Posted inWeb/Tech

iPhone 4 is working great for me

I guess every iPhone 4 should come with one of those legalistic disclaimers: "Your results may vary." Because I've been playing around with my new upgraded phone for five days now, and my review is pithily simple.Love it!The antenna/signal strength problem has been getting a lot of attention. Friday Apple is holding a press conference. Maybe they'll give every iPhone owner free bumpers -- which would be nice, since I forked out $29 for mine after I heard they solved the antenna issue (only to discover that the bumper keeps the phone from fitting correctly in my much-beloved Sirius satellite…
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Posted inEntertainment

Alex and Twitch’s dance message: “Get out of your mind!”

Sometimes great performances on So You Think You Can Dance touch a deep emotional chord with me. Last night my wife and I started to make our way through some recorded episodes. We came to Alex and Twitch's astounding hip-hop dance, "Get out of your mind!"We watched it twice. Today I saw it twice more, having been able to find it online. You'll probably have to wait for an ad to finish before seeing the video, but believe me, you need to wait. Then, enjoy.What's amazing is that Alex is an accomplished ballet dancer. Hip-hop seemingly would be way out…
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Posted inEntertainment

Photos of 2010 Oregon Country Fair

Last year, after a long absence, we returned to the 60's and had a great time at the Oregon Country Fair in Veneta (outside of Eugene). Friday we fired up our Prius and hybrid'ed our way down I-5 again, hoping the mid-90's heat wouldn't mess up our mellow. It didn't. Shortly after we parked our car and started walking across grassy fields (double entendre entirely appropriate), we came across a purple-tailed horse. I instantly felt at home. And wondered what it would have been like to come to the fair in my LSD-taking days. (I would have named the horse "Trippy,"…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Climate scientists cleared of wrongdoing

Ah, it's so pleasing to have been proven right. As was obvious seven months ago, when I wrote "Climate scientist emails show no fraud," several investigations have now concluded that the stolen emails of leading climate researchers leave the science of global warming as it was before:Proven beyond any reasonable doubt. The Earth is warming to dangerous levels, and humans are responsible for it.An article from a British newpaper, the Guardian, was headlined "Climategate scientists cleared of manipulating data on global warming."Announcing the findings, Russell said: "Ultimately this has to be about what they did, not what they said. The…
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Posted inSustainability

Oregon wolves saved from ridiculous kill order

I can't understand why Eastern Oregon ranchers are so afraid of wolves. There only are thought to be fourteen wolves in the entire state. They're on Oregon's endangered species list.Yet two of the fourteen were slated to be slaughtered by the inaccurately-named federal agency, Wildlife Services, after the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife issued an unnecessary kill order. Fortunately, on July 1 four conservation groups sued Wildlife Services for not conducting a required environmental analysis. After all, killing 1/7 of an endangered species population sure sounds like it needs some careful thought.But as I've noted before in "Ranchers overly afraid…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Progressives should support gun rights

Wow. I couldn't believe I was still on the Daily Kos -- a leading progressive blog -- when I came across a great post: "Why liberals should love the Second Amendment." Kaili Joy Gray persuasively argued that just as liberals support other individual rights in the Constitution, the right to possess guns should be added to the progressive agenda.All of our rights, even the ones enumerated in the Bill of Rights, are restricted. You can't shout "Fire!" in a crowd. You can't threaten to kill the president. You can't publish someone else's words as your own. We have copyright laws…
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Posted inFamily

Photos of cutest granddaughter in the world

To those who would challenge the truthfulness of this post's title, I reply: hey, what else could I call it? If it was your granddaughter's photos you were sharing, I'd expect you to say the same thing.Anyway, I managed to limit myself to 18. Not 18 dozen photos. Just 18. That took will power. A friend and I had labored long and hard to get a tree house ready for Evelyn's first visit as a three year old to Oregon. He built. I stained. The walkway over two sloping tree trunks is pretty steep, but Evelyn handled it just fine,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Republicans still kookie, even if Kos pollster is crooked

Often people say, "You can't trust the polls." Well, usually they're pretty accurate. But not if a pollster conducts fraudulent work, which is the allegation a leading progressive web site, Daily Kos, had made against Research 2000.It's sort of difficult for me to follow the statistical evidence trail that strongly suggests Research 2000 made up results for the polls the firm conducted for Daily Kos the past few years.However, the bottom line is clear. Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas says, "I hereby renounce any post we've written based exclusively on Research 2000 polling."That includes a well-publicized Research 2000 survey of…
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Posted inHome life

Men are wimps when sick, so I’m manly

Last week I got a flu/cold sickness from my three year old granddaughter, Evelyn, who probably caught the virus on her plane trip up from California. Evelyn had been coughing for a few days before my own symptoms appeared.With no hesitation I started to let the world know about my pitiful condition. Cough. Cough. "Ohhhhhh, I'm sick!"Blow nose. "Ohhhhhh, I don't feel good!"Cough and blow nose. "Ohhhhhh, where's the cold medicine?!"It didn't take long for my wife, Laurel, to make an observation: "You're better at whining than a three year old." My utterly predictable reply: "Ohhhhhh, I'm sick! You have…
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Posted inSalem

Images of 2010 Salem World Beat Festival

Yesterday was warm and sunny here in Oregon. But I was still kind of sick from a mildly feverish flu/cold my granddaughter had gifted me during a recent visit. Still, I couldn't resist firing up my scooter and heading to the Salem World Beat Festival. This is my second-favorite local summer event, getting bested out only by the Salem Art Fair. It was healing to catch my first glimpse of the main stage Amphitheater in the Riverfront Park. Seeing people having a good time listening to the Incendio (world guitar fusion) band made me feel better. As did watching an…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Humor

Colbert’s hilarious take on Rand Paul not being board-certified

There's a good reason why, almost every night, my wife and I watch The Colbert Report before heading off to bed: Stephen Colbert is able to make us laugh about the state of the world, which, when we watch the regular news, usually is disturbingly depressing.A few days ago Colbert revealed that Rand Paul, a libertarian ophthalmologist who is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator in Kentucky (and son of Ron Paul) isn't board-certified in his medical specialty -- though Paul claims that he is.Yes, it's true. The national panel that approves doctors as board certified said U.S. Senate candidate Rand…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Tea Party irrationality reflected in Statesman Journal commentary

The Salem (Oregon) Statesman Journal editorial board positions have gotten increasingly nonsensical and right-wing -- a redundancy of adjectives, I realize. My suspected causes are the arrival of a publisher who used to be an editor at the Orange County Register, and the newspaper's increasing need to suck up to the Chamber of Commerce in order to maintain its advertising revenues.Last Sunday, a commentary by executive editor Bill Church reached new levels of editorializing meaninglessness. Though titled "Obama, please give us reasons to stay hopeful," it didn't contain any reasoned arguments for being unhopeful. Download Bill Church Obama commentaryInstead, Church…
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Posted inEntertainment

My tips for watching World Cup soccer

I've enjoyed the two World Cup soccer matches that I've watched on TV. Naturally they've both featured the United States team -- when they played England and Slovenia -- because I'm only interested in soccer on the rare occasions when the game means something to my national interest.By "enjoyed," I mean that I followed the tips I shared in How to enjoyably watch hockey and soccer on TV.(1) Record the event.(2) Press "Play." (3) Then -- this is really important, because life is short and you don't want to waste it on meaningless stuff -- immediately press the fast forward…
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Posted inSalem

Sign lies: Trader Joe’s not coming to Keizer

Yesterday there was a lot of excited buzzing in normally sleepy Salem after the Statesman Journal ran a front page story about a sign going up at Keizer Station listing Trader Joe's as a retailer. Download SJ Trader Joe's storySure, the story quoted a Keizer Station representative who said that the sign company screwed up, and there wasn't any deal with Trader Joe's. But I, like lots of other people, figured that this was an attempt to cover up the premature divulging of Trader Joe's imminent arrival in the Salem area.Unfortunately, it looks like the Salem curse -- which keeps…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

iPhone 4 ordering screw-ups — bad AT&T omen

Eight days ago I was really excited about ordering an iPhone 4 -- Apple's newest must have techno-gadget.Today, not nearly so much. I can personally confirm Gizmodo's reporting: "Apple's iPhone 4 pre-ordering is a total disaster."I found it impossible to get any response from either the Apple or AT&T web sites when I tried to upgrade my 3G iPhone. No, that isn't true. I got some curt error messages -- not exactly the sort of thing I've come to expect from the usually smoothly functioning world of Apple. Apparently it is more AT&T's fault than Apple's, according to Gizmodo.The reason…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Police don’t deserve special thanks

I enjoy reading letters to the editor that make me say to myself, Wow, why didn't I think of that -- it makes so much sense. Today's Portland Oregonian features a letter from Jim Sumser (of Vancouver) that garnered that Wow response. He points out that police officers and fire fighters are just doing a job, as are so many other people.Letter writer Darryl Willis ("Respect for police," June 13) doubts that employees of the Red & Black Cafe would have had the courage to arrest a burglar in his home. It was hard for me to make sense of…
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Posted inRecreation Sustainability

Metolius trash spill makes me empathize with Gulf Coast

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Sometimes the morality of a situation is stunningly simple. Only one word kept echoing in my head after I spotted some out-of-place debris as I was walking along the Metolius River in central Oregon, past the Riverside campground near the headwaters. There's very little litter along the Metolius. People visiting the Camp Sherman area respect this marvelously beautiful spring-fed river, which I believe has an official Wild and Scenic designation.So this trash was out of place. Unusual. Unexpected. And wrong. We usually come to the Metolius once a month from April through October, being 1/4 owners of a…
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Posted inScience Sustainability

Lars Larson’s lies about global warming

Even though I got satellite radio to avoid the right-wing talk shows that dominate the Portland, Oregon airwaves, occasionally I tune into Lars Larson (KXL) or Victoria Taft (KPAM) to check on the strength of my cranium -- since almost always what I hear makes me feel like my brain is going to explode.I survived ten minutes or so of Larson a few days ago, but just barely. The combined scientific ignorance of Lars and a global warming-denying sidekick he had on, Chuck Wiese, was astounding.And intensely disturbing.Three years ago I criticized Larson for joking about how global warming is…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

Apple, please get into the printer business (again)

I'm a fervent devotee of all things Apple'ish. I believe that if I buy enough gadgets from Apple, I will achieve perfect (roughly speaking) happiness. I have an iPod touch, an iPhone, and a MacBook Pro, plus two Airport Extremes that smoothly and easily connect me wirelessly to the Internet and a printer. Which -- the printer -- I just replaced, again, after my Samsung decided that it would be fun to print half of a page, then stop dead, leaving the paper jammed.I researched the issue via Google and learned that this is a common complaint of the Samsung…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

iPhone 4 — the way to perfect happiness

Once again, this morning I found myself transfixed before my MacBook Pro, glued to Engadget's live blog of a Steve Jobs presentation of Apple's newest must-have techno-wonder.The iPhone 4. And this time it truly is a must-have for me. I was strongly attracted to the iPad when Jobs revealed its appealing features, but after the show was over I was left with a nagging feeling of "cool toy, yet what would I do with it that I can't already?"Different reaction to the iPhone 4, for sure.Currently I have an iPhone 3G which can't even capture video (unlike the 3Gs, a…
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