Jessica and I were walking through a dark stretch of Mountain Lake Park and back to the Inner Richmond neighborhood when we saw an amazing purple twilight over the tree line, and Jessica took a great picture of the view.

Located in the Presidio, it’s quite an excellent park–I’ve written about it before and we even made a movie about skateboarding there and a podcast starring its resident birds–and now I’ve noticed that it even has a web site dedicated to it called Friends of Mountain Lake Park.

It looks like Michigan has been told that its anti-youth-drinking policies are unconstitutional. As this article notes, this is an especially acute issue around Michigan State University, where students are regularly harassed and detained like criminals for refusing to submit to illegal intrusions into their privacy.

‘A federal judge in Detroit today struck down as unconstitutional a Michigan law that allows police to force pedestrians under the age of 21 to take a Breathalyzer test without first obtaining a search warrant.

In a 32-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge David M. Lawson struck down the state’s Minor in Possession (MIP) law because it “authorizes police officers to perform a search of minors without a warrant or legal excuse for not obtaining one” in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. The decision does not apply to drivers of a motor vehicle and allows police officers to administer breath tests without warrants in emergencies.

Michigan is among a handful of states nationwide with an MIP law that makes it illegal for young adults and minors who are pedestrians to refuse a Breathalyzer test even though police do not have a search warrant. Those who refuse to take tests in Michigan are guilty of a civil infraction and must pay a $100 fine. In addition, police in some places — including Michigan State University — tell students that if they refuse to submit to a Breathalyzer upon demand that they could spend up to a dozen hours in jail.’

These policies are especially stupid because they punish the relatively harmless act of 19-year-olds walking home drunk after a party. Progress comes slow–it’s not surprising that the federal courts had to get involved to put a stop to these authoritarian “party patrol” police witch-hunts looking to bust people for “Minor in Possession,” the likes of which are unknown even in the college town areas of other nearby Midwestern states like Illinois and Ohio. Read the whole article and see what I’m talking about.

GM’s plan to transfer to the United Auto Workers Union the burden of their benefits tab is a bunch of financial shenanigans, for sure, but it’s more than that. It’s false hope for all the deluded boosters of Detroit and its failing auto industry. A whole bunch of room on GM’s balance sheet is great for the company’s executives–but it won’t fix the American auto industry’s fundamental problems–high costs, bad finances, and the worst management cadre in American industry today.

If GM declares bankruptcy, as they should, their assets can be liquidated and sold and that could be used toward compensation for bond holders, and the rest of the needed benefits could be picked up by the normal government agencies. But instead, GM is allowed to fail on its feet, which is being sold as a way to help retirees get benefits. But as usual in corporate communications, the more important reasons for doing something are left out–in this case, the shareholders of GM (largely investment firms) ensure value for their stock holdings, at least for now.

Management at the major auto companies has been very poor for a long time, and something like bankruptcy would probably be a therapeutic shock for GM to get rid of all those old-school managers (rather than the UAW workers that always get blamed and demonized by the media) whose decisions deserve the lion’s share of blame for the company’s problems. Looking for quick profit, these managers have turned GM into a bank with a health care division and an auto subsidiary. They backed one bad or mediocre new car idea after another, from the Oldsmobile Aurora to the Hummer H3. They decided in the 1990s to build their entire companies around heavy, inefficient, dangerous trucks instead of consumer vehicles. Now with the higher price of oil cars like Toyota’s Prius are big sellers, and though trucks remain popular GM extends enormous credit to buyers because they have become so expensive.

Aside from that, the management of the American auto industry are a truly flat-footed, narrow-minded, dim-witted group. This is an archetypal 20th century industry–they really haven’t changed, especially in the executive suite–and I wonder if anyone wants to try to convince me that the future of the car industry isn’t centered in Aichi, Japan.

The idea that some turnaround could happen in America’s car industry due to a shuffling around of debts is laughable. Put aside the failure yet again of our supposedly “free market” economy to function properly–or our failure to let it function–and just look at the state of Michigan.

When I was there at Michigan State in the late 1990s, the minor league baseball team in Lansing was called the Lansing Lugnuts and they played at Oldsmobile Park. After I was there for a few years the Oldsmobile division was completely shut down by GM. The collapse of the auto industry has turned a once-proud state into a place with declining income levels, slow growth and high unemployment. And that’s everywhere–go to the worst places, like the neighborhoods along the highway in the west of Detroit with its gray rows of abandoned, decrepit old houses that line sad old boulevards with only their width to testify to their former grandeur, while the streets sit strangely quiet with few cars and shell-shocked homeless people roll shopping carts over the ashes of the auto empire.

And by the way, even this deal with the UAW involving the setup of “Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association,” or VEBA, is a temporary fix. As the Economist magazine admits, despite its typical attempt to sell the deal because it benefits the company’s executives:

‘But there is also a potential downside, as the UAW has learnt to its cost. Two earlier VEBAs, set up at Detroit Diesel and Caterpillar, have gone bust.’

This industry is not coming back. Put a fork in it instead of more money.

Dan and I want to get a dog. They’re lovable, fun, enjoy the outdoors just like us. But until we can get a real one, let’s see what virtual ones we can find. I like this little black one from RockYou. Pretty cute, and he won’t eat my shoes!

Podcast 11 (remix) is now out–you can check it out on the pacificpelican.us podcast blog, or if you want to watch it quickly you can view the Flash video version at Webshots.

This is the second podcast shot entirely with my cell phone camera–the first was number seven. For earlier podcasts I had occasionally thrown in soundless video from my old Kodak EasyShare alongside my Samsung camera-phone video, and for podcast 6 at Yellowstone Jessica and I took a bit of the video with a borrowed point-and-shoot Canon Pro.

But one device was the anchor for the early podcasts. Essential video footage for most of them was taken with a Casio Exilim which really shined taking videos as well as photos, took quality sound recordings, and was both small and portable. Recently that camera, which we had used for a year and a half as our main video and still camera, broke and we needed a replacement.

As I mention on podcast 10, the new camera is a very cool Panasonic Lumix that has 10x optical zoom and lots of powerful features. As you can see from podcast number 10, which was the first podcast to use that camera, it also takes very good video.

However the Lumix takes QuickTime video that can be played on my desktop and even uploaded to my podcast server (as in number 10 which is just one uncut movie)–but I can’t edit and remix it with the software tools I currently have. So two more podcasts have been shot and produced but await mixing. For now here are the synopses: In podcast 8, Jessica and I visit Yosemite for our anniversary. In podcast 9, a car rams into the back of a bus that I am riding in the front of and I video the aftermath.

For now I think podcast 11 has some pretty interesting moments–and it’s a “remix” because I actually re-shot the “interlude” part (i.e. the first mix) and then added footage. One of the sequences is a sort of reference to my movie “The Dog of Geary Boulevard,” and another is taken from unused podcast 7 footage. The rest is totally new–more a sequence of random clips than anything, but feel free to surmise plot lines. Movies sort of write themselves in San Francisco.