Columns

As long as we have been talking about Gov. Susana Martinez and former Gov. Garry Carruthers, we don’t want former Gov. Bill Richardson to feel left out.
While our current governor darts around the nation and world, our immediate past governor, Bill Richardson is doing much the same. He is serving on numerous boards, some of which he heads. He is speaking at prestigious universities.
He is writing a book, “How to Sweet Talk a Shark.” It tells of his experiences successfully negotiating with dictators.
Richardson said the secrets are to connect with them personally. Let them vent about how badly the United States has treated them. Find out what they really need, not what they say they need. And use humor.
Negotiating with dictators is dangerous business. Richardson was basically by himself with no protection other than his own wits. He always had quiet approval of the presidents he served and he was a U.S. official.
But it all was taking place on a back channel. Richardson was good at it and has lived to tell the story. The book comes out this fall, but he already is being interviewed on television and in newspapers.

By now, most Americans have seen a QR code, even if they didn’t initially understand why these two-dimensional matrix bar codes were suddenly appearing on products, advertisements and business cards.
Called QR for “quick response,” the codes were created in 1994 by Japanese automakers to track parts.
Now companies around the world use them to link consumers directly to their websites, where they can shop and find coupons, special offers and product information.
While QR codes are already considered outmoded by the creators of next-generation apps that link the physical and virtual worlds in quicker and more entertaining ways, at least one New Mexico advertising agency believes QR codes haven’t outlived their usefulness and are more reliable than newer so-called “hardlinking” technologies.
Defining the value
Reading QR codes requires a scanner that’s available as a smartphone application. The scanner converts the image to an Internet address, where the digital content is posted.
Without the smartphone, the QR code is unreadable, making it worthless to people whose mobile phones lack Internet connectivity.

Open voting in primary elections is the latest idea tossed into the policy conversation by Think New Mexico, the Santa Fe-based nonpartisan, liberal think tank.
Open voting would mean registered independents, or “decline to state,” as we call it, could vote in primary elections. A majority of states allow this, Steve Terrell of The New Mexican wrote April 28 in his blog.
Inclusion is the big reason for bringing independents into the primary election process. Besides, better candidates might emerge.
A candidate with broad appeal to the electorate might not be strong enough to win a primary, tilted as they are to the right and left. Democrats embraced the idea. The Republicans, always worried that someone could disrupt the tight cabal, whined that someone might game the system, which is true, but massively irrelevant.
A well-stated general rationale comes from Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, a Democrat from Albuquerque elected in 2012. “Voting is what legitimizes everything that government does,” Ivey-Soto said as we closed our conversation in his cluttered one-man office.
Fred Nathan of Think New Mexico notes that allowing independents to vote in primaries is called “semi-open,” while having every registered voter pick a primary (Democrats vote in the Republican primary, etc.) is “open.”

Sunshine and clear skies greeted all of the runners and walkers and their eager dogs for the 16th Annual Dog Jog on April 27. This year’s Dog Jog, organized by the Atomic City Roadrunners, the Los Alamos Dog Obedience Club, and the Mountain Canine Corps search and rescue team raised over $10,000 for Friends of the Shelter.
FOS is a nonprofit organization that provides assistance to abandoned animals and to pets and their owners in northern New Mexico. Our catastrophic care program pays for veterinary care for sick or injured animals that have no owners or whose owners cannot afford the treatment.
Our spay/neuter program provides grants to our partner organizations, including the Española Valley Humane Society and the McKinley County Animal Shelter so that they can provide low- or no-cost spay/neuter services to their clients.