Posted inCurrent affairs Entertainment Television

I hugely enjoyed The American Revolution on PBS. And I’m not a big fan of documentaries.

When I started watching The American Revolution on the Apple TV PBS app, I looked upon this as sort of a civic duty to see the newest documentary from the talented Ken Burns -- especially since documentaries aren't my first choice for evening entertainment. Well, six episodes and about 12 viewing hours later, my first impression was completely wrong. I was enthralled by every minute of the series, even though obviously there were zero photographs or videos of our Revolutionary War. Burns and his co-creators skillfully wove together voiceovers, documents, commentary from historians, maps, battle plans, reenactments, and such into…
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Posted inFood and drink Home life

I didn’t suffer in my vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner

When I became a vegetarian 57 years ago, at the age of 20, that was cause for concern among friends and family who thought I was depriving myself of an essential food group: meat and fish. That didn't make sense then. It makes even less sense now, given how many more options vegetarians have when shopping in a grocery store or going out to eat at a restaurant. We're still a decided minority, about 6%, with about an additional 4% embracing a vegan diet. For Thanksgiving yesterday, I dug my last remaining Trader Joes Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast out of the…
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Posted inGrowing older Home life

My take on why old guys like me are so set in our ways

I'm now the person that I was always afraid of becoming. An old guy (I'm 77) who is really reluctant to deviate from his accustomed lifestyle. I'm not exactly the proverbial senior citizen sitting on his porch who screams at playful neighborhood children, "Keep your damn ball out of my front yard!" But I can understand why that dude would say that. Because the older I get -- and so far I haven't found any way to stop that inexorable trend -- the more I cling to habits in an almost obsessive fashion. The reason I do this, so far…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Over-hyped A.I. data centers are just one reason to beware of an A.I. investment bubble

I enjoy using A.I., artificial intelligence. The A.I. overview that pops up at the top of most of my Google searches seems pleasingly accurate. So is the A.I. summary of the reviews of an Amazon product that I'm considering purchasing. And I've played around with asking ChatGPT questions, and making amusing images with Grok Imagine. But a fascinating article in The New Yorker by Stephen Witt, "Inside the Data Centers that Train A.I. and Drain the Electrical Grid," clued me in to some scary facts that illustrate the danger of believing that A.I. is going to be an economic gold…
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Posted inGrowing older Humor

At my advanced age, it’s tough to decide if I should get a 3-year subscription to a magazine

Hate to break this news to you younger folks, but things get more difficult once you're a senior citizen like me. I know, you're familiar with stories of hearing difficulties, driving at night. opening jars with twist tops, and remembering where you put your damn reading glasses. There's lesser known troubles, though. Here's one that I encountered today. Two facts collided. One was that I turned 77 last month. The other was that I needed to renew my subscription to New Scientist magazine, a weekly published in Great Britain that I like a lot. Usually I renew for another year.…
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Posted inSports

Base-running blunder cost Toronto a World Series championship — by just a few inches

I love to watch sporting events because they so often -- heck, maybe always -- reflect life as a whole. Meaning, victory or defeat often doesn't go to the better team, or the most deserving team, but the luckiest team. That's true of life in general. We like to believe that successful people earned their way to the top of the Success Pyramid through hard work, talent, and perseverance. Actually, though, being in the right place at the right time and benefiting from chance events that ended up being the difference between success and failure often is a better explanation.…
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Posted inLiving with a catheter

After eight years of using a urinary catheter, TURP is planned due to improved bladder function

In May 2017 I had a serious urine retention episode -- unable to pee, more bluntly put -- that kicked off a lengthy period of depression and anxiety due to the difficulty I had with needing to insert a catheter five times a day, since I couldn't urinate on my own. Not at all. Not even a drop. My urologist told me that smooth bladder muscle doesn't recover from an injury as regular muscle can. So I'd need to use an intermittent catheter for the rest of my life. Which wasn't a cheery prospect. But as the years passed, I…
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Posted inHealth

I chose ATRIO Medicare Advantage after Providence dumped me, but wished for more options

For eleven years after I became eligible for Medicare at age 65, I was mostly happy with my Regence Medicare Advantage plan. But near the end of 2024 Regence was enmeshed in a contract dispute with Salem Health. Since I wasn't going to take a chance on not having in-network coverage for Salem's dominant health care provider, I switched to Providence Medicare Advantage in 2025. Then I got a letter from Providence a few weeks ago saying they weren't offering my plan in Marion County for 2026. No reason was given. I'm guessing that Providence wanted a higher fee schedule…
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Posted inSports

Why a favored sports team losing hurts almost as much as physical pain

I don't follow professional baseball very closely. I'm much more of a college baseball fan, the Oregon State Beavers being my favorite team. But since the Seattle Mariners are the closest professional baseball team to Oregon, I was rooting for them to beat the Toronto Blue Jays for the American League Championship, especially since Seattle had never made it to the World Series. When the Mariners lost 4-3 yesterday in the deciding game of the Seattle-Toronto series, after taking a 3-1 lead into the bottom of the seventh inning, I was only mildly disappointed. I could understand the pain felt…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem Weblogs

Les Zaitz of Salem Reporter advises “Don’t trust the media!” at City Club talk

Last Friday Les Zaitz, the editor and CEO of Salem Reporter (our town's digital-only news source), gave a talk to the Salem City Club with the surprising title, "DON'T trust the media!" But what Zaitz meant by "media" is an expanded conception that reflects the fractured media landscape now. The day is long gone when Walter Cronkite would say at the end of his evening network news program, "And that's the way it is," followed by the date of the broadcast. These days, the way it is depends on what media source you're getting news from. Fox News may have…
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Posted inWeb/Tech Weblogs

How I went wrong in verifying my domain names with the DNS option in Google Search Console

I'm not an internet neophyte. My first personal computer was an Apple II+. At least, I think that's what its name was, so much time has passed. I started using the world wide web as soon as a dial-up log in became available through the city library here in Salem, Oregon. I've been blogging since 2002, a near-eternity in internet years. But while I'm competent with using and maintaining a computer, when it comes to the technical aspects of HTML, DNS, and other acronyms whose inner workings still largely mystify me, I've got a hell of a lot to learn.…
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Posted inSports

Oregon beats Penn State in thrilling football game (thanks to my granddaughter)

This evening the sixth-ranked University of Oregon defeated third-ranked Penn State 30-24 in two overtimes. Oregon football coach Dan Lanning said "“I think that’s the best game I’ve ever been a part of. Regardless of who won.” No argument there. It was one of the best games I've ever seen, for sure. When Oregon safety Dillon Thieneman intercepted a pass by Penn State quarterback Drew Allar in the second overtime, the game was over and Thieneman celebrated by running down the field with the ball tucked under his right arm. I felt almost as happy as Thieneman did. The game…
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Posted inEntertainment

Portland’s KATU won’t show return of Jimmy Kimmel. Here’s how to complain.

I was happy when I learned yesterday that ABC is bringing back the Jimmy Kimmel show tonight, Tuesday, September 23, after being suspended for a week after Kimmel made a joke about how the MAGA folks are worried about the killer being one of them. But today I was deeply irked when it was announced that Portland's KATU, our local ABC affiliate, wouldn't be airing the Kimmel show because the station's corporate overlord is the Sinclair Broadcast Group. An Oregonian story says: Jimmy Kimmel is set to be back on the air Tuesday night, but Portland’s KATU is among the…
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Posted inWeblogs

I’m a Typepad refugee. I’m enjoying my new WordPress home.

It's got all the makings of a tragedy. A man -- let's call him me, because that's who he is -- finds a blogging home at Typepad in 2003 after briefly trying another platform and finding it lacking. For about two decades Typepad and I got along fine. They took my annual fee. I found their services likable, albeit lacking in some features I wanted, such as the ability for visitors to edit comments they left on what eventually became three blogs. Then our relationship took a downturn. In 2020 Typepad stopped accepting new customers. Not a good sign. Rumors…
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Posted inMiscellany Writing/Weblogs

“Sketched Out” is a great pictorial take on AI and art in the New York Times magazine

How is AI going to affect art? This important question is addressed creatively, thoughtfully, and, yes, artistically, by Christoph Niemann in a special recent issue of the New York Times Magazine, Learning to Live with AI. My wife subscribes to the Sunday New York Times, so I was able to see Niemann’s piece — a combination of sketches and words — in the print edition. Since I’m a subscriber to the digital New York Times, here’s a gift link to “Sketched Out” that should work for subscribers and non-subscribers alike. To whet your appetite for reading/viewing the piece, I’ll share…
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Posted inWeblogs

My migration from Typepad to WordPress is complete, thanks to Glorywebs

Today I left this 5-star Google review about my experience with Glorywebs, a tech firm based in India with a presence in the United States. After Typepad, my blogging service, announced that it was shutting down on September 30, 2025, I contacted Glorywebs for help in migrating my three blogs with 8,400 posts and 12,000 photos into the WordPress platform. In a bit more than a week Glorywebs provided me with three well-functioning WordPress blogs that have all of my exported Typepad content. The Glorywebs team was a pleasure to work with. Responsive, knowledgeable, easy to communicate with. And they…
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Posted inWeblogs

Glorywebs is a great choice if you’re migrating a blog from Typepad to WordPress

On August 27, Typepad, my long-time blogging service, announced that they're shutting down on September 30, 2025. Like lots of other Typepad bloggers, that announcement of just a window of a bit over a month to save blog content kicked off my search for expert help in migrating a large number of posts and photos from Typepad into WordPress, the premier blogging platform. I have about 8,400 posts and 10,000 photos on my three blogs, Church of the Churchless, HinesSight, and Salem Political Snark. I'm computer literate but in no way did I consider myself competent to handle this migration.…
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Posted inWeblogs

The agony and the ecstasy of Typepad, my blogging service, shutting down

The past week feels a lot like a divorce, something I experienced in 1989 when the woman I'd been married to for 18 years and I split up.  [There is supposed to be the Typepad logo here, but Typepad no longer will publish blog posts with images, at least for me, so I had to delete it.] In this current case, the split-up is between me and Typepad, the blogging service that I've used for 22 years. Just as with my first wife, the divorce was the culmination of a lengthy period in which two parties steadily grew more distant…
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Posted inHome life

We got a TOTO bidet. Using the toilet is much more pleasant.

Life is stressful these days. Well, actually, life always is stressful to some extent. It just seems that the state of our nation and the world is more distressing now. So I'll take comfort and relaxation wherever I can find it. Including when I sit on the toilet in the bathroom that I use the most, being adjacent to my bedroom. (My wife, Laurel, and I sleep separately.)  A few weeks ago Laurel had the bright idea of getting a bidet. She'd gotten back from visiting relatives in Indiana who had a bidet. Laurel didn't try it, but they praised…
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Posted inWeblogs

Typepad shutting down on September 30. I’m crushed, but not surprised.

It hurts. There's no other way to say it. I've been blogging on Typepad since 2003. So when I sleepily looked at my email inbox early this morning and saw the subject line "Important Notice -- Typepad Shutdown  Announcement," I both woke up and felt distressed instantly.  I have three blogs with about 8,400 posts. My whole life, or at least my life since 2003, is reflected in those posts. Losing all that content would really bother me. This is what I told Typepad support back in March of this year, as reported in "Typepad told me they aren't going…
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