Posted inDogs

Why dogs don’t invent computer chips

Recently Laurel excitedly pointed out to me a news item about dogs sharing 75% of human DNA, or something along those lines. I wasn’t impressed, since I knew that chimpanzees and people are 98% genetically similar, which makes our dog a much more distant relative. And the more I play “buddy ball” with Serena, the more I am convinced that even that 75% may be a decided overestimate. For those unfamiliar with dog play paraphernalia, “buddy ball” is the brand name of Serena’s light-up-in-the-dark ball, the light-up feature being a necessity given her underdeveloped retriever skills, as it allows me…
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Posted inEntertainment Philosophy

Joan of Arcadia: God Appears on Prime Time

We just experienced a miracle—the premier of a prime time network series that we actually enjoyed. "Joan of Arcadia"(CBS, Friday, 8:00 pm) is about a sixteen year old girl who starts to encounter God in all sorts of guises. First, just a voice. Then a shadowy figure who seems to be an old man. Then a hunky teenage boy. And finally a black woman, for the requisite non-sexist political correctness. Personally, I was rooting for God to always appear to Joan in the guise of a male, since this seems to me to be the most appropriate and natural form…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Land use twists and turns

Ah, the wonder of all the twists and turns in our appeal of the neighborhood (Spring Lake Estates) proposed lot partitioning. First we win the appeal. We’re up! Then that decision is appealed. And we lose the second remand decision. We’re down! Then we ask the County Commissioners to reconsider the remand approval, and they decline, thereby sustaining the atrocious decision. We’re even further down! Then, after consulting the level of our psychic energy and bank balance, we decide to take another step and appeal to LUBA—the Land Use Board of Appeals, a $375 step. Though it is customary to…
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Posted inEntertainment

Swimming Pool

As a rule of thumb, whenever a movie review contains the words, “Rated R (for strong sexual content, nudity, language, some violence and drug use),” I’m pretty sure I’m going to like the film. And indeed I did like "Swimming Pool," our latest art flick entertainment at Salem Cinema. On the face of it, it’s one of those “repressed old maid writer unleashes her unexpressed wild side” movies, which wouldn’t make it too special. But the gorgeous Ludivine Sagnier, complete with alluring French accent and even more alluring frequent topless scenes, makes Swimming Pool special, as does the ending, about…
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Posted inHome life

Where is it???!!!

I haven’t posted anything for almost a week because I’ve spent most of my time camped out in our driveway, looking for the Mini-Cooper with my personalized license plate already on it to arrive from God. By now, I’m almost beginning to think that the comment attached to the posting below may have been tongue-in-cheek! But no!!! I must end that beginning of my thinking!!! My faith in God’s omnibenevolence must not slacken. And it will not. I shall consider that Keith’s comment, though perhaps not objectively factually true, still is, as he says, “a sign from a higher power.”…
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Posted inSustainability

Cool EEI web site

In my guise as the Communications Director for Eco-Enterprises, Inc. (a wonderfully impressive title, you must admit, which doesn’t begin to reflect the wonderfully humble reality behind those words), I’ve had the pleasure of working with a talented young web site designer, one Matthew Flook. His design talents can be perused at the newly released www.eco-enterprises.com, along with the written content that I supplied as my half of the partnership. The logo was designed by Matthew’s father, Randy. It nicely reflects EEI’s commitment to basing our property development model on nature’s wise cyclical way of doing things, rather than the…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Need to revisit Life Plan for Happiness

Earlier in the week Laurel had prominently displayed page 99 from the September 8 issue of TIME magazine so I couldn’t miss the item called “No Price Tag on Happiness.” To make sure I got the point, she crossed out “Porsche” and wrote in “Mini-Cooper” on the item’s first sentence: “Think that Porsche and boat and beach house you have been dreaming of would make you happy? Think again.” Richard Easterlin, an economist, found that “while healthy people are generally happier than unhealthy ones and married people are happier than unmarrieds, increases in wealth and material possessions improve happiness only…
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Posted inHome life

Secret shame confessed

It’s been a few weeks now since I engaged in an activity that needs confessing, but which I still can’t bring myself to speak openly about. So please excuse me for speaking indirectly in this posting. I hope you understand how difficult it is for me to talk about this. I mean, I’ve always known that I had a secret passion for it. And now that satellite TV (we subscribe to the DISH network) brings so many channels right into your home, it isn’t necessary to skulk around to view this sort of stuff any more. It’s right there in…
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Posted inHome life Neighborhood

Fire karma comes closer

Nothing grabs your attention like hearing the phone ring, picking up the receiver, saying “hello,” and then having the neighbor across the street excitedly tell you that he has just called 911 because there is a wildfire burning a few lots down from you. The neighbor was out of breath because he had noticed smoke, went to check it out, and ended up trying to put it out with a garden house (the people whose house the fire had started next to weren’t home). Laurel was in town, so I left a message at one of her likely stops, LifeSource…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Recreation

Rain dances, please

We would most appreciate some rain dances tonight and tomorrow, focusing your attention on the Camp Sherman area in central Oregon. Rain prayers are fine as an alternative. Rain magic…rain wishes…rain sorcery…rain making. Anything that will put out the Booth Fire before it torches Camp Sherman, and the cabin we own with three other people on the Metolius River, do it. The weekly newspaper in a nearby town (Sisters), the Nugget, has been doing a fine job reporting on the fire via their web site. Camp Sherman has been evacuated as a precautionary measure, even though the fire is still…
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Posted inHome life

Correction!!!

The publisher of HinesSight, namely me, has been contacted by someone, namely my wife, who was prominently mentioned in these pages recently, namely in the last posting. The publisher rashly printed out this post for Laurel’s information and amusement, and discovered that she was more informed than amused. Even though the publisher emphasized that some exaggeration is central to humor (do dogs really talk to bartenders?), my understandable desire to be able to go to sleep tonight without fearing that, sometime during the night, my head or some other important bodily organ will be smashed with a baseball bat by…
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Posted inHome life

What Laurel leaves me

Recently a HinesSight reader, who would remain nameless except for my writing “Karen Lord,” asked a question that goes right to the heart of my marital relationship, and deserves answering in some detail. Before we get into this, I should add that Karen is our CPA. And a very good CPA at that. Further, she is probably the only liberal/progressive CPA in the entire United States, a real mark of distinction. So, if you call up Karen, tell her Brian sent you. Recently we referred a new client to her, which means, I hope, that we get a free tax…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Anti-partitioning battle continues

The Hines’ battle to save the Earth from greedy land developers, or, at least, the small corner of the Earth that is Spring Lake Estates, continues. A few weeks ago we were surprised and dismayed to learn that the Marion County Hearings Officer had overruled herself on the Nielsen’s lot partitioning case. We won the first appeal, as the Hearings Officer found that the Nielsen’s hydrologist had failed to demonstrate that this partitioning wouldn’t harm the long-term sustainability of groundwater in the surrounding area. When the Nielsen’s appealed this denial, the Marion County Board of Commissioners remanded the case back…
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Posted inEntertainment

“Winged Migration” not for the birds

Meaning, this is a movie to see, because you’ll like it. Really. It is indeed all about birds, with people showing up in just a few scenes (and even then often badly, as when hunters are shown shooting down hard-working geese, gamely migrating along in their beautiful aerodynamic fashion, only to be sent into a downward death spiral for the pleasure of a few guys who think it is macho to kill a defenseless bird with a shotgun). Roger Ebert’s review contains some interesting background information about the film, which I won’t bother to repeat. “Winged Migration” has images that…
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Posted inDogs Science

Serena renaming not in the works

At least, the past few days have convinced us that the family pet definitely shouldn’t be renamed Thor, a.k.a. the Viking thunder god. Notwithstanding Serena’s proud half German-Shepherd bloodline (the other half being Labrador, though her Lab DNA must be missing all retriever instincts, given how much time and energy I spend retrieving tennis balls), we’ve learned that she is a total dog-wuss in the presence of thunder and lightning. Here in the Camp Sherman environs of central Oregon, we’ve had some impressive thunderstorms the past few days. (A few trees reportedly caught fire on Black Butte last night, but…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Suspicions about conservatives confirmed!

I suspected it all along, that hard-core conservatives are psychologically disturbed. And now here’s a study to confirm it. Well, the U.C. Berkeley study doesn’t say exactly that conservatives are psychologically disturbed, but it isn’t hard to draw this conclusion from the findings. I mean, if at “the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality,” that doesn’t sound like the person I’d like to be, or have living next to me. As anyone can tell from listening to talk radio, conservatives can’t tolerate ambiguity very well, so they tend to see and state…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Good news (I guess)

Back on July 17, in my “yin and yang news stories” post, I noted a report that men were paying big bucks in Las Vegas to hunt naked women with paintball guns. Something about this story didn’t seem quite right, but I took it at face value. After all, can’t you believe everything the media tells you? I even saw mention of this on Fox News! (Actually, I guess this should been a tipoff right there. It kills me every time a Fox anchor says, “Fair. Balanced. Unafraid.” Fair, balanced, and Fox News are four words that don’t belong together).…
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Posted inBooks Home life Philosophy

Refrigerator friends, art, and Emerson

An eclectic collection of topics, but it’s been a week since my last post, making it difficult to focus on a single subject. Refrigerator friends…Laurel found a mention of such in an article she was reading a while back. This well describes Ron and Rita, from Seattle, whom we had the pleasure of hosting as weekend guests. A refrigerator friend is someone who unhesitatingly can walk into your house and open the refrigerator without asking, even saying, “What do you have to eat? I’m starving.” The author of the article said that everyone needs some refrigerator friends, because these are…
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Posted inBooks Philosophy

The substance of emptiness

I’ve got a Buddhist book called the “The Emptiness of Emptiness.” I bought it mainly because I liked the title. Unfortunately, the title continued to be the best thing I liked about the book, even after I read it. The idea that an idea of emptiness fills up, and thus negates, the emptiness is cool. Buddhism 101. But a whole book on the subject? The title suffices. So I’m running the danger of doing the same thing by even going on as long as I have. But without saying something about emptiness, we’d be stuck in our own isolated islands…
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Posted inBooks Current affairs

Yin and Yang news stories

Maybe “yin and yang” isn’t quite the right term to describe the relation between these stories. Maybe there isn’t any relation between them at all. Maybe they are just two stories, each being what each is. Still, somehow they seem to say something about the polar ends of the human condition, not that I know what the two ends consist of, nor what value should be attached to each end. The June 23 issue of Time magazine featured a cover story, “Why Harry Potter rules,” all about J.K. Rowling and her fabulously successful series of five Harry Potter books. I’ve…
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