Posted inCurrent affairs

European Union is a success, no matter what U.S. conservatives say

With the French elections happening today, Adam Gopnik's "Vive La France" piece in the May 7 The New Yorker is timely reading.  Like so much else in the magazine, it's wonderfully written and soundly reasoned. The piece touches on a question that baffles me: why conservatives/Republicans in our semi good-old USA have such a distaste for European social democracies. Those nations do a lot of things better than we do. Like health care. Modern transportation. Making it possible to move up the economic ladder. Providing essential social services to all of their citizens. At the end of his essay, Gopnik…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Heartland Institute compares global warming believers to “murderers”

As if we needed more proof that anti-science global warming deniers are wackos, here it is: Well, when facts, reality, and 98% of the world's leading climate scientists aren't on your side, it looks like the global warming deniers are reduced to disgusting fearmongering and personal insults. Here's what part of the Heartland Institute's press release announcing the billboard campaign said: May 3, 2012 – Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too. Heartland’s first digital…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Oregon weather breaks my May heart… then heals it

Oregon weather, I'm fed up with you. I've had enough abuse. This afternoon I realized that I can't stand you anymore. Driving around in south Salem, I just had to pull over, grab my iPhone, and document what a crappy companion you've become.  Come on! You're ridiculous! My Mini's thermometer doesn't lie. The warmth between us is gone. You're giving me 43 degrees. That's cold any time. Especially... When the time is 12:50 pm -- middle of the freakin' day! -- on May 4. Spring. In fact, late spring. Yeah, I'd been listening to the "Chill" station on Sirius satellite…
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Posted inSalem Sustainability

Salem City Council, preserve the vision of “Sustainable Fairview”

Please, Salem (Oregon) City Council. Pretty please. Don't allow the beautiful property in south Salem to become less than the world-class Green development that Sustainable Fairview currently is zoned as. A few days ago I learned that the Salem Planning Commission is OK with turning the undeveloped portion of the property from a vibrant green to a blah gray, architecturally speaking. On May 14 the City Council meets to decide whether to allow Simpson Hills, LLC to build a bunch of typical apartments on 43 of the 104 acres it owns at the site that used to house the Fairview…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

Dark Sky tells me if it’s going to rain soon. Great iPhone app.

Here in Oregon it's super important to know for me to know if rain is coming in the next hour. Even though I'm retired, I have many crucial things to do -- such as taking our oldest dog for a semi-slow motion walk every afternoon. Our walk takes about an hour though it's less than two miles. Serena is twelve and a half. She doesn't move nearly as fast as she used to, unless a CAT! grabs her attention. So this morning, when I learned about Dark Sky through my iPhone's AppAdvice app, almost instantly I decided to fork out $3.99…
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Posted inHome life Salem

My photographic evidence that the world’s alright

There's a lot wrong with the world. No doubt about that. But I've accumulated some photographic evidence on my iPhone which shows how alright things are also. Along with some fellow Trader Joe's-loving friends, we've been worried about how well the recently-opened Salem, Oregon store is doing. Seems like it isn't very crowded whenever I shop there. But when I glanced into the blue/green glass bin at the D&O Garbage recycling center a few days ago, I thought Alright!  Tossing my own Charles Shaw (Trader Joe's famous $2.49 wine) bottles into the bin, I was struck by how many similarly labeled…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

So true: Republicans are the problem in American politics

Thank you for saying it, Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann. The Republicans are the problem. These respected centrists (Ornstein is with the American Enterprise Institute; Mann with the Brookings Institution) have written a terrific piece in the Washington Post that's based on their forthcoming book. It's clear, truthful, undeniable. One major political party in the United States has gone wacko, and it isn't the Democratic Party. Below are some of my favorite parts of the essay. The mention of habitual Republican use of the filibuster, something new in Senate politics, is right-on. Why does the media say "The Democratic proposal…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Global warming deniers are “merchants of doubt”

Facts are facts. Cigarettes cause lung cancer. Coal-fired power plants cause acid rain. Fossil fuel emissions cause global warming. There's scientific consensus on the causes of lung cancer, acid rain, and global warming. Unfortunately, there also has been, and still is, a systematic effort to spread lies about these serious problems. In her book "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming," historian Naomi Oreskes documented how this happened. A review says: Merchants of Doubt might be one of the most important books of the year. Exhaustively researched and documented, it…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Get high on Rosenblum to be Oregon A.G., not Holton, fellow Democrats

The more I learn about Dwight Holton, candidate for Oregon Attorney General in the May 15 primary, the less I like him. Ellen Rosenblum seems like a much better choice.  Holton, during his stint as United States Attorney for Oregon, tried to undermine our state's medical marijuana law. It irks me how the Obama administration is raiding medical marijuana providers around the country, desperate to take away a drug that relieves chronic pain and helps cancer sufferers feel better. So why would Oregon want to elect somebody who supports a crazy federal law which equates marijuana with heroin and erroneously…
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Posted inScootering

Photos of “The Mild One” with my Burgman 650 scooter

You can sort of see the resemblance. If you're near-sighted. Squint real hard. Use your imagination. Isn't it obvious... how Marlon Brando and me are so similar, posing with our "bikes"? The Wild One. The Mild One. Maybe I would have looked more Brando'ish if Jim, a friend, hadn't taken my photo in the parking lot adjacent to the West Salem Starbucks, the wild mild scene of our Sunday morning caffeine-fueled get-together. But adding a helmet, dark glasses, and a jaunty wave adds to my macho cool'ness, in my decidedly nonobjective opinion. Also, obscuring my facial features makes me look…
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Posted inEntertainment Salem

Storm Large dazzles Salem in Oregon Symphony show

Last Friday my wife and I went to see the Oregon Symphony in Salem even though we don't like classical music. Or, usually, symphonies. But Storm Large, Portland's rock goddess, was singing along with the symphony in "The Perfect Storm" show that moved to the Schnitzer Concert Hall this weekend. Which also featured rock violinist Aaron Meyer in the first part of the program -- another amazing performer. Large was on her best behavior during her sultry lounge-singer sort of performance. She noted this near the end of her show, saying something like "Salem, I bet you were wondering what you…
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Posted inSalem

Starbucks, get rid of the annoying homeless people

Oh, no! To some people I'm about to sound like a heartless right-winger, even though I'm a proud progressive. Tough. This isn't a left vs. right issue. It's an annoying homeless people vs. courteous paying Starbucks customers issue.  Understand: I'm almost always a happy Starbucks coffee consumer. Two years ago I blogged about how I'm strangely proud of my Starbucks Gold Card. Today I pay for my coffee via the Starbucks iPhone app, which makes me even prouder (because fewer people use it). But recently I walked into a Salem (Oregon) Starbucks store and was immediately aware of a large, noisy,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Obama vs. Romney on energy: Obama wins!

There's lots of reasons to vote for President Obama rather than Mitt Romney this November. Lots. Here's one area where Obama triumphs over Romney, big-time: energy policy. The world is running out of fossil fuels (fossils take a long time to form, so we're using up oil and coal hugely faster than more is being created, but the Republican Party doesn't seem to know this basic fact). Other countries, like Germany and China, are avidly pursuing profitable alternative energy sources like wind and solar. Obama recognizes that even though oil and coal will be part of our energy future for…
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Posted inBooks Current affairs

What modern women want… spanking and submission?

A blindfolded woman, bright red lipstick, with the title of the Newsweek cover story above her right breast: "The Fantasy Life of Working Women: Why Surrender is a Feminist Dream." Looking at the issue I thought, "This is why print magazines are going to survive. Glad I've stuck with our Newsweek subscription after The Daily Beast took it over." The old Newsweek wouldn't have had such a provocative article. Kudos to the new Newsweek. Many of the online comments on the story appear to be from feminists who aren't surrendering to the notion that what successful, powerful, confident, independent women…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Glaciers are still shrinking from global warming

Almost always, truth runs deeper than a single shallow newspaper story. Especially when the subject is global warming, a subject that has been studied in depth by climate scientists. This morning Google News led me to a Christian Science Monitor story, "Global warming mystery: some Himalayan glaciers getting bigger." Yes, but only some. And not a lot bigger. Then I came across another more inclusive story in the Guardian by Jonathan Bamber, director of the Bristol Glaciology Centre, "The glaciers are still shrinking -- and rapidly."  With glaciers and ice sheets covering such a diverse range of latitudes (from the tropics…
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Posted inDogs

Treats got me trained at the Willamette Humane Society

Annie Ingersoll is an excellent dog trainer. Also, an excellent human trainer. Yesterday I had my behavior nicely controlled by Annie after only a few minutes of her "Introduction to Dog Training" class. At first, Annie had the several dozen people who'd come to the one hour class briefly introduce themselves: their name, name of their dog, breed and age of dog, whether it had come from the Willamette Humane Society. Then she walked over to a whiteboard with a marker in hand and said, "Aside from food, water, and shelter, what other needs do dogs have?" People started throwing…
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Posted inTango/Dance

West Coast Swing is our new dancing thing

We live on the West Coast. We like swing dancing. But my wife and I have had a tough time getting into the West Coast Swing style. Over the years we've had several lessons. Even a four-week series. The dance just never "set in" with us. Until recently we'd forgotten almost everything we'd learned about West Coast Swing. So when we'd go to a open social dance night at the RJ Dance Studio here in Salem, and the DJ would call out "west coast swing" as a new tune started, we'd sit down and watch other people dance what looked to…
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Posted inSalem

Tear down Salem’s Courthouse Square! Make it a park.

Courthouse Square is a square block disaster in downtown Salem. The three story building, previously mostly filled with county offices, is completely unusable because of dangerous construction defects. So is the adjoining bus transit mall/underground parking. Twenty million dollars still is owed on the $34,000,000 project. There's little chance that any more than the $1.8 million received in a settlement with the architects and contractors will be gotten in recompense for the construction screw-ups. Yet the Marion County commissioners seem to be headed toward throwing lots more taxpayer money down the Courthouse Square rathole. So says the Statesman Journal in…
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Posted inSustainability Web/Tech

How I’m fighting global warming Internet “trolls”

It's a tough decision: how to handle anti-science global warming deniers who repeatedly leave lengthy comments on my blog posts, filled with untruths, deceptions, and flat out lies at odds with facts about how the Earth's climate is changing because of human carbon pollution. I've tolerated this crap for a long time, but have decided to take a stand for truth (as contrasted with "truthiness," which is what global warming trolls specialize in.  In this context a troll isn't a mythical being, but someone set on disrupting courteous, respectful cyberspace discourse. They're a problem almost everywhere on the Internet. I've…
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Posted inDogs

We give Keizer Rapids Dog Park “two paws up”

Our dogs seemed to really like their visit to the Keizer Rapids Dog Park this afternoon. It was the first time my wife and I had been there. Impressive. Just as Salem (Oregon) is the dowdy little sister to much more glamorous Portland, so is Keizer usually viewed by Salemites as even more lackluster than our aptly nicknamed So-lame. Well, not when it comes to dog parks.  My wife and I are pretty sure that Salem doesn't have any fenced dog parks. Keizer Rapids is fenced-- a big plus, especially for dog-owners like us. Recently we got a young dog who…
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