, DC, Raliegh, Charlotte, Columbia, and Jacksonville.

The first East/West line would begin San Francisco and terminate in DC Connecting Reno/Tahoe, Salt Lake City, Denver, Witchita, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinatti/Louisville, and Lexington along the way.

The second of the East/West lines would begin in LA and terminate in Jacsonville, FL connecting Pheonix, Albuquerque, Dallas, New Orleans and Mobile on its way.

The argument can be made for a third line starting in Vancouver, Seattle or Portland and terminating in either Boston or NY as well.

The construction of these high speed rail lines would put millions to work and imporve the economy in ways never imagined in this nationa and North America as a whole.

Finally, after 10 years away, and after he has finally realized that Cincinatti and Atlanta are holes not worthy of fill, Ken Griffey Jr. has returned to Seattle.

From the looks of it, Griffey had all but signed with the Braves until some loudmouth with the orginaization leaked that Griffey was going to be theirs that “The Kid” withdrew from negotiations and signed with the Mariners. If you can’t trust your front office, who can you trust?

One thing I have never understood about Griffey: He was drafted by the Mariners in 1987, he signed an eight year deal with the Mariners (a very long contract in baseball) and had taken them to two playoffs, and was the reason they built a $500 million stadium catered to his lefthanded swing, his best friend, Jay Buhner, played and lived in Seattle, so Griffey then spends two million dollars on a home in some malaria swamp in Orlando and then demands a trade so that he can be closer to his family. Why the hell, if your job, and friends are in Seattle, would you move your family 2,700 miles away?!?! It’s like someone moving next to the airport and then complaining about the noise.

Well, I’m glad he’s back. I think he realized that Seattle we’re the only ones who really, truly loved him and that Cincinatti couldn’t hold that kind of love for the man. Maybe he’ll realize what a pit Orlando is and finally move his family out of the South.

Thank you, America.

All across America millions of us are either standing in line or glued to our television. It may be the only good thing Bush gave us during his miserable presidency and I hope it is the one thing that lasts; involvement in our democracy. The papers are saying that we could expect voter turnout beyond 80%! Can you believe that?

Bush has mad this country such a hole that we are finally going to have more people voting for president than American Idol.

Full Story

This one is enough to piss off anyone. You just have to read it in it’s entirety.

Voters Across Nation Hit by Dirty Tricks
By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP

(Nov. 2) - In the hours before Election Day, as inevitable as winter, comes an onslaught of dirty tricks — confusing e-mails, disturbing phone calls and insinuating fliers left on doorsteps during the night.
The intent, almost always, is to keep folks from voting or to confuse them, usually through intimidation or misinformation. But in this presidential race, in which a black man leads most polls, some of the deceit has a decidedly racist bent.

Complaints have surfaced in predominantly African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia where fliers have circulated, warning voters they could be arrested at the polls if they had unpaid parking tickets or if they had criminal convictions.

Over the weekend in Virginia, bogus fliers with an authentic-looking commonwealth seal said fears of high voter turnout had prompted election officials to hold two elections — one on Tuesday for Republicans and another on Wednesday for Democrats.

In New Mexico, two Hispanic women filed a lawsuit last week claiming they were harassed by a private investigator working for a Republican lawyer who came to their homes and threatened to call immigration authorities, even though they are U.S. citizens.

“He was questioning her status, saying that he needed to see her papers and documents to show that she was a U.S. citizen and was a legitimate voter,” said Guadalupe Bojorquez, speaking on behalf of her mother, Dora Escobedo, a 67-year-old Albuquerque resident who speaks only Spanish. “He totally, totally scared the heck out of her.”

In Pennsylvania, e-mails appeared linking Democrat Barack Obama to the Holocaust. “Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, Nov. 4,” said the electronic message, paid for by an entity calling itself the Republican Federal Committee. “Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake.”

Laughlin McDonald, who leads the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said he has never seen “an election where there was more interest and more voter turnout, and more efforts to suppress registration and turnout. And that has a real impact on minorities.”

The Obama campaign and civil rights advocacy groups have signed up millions of new voters for this presidential race. In Ohio alone, some 600,000 have submitted new voter registration cards.
Across the country, many of these first-time voters are young and strong Obama supporters. Many are also black and Hispanic.

Activist groups say it is this fresh crop of ballot-minded citizens that makes some Republicans very nervous. And they say they expect the dirty tricks to get dirtier in final hours before Tuesday.

“Oh, there’s plenty of time for things to get ugly,” said Zachary Stalberg, president of The Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based government watchdog group that is nonpartisan.

Other reports of intimidation efforts in the hotly contested state of Pennsylvania include leaflets taped to picnic benches at Drexel University, warning students that police would be at the polls on Tuesday to arrest would-be voters with prior criminal offenses.

In his Jewish neighborhood, Stalberg said, fliers were recently left claiming Obama was more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israel, and showed a photograph of him speaking in Germany.
“It shows up between the screen door and the front door in the middle of the night,” Stalberg said. “Why couldn’t someone knock on the door and hand that to me in the middle of the day? In a sense, it’s very smartly done. The message gets through. It’s done carefully enough that people might read it.”

Such tactics are common, and are often impossible to trace. Robo-calls, in which automated, bogus phone messages are sent over and over, are very hard to trace to their source, say voting advocates. E-mails fall into the same category.

In Nevada, for example, Latino voters said they had received calls from people describing themselves as Obama volunteers, urging them to cast their ballot over the phone.

The calls were reported to Election Protection, a nonprofit advocacy group that runs a hot line for election troubles. The organization does not know who orchestrated them.

“The Voting Rights Act makes it a crime to misled and intimidate voters,” said McDonald. “If you can find out who’s doing it, those people should be prosecuted. But sometimes it’s just difficult to know who’s doing what. Some of it’s just anonymous.”
Trying to mislead voters is nothing new.

“We see this every year,” said Jonah Goldman of the advocacy group Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It all happens around this time when there’s too much other stuff going on in the campaigns, and it doesn’t get investigated.”

In 2006, automated phone calls in the final days leading to the federal election wrongly warned voters they would not be allowed to vote without a photo ID. In Colorado and Virginia, people reported receiving calls that told them their registrations had expired and they would be arrested if they showed up to vote.

The White House contest of 2004 was marked by similar deceptions. In Milwaukee, fliers went up advising people “if you’ve already voted in any election this year, you can’t vote in the presidential election.” In Pennsylvania, a letter bearing what appeared to be the McCandless Township seal falsely proclaimed that in order to cut long voting lines, Republicans would cast ballots on Nov. 2 and Democrats would vote on Nov. 3.