Posted inHealth

Ozempic shows that obesity often is a medical problem

I wish Bill Maher was a reader of this blog, because this post was stimulated by him. For Maher, who I argue has become an irritating purveyor of liberal myths, has an outdated view of people who are obese. Here's how I put it in the above-linked post from last January. Lastly, I can't disagree with Maher's often-stated point that obesity is a big problem in our country. He's correct that obesity is a risk factor if someone gets Covid. But it's a bit simplistic for Maher to say that all it takes for someone to lose weight is will…
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Posted inHome life

We get a Generac whole house generator after the ice storm trauma

The memory is still sharp in my mind of the Great Salem Ice Storm of 2021. Twelve days without electricity. Lots of tree damage. Many trips into town to get more gasoline to keep our Honda generator functioning. Having to keep our wood stove going to keep the house warm. In short, not fun. So when some friends in our rural south Salem neighborhood told my wife and I that they were getting a Generac whole house generator, our ears perked up. Turns on automatically when the power goes out. Capable of running a heat pump, hot water heater, well…
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Posted inFood and drink Home life Salem

LifeSource dumps my favorite veggie burger. I’m crushed.

It was the cheese that first set off the alarm bells in my brain. Up until then, my usual Tuesday afternoon grocery shopping at LifeSource Natural Foods had gone as it usually does.  Uneventfully. I had no clue that my vegetarian life would be upended before I reached the dairy aisle, my habitual final stop before heading to a checkout register. Glancing at my list to see what my wife and I needed there, out of the corner of my eye I noticed that something had changed in the alternatives-to-meat section. Cheese had taken over several feet of that section,…
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Posted inTai Chi

Why I enjoy Tai Chi as a martial art

Tai Chi is viewed by most people as merely a gentle form of exercise. Which, it certainly is. But there's another side to Tai Chi -- the martial art aspect.  I'm familiar with Tai Chi as a martial art because I'm fortunate to have an instructor here in Salem, Oregon who is highly adept at self-defense applications of Tai Chi moves. Warren Allen came to Tai Chi after a lot of experience in hard style martial arts. So he is able to recognize how Tai Chi can be a soft style martial art like aikido, as contrasted with hard style…
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Posted inEntertainment

Oscars 2023 was great, but I disagree about Best Picture

I always enjoy watching the Oscars show, and this year was no exception. I liked having a host back on stage. The tag-team approach I recall from last year didn't work as well as Jimmy Kimmel providing a continuous presence -- for the whole 3 1/2 hours or so of the 3-hour show. One thing I've learned is to always add an hour to our DVR recording time, which came in handy this year. The way I see it, watching the Oscars is a lot like watching sports. If you have a favorite team, you're going to root for them…
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Posted inScience

Science says first humans had black skin and tightly curled hair

Racism is ridiculous for lots of reasons. A big reason is that science finds no basis for concluding that physical differences between some members of our species, Homo sapiens, make those members inherently superior to other people. In fact, there's no such thing as race, according to science. More than 100 years ago, American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was concerned that race was being used as a biological explanation for what he understood to be social and cultural differences between different populations of people. He spoke out against the idea of "white" and "black" as discrete groups, claiming that these…
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Posted inHealth

My eye surgery went well, though not a load of fun

When I had surgery in 2021 to repair an inguinal hernia, my motivation was to have something wrong with me fixed so I could get back to living life as I did before the hernia popped up (literally). But the glaucoma surgery I had today was tougher to get enthusiastic about. There's no way to fix damage that's occurred to the optic nerve. All that can be done is reduce the chance of further damage.  However, Dr. Young, the glaucoma specialist in Portland I was referred to after some significant nerve damage was found in my very nearsighted right eye,…
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Posted inDogs Health Home life

When life goes wrong, it can happen in bunches

Anticipating how some people are going to react to this blog post, I want to start off by making one thing clear: While my wife Laurel, our dog, and I are going through a stretch of more problems in our lives than usual, we're fortunate to have a decent income, good health insurance, and a pleasant home. Lots of people have worse problems than we do, with fewer resources available to deal with them. Like, anyone homeless. Having hopefully defused the "privilege" objection to what I'm about to say, my main point is simple: Life can be tough, no matter…
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