Editorial 
This page was last updated on January 06, 2009 .

Beyond Ridiculous
by: Larry Walker, 3/14/04

I recently read something that reminded me of a scene from a Sci-Fi spoof that I once saw. If I recall correctly, that spoof was SpaceBalls starring Mel Brooks.

The scene that came to mind was when they were either running from, or chasing, the bad guys and needed more speed. It went something like this:

"More speed!" "Flank speed captain?" "Faster!" "Attack speed captain?" "Faster!" "Do you mean Ridiculous speed captain?" "Beyond that!" "You don't mean ......." "Yes, I mean LUDICROUS SPEED!" The movie's special effects folks apparently had a little difficulty trying to figure out how to show "ludicrous speed" on the spaceship's viewscreen. Moving or streaking stars or even galaxies were just not enough. They finally settled on turning everything plaid!

What I read that brought that scene to mind was a bit of bovish in a letter that was sent to BLM's Sage Grouse Team by the Nevada Department of Agriculture, an impressive collection of double-digit IQ's.

The particular statement that went beyond ridiculous and all the way to ludicrous was:

"The concept that Sage Grouse are an indicator species of sagebrush obligates and sagebrush habitat health is troublesome. Sage grouse are a prey species or game bird with numbers managed by hunting in every western state. Sage Grouse exist to be eaten, to base range health and sagebrush ecosystem health upon this species is absurd."

This jewel of self-imposed ecological illiteracy is in the first bulleted paragraph of page 2 in the scanned copy of the 4-page letter that is available online at the following links:
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