Posted inCurrent affairs

Jon Stewart is right: Fox News viewers are most misinformed

Recently Jon Stewart sort of apologized on his The Daily Show for saying that watchers of Fox News are the most consistently misinformed media viewers. Well, he shouldn't have. Stewart was right, and the usually accurate PolitiFact was wrong in this case. PolitiFact came in for a lot of justified criticism when it ruled that Jon Stewart's June 19 statement, ""Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? … Fox viewers, consistently, every poll," was false. For one thing, PolitiFact often gives a lot of leeway to politicians and public figures who make similarly bold statements. Meaning, Politifact's rulings can…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

Apple solves my half-disappeared Arial “p” problem

A few days ago my MacBook Pro lost half of it's Arial "p." I've got no idea how this happened. All I know is that certain web sites which use the Arial font (Google, for one) suddenly were weird to read. Picture a "p" that's missing it's straight vertical line. What's left is a backward "c." Well, if I looked closely I could discern a faint shadow of the missing "p" line. It was very hard to see, though. When I phoned Apple support the first guy I talked to was mystified. He checked on his computer to see if…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Philosophy

Rory McIlroy, thanks for a flowing Father’s Day

I'm a big-time golf fan. Meaning, I only watch the final round of big-time major tournaments like the Master's, British Open, and United States Open. And even then I'll record the last eighteen holes so I can fast forward my way through the hours and hours of slow-moving golf (same way I watch soccer). That's what I did yesterday also. But thanks to the amazing Rory McIlroy, I was able to watch the final round in record time. Plus, be wonderfully inspired by the sight of a 22-year old from Northern Ireland blowing away his fellow U.S. Open golfers in…
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Posted inSalem

Photos of opening day at Salem’s Trader Joe’s

Well, I wasn't one of the first in line this morning to enter the new Salem (Oregon) Trader Joe's on opening day. But I got there early in the afternoon, which is pretty damn impressive for a retired guy like me -- especially since I indulged in a 30 minute nap just before I left, expecting that I'd need all my energy to fight the crowds cramming the aisles. The reality was sort of like I anticipated, and sort of not. Here's photos of my Trader Joe's shopping visit, with accompanying narrative (and some comparative price analysis). The parking lot…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Buy local Oregon strawberries — even if non-organic

I'm a huge fan of our super-tasty Oregon strawberries, which put the California varieties (at least the ones shipped up our way) to shame, taste and appearance-wise. This week I started buying strawberries from a farmer's stand on Salem's south Liberty Road, in the parking lot by the Salem Heights Hall. When I brought them home, my wife asked "Are they organic?" "No," I told her. "But they're local." A mild husband/wife argument ensued. I feel that we need to support local farmers, even if what they grow is non-organic. Otherwise we'll get more and more fruits and vegetables trucked…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

A neuroscientific view of Anthony Weiner’s Twitter scandal

I'm tired of all the media attention that's been given to Rep. Anthony Weiner's semi-scandalous Twitter escapades with young women who caught his cyberspace eye. But I find his story interesting in a scientific sense, having just finished reading David Eagleman's "Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain." Eagleman is a neuroscientist. He also is a terrific writer. His earlier book, "Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives" is wonderfully creative. (I've blogged about Eagleman's ideas here, here, here, here, and here.) A central theme of "Incognito" is that conscious awareness is a tiny part of what's going on in the…
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Posted inHome life

What I like most about my 2011 Mini Cooper S

About three months ago, after my Mini Cooper S hardtop (pepper white with black roof) arrived from England and I drove it home for the first time, I predicted that the car would bring me perfect happiness. Since so far I've only been able to drive the Mini from Portland to Salem, then around town here a bit, I can't be 100% confident that this car-of-my-dreams will bring me the unalloyed happiness that I so richly deserve after having postponed the consummation of my Mini love affair for eight freaking years. First impressions matter a lot, though. And after spending…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Republicans, reality is a terrible thing for the U.S. to lose

At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck, I'm getting increasingly afraid for America. What worries me isn't that our citizens, political parties, and Congress are deeply divided about how to solve the many problems facing the United States. There's a more disturbing division which stands in the way of negotiating solutions to our financial, budgetary, environmental, educational, infrastructure, and other social problems. A split between reality affirmers and reality deniers. Now, from the title of this post you can tell where I feel most of the reality deniers hang out politically: in the Republican party. But many Democrats, independents,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Oregon wildlife agency kills 10% of endangered wolves

Is this government gone crazy, or what? (I wish I could write government gone wild, but unfortunately the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife isn't really all that big on "wildness," as I'll describe below.) In the past few months Oregon's wolf population has shrunk from 23 to 17. That's a 26% decrease in the number of an endangered species which used to be, and in the future should be, a integral part of our state's natural ecosystem. Two of the wolves were killed by wildlife officials to protect livestock. That's insane -- to kill off about 10% of an…
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Posted inRecreation

Wow, I learn to saddle up a horse!

Who says you can't teach an old dog (or guy) new tricks? After sixty-two years of riding horses off and on throughout my life, somehow I'd never learned how to saddle up a horse. Today, thanks to expert teacher Mike Myers (no, not the comedian), I demolished my false belief that putting on a saddle and bridle required some sort of mysterious skills. All it took was Mike showing me some tricks of the saddling trade in a simple, supportive fashion. Mike is a wrangler/instructor for the FlySpur Ranch Equishare program that's run out of three locations in the Bend,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

I’m getting more anxious about a debt limit fiasco

So here we are in the middle of 2011, with an economy that isn't great. But it's still a heck of a lot better than it was in late 2008 and early 2009, when Obama took over the presidency. Remember how horrible it was to watch your retirement or investment portfolio drop 30, 40, 50 percent? Maybe even more, if you were into really risky stuff. I didn't enjoy those days. When the stock market went back over 12,000, I began to relax some, feeling that the biggest economic shocks were behind us and the United States was on a…
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Posted inHome life

Ethical struggle: how to order coffee in my own mug

Readers of this blog post likely will have two common reactions to it: "Brian, you have too much time on your hands" and "Brian, you think too much." I disagree. To both notions. Ordering coffee is a subject of great importance to me. Ditto with using my brain to ponder matters of Great Importance (the thought just came to me that those words deserve capital letters). So I've decided that it's time to bare my caffeinated soul. I need to talk about the ethical quandary that arises almost every time I go into a coffee house and ask the barista…
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Posted inHome life

Video tour of our Oregon garden, when it was — shock! — sunny

We have non-easy care landscaping. Our home's garden isn't a "mow it and forget about it" sort of place. It's filled with plantings that require a lot of attention from the two of us. So I decided to take advantage of some sunshine this Memorial Day (annoyingly brief; it started raining again late in the afternoon) and conduct a video tour of our rural south Salem garden. My thought was that if more people see it, we'd be able to divide all the time, money, and energy we pour into our yard by a greater number of eyeballs -- thereby…
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Posted inSustainability

Rancher thinks public land is “private”

I don't like ATVs wrecking nature. But I also don't like the attitude of "welfare ranchers" who get to graze livestock on public land for ridiculously low fees, then complain that they're not able to do just what they want on their property. Such as killing wolves, even though these natural predators account for only a minuscule percentage of livestock losses. Also, keeping people off of leased public land. On the Portland Oregonian's editorial page today I read "Trespassing by ATV: We need to protect ranching and recreation" by Ambers Thornburgh. What caught my eye was this paragraph... (bold is…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Palin and Bachmann thrive by being pretty

Back in 2008 I blogged about how Sarah Palin is hot! (and wrong). Today I was pleased to see that another guy has analyzed Palin's and Michele Bachmann's popularity from an attractiveness angle. Marty Kaplan asks a good question, if Bachmann and Palin weren't pretty. I wonder how much airtime Michele Bachmann would get if she didn't look the way she does. I wonder how much of Sarah Palin's political appeal arises from her physical appeal.I have a feeling that wondering this will get me in hot water, but what the hell.
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Posted inCurrent affairs Health

Amazing! I’m praising Regence BlueCross of Oregon.

This is quite a day. After a string of highly negative blog posts about what a crappy excuse for a health insurance provider Regence BlueCross Blueshield of Oregon is (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), I've got something good to say about the company. Today I learned that Regence is going to pay 80% of the cost of the colonoscopy that I had in February, a big jump from the 0% my Regence Evolve Plus plan originally was going to pay. I complained about this absurdity in "Health insurance companies discourage colon cancer screening." The…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Raising federal debt limit has no effect on spending. None. Zilch.

It drives me nuts -- or rather, nuttier than I already am -- to hear congressional Republicans blathering on about how not raising the debt limit is key to cutting federal spending. Here's a fact (ooh, scary! a fact!) for these Tea Party types: the federal debt limit has absolutely nothing to do with new future spending by the government. If you read the information below you will discover that the debt ceiling that the Republicans are using to blackmail President Obama really has nothing at all to do with “increased spending.” The debt ceiling is a formal acknowledgement of…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Oregon cougar hunting bill dies in committee

Great news for Oregon cougars -- and those, like my wife and me, who want to have environmental policies based on solid facts rather than irrational fears. House Bill 2337, legislation that would reinstate some sport hunting of cougars with dogs has died in the state Senate. Many thanks to the legislators my wife phoned yesterday, pleading to not let fanciful emotion sway their votes. Cougars are an extremely minimal danger to humans. Much less so than dogs, bees, horses, snakes, and of course, other people. Their numbers likely aren't increasing nearly as much as proponents of cougar hunting proclaim.…
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Posted inRecreation

Photos of human beach life on Maui

On the first day of our Maui vacation my wife asked me if I was going snorkeling. This is her favorite ocean activity. I hate it. "No," I said. "Snorkeling is a been there, done that thing for me. Water gets in my mask because I have a beard. The fish all look the same after a while. I'd rather sit on the beach and observe the varieties of humans. That's more interesting to me." So when I wasn't boogie boarding or sidestroke swimming, I had my camera at the ready, prepared to snap some shots of the various sorts…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Why we’re going to wait to get an electric car

Today's story in the Portland "Oregonian" about a delay in the availability of public electric car charging stations created a further drain in my enthusiasm for buying a Nissan Leaf or Mitsubishi i, even though I've put down money for a reservation on both cars. The story says: With its backyard chicken farms, recycling ethos, and nation-leading love affair with the Toyota Prius, Oregon has long been seen as the perfect test bed for electric cars. ...But a funny thing may be happening on the way to the charging station. Oregon consumers, local experts say, haven't been beating the bushes…
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