Posted inCurrent affairs

How Yugoslavia reacted to King’s death

I was in a communist country when Martin Luther King died on April 4, 1968 – Yugoslavia. Back then it was called the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Tito was in power. Along with a couple of dozen of other San Jose State College students, and a few professors, I was spending my second sophomore semester taking classes in Zadar, a picturesque town on the Adriatic sea. As you can imagine, it was quite a culture shock. For both us and the locals. Into a regimented traditional society comes a bunch of hang-loose long-haired hippie college students from the epicenter…
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Posted inMeasure 37

Measure 49 forms being mailed out

You know you're a land use junkie if…you spend a Saturday night pouring over forms being mailed to Measure 37 claimants, so they can choose what to do under Measure 49. Yes, that describes me. I had to see whether Willamette Week spoke truly when reporter Nigel Jaquiss said the form is "29 pages long, and not what most claimants are likely to regard as simple." I found that Willamette Week is way off base. The packet being sent to Measure 37 claimants apparently is indeed 29 pages long (can't be sure, since "draft" is stamped on the copy WW…
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Posted inMeasure 37

Playing attorney on a Measure 37 vesting case

It's fun to play make-believe, even (or especially) when you're 59 years old. Yesterday I tried to make a Marion County hearings officer believe that I knew as much about Measure 37 vesting as a real attorney. And I did a pretty darn good job. My wife, Laurel said so, which proves it. "You sounded like a lawyer," she told me after I testified. Ordinarily I wouldn't take that as a compliment. But since I was arguing that a Measure 37 claim wasn't far enough along to be exempted from Measure 49, which fixed many of the flaws in Measure…
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Posted inHome life

Buyer beware with Penguin Windows

Thank God, or Tao, for Oregon's "Buyer's Right to Cancel" law. It just saved us from a pushy Penguin Windows salesman, who somehow talked us into signing a contract for some vastly overpriced (though seemingly high-quality) replacement windows. I wasn't going to mention the company's name in this buyer beware post. But after reading a bunch of comments from people who had remarkably similar bad sales experiences, I decided to say it like it is: Penguin Windows engages in annoyingly high-pressure sales tactics. Which, unfortunately, are pretty damn effective. Laurel and I generally are resistant to salesman B.S. But the…
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Posted inMiscellany

Two days with a Chinese laptop, the Lenovo Y510

Ah, how things have changed. I remember when "Made in Japan" was a synonym for "Piece of Crap." Now two hybrid cars from the land of the rising sun, a Toyota Prius and a Highlander, are our trouble-free transportation. And China? It used to be several large rungs below Japan in the quality category. Just a few years ago I never would have guessed that my new laptop would say "Made in China" on the bottom of it. But it does. I just bought one of the first U.S. computers that are newly available in Lenovo's "IdeaPad" lineup. As I…
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Posted inEntertainment

Colbert and Stuart are better without writers

After four days of seeing how Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart fared without writers after returning to the airwaves, I can issue my review: The Colbert Show and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (now called A Daily Show) are more entertaining without the writers. So even though my progressive sympathies are with those on strike, my TV watching sympathies say, "Stay away; let Colbert and Stuart keep on doing their own thing." I've always enjoyed The Colbert Show more than The Daily Show, because Stephen Colbert is more of a natural improvisational comedian. His interviews are terrific, filled with…
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Posted inTango/Dance

The one place where men always lead

From my male perspective, it's nice that there's still one place in this modern, egalitarian world where men always lead and women always follow. The ballroom dance floor. At least, that's the way it's supposed to work, as Lora (our RJ Dance Studio instructor) explained to us a few days ago. We're taking a beginning Foxtrot class. Laurel and I have taken quite a few classes from Lora, but most of the other Foxtrotters were new to dancing, so she went over the basics. Including this weird and wacky notion: the woman should do whatever the man wants – unless…
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Posted inTango/Dance

Argentine Tango could spice up Salem

[Update: Since I wrote this, Frank and Karen Davis have begun to organize an Argentine Tango community here in Salem. Check out their website for info about the Tango classes being taught by Elizabeth Wartluft of Portland. On September 3 the Salem paper had an interesting story about the classes.] Fellow Salemites, even though we live in Oregon's boring capital city, there's untapped passion in our rain-drenched souls. That's why we need to bring Argentine Tango classes back to town. Thanks to Peter Gysegem, of Corvallis, weekly classes were offered during 2006 – which Laurel and I started taking in…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

New Hampshire, give us the gift of Obama

It's been a long time since any presidential candidate has turned me on. I'm tired of saying about the Democrat, "Well, at least he's better than _____." That sort of faint praise, which is what I'd offer Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, isn't what this country needs or deserves after putting up with eight years of George Bush. Barack Obama is. So New Hampshire voters, please, pretty please with an Oregon fir tree on top, give my state and the rest of the county a tremendous gift next Tuesday. Another impressive Obama win. I've tried to get enthusiastic about Clinton.…
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Posted inPhilosophy

How to make time slow down

Time speeds up as you get older. Almost everyone I know says this is true. I sure do. And it's damn unfair. Why should children, who have their whole lives ahead of them, experience time moving more slowly than semi-geezers like me (I'm 59), who don't have anywhere near as long to live? I frequently feel like screaming, Hey life! Flip things around! Those kids should be the ones who sense time flying by, while older people get to string out the days they have left. One of my best friends from elementary and high school died recently. He was,…
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Posted inHome life

I’m the DSL King of the World!

Step aside, Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm the new king of the world – unashamed to appropriate one of the cheesiest movie lines ever. Because I deserve it. I, me, myself, Brian the Hines, was responsible for bringing Qwest DSL to our rural south Salem neighborhood after many would-be kings (including moi ) had tried and failed for years. At this very moment I am praising myself in a blog post that will be uploaded via wireless DSL, a vast improvement over our dreadfully unreliable Wild Blue broadband satellite service, which never saw a raindrop that it wasn't afraid to send a…
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Posted inSalem

Starbucks sucks with its high priced wi-fi

Being a frequent Starbucks customer, I've noted laptop users in the ubiquitous stores tuning in to what I assumed was free Wi-Fi. After all, these days even the most humble coffee house usually offers a complimentary Internet connection, so why wouldn't this corporate giant? Greed, I guess. Because after my router decided to stop routing this morning, I packed up my ThinkPad and took it with me to the West Salem Starbucks, where, after chatting for a bit with friends, I opened it up for some well-deserved Internet access. Well-deserved, because my habitual grande nonfat vanilla latte sets me back…
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Posted inTango/Dance

Salem Tango stimulated by a San Diegan

Amazing! Last night Salem actually seemed interesting for a couple of hours. We pushed aside the tables in the downtown Beanery coffee house and danced away on a nice wood floor while Tango music played over the sound system. It took a San Diegan, though, to wake up sleepy Salem. That would be Matt, the guy in the middle of the photo who distinguished himself by (1) being by far the youngest amongst us, and (2) actually knowing how to dance Argentine Tango. The rest of us ranged from rusty beginner/intermediates (Karen, in middle, plus Laurel and me, on the…
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Posted inMeasure 37

Measure 49 not threatened by Corey case

There's some wishful thinking going on in the little minds over at Oregonians in Action, who hope that Santa will bring them a Measure 49 demolishing (or at least, limiting) court case. Corey v. Department of Land Conservation and Development is a current favorite, grandiosely (and inaccurately) described in the most recent OIA newsletter under "Is There Hope on the Horizon for Measure 37 Claimants?" Short answer: almost certainly not. I say this not as an attorney, but as someone who knows how competent attorneys view the Corey case. Which is a long way from how OIA sees a ruling…
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Posted inUncategorized

Another agnostic Christmas eve

Well, just as newspapers reprint the "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" piece every year, I'll start my own agnostic tradition and link back to my 2006 post, "An agnostic Taoist on Christmas Eve." Not much has changed. We're still heading to a vegetarian buffet at Salem's Marco Polo restaurant tomorrow. We're still irritated by Salvation Army bell ringers, Christmas music in stores, and the prevailing cultural sentiment that if you don't believe in Jesus, somehow you're impoverished during the holiday season. That's ridiculous. We feel overwhelmingly grateful that unlike the vast majority of people in the world, we…
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Posted inFamily

2007 Christmas Letter released to an eagerly awaiting world

Here it is, world! What you've been waiting for to complete the Christmas season: Laurel and Brian's 2007 Holiday Letter. Download 2007_christmas_letter.pdf Download 2007_christmas_letter.doc (shared in both PDF and Word formats) By "world," of course, I mean the subset of Earth's 6.3 billion people who look forward to the wise, witty, and moving sentiments we express in our annual letter. Not being Christians, I prefer the term "Holiday letter." Yet as a worshipper of Google, whose search engine is attuned to "Christmas letter," I shamelessly have used those words in the title of this post. If you read the letter,…
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Posted inUncategorized

TypePad thinks my comment about comment spam is spam

Ah, how marvelous became my blog's hall of mirrors after TypePad, the hosting service, had the not-so-bright idea to juice up its spam comment filter. Absolutely legitimate comments got unceremoniously moved into a spam folder, unbeknownst to me and countless other bloggers. Until the unbeknownst became knowst when I heard from an upset visitor to my other blog asking why I was censoring several of his recent comments. I had no idea what he was talking about. But then I logged onto TypePad and saw a mention of how they were thanking people for letting them know that their comment…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

India gets a cool new computer before U.S.

It's a sign of the globalization times. And of the United States' technological decline. Lenovo, a Chinese company which bought IBM's Personal Computing Division in 2005, has started to get into the home computer market. I'm interested, because my wife and I each use Lenovo-made ThinkPad notebooks that still bear the IBM logo. We like them. They're rock solid and nicely designed with a great feeling keyboard. Further, Consumer Reports rates Apple and Lenovo as the computer companies with the best support and most trouble-free products. So I've been perusing Lenovo's one and only notebook aimed at home/home office users,…
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Posted inHome life

Further unplugging of the Christmas machine

Last year we slowed down the Christmas machine, but it still had quite a bit of leftover energy. Now we're going to further unplug this monster. No Christmas tree for us. This is a pretty big decision, given that our extra-large artificial tree has been a dominating feature of our living room for quite a few years. Too dominating, we've decided. It's a pain to set up. Just about as big a pain as driving to a real tree lot, agreeing on a suitable choice, tying it to the roof rack so it has a minimal chance of falling off…
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Posted inMeasure 37

Plain truths about Oregon property rights

A few nights ago my wife and I went to a standing room only talk by Ralph Bloemers of the Crag Law Center, one of Oregon's premiere public interest attorneys. Now, it was a small room at the West Salem Public Library. But still, I was impressed by how many people turned out for this Friends of Marion County meeting about vesting and land use issues under Measures 37 and 49. Some Measure 37 claimants even came, wanting to learn how their development efforts are likely to fare under the new property rights climate ushered in by the passage of…
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