Posted inHome life

In the belly of the beast–a tale of hard drive hell

It's been a strange two days. I hardly know who I am anymore, or what I've been doing. I must seek clues in what I see around me. Empty coffee cup. Paper towel with jelly stains. Shiny anti-static wrapper. Screwdriver. PC card slot placeholders. Two tiny screws. Computer manuals. Receipt from CMS Peripherals, Inc. with "You bastards will die!!!" scrawled on it in red crayon. Hmmm. That's my handwriting. What's been going on? Ah, it all is starting to come back now...my eeensyweensy 20GB notebook hard drive had become filled to overflowing with my verbiage, and those endless Windows XP…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

God blesses America?

On this eve of Bush's State of the Union speech, it is appropriate to ponder the all-important questions, "Does God bless America?", and "Does America bless God?" Recently there was a letter to the editor in our local newspaper that made a daring suggestion: maybe it is best for us to humbly bless God, rather than make imperious demands on the divine--God bless America!--such as our President is wont to do. Obviously this person was a thinly disguised neo-pagan, or perhaps even an Al-Quaida mole, because the evidence is clear that God truly does put America first among all the…
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Posted inFamily

30 Reasons for a Father Not to Have a Daughter

In honor of my daughter, Celeste Vos, whose 31st birthday is today, I have reprised in a much more public fashion last year's birthday greeting, tenderly titled "30 Reasons for a Father Not to Have a Daughter." I probably should have updated it to "31...", but the Super Bowl has started, and I really can't think of any new reasons, anyway. Now that she's past 30 (time to have children, don't you think?), Celeste has become wonderfully attentive and sensitive to her father, even when she isn't asking for money. I'm the one, this year, who didn't get a card…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Almost a fan

I was so thrilled yesterday to get some fan email! Well, almost. I suppose I should have recognized right away from the message that something was wrong, but my desperate need for praise and approval blinded me for a while. Here's the message, with my (almost) fan's name omitted: DEAR MR. HINES, MY NAME IS...AND I AM IN FIRST GRADE. I CAN'T WAIT FOR YOU TO COME TO OLD BETHPAGE GRADE SCHOOL NEXT WEEK. I READ YOUR BOOK, THE MONSTER'S TEST, IN SCHOOL TODAY. I LOVED IT. YOU ARE A VERY GOOD AUTHOR. I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET YOU. YOUR…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Iraq irrationality

So tell me, where am I wrong in pointing out this particular piece of Iraq irrationality? Last night I was reading a Time magazine story about Rumsfeld's war plans. Reportedly he plans to emphasize the use of special forces troops, who are to swoop in at the beginning of the war and prevent Hussein from using his chemical, biological, and/or nuclear weapons. Now, one has to assume that this means the special forces will (1) be able to find out where the weapons are stored, and (2) be able to destroy them after they find them. But...isn't this just what…
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Posted inMiscellany

Marvelous spam compendium

If you aren't getting enough ads for penis enlargement and home business opportunities in your email inbox, Mark Morford has put together a marvelous compendium in his SFGate.com column. At least, I assume these are genuine excerpts from email ads. I've seen some of them, but Mark must get a lot more spam than I do. I also like his earlier piece, "Are Hummer Owners Idiots? More delightful proof positive that most SUVs are, in fact, morally repugnant. Go, America!" Apparently there is solid research to show that large SUV owners are more ego-driven and insecure than drivers of other…
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Posted inSustainability

Renaming Fairview makes the news

It was both scary and exciting to approach the newspaper box this morning, knowing that an article about the Fairview renaming effort, and my online poll, probably would be in the Statesman-Journal. You never know how a story will come out, after you talk to a reporter. Laurence Cruz, the environment reporter, called me yesterday afternoon after I had written a letter to the editor about the poll, and had been told by the editorial page editor that it really was a press release, not a letter. OK, whatever. I had gotten some resistance from the management of Sustainable Fairview…
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Posted inEntertainment

Golden Globe awards

Having just seen Adaptation, we were pleased that Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep got supporting actor/actress awards for their roles in this great movie. Not being familiar with Cooper, I was astounded to see a old (meaning, about my age) white-haired guy go up on stage to get his award--never would have recognized him as the largely-toothless good old southern boy orchid hunter he played in Adaptation. One of the best lines in this movie, or at least one of the few lines we remember: "It's what you love that matters, not what loves you." So, pursue your passion, and…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Thanks, “Stop Densification” supporters

Laurel and I greatly appreciate the donations we've received recently in response to our "help, we need more money for the Stop Densification in Spring Lake Estates Committee" letter. With the help of other concerned neighbors, we're doing our best to overturn the initial approval of the Oak Drive partitioning request. Well, Laurel is doing most of the real work; I mainly help with the typing and other clerical chores. Friday, Laurel went down to the county planning department and picked up the partitioner's response to our appeal. Fortunately, it still looks like we have the facts and the law…
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Posted inFamily

Happy Birthday, dear sister!

click to enlarge Carol Ann, this is a public online cyberspaced weblog birthday greeting from your brother, all the way from Salem, Oregon to Castries, St. Lucia. In other words, like always I forgot to mail a card so it could get there in time, so I have to say "happy birthday" electronically. Well, at least this is a refreshing change from email, or those "Blue Mountain" sorts of cyber-greeting cards. Hey, I went to some trouble to find an old photo of us, scan it, and touch it up. I love how you are looking so adoringly at your…
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Posted inSustainability

Feed the PollMonkey, and help rename Fairview

I had a good time yesterday learning about PollMonkey, and setting up a polling page where people can express their opinion about which proposed new name for the Fairview sustainable development they like best. Econia, Pringle, Ekone, Terramore--these are the candidates at the moment. Be sure to take the poll, which is at www.brianhines.com/renamefairview.htm As I say on the web page, email me if you have any comments on the names, or want to suggest another name. On January 27 the members of Sustainable Fairview Associates, who include Laurel and me, are supposed to choose a new name for the…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Laurel’s letter–she’s published!

Now we finally can stop running up to the end of the driveway each morning, grabbing the newspaper, anxiously scanning the opinion page for Laurel's coyote letter. Today, right there smack dab in the middle of the page, is her letter to the editor. Laurel was spurred to write after we heard some distressed-sounding coyote calls late one night, seemingly coming from the property of a neighbor who has been threatening to set traps/poison to kill the coyotes who supposedly are threatening the feral cats that he and his wife like to feed. Of course, leaving food out for cats…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

AAA, and the middle way

The channel 2 evening news last night had a poll that showed the three-year income tax increase narrowly ahead. Amazing. That would be one of the great voting surprises in Oregon history, if the measure passes after all the pundits had pronounced it dead on arrival. We've mailed in our "yes" votes; everyone else, do the same. Hopefully, the normally apathetic people in our formally great state are being aroused by the painfully clear consequences of inaction--of letting state-funded education, health care, criminal justice system, and so on, go down the tubes into a morass of mediocrity. Along these lines,…
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Posted inPhilosophy Science

Soulful science

For an interesting, if dense, scientific consideration of soul, consciousness, and Platonic truth, read "Morality at the Planck Scale," a chat with Stuart Hameroff. Reading this Metanexus posting, I recalled that Hameroff is the anesthesiologist whose work Roger Penrose cites in his equally dense (and much longer, being a book) "Shadows of the Mind." The basic notion of these brilliant guys is that teeny-tiny microtubules in the brain's nerve cells are small enough to involve quantum effects at the teeniest-tiniest level of physical reality, which is the Planck scale. This means that there is a connection between us, our brain,…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Garden Poet needs a weblog, don’t you think?

I got to know the Garden Poet, a.k.a Keith Ecklund, when we hired him to do some extensive landscaping on our previously unpoetic yard. Whereas another prospective landscaper was going to prepare a detailed computerized plan, showing every detail of what they planned to do, Keith basically showed us the landscaper's equivalent of the proverbial business plan sketched on the back of a cocktail napkin, a very sketchy conceptual outline, and said "trust me." We did, and we ended up loving his work. I enjoyed looking out the window and seeing Keith perched on the seat of his idling tractor,…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Positivity appreciated, feedback welcomed

I've already heard from some new HinesSight viewers (well, almost all the viewers are new, actually), who said some nice things about our humble weblog--especially the photo of Serena, which seems to be the favorite post so far. Some problems also were pointed out, and I'm trying to fix them. I'm slowly learning some of the tricks of the trade of the Internet, such as "don't reduce the margin of Word files unless you want some browsers to see what you've written as a teeny-tiny one-word column that stretches on for near-infinity." No, I didn't mean to do this with…
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Posted inScience

New sexual anxiety: length matters

Length of the index and ring fingers, that is. I learned this last night, watching a Discovery Channel program about the differences between men and women (I know, I know...you'd think, at the age of 54, I wouldn't need such education). One experiment with boys and girls was highly encouraging: they dumped a bunch of $100 bills from a balcony and filmed a group of young boys and a group of young girls separately trying to catch the bills before they hit the ground. The boys caught six bills, and the girls caught zero, nada, zilch, which goes a long…
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Posted inPhilosophy Plotinus Writing/Weblogs

Trusting truth

Here's a question: if we had a choice between knowing the absolute 100% truth about existence, or remaining with our current beliefs, what would we do? I posed this question during a talk I gave in Seattle last year, and I remember being met with a lot of quizzical faces (which isn't unusual for me when I speak, but I don't necessarily consider this to be a bad thing; if an audience is looking quizzical, at least they aren't asleep). It's a good question, though. Most of us believe in God, somehow or other. And most of us believe in…
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Posted inEntertainment

Bowling for Columbine

This was last night's enterainment at Salem Cinema, where the newly installed seats add a lot to our viewing enjoyment. Plus, you can drink a cup of decent coffee and eat some almost-healthy popcorn (probably truly healthy if you get the brewer's yeast option). Last time we went, before this, the owner made a nice little speech before the movie about the new seats, and how much she appreciated everyone's support over the years, and please turn off your cell phones, but if you don't, everyone in the theater should feel free to scream at you when the ringer goes…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Whew! Made it by ten days

Man, what a relief, to be ahead of the curve by ten days. Yesterday's Living Section in the Oregonian had a fairly extensive story about blogs, a.k.a. web logs, which this here thing is. So if I hadn't decided to start HinesSight on January 2, I'd be behind the curve right now. Instead, I'm ten days ahead of the (Oregonian) curve. Of course, I'm years behind the weblog pioneers, so from that standpoint I'm way behind the curve. Well, I guess I'm right where I'm supposed to be, which is preparing to send out emails letting folks know about HinesSight.…
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