Posted inSports

Here’s hoping Oregon State has a great Men’s College World Series run

Tomorrow, June 13, Oregon State plays its first game in the 2025 Men's College World Series: 4 pm Pacific time against Louisville, televised on ESPN. I've been looking forward to this ever since the Beavers won two out of three games against Florida State in the Corvallis Super Regional, thereby punching their ticket to Omaha and the College World Series. This could be wishful thinking, but watching Oregon State play in the post-season makes me think the team is destined for a national championship. I fondly remember the three championships OSU won in 2006, 2007, and 2018. The current incarnation…
No Comments
Posted inGrowing older Health

Death Clock app tells me I’ll die on December 7, 2039 at age 91. I’ll take it.

Thanks to a story in the Washington Post, "How many years do I have left? An app gave me helpful insights," today I learned how long I have to live -- based on the answers I gave to 29 questions. The story gave some examples of the questions. Although the specific date of death is obviously not intended to be accurate — the app’s disclaimer says it’s “for fun only” — it does tie your personal habits to your likelihood of living into old age and tells you what lifestyle changes might buy you more time. Thus Death Clock AI’s…
No Comments
Posted inScience

Scientist AI proposed as a way to keep us safe from “agent” AI models

There's a lot of talk nowadays about the dangers that AI (artificial intelligence) models such as ChatGPT could pose to humanity as they come closer to AGI -- artificial general intelligence. That would make AI models akin to a super-intelligent person, but with powers potentially much vaster than any person now possesses. It's easy to see how things could go horribly wrong. (Just imagine an AI version of Elon Musk that is 1000 times smarter with no way to control its actions.) The situation seems hopeless given the rush to create AI models with very little regulation. No country wants…
No Comments
Posted inSports

Wow! Oregon State baseball wins four in a row in regional after losing opener

Really impressive, Oregon State baseball. Amazing comeback. This afternoon the team defeated USC 9-0, advancing to the super regional phase of the NCAA tournament. That seemed really unlikely three days ago. After fighting hard all season to become a highly ranked team (#8 in the country) that earned the right to host both a Corvallis regional and super-regional in the 2025 NCAA tournament, the top seeded Beavers flopped in a 6-4 opening loss to fourth seed Saint Mary's last Friday. In a double elimination tournament, losing the first game makes for an uphill battle, since another loss means an exit…
No Comments
Posted inFamily

Why my mother wouldn’t attend my high school graduation

Today my granddaughter graduated from Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California. I watched via a streaming video. The auditorium was full of proud parents, grandparents, and friends. My daughter sent me a photo of she and her husband with the new graduate. This brought to mind a memory of my own high school graduation that has quite a bit of pain associated with it. Of course, after 59 years -- I was in the class of 1966 -- both memories and pain fade considerably.  I'm still bothered by my mother's action though. Which was, choosing to not attend…
1
Posted inCurrent affairs Entertainment

Conclusion of Handmaid’s Tale inspires resistance against Trump’s autocracy

I just finished watching the last episode of the final season of The Handmaid's Tale. It capped a wonderful story spanning six seasons of resistance by June Osborne (masterfully played by Elisabeth Moss) and many others against the dictatorial regime of Gilead -- a religious autocracy that forces women into becoming breeding machines impregnated by rapists who are Commanders of the regime. It was a difficult series for me to watch. I came to it late, after the first five seasons had concluded. Sometimes I wanted to give up on the Handmaid's Tale. Often, or usually, it was bleak, dark,…
1
Posted inSports

Here’s why an Oregon softball runner was called out twice for leaving a base early

I'm really happy that the University of Oregon softball team is headed to the 2025 College Women's World Series after winning twice over Liberty this weekend in a super-regional matchup in Eugene. But there were two plays in the first game on Friday that left both the announcers and me wondering, What the heck was that all about? In each case, Kai Luschar, Oregon's lead off hitter who is noted for her speed and ability to steal bases, was called out after appearing to steal a base following a challenge by the Liberty head coach. Here's a video that shows…
No Comments
Posted inSports

Oregon softball team was inspiring in winning regional over Stanford

Whenever the University of Oregon softball team makes the post-season, I look forward to watching them even if I didn't see any of their preceding games. Baseball appeals to me also, but softball -- a woman's college sport -- is more entertaining for me, partly because a game moves along more quickly given the lack of annoying pick-off moves by the pitcher (in softball a base runner can't get a lead until the pitch is thrown) and a game lasts seven innings instead of nine (even shorter if a team is ahead by eight or more runs after five innings…
No Comments
Posted inStarlink

Be sure your Starlink power supply matches what your dish needs

I've been a user of the Starlink satellite internet system since January 2021, when I became a beta tester.  I've learned a lot about Starlink over the years, but there's always more to know.  My message in this post is simple: if you're having a problem with your Starlink, be sure that the power supply is properly matched with your dish. I discovered this the hard way recently. It all started when I came home in the late afternoon and found that our Starlink broadband had gone offline. Usually restarting the router solves the problem. That didn't work. I tried…
No Comments
Posted inHealth

Acupuncture is an example of the games health insurers play with benefits

Though I can't prove this scientifically because I'm not a controlled experiment, there's good reason for me to believe that I've benefited from my acupuncture treatments for low back pain and the related sciatica from Karen Kaufman. I talked about this in a June 2024 blog post, accurately titled "I benefited from my sessions at Salem's Innerhealth Acupuncture Clinic." I'm convinced that Kaufman helped relieve the sciatica pain in my right leg considerably. Naturally I can't be sure of this, since I'm not a random controlled experiment, just one person who was drawn to try acupuncture after physical therapy didn't…
1
Posted inSalem

Ugh. Paid on street parking coming to downtown Salem July 1

Three days a week I have to park in downtown Salem so I can go to my Tai Chi class on Court Street between Liberty and Commercial. My instructor posted this not-so-cheery card from the City of Salem, alerting us students to what is coming July 1. I find the "Get Ready to Meet Beep Beep Salem" annoying. Sure, if Beep Beep is the dog (if that's what the animal is) driving a little red car, that would be entertaining. Also, decidedly illegal, since I doubt a dog could pass the DMV test for a license. But Beep Beep Salem…
No Comments
Posted inBooks

Book recommendation: “A Walk in the Park” by Kevin Fedarko

I read a lot of books. They're a mixture of nonfiction and fiction. But I'm not into "literary" versions of these genres. I buy nonfiction in order to learn something. I buy fiction in order to entertain myself, usually in the spy/thriller/espionage sort of writings.  (The Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva that I enjoy a lot comes closest to literary fiction, being very well written; however, I doubt Silva's books truly qualify as literary fiction.) However, near the end of 2024 I saw a list of 100 recommended nonfiction books published last year. I figured I needed to broaden…
1
Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Avelo Airlines, which flies out of Salem, is being paid for deportation ICE flights

It was controversial when in 2023 the Salem City Council paid $2.4 million from the city's general fund to make airport improvements that were needed to attract commercial air service to Salem -- even though at the time the City of Salem was facing a large budget shortfall and was hoping to raise $25 million a year from a payroll tax on workers. Avelo Airlines, a low-cost carrier, ended up coming to town. Now Avelo is enmeshed in a controversy of its own making due to the airline contracting with the Trump administration's ICE agency (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) for…
No Comments
Posted inSustainability

Climate change trends in Oregon discussed at Salem City Club

Truth is preferable to falsehood, for sure. But it can be damn depressing at times. That's how I felt today while listening to a Salem City Club talk about climate change from an Oregon perspective. The speaker was Erica Fleishmann, Professor, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, who is the Director of the Climate Change Research Institute (CCRI), a network of researchers and professionals that is housed at Oregon State University in Fleishmann's college. One of CCRI's missions is to research and monitor the state and regional climate. Every two years CCRI publishes an updated Oregon Climate Assessment. The…
No Comments
Posted inCurrent affairs

Should progressives pursue policies of abundance? Probably.

I identify as a progressive, though for me, the term basically is synonymous with liberal. At any rate, I'd call myself a moderate progressive/liberal. Meaning, I'm not as far to the left as Bernie Sanders, though I agree with much of what he says and stands for, and I'm not as far to the right as John Fetterman, though I also like much of what he says and stands for.  So it isn't surprising that I resonate with the general thrust of a recently published book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance. In fact, I just ordered the book.…
No Comments
Posted inScience

Artificial Intelligence explained to City Club by Willamette University professor

Last Friday Calvin Deutschbein, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Willamette University, gave a talk on Artificial Intelligence, otherwise known as AI, to the Salem City Club. Deutschbein is holding a microphone in the photo below. He started off by talking about intelligence in general. It has something to do with (1) representing the world, (2) finding patterns, (3) predicting the future, (4) acting optimally. His example pertained to his cat. I'll adapt it to our dog. Mooka, our Husky mix, clearly is adept at making sense of the world. After all, ever since dogs became domesticated, probably via ancestral…
No Comments
Posted inHome life

My fall into a creek shows why doing one thing at a time makes sense

Yesterday I fell off a bridge into running water. Fortunately, it was a tiny bridge and the water wasn't very deep. How it appears to have happened contains a life lesson. Yesterday I was taking our dog, Mooka, on her usual late afternoon walk, which begins on our property in rural south Salem. I had her on a leash, since the area by a creek is favored by raccoons, and we don't want Mooka running off and tangling with one. I'd just crossed a little bridge that crosses the main part of Spring Creek, a short creek that feeds Spring…
No Comments
Posted inWeblogs

Typepad told me they aren’t going out of business. Hope that’s true.

I've been blogging with Typepad since 2003, which is when Wikipedia says Typepad launched. So I must have been one of their earliest customers. Now I have three Typepad blogs. So while I've gotten used to fairly frequent Typepad outages as problems with the blogging service have become more common, when I couldn't log in to my account on March 3, I got more concerned than usual. Even though things were back to normal by the next day (which for Typepad is still pretty crappy, especially when it comes to uploading photos, as this person complained about in 2022), I…
10
Posted inCurrent affairs Health

Laurel Hines, my wife, supports changes to Oregon’s Death With Dignity law

The Oregon legislature is considering a bill, SB 1003, that would make changes to our state's Death With Dignity law -- which allows people who have six months or less left to live to exercise control over the time and manner of their death by taking physician-prescribed medication. Passed by Oregon voters in 1994, and affirmed in 1997 when it took effect after a legal challenge, the law is a good start, but it needs improving. That's why my wife, Laurel Hines, testified in favor of SB 1003 at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on March 3. Laurel told the…
1
Posted inSalem

Ukrainian refugee speaks at Salem City Club on day Trump insults Ukraine

The timing was coincidental. Still, yesterday it was jarring for me to leave for the noon Salem City Club program on "Finding Home in a New Culture and Country" after learning the news about how Trump and Vance had insulted Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, which really was an insult to the entire country, only to find that one of the program speakers was Kseniia Hnatovska, a Ukrainian. Here's how she was described in a City Club email: Kseniia and her family fled Ukraine at the onset of the war and undertook a long and challenging journey that brought them…
No Comments