Results tagged “publicaffairs”

The truth is out there -- in Cordelia, outside Vallejo, at the International Bird Rescue Research Center. A technician x-raying a male mallard duck with a broken wing looked down at the x-ray and saw..... THE FACE OF AN ALIEN!!! AAAAAAAAAAGH!!! (We've helpfully circled the face for you on the picture). Can we just quote from this excellent press release?

The IBRRC staff discussed if an alien life form was either consumed by or trying to communicate with the people of Earth through the duck, because the center is located in an area of California known for its mysterious crop circles. Karen Benzel, Public Affairs Director for IBRRC noted that the symmetry of the alien's face is perfect, with an intense grimace, as if it was in anguish after being eaten.

They don't know where the alien face came from, though results of the duck's necropsy are still pending. (The duck died of its injuries.... or did it???). They'll be auctioning off the x-ray on EBay, to benefit the group. The auction goes live on Sunday.

Saturday, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean and about 400 Democratic Asian American party activists and officials filled the halls of the San Jose Marriott to attend the Asian American and Pacific Islander Democratic Leadership Summit (.pdf). Howard Dean was the keynote speaker and spoke on Saturday morning at around 9:30. He gave the DemocraticMessage, or what we perceived as the "Together, we can do better" speech. [Ed. note: is that the same or different from the "yeeeeaaaaargh!" speech?] For those who weren't there, and are interested, it is similar to the speech he gave to the Jewish Council of Public Affairs. The conference was energizing and uplifting with speeches from the first Asian American Boston City Council member Sam Yoon and from the first Asian American San Jose City Council member Madison Nguyen. The Saturday lunch speaker was Mike Honda, who spoke on leveraging an Asian American background to run for political office. Of course, no conference is without handouts. Consequently, there was an organizing tip handout given out in the late Saturday afternoon titled, "Democratic State Party Structures - How to Navigate and Move Ahead, Four Important Things to Know." This handout did not talk about how Democrats can win elections, but instead focused on the finer points of the Party such as becoming familiar with Robert’s rules of order. Who said that politics was all fun and games? Do not despair though, as another rule from the handout was to "ESTABLISH Political Convictions and Strength." (capitalization in original). Well, Asian-American Democrats, go change the world! Just make sure to do it according to Robert’s Rules of Order and only after establishing your political convictions.

Picture of Madison Nguyen and Mike Honda at a San Jose event in 2005 [ed. note: for love or money, we can't seem to find any pictures of the actual event online. Send us some!]. SFist Tiffany, contributing

Man, whose job do we not want this week? BART spokesman Linton Johnson's. Poor Linton had to do yet another round of ritual apologies after a massive computer failure crashed BART for about two hours in the middle of the evening commute yesterday. It's been a pretty hellish month for BART, as you can see by perusing our Your Commute archives. (We're only posting on this because we assume SFist Jon has spent the night somewhere between Millbrae and San Bruno, hoppin' mad.) BART just installed a new computer system to run the trains, and three completely-separate incidents have crashed the system every day this week so far. Because BART themselves didn't know how long it would take to reboot, they weren't able to give accurate time estimates -- and adding insult to injury, the first time they thought they got the system up, it crashed like five minutes later. Big ups to Johnson, though, who really has this apology thing down. And as we got on BART this morning, we picked up a marigold-colored apology bulletin from BART Media & Public Affairs, apologizing profusely for the problems, explaining the situation with the computer, and saying they're working hard to fix the situation. It made for good reading as we were stuck between 16th and Civic Center, waiting for the smoking brakes from a train ahead of us to cool down. Picture of the beleaguered Johnson by the Chron.

We've been a bit remiss in keeping up with all our blog reading, or we would have caught this story on BoingBoing ourselves. But it was big enough to have been forwarded to us by friends of SFist Ross and Jeff.