After the jump: AZPM's Heather Gray reports on Tucson photographer Michael McNulty's study of how the human eye sees color:

From behind the lens of his camera, Michael McNulty became curious about the rich colors of the desert, so he began to research the properties of light, and how the human eye sees color.

"One way to define light is that it’s the part of the electromagnetic spectrum we can see," McNulty said. "But that’s a really tiny, tiny portion of the whole electromagnetic spectrum."

...

"We don’t necessarily think we have trouble looking at red and blue, but if you try to look at different shades of red and blue, you’re going to find that you cannot distinguish them as well as you can green," McNulty said.

McNulty shares his stories of red, green blue in this segment of AZ Illustrated Science. He is working on a book based on his research about the colors of light.

[AZPM]

The good folks at Narco News have released a new video by School of Authentic Journalism scholars on the strategy used by DREAMers based on a series of articles written by Los Angeles organizer Paulina Gonzalez.

From the first part of her Narco News series:

The Dream Act students he referred to, in fact are ordinary people, who carefully studied the lessons of the civil rights movement and other successful nonviolent struggles. The Executive Order issued in June of this year by President Barrack Obama, giving undocumented young people legal status, is the product of that work, in this century, by undocumented young people.

The organizers of the Dream Movement gained valuable experience and built momentum by organizing in support of expanding access to higher education for undocumented young people. With the election of President Obama, in which Latino voters played a significant role in helping elect him in key swing states like Colorado and Nevada, youth organizers saw their first strategic opportunity to pass federal legislation.

Movement organizers then shifted their attention to a nationally coordinated effort for federal DREAM Act legislation. The United We Dream Network, born in 2009, originally comprised of 10 locally based Dream Teams that would later grow to 31 affiliates, began to weave together local grassroots organizations under a national umbrella and national strategy. The local Dream Teams were then perfectly situated to implement an agreed upon strategy in cities across the country.

• ©Kathleen Dreier, Esens Photography

Tucson photographer Kathleen Dreier's atest project, Bus Stop Dreams, is quintessentially Tucson: Dreier approaches people at bus stops, asks them where they are going and what they hope for in the future.

From Dreier's blog:

It is a project that I hope connects all of us to our common humanity of wanting to be something more than what our present circumstance allows for whatever reason. Eventually, this project will be a hard cover and e-book. If you know any one who would like to support this project, please let me know. I extend my gratitude to each person who allows me, a stranger with my camera and notebook, to capture their vulnerability and private wishes.

• Tucson Modern Streetcar Facebook Page

Love it or hate it, the streetcar is coming. The Sun Link website says that the project is currently 85% complete, so don't expect a joy ride until midsummer of next year.

Sunday night party animals caught a glimpse of a unicorn, or AKA the modern streetcar. Allan Sturm gave us permission to use his footage of the taxpayer nightmare chugging along Congress Street.

Hopefully this thing moves faster than the Sun Tran on a holiday schedule, but it does look cooler than the 3D animated clips Sun Link fed us in the beginning.

Popular Science, the long-running magazine and gateway to hard-science discussion, recently made a drastic change to their website: The editors are cutting out the discussion.

This week, PopSci.com decided to close the comments for their publication, save for selected stories "that lend themselves to vigorous and intelligent discussion," say the site's powers that be.

Now, why on Earth would they choose to do that? Well, partially because of this March op-ed from the New York Times, containing information from a survey noting that the content of comments on a story can change how a reader perceives the story they just read:

In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.

Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought.

PopSci found the study to be fairly accurate, noting the discussions found beneath articles on climate change and abortion studies to be cesspools of spam, climate change deniers and slut-shamers. Keep in mind, this is a website focusing on things that can actually be tested and proven. Using science.

From Suzanne LaBarre, the online content director for PopSci.com:

A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.

This new Dewar's scotch advertisement using the Charles Bukowski poem "So You Want to be a Writer" is beautifully done and the narrator's voice is cool, although it would be even more beautiful with Bukowski's smoke-singed voice. But you know what I do have a problem with? And I know this going to seem very un-Bukowski, but he won't care, believe me. I have a problem with the fact that you don't see a woman on the screen until towards the end and only for a second.

They couldn't find cool women doing cool things? Women don't drink scotch? Shit, tell that to my mother.

I know: Guys have their things and gals have their things. But sometimes, wouldn't it be nice if everyone came to the conclusion that we aren't that much different from each other? We like the same paychecks. We like writing and life's big adventures, just like the ones shown in the Dewar's video.

I guess it's just been one of those weeks, and of course reading the bust.com blog doesn't help matters when their writers point out what they consider to be the most misogynistic article of all time. So, yeah, I'm on my feminist soap box. Deal with it.

While I generally agree with the morning daily's point that GOP legislative leaders are barking up the wrong tree—and wasting taxpayer dollars—in their latest attack on the Independent Redistricting Commission, I can't help but scratch my head about this assertion in today's Star editorial:

While districts can never be completely equal, the redistricting commission has done a good job of balancing the requirements it must work under (see box). A quick look at the latest Arizona voter registration report, which notes voters’ party affiliation, shows no district has an insurmountable advantage for either party.

Looking at congressional races since the commission was established, the balance of power has fluctuated between Republicans and Democrats. These shifts are as it should be. There should be no “safe district” for any party if we hope to have lawmakers compromise for the good of all.

No district has an insurmountable edge? That must have been a very quick look at the latest voter registration counts. How about Congressman Raul Grijalva's district, where 123,000 voters are Democrats and 61,000 are Republicans? Or Congressman Paul Gosar's district, where 155,000 voters are Republicans and 78,000 are Democrats? Or Pima County's Legislative District 3, where 42,000 voters are Democrats and just 14,600 voters are Republicans?

The competitive districts remain a rarity in Arizona, despite independent redistricting. Only three of the nine congressional districts are competitive (and they were all close races in 2012). And here's a breakdown of competitiveness viewed in various ways developed by the Independent Redistricting Commission itself, which clearly shows only a handful of the 30 legislative districts are competitive. There are reasons for that, based on geography, communities of interest, and other factors, but let's face it: If every district were competitive, our legislative races would be a lot more interesting. Arguing that there are no "safe districts" suggests a laugh-out-loud misunderstanding of the basics of Arizona's political landscape.

At the last election season's Pima County Republican Party fiesta, I remember watching a man and woman with a camera following former Tucson City Council candidate Lori Oien. I asked who they were and they said they were making a documentary. The documentary is called Election Year, and the trailer was just released. Sure enough, Oien is in it, as well as Tucson Unified School District governing board member Kristel Foster when she was running for school board.

The filmmakers description:

Set in the Wild West atmosphere of Arizona, where the ideological conflicts of America are at their most intense, ELECTION YEAR portrays the personal and political struggles of five ordinary Americans against the backdrop of the 2012 Presidential election.

A documentary collage of diverse perspectives, ELECTION YEAR demonstrates the impact of the national campaign issues on the real lives of its characters - a teacher running for her first political office, an unemployed Tea Party activist, a young squatter, an architectural designer struggling to recover from the real estate crisis, and a politically active mother preparing to launch her daughter into adulthood.

Inspired by the novels of John Dos Passos, ELECTION YEAR is the first installment of the USA Trilogy.

It was interesting watching them film at the election party, a party I've covered for years and in my liberal reporter biased views, I've actually enjoyed. There's always something — this last one being when we found self-described Democrat and TUSD school board members Mark Stegeman having a nosh downstairs at other GOP party happenings. That's Tucson for you, and a great example of politics at its best (or worst).

The documentary has a Facebook page, a website, and you can follow on Twitter.

As much as I could relate to the girl asserting her constitutional rights at a border checkpoint in the above video, I really hate the damn "Hot Chick" title. Her snarky behavior accentuates the fact that she's a white woman who would never have to experience what others have to when they are asked: "Are you a U.S. citizen?" Detained? Ask former Arizona governor Raul Castro about detainment.

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The Al Jazeera America documentary, Cross Border Killings, which recently aired on new channel's Fault Lines series, is now available for a limited time on YouTube:

Fault Lines travels to the border town of Nogales - currently the nexus for this increasingly lawless law enforcement - to meet the Mexican families who have lost their young sons at the hands of US agents who many accuse of being immune from the law.