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Got an old backyard swimming pool that’s sitting empty? Turn it into a self-sustaining garden! That’s what this Arizonan family did:
When we purchased our first home in Mesa, AZ on October of 2009, it came with a large, empty, and run-down pool. Rather than spending thousands of dollars in fixing the pool or having it filled with fill dirt we decided to design an inexpensive & self-sufficient urban greenhouse. Initially, we had anticipated self-sufficiency by 2012 but we achieved our goal by mid-2010. Our family gets about 8 fresh eggs a day, unlimited tilapia fish, organic fruit, veggies, and herbs 365 days a year.
Link – Thanks Tiffany!
We don’t post a lot of politics here on Neatorama, so pardon me for this post about the new and controversial Arizona law that forced local police to check whether a person is an illegal immigrant (presumably from Mexico).
Critics contend that the law will lead to racial profiling. Even Mexican President Felipe Calderón has blasted the law as violating basic human rights.
Whether you agree with the law or not, here’s the point of this post: it turns out that despite its bluster, Mexico actually has very similar laws on its book against the country’s own Honduran illegal immigrants!
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said the law "violates inalienable human rights" and Democrats in Congress applauded Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s criticisms of the law in a speech he gave on Capitol Hill last week.
Yet Mexico’s Arizona-style law requires local police to check IDs. And Mexican police freely engage in racial profiling and routinely harass Central American migrants, say immigration activists. [...]
"There (in the United States), they’ll deport you," Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, said as he rested in a makeshift camp with other migrants under a highway bridge in Tultitlán. "In Mexico they’ll probably let you go, but they’ll beat you up and steal everything you’ve got first."
Chris Hawley of USA Today has the full story: Link (Photo: Sergio Solache/USA Today)
A stunning, other-worldly experience, the Antelope Canyon in Arizona is one of the most stunning slot canyons in the world. Photography is necessarily difficult from the depths but these shots are amazing.
Over the thousands of millennia it took to create the full effect the water slowly but inexorably made the corridors of the canyons deeper and steeper. The hard edges of the rock were inevitably worn down and formed the flowing shapes on the rock face. So it was not the work of mighty and ancient Navajo spirits (perhaps…) but of the sheer tenacious persistence of the elements.
(image credit: Flickr user brentbat)
From the Upcoming 
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A Cave Creek, Arizona city council race ended in a tie, with both candidates receiving 660 votes, confirmed by a recount. So they decided the winner by drawing cards!
Adam Trenk and Thomas McGuire, both in blue jeans and open-collar shirts, strode nervously into Town Hall with their posses. There stood the town judge. He selected a deck of cards from a Stetson hat and shuffled it — having removed the jokers — six times.
Mr. McGuire, 64, a retired science teacher and two-term incumbent on the Town Council, selected a card, the six of hearts, drawing approving oos and aws from his supporters.
Mr. Trenk, 25, a law student and newcomer to town, stepped forward. He lifted a card — a king of hearts — and the crowd roared. Cave Creek had finally selected its newest Council member.
“It’s a hell of a way to win — or lose — an election,” Mr. McGuire said.
(image credit: Joshua Lott/The New York Times)
(image credit: Arizona Game and Fish Department)
