Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Obama gets serious about climate change. Finally.

Yes. Yes. Yes.  I could hear my brain screaming those words when I came across President Obama's strong statement about global warming in his second inauguation address. We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy…
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Posted inEntertainment

Pickpocket Apollo Robbins: so smooth at stealing

If you think you'd know if a skilled pickpocket was taking your watch, wallet, or cell phone, think again. That's the lesson I've learned from watching a video of theatrical pickpocket (meaning, a legal "stealer") Apollo Robbins. I've watched the video several times, I'm so fascinated by Robbins. His physical skills are amazing, but its the smoothness of his whole persona that is particularly impressive. Without that, his pickpocketing would be much less successful. Have a look. And a read, if you click on that link.   
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Posted inHome life Retirement community Sustainability

Best planned community in Portland, Oregon area?

Like I said in my previous post about a planned community in Monmouth, Oregon, almost certainly someday my wife and I will want to leave behind the large house on ten rural acres that simultaneously drives us crazy and makes us happy. There's a lot of people akin to us. Baby boomers (we're in our 60's) who are in good health, have lived in a non-easy-care home for a long time, aren't interested in a traditional retirement community, and are beginning to think about where they'd like to live when "let's move" becomes not just a idle thought, but an…
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Posted inSalem

Salem needs an “Edwards Addition” like Monmouth has

OK, let's get past the name of this otherwise-cool housing development: Edwards Addition, which sounds like a boring afterthought, is anything but. Today my wife and I met the developer, Eric Olsen, at the Mid-Valley Home Show (Americraft Building, State Fairgrounds, today through Sunday). We'd just started to browse the show when I heard "Brian and Laurel!" Turning toward the Olsen Design and Development booth, which likely we would have walked right past otherwise, Molly Beecroft greeted us cheerily.  Molly is a former neighbor, and current realtor, who works with Eric. Her charm and my desire for a free gift soon…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

NRA disparages Secret Service protection for Obama’s daughters

Despicable. Shameful. Outrageous.  Until today I didn't think NRA executives could surprise me by acting more callous, tone-deaf, disrespectful, and unpatriotic than they've demonstrated in the past. But now the NRA has put out a video insulting Obama and his daughters for using the Secret Service protection that has been uncontroversial in the past -- until the NRA decided that the best way to honor the deaths of twenty children at Sandy Hook Elementary School killed by an assault rifle is to pick on Sasha and Malia.  "Has the NRA lost it entirely?" asks Salon. Answer: absolutely. It's fair game…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science Sustainability

Oregonian story downplays global warming science

Yesterday I emailed a reporter for the Portland Oregonian that writing a story about global warming and including a mention about how some are skeptical the planet is getting hotter is akin to ending a story about a fossil discovery with "but some scientists doubt evolution is real." That would be absurd. Evolution is a scientific truth. So is global warming. There's no doubt among the vast majority of reputable researchers in either field about these facts.  So it bothered me when the reporter, Scott Learn, tossed in this sentence near the end of a story about how a national…
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Posted inSkateboarding

Videos of my longboard land paddling, at 64 years young

If you've been waiting to see videos of me pushing my way along on a longboard with a stick (not a foot, which distinguishes land paddling from regular longboarding)... I'm amazed.  But sometimes people don't know what's been missing from their lives. (Which, of course, is the secret of Apple's success; don't give people what they want, give them what they will want once they know about it.) Regardless, I'm pleased to share the first four videos made with my newly acquired GoPro Hero3, silver model. I put it on a chest mount yesterday without really knowing what I was…
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Posted inEntertainment

DirecTV raises rates 5%. Still no Pac 12 Network.

Overly optimistic me actually was eager to open a recent email from DirecTV with a subject line, "Information about your DIRECTV account." I hoped the big news was that, finally, DIrecTV had reached a deal with the Pac 12 Network, and that I wouldn't have to miss any more football, basketball, or baseball games shown only on that network. But no. I learned that we're going to pay 4.5% or so more this year. For nothing that means anything to me. Disney Jr. channel has been added along with some other yawn-inducing programming. Whoopee. Here's what I told DirecTV, using their…
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Posted inHome life

Diagnosing a water heater leak (for dummies)

If you know a lot about water heaters, stop reading. If you're like us -- water heater quasi-dummies, especially when it comes to leaks -- read on.  Yesterday we spent $99 to get educated from a pleasant George Morlan Plumbing guy about why what we thought was a leak in our water heater, almost certainly wasn't.  A few days ago my wife noticed water pooling around the tile floor in front of our water heater. Not a huge amount, but quite a bit. She put towels around the water heater. When I got home, I had the bright idea of…
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Posted inSalem

Natural Grocers coming to Salem. We’re not excited.

My wife and I love LifeSource Natural Foods, currently Salem"s one and only natural food store. Health-minded eaters that we are, vegetarian and organic-leaning, we enjoy the friendly atmosphere and good selection of food at LifeSource. However, we also lust after a Whole Foods, Market of Choice, New Seasons, or other larger natural food store with more choices and lower prices. Usually when we're in Portland, Corvallis, or Eugene, we stop at one of the stores that Salem should have, given its population, but doesn't. So I was more than a little excited when I glanced at the front page…
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Posted inSalem

I count the irritations, waiting in line at the post office

Oh, irritating irritations, I had plenty of time to count you up during my lengthy wait at Salem's Vista Station post office today. (1) Walking in the door at about 2:30 pm on a Tuesday, a time I figured would be pleasingly low key busy-wise, and finding about a dozen people lined up in the small lobby. I only needed to pick up a package that required a signature. Didn't want to come back; didn't want to run the risk of having our mailhuman try to deliver it again at a day we weren't home. (2) So I decided to…
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Posted inMiscellany Salem

Starbucks’ new Blueberry Oatmeal worth the extra buck

Today Starbucks started off by disappointing me, but ended up deliciously surprising me. Love your new Blueberry Oatmeal! It's a winner. Once again, the West Salem Starbucks didn't have any multigrain bagels by the noon'ish time I arrived for my regular Sunday get-together with some friends. That always irritates me, since the only stuff health-conscious me likes to eat at Starbucks are the multigrain bagels and the oatmeal. But since I have oatmeal for breakfast every day but Sunday (when I make a gigantic whole grain pancake), I prefer the different'ness of the bagel. Sounding as pathetic as possible, I…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

More guns equals more killing. Obvious equation.

Thank you, Elisabeth Rosenthal, for reminding us of an obvious truth that, sadly, is ignored by a disturbingly large percentage of the people in our gun-crazed country: nations with more guns have more gun deaths.  Duh...  But sometimes those duh... truths which seemingly shouldn't need to be said so often, do need to be repeated over and over -- when there's a willful attempt to ignore the truth. The thousands of needless gun deaths in our country, including the recent twenty-six at Sandy Hook Elementary School, scream out Don't ignore me! So read Rosenthal's "More Guns = More Killing." She's a physician…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Shoulder-fired missiles don’t bring down aircraft, people do. Huh?

Oh, yeah! I'm almost a writer for The New Yorker! My dream. This might be as close as I get, parallel thinking about gun control between The New Yorker's hugely talented Hendrik Hertzberg and way-less-talented me.  But, hey, we're on the same track when it comes to making fun of the absurd contention, "Guns don't kill people, people do." Which is so, so, so wrong. Here's what I said in a blog post on December 29, 2012. Why don't we legalize surface-to-air shoulder fired missiles? After all, people shoot down airplanes; shoulder fired missiles don't shoot down airplanes. If terrorists…
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Posted inEntertainment

“One Pound Fish” hasn’t taken over my brain. But is trying to.

I suppose there's worse ways to go crazy than have your mind repeat the "One Pound Fish" ditty incessantly. So far, that hasn't happened to me. But it could... Be warned. If you're prone to catchy songs playing uncontrollably in your head, don't watch these videos. (Assuming you're one of the few people in the world, which included me up until a few days ago, who hasn't seen them yet.) Background story here. This is the original video of the fish seller.   And this is the jazzed up post-viral video version.    
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Posted inCurrent affairs

U.S.A. has more gun violence because it has more guns

There's a simple way to save thousands upon thousands of lives needlessly snuffed out by gun violence in the United States: reduce the availability of guns.  This is so obvious, it's difficult to understand why so many people say, 'the problem is complicated." No, it isn't. That's a lie, mostly spread by people who aren't interested in saving the lives of innocents -- including the twenty children and six adults killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School last month.  So says, Fareed Zakaria, one of this country's clearest-sighted fact-based commentators in The Solution to Gun Violence is Clear. Read the whole…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Debt limit fight: will GOP pay the bills it voted for?

I'm glad that President Obama is vowing to stand firm on not negotiating over an upcoming increase in the federal debt limit.  “I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed,” the president said Tuesday night after he successfully pushed Republicans to allow tax increases on wealthy Americans. This is the Obama that progressives hoped we'd see after his re-election victory. He's a lot more realistic about how you negotiate, or don't negotiate, with unreasonable fanatics who care much more…
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Posted inHome life

May 2013 bring personal craziness and collective sanity

I'm toasting the New Year four hours early here on the west coast. Might be asleep by midnight, wild and crazy 60-somethings that my wife and I are. An ironic statement, albeit sort of true. And I'm wishing us more craziness in 2013. You too. May a crazy wind fill your sails and propel you into wonderfully strange lands.  The sort of crazy I'm wishing upon you, me, and everybody isn't pathological. It's life-enhancing, a fine madness (to borrow a thought from a movie title). I got to thinking about how cool such craziness is after I finished a longboard…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

More proof that “guns kill people, people don’t kill people”

To me, and lots of others, it's obvious that guns kill people. My first blog post on this subject contains inarguable facts to that effect. The United States has 35-50% of the world's civilian owned guns, but only about 5% of the world's population. We rank #1 in firearms per capita. Our intentional homicide rate is three times that of Canada. Our firearm-related death rate is five times that of Canada.  State comparisons lead to the same conclusion: guns kill people; people don't kill people. States with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership have the lowest firearm…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Fiscal cliff crisis shows need for Taleb’s “antifragility”

I gave myself Antifragile for Christmas. My wife wrapped it up after I handed her the Amazon box. I've been happily reading the book for the past few days.  The subtitle of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's lastest work (he wrote The Black Swan) drew me in: "things that gain from disorder." What a marvelous notion. Fragile things break when stressed. Robust things stay the same when stressed. And antifragile things benefit when stressed -- like Hydra, which grows two heads whenever one is cut off, or bones, which get stronger when they support heavy weight. Several chapters in, Taleb is well…
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