siege day 46

Today I learned that the reason we have some uneducated-sounding nutjobs in the Arizona legislature is because a few years back, Arizona leveled the playing field, financially, for candidates, so anyone who could raise 220 donations bigger than $5 could go for it. That apparently made it too easy for the uneducated-sounding nutjobs to look legit and make it into office.

In other news, Chevron's technical question guy was really, really helpful. He reminded me of the engineers I used to call in grad school, looking for some weird answer, and they'd happily chat your ear off. Apparently there are standards, and your gas has to fit into a very narrow window, contents-wise, so once you get it organized, it takes a lot of work to change it even a little bit. There are variations between batches, but it wouldn't be enough to cause a city-wide death cloud. This year's summer blend is the same as last year's, so we're good to go with blaming the Air Force base.

I got the FOIA request written, so hopefully in about a month (maybe less) we'll have actual evidence. But, it's the base. I just need them to understand what the problem is so they can tell me when they'll be done so I can come home.