Posted inHome life

Act my age? That’s a really bad idea.

My driver's license says I'm 63. So does my birth certificate. But how old am I, really? Answering that question requires that we get down to what's real. And that's a matter of opinion. Yes, I believe in objective reality when it comes to science. I won't argue calendar facts. The Earth takes a year to go around the sun. I've been alive for 63 of them. No argument there. But subjective reality is really real also. When I ignore the subjectively irrelevant detail of my calendar age, close my eyes, forget the past, focus on the now, and simply…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

“You didn’t build that” because you don’t have free will

Political junkie that I am, I've been fascinated by the response to President Obama's statement in a speech that successful Americans owe much of their success to societal factors -- education system, roads and bridges, Internet, etc. -- they didn't build themselves. There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Guns kill people. People don’t kill people.

This is a lie: "guns don't kill people; people do." No, that's wrong. Guns kill people. This is a fact. Believe it, unless you're so anti-American, you consider that citizens of the United States are hugely more violent and immoral than people in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and other western industrialized nations. Have a look at two Wikipedia pages: First, List of countries by intentional homicide rate. In 2010, these were the intentional homicide rates per 100,000 population: United States 4.8Canada 1.6United Kingdom 1.2Austalia 1.2Germany .8 Are Americans really three times more murderous than Canadians? Or six times more murderous…
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Posted inHome life

My wife parallel parks better than me

Wow. I said it. Right there in the title of this blog post. A headline. Wasn't as hard as I thought.  Neither was getting out of our car yesterday after I'd mangled my first attempt at getting into a fairly tight parking space on a cross-street between LIberty and Commercial, conveniently near the Salem Art Fair in Bush Park. "There's a spot!" my passenger-seated wife had yelled out a minute or so before. "I think it's too small," I told her, not entirely accurately. Because actually what had gone through my mind as I glanced at the size of the…
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Posted inSkateboarding Tai Chi

Tai Chi, me, and senior citizen longboarding

So far I've spent about two hours on my recently acquired longboard skateboard. Given how few 63 year old guys (and even fewer gals, likely) spend any time on a skateboard, I figure this makes me a skateboard sage -- mostly by virtue of lack of competition for the title. My skills are limited. But my venerable sagely wisdom is not, in my own mind at least. So if you're still awake after viewing this video of my most recent longboarding practice session, read on below it for some insights I've gotten into how my Tai Chi will relate to…
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Posted inEntertainment

Jack Reacher movie must show he’s the toughest Jack

Back in 2006, after extensive watching/reading research, I concluded that Jack Reacher, ex-MP hero of the terrific book series by Lee Child, was tougher than Jack Bauer, terrorist battling hero of the terrific TV series "24." In an unarmed mano-a-mano, you’d have to bet on Reacher. He’s 6’ 5” and about 250 pounds. Puny Bauer and his pussy martial arts moves would barely get Reacher warmed up. I fondly remember one Reacher bar fight which began with him calmly sitting at a table. He’s confronted by half a dozen guys out to give him a bad time. Reacher suggests that they should…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Airport security screening is almost useless. And irritating.

Check out a great article by David Pogue in Scientific American, "The TSA's Dumb Air-Security Rules Are Not Based on Science: Outdated screening rules aren't making for safer skies -- just longer lines." Having flown from Portland to Indiana and back recently, I agree with everything Pogue says. Getting through airport security is deeply irritating, but I wouldn't mind if the screening made scientific, logical, and reasonable sense.  But it doesn't. Here's some examples from Pogue's piece: Laptops have to come out of their bags and lie flat in a plastic tub—but not tablets, phones, Kindles, cameras or portable game…
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Posted inSustainability

Global warming is getting scarily real

Great way to put it, columnist Eugene Robinson: "Welcome to the rest of our lives." The extreme weather and global warming predicted by climate scientists is here. And it's only going to get worse unless the world gets off it's denying-butt and starts dealing with increasingly obvious reality. Here's a compilation of extreme weather events. More are coming. And then more after those. Believe it.   Last night I read a chilling article about global warming, "Running Wild," in a recent issue of New Scientist. Scary stuff.  Climate scientists have long warned that global warming will lead to more heatwaves, droughts…
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Posted inHome life Skateboarding

My senior citizen skateboarding: days 1 & 2

Yeah, I did it. Got a skateboard. Longboard, actually. They're different breeds of the same four-wheeled animal. Quite different critters. Skateboards are all tricky; longboards are for cruising, carving, dancing. I thought about the pros and cons of jumping into longboarding at the age of 63 (see here and here).  Then my inner voice, which hopefully isn't a senile or self-destructive one, spoke to me. "Dude, do it!" Since it used the word dude, I trusted the voice. Figured it was in tune with the skateboarding vibe.  After talking with the dudes at Salem's Exit Real World skateboard/snowboard shop, I…
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Posted inRecreation

Photos of Oregon Country Fair 2012: wonderfully weird

Today Laurel and I made our annual pilgrimage to a 60's vibe (decade, not our ages) via the time machine of the marvelous Oregon Country Fair. It's held on beautifully wooded grounds near Veneta, outside of Eugene. If you've never been, go! Wherever you live. A few days ago Laurel flew home after visiting friends in Wisconsin. On the plane to Portland, she sat next to a woman from Iowa who was going to spend all weekend at the fair. There's nothing like it anywhere in the United States, for sure. Temperature was in the mid 80's. Perfect weather to…
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Posted inSustainability

Gas cars need to respect electric vehicle parking spaces

A few months after getting our all-electric Nissan Leaf, I was incensed to see seven of eight EV (electric vehicle) parking spaces next to chargers in Salem's Chemeketa Parkade filled with gasoline powered cars. Jim Motavalli, a writer who specializes in green car topics, wrote an interesting article on this subject: "Caught on tape! Gas cars parking in electric vehicle spots." Not surprisingly, the part I found most interesting was his mention of me. I feel the pain of EV owners who can’t charge because somebody took their space. Brian Hines took his newly acquired electric blue Nissan Leaf to…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Freeway backup shows craziness of relying on cars

Two things drove me crazy during today's drive from Salem to pick up my wife at the Portland International Airport: (1) Listening to right-wing talk show host Lars Larson, because his station, KXL, has good traffic alerts, and (2) getting stuck for a long time in a backup on I-205 whose seeming cause says a lot about the need for more mass transportation. This afternoon Larson didn't blather on about the blessedness of cars, and the hellishness of bicycles, light rail, high speed trains, and other alternatives to getting around in automobiles. But I've often heard him do this. Which…
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Posted inHome life Recreation

Indiana is weird: down on coffee, up on chickens in swings

Yesterday I got back from a visit to Indiana. It was bizarre there. Starting with the weather. On Saturday we were driving around in our (blessedly) air conditioned rental car. I glanced at the outside temperature display. 108 degrees. One...hundred...eight...degrees. With high humidity. I felt like I was being waterboarded while standing straight up. At first it was difficult for my Oregon lungs to breathe. I kept thinking, "Is this air, or watery gruel I'm inhaling?" Whenever the highly unusual heat wave came up in a conversation with locals, I'd mention global warming as often as I could. Indiana being rather…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Marijuana

Oregon could legalize marijuana for adults in 2012

Way to go, Oregonians. Backers of the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act (OCTA) have turned in over 165,000 signatures for a citizen inititive that would legalize marijuana and allow its sale in state-licensed stores. That's almost double the 87,213 needed to be on the November ballot. I support OCTA not just because I'm an ex-pot head from my college days. It makes zero sense to spend so much money in the law enforcement and legal system trying to stop people from using an herb that is demonstrably safer and more beneficial to human well-being than alcohol. Currently we're in a period…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Obamacare is a middle-class tax cut

Beware! Republicans want to raise taxes on the middle class. A lot. How? By repealing Obamacare, a.k.a., the Affordable Care Act, thereby making health care much less affordable for Americans. Obamacare will provide tax credits for those who want insurance, but can't afford to buy it on their own. $686 billion worth over 10 years. By contrast, well-to-do people who can afford health insurance, but refuse to buy it, would pay only $54 billion in shared responsbility penalties. If you want to call those penalties a tax, as the Supreme Court did recently, fine. The net result of repealing Obamacare…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

If Obamacare penalty is a tax, Romney is a huge tax-raiser

Mitt Romney never met a flip that he didn't soon flop. The guy has no spine. He bends to whatever his right-wing Tea Party masters want him to say and do. Not a great leadership quality for a would-be president of the United States. Latest case in point: at first he and his campaign argued that the Affordable Health Care penalty for not having health insurance wasn't a tax, contrary to the Supreme Court majority opinion. Probably this was because the penalty in Massachusetts under "Romneycare," which "Obamacare" essentially copied, also was handled by the tax collection folks, so if…
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Posted inScience

Not a big surprise: women are more moral than men

Roger Steare, a "corporate philosopher," has gotten 60,000 people across 200 countries to take a Moral DNA Test.  One conclusion: women are more moral than men. Which to me, is just about as surprising as a researcher concluding that wolves are more dangerous than kittens. Still, science is to be respected, even when what it tells us agrees with common sense. The study, which measured responses to questions about honesty and competency, showed females are more likely to make decisions based on how they impact on others. It also suggest the moral compass of both men and women alters with…
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Posted inHome life Skateboarding

Senior citizen skateboarding: my new passion?

Can't get it out of my mind. Longboarding, which is skateboarding on, duh..., a longer board. After blogging about how I'm seriously considering giving longboarding a try at the age of 63, asking "am I crazy?", I've come to no firm conclusion. Of course, knowing the answer wouldn't tell me much. I've never had a desire to be averagely normal. And leaving aside obvious clinical insanity, craziness is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. We all do, think, and believe stuff which makes other people say, that's crazy! While to us... they're crazy. So viva la craziness. The…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Video proof: Republicans don’t care about 30 million uninsured

When I said that "compassionate conservatism" is dead in today's GOP, a few commenters on my post disagreed with me. I stand by my assertion. Even more so, after watching in full an interview with Mitch McConnell on Fox News.  Even after being asked repeatedly how Republicans would handle the problem of 30 million uninsured Americans, how they would move toward universal coverage, McConnell kept dodging the question, saying "that's not the issue." What a jerk. What an uncaring, heartless, uncompassionate jerk. This is the modern GOP: out of ideas, out of caring. Here's the proof.  
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Posted inHome life Skateboarding

At 63, I’m seriously considering skateboarding. Am I crazy?

I've never been on a skateboard in my sixty-three years. But after a great conversation yesterday with a guy eight years older than I am, I'm seriously thinking of getting a longboard skateboard -- for cruising around, not doing fancy tricks. Is this crazy? Not to me. And not to the 71 year old man I met while we were waiting for our cars to be serviced at Mini of Portland. Killing time, we found ourselves standing together, looking at the new Mini two seat model in the showroom. Noticing what I was wearing, he said "That's a Crazy Shirt."…
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