by Ian Punnett

Have you caught the new website design for Coast to Coast AM?

Here's the work in progress--the new "beta" version:

beta.coasttocoastam.com

And here's the direct link for a new photo we took for the website.  That's me and my favorite pipe as I exist just before going on the air every night.  Scroll down a bit.

beta.coasttocoastam.com/p...

With my trip last week to the talk radio seminar in LA and all that catching up I had to do this week, I might have missed how much attention this story got.  If you already heard the headline . . . 

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'

. . . then pardon me for repeated old news.   But if you, like me, are a few stories behind, this one is worth taking the time for.

I have no idea if it’s true or not or whether it’s just Sy Hersh’s conspiratorial fantasy.  We asked him to come on the show and explain this book that he’s working on but we were told he is not doing interviews on this subject at this time.

Still, in a talk delivered this past week at the University of Minnesota just down the street from me, the same journalist that blew the lid off the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War is making a new claim.  

“After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state . . . Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.”

There’s more.  Here’s the link for the whole story.

www.minnpost.com/ericblac...

Now, on a lighter note, I want to share something with you that I’ve been working on called “Tri-Color Foam Carwash Art.”

Not every car wash features “tri-color foam” but it’s popular around my neighborhood.  Different car washes have different colors in their “tri-color foam” mix and not all foams are the same.  Mostly the foams are for waxing but some are conditioners.  

But a few weeks ago I became fascinated by the swirling colors and the patterns they create before during and after they are being rinsed off my windshield.  

That’s when I started taking photos of the foam.  Never mind the names of the pieces--they may or may not make any sense to you--but I encourage you to take moment to enjoy the colors of your car wash too and see what you can see in the swirling foams.

Here's my most recent piece called "Bill O's Soapy Love."  I love the purples shades.  If didn't follow the stories of the weird this week, never mind the title.

This next one was taken right around the same time as the color all washed away.  It gave me the feeling was that I was lying on a sandy shore with the waves washing over me so I call it "Surf." 

Named after a woman with whom I am friendly, this one is called "Astyck."

This next one is my favorite so far.  I was in a car wash I don't often visit and it has recently started using new colors in their foam.  It gave me this beautiful cascading cloud effect which I call "Owatonna Sunrise" after the rural town in Minnesota where this is very little light pollution.

I think this is really, really lovely and I am as proud as somebody can be of a photo of colored soap on a windshield.

This next one was my first attempt at making art out these patterns and I've called it "Daffodils" for reasons that are way too complicated to explain.  Just go with it.  After this one I realized the secret was "more foam, less canvass," so to speak.

All in all, pretty weird, huh?

Still, not as weird as this:

BELLEVUE, Wash. -- A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists proposed the "Star Wars" defense system to knock Soviet missiles from the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now aiming their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito.

In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light.

The insects survived this particular test, which used a non-lethal laser. But if these researchers have their way, the Cold War missile-defense strategy will be reborn as a WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction.  (WSJ)

If shooting down mosquitoes with lasers sounds crazy then you ought to see how big the skeeters get in Minnesota!  

I think I feel the inspiration for more "Tri-Color Foam Carwash Art" coming on . . .