I don't understand what the Minnesota dentist, Walter James Palmer, gained from killing, beheading and skinning Cecil the lion. What a useless investment of $50,000 (that's allegedly about how much this guy paid to kill Cecil). 

CNN reported that the dentist and his guides—a professional hunter and a land owner, both residents of Zimbabwe— lured Cecil out of the Hwange National Park with a dead animal on top of a vehicle to then shoot him on private land. First, Palmer shot Cecil with a crossbow and 40 hours later shot him with a gun.

(Palmer says he was relying on the guides to ensure a "legal kill." Here's a good recap of it all by CNN.)

Palmer's two guides were recently released from jail on a $1,000 bond each, and could reportedly face 10 years in prison. According to CNN, Zimbabwe officials want to speak with Palmer, and he has said that he'll cooperate with any investigation. "Although, he said in his statement that he had yet to be contacted by officials in the U.S. or Zimbabwe," the write up says.

Well, the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals thinks extradition and execution are viable punishment options.

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk issued this statement:

Hunting is a coward’s pastime. If, as has been reported, this dentist and his guides lured Cecil out of the park with food so as to shoot him on private property, because shooting him in the park would have been illegal, he needs to be extradited, charged, and, preferably, hanged.

To get a thrill at the cost of a life, this man gunned down a beloved lion, Cecil with a high-powered weapon. All wild animals are beloved by their own mates and infants, but to hunters like this overblown, over-privileged little man, who lack empathy, understanding, and respect for living creatures, they are merely targets to kill, decapitate, and hang up on a wall as a trophy. The photograph of this dentist, smiling over the corpse of another animal, who, like Cecil, wanted only to be left in peace, will disgust every caring soul in the world.

Yes, this guy is a dick and a reminder of greedy, ignorant tourists who go to foreign countries expecting to eff things up, disrespect what's sacred, and expect to pay their way out of any trouble. But PETA just took this conversation into the depths of the dark side (and reaffirmed PETA critics on the thought that they are a bunch of nut jobs) suggesting to hang the dude. I think extradition (after all, he killed an animal that was living in sanctuary) and a nice stay in a Zimbabwe prison should teach Palmer a lesson or two. Unfortunately, it'd be unsurprising to hear that, aside from public shame, he won't suffer any other repercussions.

The AZ Republic recently published at least six articles and columns about Arizona's Tuition Tax Credit program, and there may be more coming. Reporter Alia Beard Rau deserves credit for being at the forefront of the Republic's work on the issue. For anyone who wants to dig deeper into the issue, I link to the Republic pieces at the end of the post.

Tuition tax credits are sometimes referred to, accurately, as backdoor vouchers. An Arizona taxpayer "contributes" money to one of the state's private School Tuition Organizations which give out private school scholarships, then the taxpayer gets 100 percent of the "contribution" back in the form of a credit on income taxes. "Contribute" $1,000, pay $1,000 less in state taxes. The result is, the taxpayer foots the bill. It's a private school voucher program by another name. Like the more recent Education Savings Accounts, aka Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, aka Vouchers on Steroids, tuition tax credits are carefully crafted to get around the state constitution's prohibition against using state funds for religious education. If, unlike me, you like private school vouchers, you probably like the programs. If you think the tax credits are a good idea because they help poor kids go to private schools, well, they help rich kids go to private schools too. These programs continue to grow, with the goal, stated by many Republican legislators, of offering vouchers to every student in the state.

The longest and most comprehensive piece in the Republic is Arizona private-school families cash in on state's tax-credit program, which includes a great interactive map that shows every Arizona private school that receives the tax credit money and how much they get. The others focus on specific issues.

I could go on almost endlessly about tuition tax credits as I have in the past, mainly on Blog for Arizona when the topic was first spotlighted in 2009. I won't, especially since the Republic has done a good job exploring the topic. Instead, I'll focus on a few issues I think are especially interesting.

In the vast and twisted world of the horror gene there is a diverse and potent selection of ingredients to induce a nightmare. From slashers, to the supernatural, to creature features, zombies and all things beyond the grave, horror is a creative insight into the subjective nature of fear. Hell can look and feel like a lot of different things. Most of the monsters and ghoulies and people that scare us do so because they want, will or are currently trying to eat, maul, sacrifice or vamp us. Or else, they represent something inside in the dark bowels of human nature that frightens us of one another.

In the proud and spooky hall of genre icons, one big bad shines out for his kind of intellectual way of enjoying our sweet sufferings.

Pinhead, of Clive Barker’s horror-novel-verse and the Hellraiser film series, has been a staple of horror since he first stepped into this dimension in the 1986 novella, “The Hellbound Heart.”

After watching the rock star of the Cenobites completely tear souls apart with ripping hooks, chains and painful flesh removal throughout his long residency in books, films and comics, it’s hard to remember he was once just a couple of sentences.

Barker has always been open about his own surprise at the Pope of Hell’s journey to fame. He really hadn’t intended “Pinhead” to become a big star but he has sure been living with the monster all these long years. Pinhead was a bit of a puzzle box himself for his creator, Barker becoming synonymous with him above all his other works. ("Books of Blood" is a close second.)

Now, 25 years later, Barker has written one final Pinhead story, the last of the sadomasochistic hell priest in his erotic, twisted canon. “The Scarlet Gospels,” Barker’s long awaited new novel, left readers in a living Hell waiting years for him to write the long promised death of Pinhead. Released May 19, the novel marks Barker’s return to adult fiction and is the first sequel he has actually ever written to his original novella.

In a May article with Rue Morgue magazine, Barker spoke about his long promised plans of killing off his iconic and defining character.

Phase II of development proposals for the Ronstadt Transit Center downtown were unveiled last week during a public meeting. Despite what we may have read or heard, not everyone is a fan, though. 

Development plans bring fear of gentrification. We've already seen long-time Tucson characters like The District (and others) shutter over high-as-hell rent. While growth is good, watering down the diversity that is downtown Tucson will birth harsh resistance from critics. 

Local homeless advocate and one of the heads behind the Tucson Bus Rider Union Brian Flagg wrote a quick reminder on the blog Voces de Casa Maria that not all is good in the RTC-development-front:
City Councilman Steve Kozachik mentioned the meeting on his weekly newsletter, saying the development will be a "benefit to the entire Tucson area, not just downtown."

He, other city leaders and the public got to hear about two proposals—one from the firm Alexander/Campbell and another from Schwabe/Swaim—that include retail, housing and the transit portion. The Alexander/Campbell plan has a cost of about $50 million, while Schwabe/Swaim say it'll cost more than $170 million. Both groups mentioned they'd involve local designers, as we all hope they should.

Kozachik says both would require "some level of public funding involvement, but only the Alexander/Campbell team identified what that would be and at what level." (Any public funding for either one of the proposals would have to be OK under the Arizona Constitution's Gift Clause.)

At the meting, residents handed the development teams a series of questions that should be answered in the next 30 days. There will also be final recommendations from the committee selecting the team that will take on the project. After that, a winning proposal will be chosen, which Kozachik says should come by the middle of next year. 

"This is a big economic opportunity for the region. Six years ago, the City was on the cusp of making a very bad economic decision: building a luxury hotel and using the City’s General Fund as the backstop of the financing. We avoided that mistake, and now we have a chance to take this huge step in the right direction," he says. 

A Cronkite News story headline screams, "Arizona posts lowest college completion rate, highest default rate." An Associated Press headline is equally dire: "Report: Arizona tied for lowest college graduation rates nationwide." To give Cronkite News its due, after its headline grabs you with its partial truth, the article does a good job of breaking down the overall completion rate to show that our public universities graduate a higher percentage than the national average. The very short AP article, after listing the Arizona four year college completion rate at 29 percent, ends by saying "Education Secretary Arne Duncan said graduation rates are especially low, and default rates are especially high when it comes to for-profit schools." What does that sentence mean exactly? It doesn't say, no further explanation. Oh, and AP says the 29 percent figure represents students who graduate in four years. Wrong. It's the percentage of students who graduate within six years. Oops.

So let's go to the U.S. Department of Education report fact sheet that both articles draw their figures from and see how it breaks down college graduation and college loan default rates. Colleges are separated into three categories: Public, Private and For-profit. (Since it doesn't specify, I have to assume that "Private" means nonprofit, since "For-profit" colleges are also private, by definition.) Arizona's 29 percent, six-year graduation rate lumps all three types of colleges together, putting us at the bottom of the heap alongside Alaska. Looks like bad news for Arizona. But when we look at the public college graduation rate separately, it's 57 percent, just above the national average of 55 percent. Meanwhile, Arizona's for-profit college graduation rate is 23 percent, well below the 32 percent national average. You can attribute much of that rate to University of Phoenix, which has students from all over the country, yet all of them count here because they're attending an "Arizona college." The abysmal graduation rate of University of Phoenix's 213,000 students drags our numbers way, way down.

Then there's the student loan default rate. Arizona's is the highest in the nation at 18 percent. But not so fast. Our public college default rate is 9 percent, the national average for public colleges. Our for-profit default rate is 19 percent. That happens to be the national for-profit average, but since University of Phoenix is the largest for-profit college in the nation, its default rate has a larger-than-normal impact on Arizona's overall rate.

We have plenty to criticize about our public education system here in Arizona, but let's not criticize our public universities' graduation and student loan default rates by mixing them in with the results from Huckster U University of Phoenix.

The city of Tucson is going to host a special day next month to try to tackle a backlog of more than 40,000 arrest warrants—most stemming from failure to appear in court.

These warrants total about $120 million in uncollected fines, City Councilman Steve Kozachik says on his weekly newsletter. 

On so-called Warrant Day—happening Saturday, Aug. 8—people with a warrant can head to the Tucson City Court, 103 E. Alameda, and work on a plea agreement and/or a payment plan to pay off any fines, which doesn't mean you're off the hook, according to Kozachik. Whatever charges a person may have will still be on that person's record and the person can still be taken to jail if the charges are not cleared.

"However it works out, though, you won’t have to drive around worrying about getting busted if you’re pulled over, and the city will be able to finally clear the debt from its books," he says. 

If you think you might have a warrant on your name, check out the City Court website, www.tucsonaz.gov/courts, and click on the “see if you have a warrant” link.

Warrant Day is an all-day event.

Hi everybody! My name is Leo and I'm on the hunt for a new family. I am the perfect dog, if I do say so myself. I'm great on a leash, a perfect lounger and I'm already house trained. What more could you want?

I'm not too picky when it comes to my new home. I'd really love a family that could take me on a good walk or two a day. After all, I have a physique to maintain! I do a perfect job of manning the grill, but hold a zero tolerance policy of talking during the football game. I enjoy actions movies and rom-coms, but don't tell the ladies.

All joking aside, I'd really love a new home. I've been waiting for some time now and the staff all tell me that my family is waiting just around the corner. If you think we're soul mates, please come and meet me. 
Leo—5-years-old —Pit Bull Mix—M—#798406

When I wrote my earlier post comparing Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird with her just-released earlier novel, Go Set a Watchman, I was relying on a number of reviews and analyses I had read about the new book. I hadn't gotten my own copy yet. Since then, I've read Watchman, which reinforced the perspectives I got from others and added to them. Watchman isn't a great book—it probably isn't even a very good book in its published form—but it's an intelligent book with sharp analyses of attitudes in the south during the 50s, specifically after the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision. The contrast between the versions of the south and the pervasiveness of racism portrayed in the two books is what most resonates for me—the glossy, airbrushed version in Mockingbird versus the wrinkles-and-all version in Watchman. My general takeaway from the contrast between the two books is, we need to grow up about the way we perceive racism in this country—how substantial it is, how much it underlies the way we as individuals perceive the world and the way our society functions. We need to look racism directly in the face, acknowledge it and do whatever we can, not to eradicate it completely since that's impossible, but to lessen its impact by working to correct its most destructive aspects.

Genuine spoiler alert: I'm going to be talking about Watchman in some detail, so if you plan to read the book and don't want it pre-summarized and analyzed, this is a good time to stop reading.

In Watchman, a 26-year-old woman who is living in New York returns to her home town in the south for a visit. At the beginning of the book, the town and its inhabitants appear to be as she remembered them, especially her father Atticus Finch whom she idolized as a child and continues to idolize as a young adult. In her eyes, Atticus was a man who transcended his time and place, someone who saw beyond race and class, whose judgement was absolutely fair and even handed unlike most white inhabitants of the town, including some wonderful but flawed adults she knew growing up.

As the book continues, she begins to see that Atticus isn't the man she believed he was. To her horror, she finds he's a segregationist and something of a bigot. He's against school integration and making it easy for southern blacks to vote—or he's against doing those things right away, anyway. He wants changes to happen in their own sweet southern time, not on the timetable set by the Supreme Court and the N.A.A.C.P. To paraphrase one of today's much-used phrases, for Atticus, White lives matter, but Black lives — or at least the quality of black lives — don't matter nearly as much, especially if improving their lives has a negative impact on the privileges he and other southern whites have come to expect as their birthright.

There's still some time left to try out Downtown Kitchen + Cocktail's limited time Around the Globe menu foray into Moscow, but, in case you didn't get your fill of unique Russian fare in that menu tasting (or if you mess up and miss it completely since it ends on August 3), you should head over to Kalina Russian Cuisine and Tea House on Friday, August 7 for a tasting menu of both Russian food and beer.

While the food menu for the night is all Russian, with dishes like pellmell with ground lamb (Russian ravioli) and stroganoff over mashed potatoes, the beer will sample brews from Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine. 

Here's the full menu:


The five course tasting menu is $33 all inclusive at Kalina (8963 E. Tanque Verde #210) beginning at 6:30 p.m. You can make reservations online through the restaurant's event page.

Time flies. Vote now.