The human brain is a thing of mystery. It can get us to the moon, cure diseases, and solve equations of enormous complexity. Yet all you need is one loose mental connection to qualify as a slack-witted, dim-sighted, dead-from-the-neck-up and dead-from-the-neck-down simpleton. Take me for an example: I’m a smoker…
No one knew what U-Haul founder L.S. Shoen had in mind at his “Celebration of Love and Respect.” L.S. was as unpredictable as a desert storm. I’m a 180-degree guy, he often said, and I’ll change direction before you blink if I think it’s right. He had started U-Haul with…
Sure, Arizona has the world’s largest land gorge (the Grand Canyon) and the world’s smallest rodent (the northern pygmy mouse) and the country’s oldest town (838-year-old Oraibi on the Hopi Reservation) and more species of hummingbirds than any other state (14). We’ve got the world’s biggest cacti (saguaros with arms…
Terry Franks admitted shooting two people to death and seriously wounding two others. That part was cut and dried. What was his defense? Insanity. Uranium-related temporary insanity. Gamma rays on the brain, so to speak. The 25-year-old Navajo has certifiable brain damage that left him with an IQ of about…
Howard Keim, the developer hired to run Scottsdale’s Horseworld project, has been criticized for the sluggish financial performance of the multimillion-dollar playground for pony people. Now he’s named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit accusing him and several other people of defrauding investors in another equestrian park near Santa…
It wasn’t the fault of Arizona Public Service Co. customers that the Palo Verde nuclear plant wound up with a badly designed pump. But the bean counters hired to look at expenses at the $9.3 billion plant think the customers should pay big bucks because of it. To no one’s…
Let’s get to the moral of this story right up-front: Valley National Bank thinks a happy employee is a puzzled employee. The behemoth of local banks is trying to get its 7,000 employees’ attention by giving them puzzles–jigsaws, Rubik’s cubes and the like. The idea is tied to their prize-winning…
Is Rose Mofford hiding something? The bouffant-coiffed occupant of the ninth floor of the capitol tower doesn’t think it’s any of the public’s business with whom she is meeting and consulting before making decisions. It seems that somehow letting the public know who is bending her ear might, in her…
Dear Mr. Fitzpatrick: I really resent being called stupid and insensitive for my service as a juror on the Martin Mix case. I would like to point out that just because the evidence indicated there had been sexual intercourse between the parties does not always mean the conclusion should be…
As a kid I suspected that environmentalists did not enjoy life very much. I mean, no one would ever pay cash money to watch Jacques Cousteau dance. Every ecological advocate I saw looked and acted like some weedy refugee who’d fasted a tad too long on groatcakes and carrot juice…
Warning: If you aren’t a parent and have no intention of becoming one, read no farther. The following contains information you don’t want to know, wouldn’t understand, and are in no way equipped to stomach. There. Now that the pantywaists among you have moved on to the Puzzle page, we…
Easter Sunday morning. Slowly, you walk into the alley south of Madison Street. It’s still partially dark. It’s 6:35 a.m. A steady rain falls. It’s been raining all night. On the radio, they talk of flash flood warnings. The fat copies of the Sunday Republic make a last-ditch effort to…
If you’re keeping score, utility man KEITH TURLEY is batting cleanup. At the same time the APS mogul is officially luring big-league sports and a domed stadium to downtown Phoenix, he’s helping someone build a stadium in a competing city. SUNCOR, the ailing real-estate branch of Turley’s PINNACLE WEST conglom,…
Editor’s Note: This story was changed from its original version to eliminate the name of the victim. Well, the law has been screwed. And this war is over. A woman, who said she was the victim of a vicious rape by a police officer, has now become a victim of…
Although the losing attorneys won’t admit it, they probably wish now they’d never appealed a Maricopa County judge’s ruling that the chronically mentally ill deserve the services the state has said they should receive. Last week’s Arizona Supreme Court decision which upheld that ruling–a landmark decision that goes farther than…
Can Phoenicians be lured out of their cars? One downtown business has found the answer is yes. But it takes more than just slogans and hoopla. It takes the green stuff. Valley National Bank boasts one of the best records of any Valley company on getting its employees to use…
Cindy Resnick doesn’t think state health director Ted Williams should set himself up as some sort of morality cop. The Tucson Democratic lawmaker is squabbling with Williams over his refusal to record birth certificates when a married woman won’t list her husband as the father of the child. Williams, an…
ValTrans opponents say we don’t need the mass transit system because–and here’s where everyone starts laughing–the air quality in Phoenix is improving. Laugh all you want, the opponents say, we’ve got the statistics to prove it. In fact, in one of the brochures they’re distributing around the Valley, opponents have…
He couldn’t seem to leave town. As Tucson grew larger and more grotesque, he kept talking about going to Moab or Ajo or somewhere. He told me once that Tucson was easy to leave–he’d done it six times. But he never seemed quite able to go through with it, any…
Add Klan-superstar-turned-Louisiana- GOP-legislator DAVID DUKE to the long list of people who’ve beaten BRUCE BABBITT at the polls.Reporter JAMES RIDGEWAY of the VILLAGE VOICE mined that nugget recently, to which a former campaign worker for Bruce snootily replied that Babbitt had already dropped out of the presidential race when Duke…
Flamboyant defense lawyers have always fascinated me. The first one I ever met was Ernie Navarre. I met him long ago in Lima, Ohio. Navarre wore a gold watch and a different suit every day. He drove a big car. But he also regularly undertook the defense of seemingly hopeless…
Dedicated to the memory of Ed Abbey, an Arizonan who understood that it is important to litter the asphalt paths of America with beer cans pitched from a fast-moving vehicle. Larry Miller, director of the Regional Public Transportation Authority (RPTA), sat in New Times’ conference room and lied to the…
