Posted inSalem Sustainability

Sunday, support sustainability with the Strongs in Salem

Sesame Street should be proud of me. Look how many "S's" I used in my blog post title! I stretched my alliterative mind muscles because the house party in honor of the Crag Law Center's 10th anniversary that I'm publicizing deserves to be noticed by people in the Salem, Oregon area who care about protecting our state's natural environment. Without attorney Ralph Bloemers and the Crag Law Center our south Salem neighborhood couldn't have successfully fought the threat that a 43-lot subdivision posed to our ground and surface water. So in addition to friends and neighbors, I'm spreading the house…
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Posted inPhilosophy Sustainability

My question for Humane Society of U.S. leader

This was my big chance. Would I ever get another opportunity to ask the President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Wayne Pacelle, a question about animal consciousness? Almost certainly not. So I stuck my hand in the air tonight when Wayne said that he'd welcome a few questions from the passionate band of local animal activists who'd assembled at Ted and Beverly Paul's beautiful home in the south Salem hills to meet Pacelle. As soon as we arrived, I plunked down $27 to buy a copy of his book, "The Bond: Our Kinship with…
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Posted inHome life Humor

Will our dog fit in a Nissan Leaf?

I have many unanswered questions.I'm still trying to learn the meaning of life, what will happen to me after I die, and why the Kardashian sisters are famous (I do have a guess: they're famous for being famous). But today I focused on a query assigned to me by Laurel, my wife. "WIll our dog, Serena, comfortably fit into the Nissan Leaf electric car that we're poised to buy? We'd made a stab at answering this question during our first test drive, learning that the $250 cargo floor organizer included by the manufacturer on the car earmarked for us produces…
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Posted inHome life

What I learned from a cut phone line

Life has a way of teaching me lessons, even though I have no idea who the instructor is. I mean, who the hell is this guy called "Life" anyway? Everybody talks about him, but I've never seen the dude. Well, whoever or whatever LIfe is, here's what I learned today: don't assume; keep your cool; be positive about people until you can't help being negative. This was a pretty weird experience, now that I think about it in the calm of a pleasantly cool September Oregon evening, blogging on our deck while listening to nearby crickets cricketing and distant owls…
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Posted inHome life

Buy our 2007 Prius! Just 36,500 miles on it!

[Our car has been sold. Sorry, would-be Prius buyers. Disappointingly, the couple who bought the car learned about it via an AutoTrader listing, not this blog post. We ended up selling it for $16,000, which is about what I expected to get -- once I realized that nobody was going to pay $1 million for a 2007 Prius Touring, unless it was made of gold.] I've never wanted to be a real-life car salesman, but it's kind of fun to play one in a blog post... BUY, BUY, BUY! -- THIS CAR WON'T BE IN OUR DRIVEWAY FOR LONG!Wow, a…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Why we didn’t buy our Leaf from Salem Nissan

Us bloggers believe in giving businesses praise when praise is due, and also publicizing buying turn-offs. So here's how I just replied to an email from Salem (Oregon) Nissan. I'd gotten a message from Salem Nissan asking if we were still in the market for a car that included this request: If you are no longer looking or would like to be removed from my follow-up list, please send a quick note to let me know. I did just that, saying "We're buying a Leaf from the Corvallis Nissan dealer, so you can take us off your follow-up list." When…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Jon Huntsman — only sane Republican presidential candidate

Driving home this evening, I tuned my car's satellite radio to MSNBC. I wanted to hear at least a little bit of the Republican presidential debate in Simi Valley, California. If I'd heard more, my head might have exploded -- the rhetoric was that ridiculous. I couldn't understand why the audience didn't laugh out loud at some of the answers candidates gave to questions. For example, Ron Paul ranted on about the uselessness of building a fence along the Mexican border to deter illegal immigration. He said that this fence could just as easily keep people in the country, not…
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Posted inEntertainment Sports

Why the Oregon football team lost to LSU

Wow, that's a gutsy title for this blog post. Me, little blogger Brian, is going to explain why the Oregon Ducks, ranked #3 in the country for a frustratingly brief time this 2011 football season, lost ignominiously to the LSU TIgers last Saturday. (The final score 40-27, doesn't reflect how badly the Ducks were dominated by the Tigers.) My qualifications for this feat? I've never played organized football at any level. I watch a lot of college football on TV but haven't gone to a live game for decades. I know next to nothing about the intricacies of play calling,…
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Posted inHome life Sustainability

We test drive a Nissan Leaf. How dog friendly is it?

So there we are today, looking over a blue 2011 Nissan Leaf, all 100% electric and high techy, wondering if we should go ahead and buy the car after putting down a $500 deposit on it upon learning from Russ Goodyear at Corvallis' Jack Scoville Nissan that a Leaf could be ours much sooner than expected, owing, I believe, to someone cancelling an order for this car. Russ is ready to show us its technological marvels, and let us take our first test drive, but first Laurel needed to closely inspect the car's dog friendliness. How comfortably and safely would…
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Posted inRecreation

Shadow Lake firefighters with BIG trucks get lost

I greatly admire forest firefighters. Watching four or five large semis filled with equipment take a wrong turn in Camp Sherman, Oregon a few days ago doesn't lessen my admiration for them in the slightest. It just shows that they're human. (Maybe these guys hated to stop and ask someone for directions, like me; or the government needs to fork out a few bucks to get them a GPS app like Navigon for their iPhones, which I have -- and love.) Tuesday my wife and I were at our co-owned forest service cabin in Tract C along the Metolius River,…
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Posted inBooks

Keep independent bookstores alive! They can’t die.

I'm a long-lapsed Catholic, but it still felt right to call my purchasing of a book in the wonderful Paulina Springs Books a penance. That's what I said to my wife after we met up again in charming Sisters, Oregon. Laurel had returned from her clothes shopping safari, and me from a bookstore exploration. (We do this a lot, having different material desires.) I showed her my big, thick, intellectually meaty/tofuy copy of David Deutsch's "The Beginning of Infinity." I knew I was going to buy this book almost as soon as I read the subtitle: Explanations That Transform the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Richard Dawkins calls Rick Perry an “uneducated ignoramus”

I wonder if Rick Perry, Republican presidential candidate and Texas governor, knows what "ignoramus" means. Probably not. I'll help Perry out in case he stumbles across this blog. Here's the definition, Rick: Utterly ignorant person. Such is how noted evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins describes not only Rick Perry but also the entire leadership of today's Republican party. He's right on. Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution or other unarguable scientific facts indeed is an ignoramus. How is it that they even could be considered for high public office, especially the presidency of the United States? Here's how Dawkins starts off…
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Posted inSustainability

A 2011 Nissan Leaf could be sprouting in our garage soon

We've changed our minds about changing our minds... about getting an electric car. In early May I put down reservation deposits on both a Nissan Leaf and a Mitsubishi i MIEV. A few weeks later, we'd decided to take a pass on going electric automotively. And today? I gave Russ at Jack Scoville Nissan in Corvallis a $500 credit card deposit to hold a soon-to-arrive blue 2011 Leaf for us. Obviously, something changed to make us change our minds again, after we initially changed our minds about getting a Nissan Leaf. Well, a few weeks ago The EV Project notified…
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Posted inSustainability

Lars Larson’s unnatural view of the world

I enjoy listening to right-wing talk radio because I believe in "know your enemy." Reality- based progressives like me who respect science and truth, unlike many Republicans, find it hard to understand how so-called conservatives are willing to embrace obvious falsehoods. I say so-called, because my interest in politics began in the 60's, fueled by my mother's rabid Republicanism. Yet she also loved science, nature, preserving the environment. She was a conservationist, which used to have something to do with "conservative." No more. Not in the Tea Party crazed Republican Party of today, where scientific truths have become dirty words.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Republican presidential candidates disrespect reality

Whenever the current crop of Republican presidential candidates make a public utterance, I think, Reality is a terrible thing to waste. WIth a single exception, Jon Huntsman, they don't care whether what they're saying is fact-based, scientifically-defensible, or otherwise firmly rooted in demonstrable consensual reality. They just spout off about whatever is politically expedient. If Republican primary voters demand crazy talk from a candidate, that's what they're given. This is dangerous. What if one of these reality-deniers somehow becomes President of the United States? Who wants the leader of our country to be out of touch with what is really…
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Posted inHome life

Warning: corn is more dangerous than it looks

Ears of corn. They seem so natural, so innocent, all wrapped up in their tight green leafy kimonos, begging to be stripped naked and devoured with lustful buttery zeal. (Guess I've been watching too much Stephen Colbert "cornography.") But when you get them home... watch out. Yesterday I found out how dangerous corn can be. I don't want anyone else to suffer needlessly like I did, so I'm getting my story out onto the Internet in hopes of saving other innocent victims from what I've gone through. I stopped at a farm stand where I've been buying fruit all summer.…
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Posted inTai Chi

Tai Chi shows how to handle aggression

I love how Tai Chi demonstrates a hugely practical philosophy of life through physical movement. Other activities do this also -- ballroom dancing comes to mind -- but Tai Chi is unique in that it explicitly embodies philosophical Taoist principles. Tonight, I was paired up with my Tai Chi instructor, Warren, as his class practiced the self-defense application of the Fair Lady movements (with a follow step). Warren and I have a lot of marital arts experience -- he more than me, naturally. And his Tai Chi background is much deeper than mine. Yet both of us were surprised at…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Marion County clips wings of anti-govt “Gathering of the Eagles”

Ah, I so love it when a right-wing, self-righteous, anti-government group gets caught doing something illegal and has to bow down before the rule of law. Earlier this month Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, conservative Portland talk show hosts Lars Larson and Victoria Taft, plus a bunch of other Tea Party types assembled for a "Gathering of the Eagles" at the Ames Ranch in normally sleepy Jefferson, Oregon -- between Salem and Albany, just off I-5. However, the organizers somehow ignored the fact that the crowd of more than a thousand people needed a permit from Marion County in order…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Rick Perry acts like an idiot (no big surprise)

Well, it didn't take long for Texas governor Rick Perry to demonstrate why he is utterly, completely, 100% unsuited to be president of the United States. Even supporters of George Bush like Karl Rove are outraged by Perry using "treasonous" to describe the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and threatening Bernanke with "ugly" treatment in Texas. Does this guy look presidential to you? Twenty-five other states have lower unemployement than Texas, and it is tied with Mississippi for the most minimium wage workers. Not exactly a model for our country.  
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Patti Milne oversaw the failure of Salem’s Courthouse Square

Today's front page story in the Salem Statesman Journal is headlined, "Courthouse Square's Red Flags." Subtitle: Project's failures extend beyond bad engineering Yeah, no kidding. The county commissioners in office when construction problems first started to become apparent looked the other way, even though the project manager recommended taking action. When cracks appeared at the tops of columns during construction of Courthouse Square in 2000, the defects were taken seriously by Melvin Mark Development Co., a Portland firm hired as a project manager. The cracks were in critical locations beneath the bus mall at Courthouse Square. Melvin Mark wanted to…
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