The Thomas Chronicles

***Update Below***

YahooNews reported today that the American Medical Association just approved the use of radio frequency identification tags, or RFIDs, to improve “”safety and efficiency of patient care”.

Oh joy.

CHICAGO (AFP) - Doctors could soon be storing essential medical information under the skin of their patients, the American Medical Association says.

Devices the size of a grain of rice that are implanted with a needle could give emergency room doctors quick access to the records of chronically ill patients, the nation’s largest doctors group said in a report.

The association adopted a policy Monday stating that the devices can improve the “safety and efficiency of patient care” by helping to identify patients and enabling secure access to clinical information.

These radio frequency identification tags (RFIDs) are already used by Wal-Mart and other businesses to speed up their shipping systems by sending out small signals that can be scanned more easily than bar codes.

Implanting them in people “can improve the continuity and coordination of care with resulting reductions in adverse drug events and other medical errors,” said the report prepared by the association’s ethics committee.

….

They may also cause interference with electrical devices like defibrillators and it has not been determined what impact they would have on prescription drugs.

The report concluded that it is “likely that utilization of RFID devices for medical purposes will expand.”

….

The FDA may eventually approve “active” devices which contain internal batteries and can be updated as a patient’s condition changes.

While I can understand all the arguments against this device, such as it interfering with a heart defibrillator and all the concomitant privacy concerns, I have a very simple argument against this. The Christian one.

He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.

This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.

-Revelation 13:16-18

Is this what they meant by “active” devices?

These devices have been around for quite a while now, but they’ve been sitting below the radar. Back in August of 2005, Foxnews had a special report about these devices and concluded that Americans have a widely held deep distrust of RFID implants.

Arthur Caplan, PhD, who is the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania believes that American distrust of these devices are understandable but irrational.

Americans may think their medical information is top secret. But Caplan says that we have far less privacy than we think we do, given the number of people who can legitimately see our medical records. And the potential benefits of RFID implants outweigh their risks, Caplan argues.

“You are more likely to die or be harmed by lack of medical information about you than by people knowing too much about your medical information,” he says. “In an emergency, it’s important for doctors to know what your allergies and medical problems are, who your relatives are and how to reach them, your blood type, and so on.”

But Caplan says that Americans’ distrust of things like RFID implants runs deep.

“The idea of putting something in your head or in your arm frightens people and stirs up privacy worries, even if they don’t make a lot of sense,” he says. “Americans have an almost obsessive drive to protect their personal privacy.”

Halamka, however, is already dreaming about future upgrades.

“If a chip could also serve as a GPS, reporting my location, or act as an emergency transponder, requesting rescue, I would definitely upgrade,” he says.

The AMA’s approval of this device went down without a whimper. Apparently, its passage wasn’t important enough for Americans to protest…

The ironic part of all this is that we have had one movie after another practically screaming to warn everyone of a potential technological tyranny. 1984, Brave New World, Minority Report, THX 1138, The Island, The Matrix— the list is endless.

And we are going full speed ahead. Just ask the British.

Update:

Seeing that this is a very serious subject, I thought I’d further clarify my comments above about the chip being related to the Mark of the Beast. The key thing in my understanding of this scripture is the willing surrender of the individual will to the Beast. That is, if someone sneaked the chip into your body unawares, I don’t think that means automatic damnation. I think it turns of the renouncing of Jesus the Christ.

That, however, is just my opinion. I think all Christians should be asking Jesus on this matter and take their direction straight from Him. This is far too important a topic for personal opinions to decide.

For all our protestations of our undying love and devotion to our kids, it seems we’re corrupting them before they graduate from elementary school. We bombard them with the virtues of sex, drugs, derogatory rap and violence. We bath them in the indoctrinations of “might makes right”, “will to power”, “do what feels good”… all the variations of watered-down Marxism and Nietzsche.

Peggy Noonan wrote a perspicuous article back in April aptly titled, “We’re Scaring Our Kids to Death.” In it, she writes:

For 50 years in America, whenever the subject has turned to what our culture presents, the bright response has been, “You don’t like it? Change the channel.” But there is no other channel to change to, no safe place to click to. Our culture is national. The terrorizing of children is all over.

Click. Smug and menacing rappers.

Click. “This is Bauer. He’s got a nuke and he’s going to take out Los Angeles.”

Click. Rosie grabs her crotch. “Eat this.”

Click. “Every day 2,000 children are reported missing . . .”

Click. Don Imus’s face.

Click. “Eyewitnesses say the shooter then lined the students up . . .”

Click. An antismoking campaign on local New York television. A man growls out how he felt when they found his cancer. He removes a bib and shows us the rough red hole in his throat. He holds a microphone to it to deliver his message.

Don’t smoke, he says.

This is what TV will be like in Purgatory.

She’s right. We’re inundating our kids virtually to the point where there would be zero possibility of them reaching their teenage years with their innocence intake. And you can forget adulthood.

Some would mount the argument that kids are going to be stricken with all the dregs of society anyway, and we can’t shield them forever. The faster a child understands the ways of the world the better.

What dark, cynical thinking!

Of course, children are going to grow into adults and will eventually deal with all troubles of living in the modern world. But this doesn’t mean we should hasten their worldly sophistication. Just because everybody will have to confront the madness around us at some point in time doesn’t mean we have to dip them into that cesspool all day, every day and every chance that we get.

Let children be children. Let them have their day in the sun.

The terrible world can wait. I assure you it ain’t going anywhere.

And now we are threatening to bring the legal system down on top their heads.

A disabled single mother from Beaverton has filed a federal lawsuit against the Recording Industry Association of America, claiming that she is the victim of abusive legal tactics, threats and illegal spying as part of an overzealous campaign to crack down on music pirating.

The recording industry sued Tanya J. Andersen, 44, in 2005, accusing her of violating copyright laws by illegally downloading music onto her computer. Andersen claims in a suit she filed last week in U.S. District Court in Oregon that the recording industry refused to drop its case after its own expert supported her claims of innocence.

Instead, industry officials threatened to interrogate Andersen’s 10-year-old daughter, Kylee, if she didn’t pay thousands of dollars. The intimidation included attempts to contact Kylee directly. A woman claiming to be Kylee’s grandmother called the girl’s former elementary school inquiring about her attendance, according to Andersen’s suit.

And this is only one example of a growing trend of police and investigators using the children to get at the parent.

There was another ongoing murder sensation of a woman who lived with her divorced husband. (I can’t keep track of the names of all these lurid murder cases on TV. There are too many of them and I find all the fascination with them on almost sickening.) Police investigators and all the media dog-piled on the husband, accusing him of murdering his ex-wife. Nevermind that the wife went out every night to have anonymous sex with her MySpace internet “Friends” to go “find herself”, and any one of those very friendly “Friends” could have murdered her.

Instead of doing actual investigation the police investigators wanted to interrogate the man’s kids (and yes, they still lived in the same house while the wife went a-whoring). When he refused to allow his kids to be further traumatized by the murder of their mother, the media, the man’s neighbors, a police trooper who pulled him over months ago, all chimed in and said just what a bad man he was. The policeman who pulled him over sagely declared, “You can just tell. There was something about his eyes.” (And they have the audacity to call all these hearsay comments news! Incredible!)

Last I checked, they still want to put the man’s kids under the spotlight.

In our modern judicial system, if the press grabs hold of your case, it’s not just the fate of your life that they’re deciding. They’re deciding if you’re fun to watch and talk about, if you’re good for ratings. You’re entertainment, via Geraldo Rivera and Greta Van Susteren and just about every cable news station there is. C’mon, dude. Dance!

This is madness… just madness.

I’ll be posting some thoughts later on today. It’s shaping up to be a busy morning. To be continued.

***Update Below***

After yesterday’s post about the Angora wildfire in Lake Tahoe, another blog responded with this comment:

In my obsessive search for news about the fires, I decided to read blogs to hopefully read some first-hand accounts. But instead of that I am treated to drivel by dickweeds (That’s yours truly) who are suggesting environmentalists are to blame for the fires. Blogs really might be the worst thing that has ever happened to people because it makes you realize just how ignorant and self-centered people are. My hometown is slowly being destroyed and instead of worrying about the people who are losing their homes, people are using the opportunity to push their ignorant political agenda. Picking up some sticks in the forest would have done nothing to help prevent the fire. Nevermind that there are 150,000 acres in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Everything is so simple and obvious when you are behind a keyboard.

Yyy-ouch.

Well, that morning on Foxnews, a park ranger working in the Lake Tahoe area said that all efforts to remove deadwood and underbrush had been successfully blocked by environmentalists for 11 years. He further said that the entire area was like a “furnace” with plenty of fuel laying around. All it needed was a match.

I can’t find a video to substantiate it for this blog, but there’s an article from the Tahoe Daily Tribune that says much of the same thing.

Even before the ash from the Angora fire has settled, some South Lake Tahoe residents have begun to lob accusations that decisions based on politics contributed to Sunday’s devastating blaze.

The League to Save Lake Tahoe, the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club’s influence drew much of the ire of Sue Abrams, a resident of the Mountain View Estates subdivision heavily damaged during the blaze. These groups exert too much control over Tahoe Regional Planning Agency policy decisions, according to Abrams.

“No policies in the 30 years I’ve been here allow us to create defensible space,” Abrams said during a phone interview on Monday. “Every ordinance that was put together over the past 30 years except for the past year or so has been hands-off. Every bit of this was preventable had politics moved aside.”

Abrams, unsure of the status of her house as of Monday evening, filed suit against the federal government in 1997 concerning the management of hazard trees in the basin and is looking to bring issues surrounding the Angora fire into court as well.

drivel by dickweeds who are suggesting environmentalists are to blame for the fires?… People are using the opportunity to push their ignorant political agenda?

I would greatly prefer to preserve our forests. Somehow I don’t think leaving dessicated kindling wood all over the ground in a fire-prone forest is a good idea. But maybe I’m just a stupid ignoramus behind a keyboard.

Update 6/26/07:

Boy howdy, the folks up at Lake Tahoe are angry. Here’s an LA Times article describing the residents’ extreme annoyance and displeasure.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE — The mood of the crowd jammed into the meeting room was angry.

Many had lost their homes to the forest fire that swept through the Sierra Nevada just south of Lake Tahoe.

They said they were angry at bureaucrats and environmentalists who made cutting of trees and clearing of land difficult. There was always too much red tape, they said, and now it was too late.

In all, a crowd of nearly 2,000 people descended on the South Tahoe Middle School auditorium Monday night, wanting to be heard in the face of their losses.

And if there was an object of scorn in the crowd, it was the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a powerful bi-state environmental land use agency charged with managing the resources of the basin.

When a speaker mentioned the agency, the crowd responded with a chorus of boos. “What a joke!” yelled one man.

The wrangling began in earnest over the assignment of blame, including arguments over whether federal and state forest managers had made their tree clearing rules too strict in the face of pressure by environmentalists.

A common sentiment Monday was expressed by Jerry Martin, a bartender at the Horizon Casino Resort, whose house was still standing, although eight others around it had burned to the ground. He said U.S. Forest Service rules regulating the harvesting of dead trees were too stringent for those living next to government land.

“I hate to get political, but environmentalists wouldn’t let us cut down the dead trees,” he said.

The amount of fuel in the Tahoe Basin has reached critical levels after years of discord among environmentalists and government agencies over how to thin forests and reduce the fire threat. And it has led to predictions of a devastating wildfire because the basin is one of the areas with the most fire starts in the Sierra Nevada.

….

…the people at the meeting Monday said that regional planning agency regulations were the source of much of the problem when it came to clearing the land.

A man got up and said, “I’ve lived here 35 years. Is this going to open TRPA’s eyes?” The room erupted into cheers and applause.

According to the SFGate.com, though, the blame for this fire laid squarely on the shoulders of all the people who moved to Lake Tahoe, from the Gold Rushers to the current residents of the area to… Global Warming?

The raging fire that is denuding hillsides and darkening the clear blue waters of Lake Tahoe is the final product of 150 years of mismanagement of the Sierra Nevada ecosystem, fire management experts said Monday.

….

Ecologists and local residents said they saw such a disaster coming.

“It’s the fire we’ve been anticipating for 20 years,” said Patsy Miller, who owns a residence at Fallen Leaf Lake, about a mile from where the flames had spread by late Monday.

“People have interjected their homes into a system that has a natural tendency to burn very frequently, and where we have suppressed the frequency of those fires for so long, there’s an ungodly amount of fuel there,” Forest Service regional ecologist Hugh Safford said.

The immediate cause of the Angora fire was under investigation Monday. But the fire’s beginnings can be traced all the way back to the Gold Rush and the Comstock-era mining boom.

“They clear-cut about two-thirds of the basin,” said Shane Romsos, science and evaluation program manager for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.

…

Federal officials began to shift fire-management policies in the mid-1990s and in recent years have sought to clear away dense underbrush and thin trees in the forests around Tahoe and in the rest of the Sierra. U.S. Forest Service officials said those efforts probably saved at least 500 homes that otherwise could have been engulfed by the Angora fire.

So, what’s the solution to all this? How do we prevent another catastrophy like this?

Just letting nature handle the recovery isn’t an option after 150 years of human activity and mismanagement.

“We need to more aggressively manage our forests,” Miller said. “In the days of the Indians you had a lot of periodic small fires that kept the forests clean, so fires wouldn’t get huge and out of control. We can’t rely on that anymore.”

The Forest Service’s Safford noted that even the climate has come under human influence, as evidenced by global warming and increased forest fires in a dryer, warmer West.

Okay, let’s get this clear. The residents of Lake Tahoe are all up in arms over what they view as government overreach. They are blaming the environmentalists for throwing up one obstruction and red tape after another to halt or slow down the rate of clearing the deadwood and underbrush. They are so upset over the matter they are willing to sue environmental groups for directly causing the Angora fire.

The environmentalists on the other hand, represented by SFGate.com, suggested that, at root, humans residence in the area is the real cause of the fire. The Gold Rush miners destroyed the original forest and it’s been mismanaged ever since. Though they don’t overtly advocate it, it almost sounds as though the environmentalists want all the residents in Angora to take a hike because it was their fault anyway.

It seems like their solutions to halt future fires is to draw up more regulations…

Yeah, like the regulations that started this one?

(hat tip: NewsBusters)

Chavez Strikes Again!

Addressing Venezuelan soldiers at Tiuna Fort, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says that their military must prepare for a guerrilla war with the United States.

President Hugo Chavez urged soldiers on Sunday to prepare for a guerrilla-style war against the United States, saying that Washington is using psychological and economic warfare as part of an unconventional campaign aimed at derailing his government.

Dressed in olive green fatigues and a red beret, Chavez spoke inside Tiuna Fort—Venezuela’s military nerve-center—before hundreds of uniformed soldiers standing alongside armored vehicles and tanks decorated with banners reading: “Fatherland, Socialism, or Death! We will triumph!”

“We must continue developing the resistance war, that’s the anti- imperialist weapon. We must think and prepare for the resistance war everyday,” said Chavez, who has repeatedly warned that American soldiers could invade Venezuela to seize control of the South American nation’s immense oil reserves.

U.S. officials reject claims that Washington is considering a military attack. But the U.S. government has expressed concern over what it perceives as a significant arms build-up here.

Just a few months ago, he accused our government of trying to assassinate him, and last year, he called President Bush the Devil himself. Is Chavez paranoid, or is he stating his direct intention to attack the United States through asymmetric warfare?

One of our primary concerns in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was the turmoil down in Latin America. If the communist FARC merged with the drug cartels and had state-sanctioned support, we could be in for a very bumpy ride. Unlike our current Islamofascist enemies whose tribal mores and religious zealotry we can spot a mile away, Latin American terrorists can really hurt us.

The drug cartels and FARC have support structures and safe houses all across the United States in every city through the drug trade. We haven’t yet shut down our borders six years after 9/11, and terrorist operatives from Latin America can easily hide within our unregulated illegal immigrant population. Well, the merger between FARC and the drug cartels have already largely happened since 9/11 and there are links that tie Hugo Chavez to them as their ringleader. (See here and here.)

It seems like our solution so far to this very real threat is to stuff our heads in the sand and hope it all goes away because, you know, it’s really inconvenient.

We really have got to close our borders. And our Senate ain’t helping matters much.

The Russia Factor

What’s even more ominous is the omnipresence of Russia. Where there’s an enemy of the United States, there’s Russia selling them arms.

Under Chavez, Venezuela has recently purchased some $3 billion worth of arms from Russia, including 53 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 24 SU-30 Sukhoi fighter jets.

Last week, Chavez said he is considering arms purchases, including submarines and a missile-equipped air defense system, as he prepares for a tour of Russia, Belarus and Iran.

“We are strengthening Venezuela’s military power precisely to avoid imperial aggressions and assure peace, not to attack anybody,” he said Sunday.

This report comes hot off the heels of Russia selling Syria highly advanced MiG-31 fighter jets, which many consider one of the best in the world.

Russia has “advisors” in Southern Lebanon during and after Hezbollah’s war with Israel in the summer of 2006. Russia had “advisors” in the Gaza Strip shortly before Hamas seized control from Fatah. Russia sells advanced nuclear weapons technology to China, (They’ve agree to sell China their new Topol-M missiles as well as other high-tech weaponry. They say that their new Topol-M missiles are capable of defeating any missile shield.) under the guise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Russia is also the nation building the nuclear reactors for Iran.

The list goes on and on. Given Putin’s declaration to resume the Cold War with the United States, one has to wonder about Russia’s intention.

Their recent, unprecedented cyber-attack on Estonia, which virtually shut down their entire country, doesn’t indicate Russian good will toward those they disagree with either.

Tentative Summation

We’re in deep kim-chi, and we’re talking about Paris Hilton.

Have a good day.

Frankly, I’m surprise at all the interest generated by my previous post on the “UFO” over the Channel Islands. I’ve received about 113 hits on that one post alone, which I found a curiosity.

Anyway, here’s a news clip I found on YouTube. It’s an interview with the pilot. As to his credibility and the credibility of this entire thing, you decide. One thing’s for sure, X-Files enthusiasts are having a field day.

Four years ago when I moved out to Los Angeles from Houston, a friend and I took a long road trip through the length of California. We drove through the Sierra Mountains, the Central Valley and through Lake Tahoe. We were careful to stay off the major highways and stuck mostly to the off-beat winding roads and small towns. It was the beginning of September and most of the tourists have gone back to work, and the all the children have gone back at school. Not that very many tourists would deliberately search for the nooks and crannies of small-town California, but it was nice still the same.

Of all the places we passed through and visited, Lake Tahoe was one of the most beautiful. Lush green pines trees, awesome mountain ranges and the calm, still blue waters of the lake. We passed through small, unassuming communities, many standing on stilts, others seemed to have built their foundations on hard granite.

All that’s gone now. Burned away. Cast into a fiery cavern and is devoured by its insatiable appetite.

Firefighters launched an aggressive attack Monday to corral a raging forest fire that had destroyed at least 220 homes and forced about 1,000 people to evacuate near the popular Lake Tahoe resort area.

The fire, believed to be caused by human activity, had charred nearly 2,500 acres - nearly 4 square miles - near the south end of the lake since it started Sunday afternoon. No injuries were reported.

It was less than 10 percent contained Monday morning, said Lt. Kevin House of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department.

“This is far and above the biggest disaster that has happened in this community, I don’t know, probably in forever,” House told reporters in an early morning briefing.

Flames came within a quarter mile of the 1,500-student South Tahoe High School during the night, and dozens of firefighters surrounded the school. A few miles south, hundreds of homes in Meyers were evacuated, authorities said.

Wind slowed to about 12 mph during the night, after gusting as high as 35 mph late Sunday, and temperatures dipped into the 30s, aiding firefighters’ efforts to corral the flames in the heavily wooded, parched terrain.

“Our incident commander is feeling very good right now,” said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Rex Norman. “We had more favorable conditions overnight. It was a good time to be charging in there and making some progress.”

“The fire is pretty much staying in the same place right now,” Norman said. “But that could change if the winds change.”

From the initial reports of the fire and how quickly its spreading, it sounds very much like wildfires in Colorado and Arizona in 2002 and the San Bernardino wildfire that raged in 2006. Both of these wildfires were able to consume tens of thousands of acres because the uncleared deadwood laying about became literally exploding tinderboxes. In 2002, approximately 410,000 acres of forests were burned in Arizona alone.

Environmentalists have blocked logging companies from clearing the deadwood for years, and in their efforts to preserve our pristine forests, they have succeeded in destroying it.

In 2002, CWA discussed much of the same thing in their article: Is Radical Environmentalism Fueling Western Fires

As raging, drought-propelled wildfires rip through western states, condemnation of the Clinton administration forest policy are tearing through state and local governments.

“We’ve got to clean up these forests,” Arizona Gov. Jane Hull told reporters this week from a meeting of western governors in Phoenix. Those comments were made as wildfires consumed 351,000 acres of forest and more than 390 homes in her state. Colorado, also ablaze, was already been declared a disaster area.

Critics say the previous administration enacted policies at the behest of environmental groups, including the elimination of 80 percent of logging on federal lands and the roadless area initiative, which hinder fire control efforts and maintenance by allowing deadwood and underbrush to accumulate.

“It is scandalous how the Clinton administration neglected our National Forests at the urging of wrong-thinking environmental groups,” said Tom Randall, director of the John P. McGovern, M.D., Center for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs for the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“Today we are losing millions of acres of forests, the habitat they provide, and the animals and birds—even people—that call these forests ‘home,’” he added.

To which the Environmentalists airily responded:

“The timber industry and its allies are quickly blaming decreased timber sales in national forests for the wildfires, with the hope of whipping the public into a hysteria to reverse attitudes and trends about national forest protection,” Mathew Koehler, spokesman for the National Forest Network told the Environmental News Network.

The Environmentalists aren’t the only problem though. After President Bush pushed through legislation to clear the deadwood, the West was in for a rude shock. Just shy of half of the timber companies in California have folded since 1992, a fact they discovered when they tried to thin out the forest around Lake Tahoe in 2003.

But it’s not working that way in the Tahoe National Forest’s Red Star
project, about 15 miles west of Lake Tahoe, and in a number of other
so-called salvage timber operations in California. Commercial loggers
are bidding low or not at all. The revenue envisioned by the Forest
Service is not pouring into the government’s coffers. The smallest
trees, which pose the greatest wildfire threat, are not being cleared
out, and the larger, more valuable and least flammable ones are hauled
away. Limbs and treetops left from timber cutting remain strewn across
the landscape like giant piles of kindling.

It is a scene, repeated up and down the Sierra, that raises questions
about the degree to which the federal government can rely on
commercial logging to help with its fire prevention work.

For one thing, the commercial strategy assumes a vibrant logging
economy that does not exist in California. It also implies that when
commercial logging makes a healthy profit, money will be immediately
available for clearing out the smaller trees and flammable debris. In
fact, much of that revenue, especially from salvage sales, is by law
earmarked for other uses. Last year, salvage harvests made up nearly
half the timber volume cut in California’s 18 national forests.

California’s timber industry has shrunk dramatically, forest
economists say, hurt by cheap Canadian competition, a steep drop in
timber output in national forests in the 1990s and the cost of doing
business in the state.

“The basic problem is that the industry in California, especially
production in the Sierra Nevada, has just gone away in the last
decade,” observed Rich Thompson, a resource economics and management
professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. “The number of mill closures is
phenomenal. They’re gone. The few [companies left] know they
practically have the wood basket to themselves and … don’t have
to be competitive.”

In 1992, there were 56 timber mills in California. Today there are 29.
Many of the remaining operations are owned by a single company, Sierra
Pacific Industries, which has for years been the biggest purchaser of
federal timber in the state.

Fewer mills mean fewer bids. Records compiled by Timber Data Co. of
Eugene, Ore., show that timber sale after sale in California national
forests attracted little or no interest from loggers this year. That
was true of offerings of live green trees and those killed by fires,
insects or storms.

“It is something that is becoming more common. It is really an effect
of the global market,” Jim Pena, supervisor of Northern California’s
Plumas National Forest, said of the anemic bidding situation. Parts of
a salvage project in the Plumas were offered three times this year
without getting a single bid.

In the Klamath National Forest in northwestern California, seven
separate timber sale offerings last summer failed to attract any bids,
according to Timber Data. In the Modoc National Forest in the state’s
northeastern tip, silence greeted an October appeal for bids on
portions of a 9,000-acre salvage project.

I don’t know if this problem was rectified by now. I hope for the sake of Lake Tahoe and the residents there that the forest was thinned out and the deadwood cleared. But the fire has already destroyed the area I visited… and there is no going back.

I just hope this wildfire doesn’t destroy it all.