Posted inHome life Web/Tech

How I’m talking myself into buying a Retina MacBook Pro

Without rationalizations, what would my life be? Dreadfully filled with, ugh!, impersonal reality. I've got sound neuroscience on my side here. Ever since Apple announced the Retina MacBook Pro, I've been wrestling with whether I should get one. On the day news of the new laptop was released, I presciently blogged, "New Retina MacBook Pro or MacBook Air? Laptop lust will decide." That's how it's been going the past eight days. Logic and reason lead me one way, emotion and intuition lead me another way. And here's the likely neuroscientific fact: my brain (a redundancy, because "my brain" is me)…
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Posted inRecreation

Photos of Whychus Creek trail near Sisters, Oregon

If you're looking for a beautiful, easily accessible, moderately challenging, six mile round trip hike through a variety of riverside terrain in central Oregon, check out the recently opened Whychus Creek trail.  My wife and I learned about it through an informative article in the Sisters weekly newspaper, the Nugget. Craig F. Eisenbeis got us enthused about the trail in his "Experience the 'wild' at the edge of town." After we took his advice, we were way more enthused. Here's some photos of what we saw. The northern trailhead is reached from Highway 20 by driving 4.2 miles south on…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

Reasons to choose a basic MacBook Pro over the Retina

After Apple's release of the 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro, I've been bouncing back and forth between finding good reasons why I need one, and why I don't. As I said in a previous post about my laptop lust: After the WWDC event was over, the online Apple store returned to life with the new Retina MacBook Pro prominently displayed, which is basically a blend between the old MacBook Pro and Air. That's the laptop I lust for. But my pocketbook wonders if an Air would suffice. I priced three options of the new models, with each including 8 GB…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Oregon has higher taxes and stronger economy. Hmmmm….

A few years ago Oregon raised taxes on businesses and high-income individuals. Tax-hating conservatives screamed warnings about how bad this would be for the state's economy, and how the "job creators" would be moving out. Not happening. Here's a couple of recent headlines from the Oregonian. Oregon economy growing at nation's second fastest rate"Oregon's economic growth outpaced all but one state in 2011, driven largely by double-digit manufacturing gains." Oregon payrolls continue to grow in May, but monthly figures cloud hiring picture"Oregon employers added 6,900 jobs last month, according to the state's monthly report. That's equal to 10 percent of all jobs…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Oregon’s electric cars shouldn’t pay a miles-driven tax

I'm not exactly unbiased on the subject of Oregon moving away from using the gasoline tax to pay for roads. We owned an all-electric Nissan Leaf for about six months, and now have a semi-electric Chevy Volt. Over on Blue Oregon, Kari Chisholm talks about "GPS tax: the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea that just won't die."  He perusasively describes why outfitting cars with a GPS device that tracks mileage driven within the state is all of those negative adjectives in his blog post title. How will Oregon force all vehicles to get a GPS device installed? There are…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

New Retina MacBook Pro or MacBook Air? Laptop lust will decide.

Like lots of other Apple addicts, I was glued to my computer this morning, watching Engadget's live blog of the WWDC 2012 conference where new Apple products were eagerly anticipated. The rumors were pretty much right-on. A new 15 inch MacBook Pro with a retina display (like on the iPhone 4s) was the highlight of the show. For me, at least. I've had my 13 inch MacBook Pro for what seems like centuries. In computer years, that's about right -- got it in October 2008. It's been almost completely trouble free. It looks virtually brand new, but my laptop is feeling…
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Posted inHome life

Welcome to our day old car baby, Chevy Volt

Aw, so cute. When I saw her for the first time she was just five miles old. My wife and I immediately bonded with her. Liked her lines. And her soothing feminine Viridian Joule light greenish color.  Here she is after we brought her home yesterday from Salem's Capitol Chevrolet dealership. All on electric power, mostly on the freeway. We then drove into town that evening for a dance lesson and practice. Voltie shifted to gasoline power only for the last mile. Battery range was almost exactly as expected, about 35 miles. We ordered the Volt, so had to wait…
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Posted inDogs Home life

Zu Zu, our new dog, wears flowers in her hair

Finally, an almost-summer-feeling Oregon afternoon. Laurel, me, and our two canine dog pack went for a walk around the neighborhood lake.  A big patch of wildflowers caught my eye. Also, Laurel's.  While I was getting out my iPhone and snapping some shots of the flowers, she was adorning Zu Zu with some daisies. Of course, dog photography being what it is, as soon as we tried to pose Zu Zu she shook violently, then laid down on her back. Which messed up her flower arrangement. Still, it brought back memories of the 60's to see our new dog with flowers…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Eight reasons to feel better about the Wisconsin recall election

After Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker survived his recall election last Tuesday, I was disappointed but not depressed. Democrats took back control of the state Senate and there were other reasons to not feel like the progressive sky was falling. Now I'm feeling even better. Joshua Holland helped boost my spirits with his "8 Ways Delusional Right-Wingers Are Blowing Wisconsin Out of Proportion." Thanks, Joshua. In the aftermath of the vote, conservatives, proving typically magnanimous in victory, spun the results like a top. They claimed the outcome spelled doom for Obama this fall, marked the death of the labor movement and…
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Posted inSalem Sustainability

Northwest only region of U.S. cooler than normal in 2012

This won't surprise Oregonians and Washingtonians bummed out over our cold, wet spring. Which has extended into summer. Snow was falling at pass levels recently, and it's freaking June! Almost everywhere in the United States but the northwest, temperatures have been warmer than average in 2012. In many places, record-breaking warmer. Our relatives in the mid-west have been bragging for months about going swimming in 80 degree weather. Climate Progress tells the tale. Spring 2012 beat 1910, which had held the title for record warm spring, by a healthy margin of 2°F. No doubt much of this was driven by the…
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Posted inSalem

Downtown Salem (Oregon) needs to lose some lanes

I'm writing this blog post in my favorite downtown Salem coffee house, the Beanery. The atmosphere both inside and outside is pleasant, but in no way electric, energetic, exciting, enthusiastic, or any other "e" word I can think of to describe what downtown Salem could be, yet isn't. That's Salem, the little engine that could, but hasn't. On May 4, 1000 Friends of Oregon brought together a bunch of people to discuss what's right and wrong with downtown Salem. An overview of the meeting is interesting reading. I heartily agree with: But local residents and businesspeople have a lot of…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Entertainment

PETA now has a XXX web site. It’s animalistic!

Way to go, PETA. You're making good use of the new .xxx domain option with www.peta.xxx Personally, I wasn't turned on by seeing porn star Ron Jeremy featured on the home page, but my male eyes quickly turned leftward (natural for me) to an image of Sasha Grey -- another former porn star who supports the animal side of both humans and animals. PETA enticed my throbbing attention deeper into the site with... PETA is not new to the world of adult entertainment. In fact, we've been collaborating with some of the most legendary XXX stars for years. Thanks to…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Wisconsin recall election disappointing — but everything will be all right

What goes up, comes down. A loss today often presages a win tomorrow. The only certainty in politics is that nothing is certain. I'd hoped Governor Scott Walker would lose today's Wisconsin recall election, but polling showed that the prospects of this happening were low. His win is disappointing to me, not depressing.  I feel for the legions of hard-working progressives in Wisconsin who worked long and hard to recall Walker, collecting more than a million signatures. After subscribing to the Twitter feed of Wisconsin activist Kelly Steele, every day I enjoyed reading his passionate tweets about the ups and downs…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

I’m not worried about Southern Oregon land use pilot program

The headline in today's Salem Statesman Journal story said, "Pilot program loosens grip on land use plans." Subhead: "Door opened for southern Oregon counties." Well, yeah. But the door isn't open very far.  As I noted in a blog post last March, Governor Kitzhaber's executive order and the legislature's appropriation of $550,000 to support regional land use planning looks to me a lot more like political expediency than a significant policy shift. So if HB 4095 was unnecessary and didn't even get a hearing in the joint Ways and Means Committee, why was $550,000 in general fund taxpayer money allocated…
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Posted inSalem

Salem “cougar” is almost certainly a cat

Lock the doors! Keep children inside! Armor up your Chihuahuas! A cougar has been spotted in a south Salem residential area! Except... the animal almost certainly is a cat, notwithstanding the uncritical acceptance of the cougar sighting by Statesman Journal reporter Dan Bender. (Note to Bender: "sighting" is when you see something; "siting," the word you used, is when something is positioned somewhere.) This is a real cougar. This is the "cougar" spotted lying on some groundcover during daytime in the backyard of a south Salem home. Comments on the KATU story are decidedly (and appropriately) skeptical about this animal…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Weak jobs report points to Republican failings

Not as many jobs were created in May, 2012 as were expected. This is bad news for the unemployed. But Obama isn't to blame, notwithstanding Republican glee over the misery of Americans without a job. As I noted before, the question to ask is whether the United States is better off after the past several years of Republican obstructionism, where the #1 goal of the G.O.P. has been to stop Obama from winning a second term. So it doesn't make sense to blame Obama for a weak recovery, since after the 2010 election he hasn't been able to get key…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Writing/Weblogs

Reality is respected on this here blog

Reality is a wonderful thing. Actually, the only thing. Show me something that isn't real, and I'll say "You've shown me nothing." And that's what some commenters on this blog want to do: pretend they've got a fact in their hand when all they possess is an empty palm of subjectivity.  Which, I'll admit, is something real. But reality comes in two main varieties, communal/objective and individual/subjective. Both are wonderful, admirable, essential, inescapable. It's when an attempt is made to pass off one as the other that I, as moderator of this blog, rule "No way!" Global warming and Obama's…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Alan Simpson trashes Republican extremism in Zakaria interview

Alan Simpson is a Republican who was a Senator from Wyoming for 18 years. He's an appealingly crusty, straight-talking guy. He's the sort of conservative who now is looked upon by super-far-right Tea Party types as -- gasp! -- a moderate. Today I enjoyed listening to a podcast of his recent interview on Fareed Zakaria's GPS program. He appeared with his fellow co-chair of what's often called the Simpson-Bowles (or Bowles-Simpson) commission, Erskine Bowles.  (Full transcript can be read on the CNN site.) Simpson strikes me as a much more reasonable version of Ron Paul. Equally blunt, but without the…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Crazy Shirts model spotted at Salem dog park!

OK, let's add "Aspiring" at the start of the title for this blog post. Because right now I am not an official model of Crazy Shirts clothing. But after Crazy Shirts executives see today's Salem (Oregon) dog park photo shoot, I expect a modeling contract will be in the mail. (One negative omen, though: Crazy Shirts seems to be age'ist in its current choice of clothing models. On the positive side, there's a dog in this photo of a 2012 photoshoot.) My own photoshoot was spontaneously organized by my wife, who asked for my iPhone after I cajoled Family Dog #2, Zu Zu, to…
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Posted inHome life

Innocent bee swarm…or something more sinister?

Maybe I've read too many mystery novels, and watched too many junky murder movies. But... I'm worried that there's more to this bee swarm than meets the eye. Especially since the swarm is right at eye level, on a branch overhanging a trail that Family Dog #1 and I walk on often. As soon as I drove home yesterday and got out of the car, Laurel excitedly asked me if I had my iPhone with me. "Of course," I said. "Good. There's a bee swarm on the trail to the creek. My phone's battery is dead. I want you to…
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