Posted inMarijuana

Bill Maher’s criticism of the PAX3 vaporizer was misplaced

I love Bill Maher and his Real Time show, which always ends with "New Rules." But the March 22 show missed the mark when Maher criticized the newest version of the marvelous PAX vaporizer -- which in my highly (so to speak) informed opinion is the best way to imbibe marijuana.  (Note: I live in Oregon, where pot is legal, so don't bother notifying the police about my nefarious behavior.) In the video below you can see that Maher claims that the new version of the PAX doesn't include a raised mouthpiece. Well, actually it does. Here's the photographic proof.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

City Club talk about Oregon demographics and 2020 Census pleasingly factual

We live in an age of opinionating. For example, this afternoon the Mueller report was released to the Attorney General. Now there's a frenzy of speculation about what is in the report, how much of it will be released to the public, what the political impact will be, and so on. So it was pleasant to attend a Salem City Club talk today by demographer Charles Rynerson, a Research Associate with the Population Research Center at Portland State University (my graduate school alma mater): "Oregon Demographic Trends and the 2020 Census." Rynerson was low-key, highly competent, and almost entirely factual.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Trump’s tariff threat on foreign cars irks VW GTI loving me

Just when I think I can't get more irritated at Donald Trump, our (hopefully) one-term president does something that causes my Irritation Index to jump to a new high. In this case -- imposing a tariff on imported cars that could reach 25% -- it's a threatened something that's raising my ire. But given Trump's oft-stated love of tariffs, even when they're a spectacularly bad idea, it sure seems like there's a good chance he'll go ahead with an imported car tariff.  At my age, 70, obviously I've owned a lot of different cars. More have been foreign than domestic.…
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Posted inHealth

My fourth colonoscopy goes smoothly at Salem Gastro

First off, I just noticed the appealing slogan on the Salem Gastro web site: "What matters is what's inside." Nice mixture of philosophy and double entendre.  The colonoscopy I had last month at the hands of Dr. Richard Brandes wasn't exactly appealing, but it went about as smoothly as possible. This was my fourth colonoscopy. Well, fifth, counting a virtual (CT) colonoscopy I had in 2006. In retrospect, that probably wasn't a great idea, since if a suspicious polyp had been found (maybe all polyps are suspicious), I would have needed to undergo a regular colonoscopy. But at the time…
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Posted inHome life

I’m a big fan of winter tires. Here’s why.

I've had winter tires on quite a few of the cars my wife and I have owned over the years. They make a lot of sense, even here in western Oregon where sometimes it never snows all winter.  I can't recall exactly what led me to start putting winter tires on in mid-November and off in mid-March, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with an experience I had driving our Volvo 850 station wagon to a cabin in Camp Sherman, Oregon that we were part owners of. I'd just pulled off the main highway that leads to…
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Posted inBooks Plotinus

My “Return to the One” book gets a pleasing recommendation

I don't often plug my book about Plotinus, the 3nd century Greek Neoplatonist philosopher and mystic. Return to the One continues to have slow but steady sales, with good reader reviews on Amazon.  Recently, though, my book got a pleasing recommendation from Christine McGinley, who founded a small book publishing company called Gleam of Light Press. Here's the email message I got from her. Dear Brian,  We want to let you know that the launch of Gleam of Light’s “Other Great Finds” is now up on the website: https://www.gleamoflightpress.com/ and we are pleased and proud to have Return to the…
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