“We have no desire to attend any event sponsored by your organization and its narrow beliefs steeped in religious bigotry and intolerance.” — Joint response by PRIDE, NARAL and the WSSA to a Radio Christi invitation

IN MY TRAVELS I ENJOY READING COLUMNS, letters or articles in various cities to learn differing perspectives. A column by Mike Adams titled, “PRIDE: Progressives Rejecting Intellectual Diversity Explode,” recently caught my attention.

Mr. Adams is a rarity: a tenured professor, former liberal and now conservative Christian. This dual conversion occurred after his achieving tenure, which he has stated would not have otherwise been offered.

The piece, from which the above quote was taken, pertains to Radio Christi, a conservative Christian group on campus at UNC-Wilmington, where Mr. Adams teaches. In his column, he defines one of the purposes of the group:

“They seek (to open up the marketplace of ideas) in at least two important ways:

“• First, when people who have different beliefs bring in speakers and sponsor programs, they go and ask questions in a respectful manner. I’ve never heard a single report that they have been disrespectful in any way when they attend the events of their opponents.

“• Second, when they bring in their own speakers and sponsor their own programs, they invite the opposition so people can ask questions in a respectful manner.”

Mr. Adams, offers his astute translation of the response to Radio Christi’s invitation, cited above:

“We are too open-minded to be open to your point of view; we are morally superior to you because we are not religious; and we are too tolerant to tolerate your intolerance.”

The Naming of the Barack Obama Memorial Landfill was approved by the North Dakota State Senate 35-10, with two Democrats voting in the affirmative. At least that was what the email I recently received stated. A quick visit to Snopes.com indicated the story originally appeared in November at the Daily Currant, a satirical Web-based news site.

Stories such as this periodically make the rounds, with some people believing them, frankly because they want to believe such insults.

The story is another example of the disrespect shown to President Obama by those who dislike him on any of several levels. Supporters of the president are outraged: “No president has received the level of contempt and disrespect he has been shown.” Unfortunately, these people do not recall recent history:

In 2008 the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco promoted a name for a new waste treatment plant: “The George Bush Waste Water Treatment Plant.” The reason, given by group spokesman Brian McConnell, was to have a permanent method by which the Bush haters could perpetuate their hate by passing it on to future generations:

“Fifty years from now in a civics class, students will learn about the Lincoln Memorial, that other presidents are on Mount Rushmore and George W. Bush got a sewage plant. It will prompt people to ask why, and they can discuss the Iraq war, and everything that led to it. People want to forget bad moments of history, and this is our way of making sure that doesn’t happen.”

The Daily Currant’s slap at President Obama was not intended to be taken seriously. But how serious was the San Francisco proposal? Well, it seems a petition was generated that gathered almost 12,000 signatures, or better than 50 percent more than the required minimum. The proposal; Proposition R, was placed on the ballot, where it failed 70-30 percent.

Interesting that the anti-Obama group proposed the insult as a joke, while 30 percent of the voters of San Francisco took a similar slap at President Bush in a very serious way.

Desalination is returning to California’s Santa Barbara area, as the Charles Meyer Reverse Osmosis (RO) plant is scheduled to be rehabilitated later this year. The plant, built in 1992 as a response to the drought of the late ’80s, operated just long enough to pay for itself. Last year the city of Santa Barbara spent $750,000 on a study to reopen the plant and are currently seeking bids (estimated cost is $1.9 million) to accomplish this task. Plans call for a production of 7,500 acre-feet of water per year (a family of four uses about one acre-foot per year).

I have a bit of personal history with the plant, as I was involved in the original project during conception and construction. Ingersoll-Rand, my employer at the time, built the pumps and energy recovery turbines, which are no longer the best available technology. Today lower pressures are required to drive the water through the membranes, resulting in a more cost-effective operation and obsoleting the existing pumps.

Farther south in Carlsbad, an RO plant is progressing quite rapidly and is now about 60 percent complete. Israel-based IDE designed the system for the plant, which will produce 153 acre-feet of water per day, more than seven times that of the Santa Barbara facility.

In many respects it is a shame that the Santa Barbara facility was not used more, but the plant was conceived for emergencies and not for permanent operation. Santa Barbara, now in month 10 of a stage 2 drought, may be repeating the same mistake of 1992 — waiting too long to take action during a crisis. From engineering to project award to startup, the project to rehabilitate the facility will likely take a minimum of 12-18 months before completion.

The two projects offer an interesting contrast in leadership. In the case of Carlsbad the project has been in the development and approval phase for many years, long before the current drought began. Thus Carlsbad represents planning, not in response to a crisis, but to prevent and ease a potential crisis. Santa Barbara, on the other hand, has long had a partial solution at hand.

Desalination is not the complete answer to current water shortages, but it should be a part of the discussion. It’s encouraging that progress is being made in this regard.

Dennis Lund is a mechanical engineer who lived in Benicia for more than 20 years.