HinesSight

Support your independent pharmacist

Recently I’ve made a new friend, our local pharmacist. I had gone fifty-seven years without needing a long term prescription.

However, this year for my birthday I not only got my first prostate exam from a female doctor but also some Flomax samples (though peeing can be fun, I’d prefer to engage in this activity a bit less often).

In addition, the week after my physical exam I got a phone call about my blood test results. “Your cholesterol is 212,” I was told by the nurse. “That’s crazy,” I said. “It’s always been less than 190. I’ve been a strict vegetarian for thirty-five years. I don’t eat any meat at all. Yogurt is the only dairy product that I consume. I’m a poster child for good nutrition. Plus, my weight is normal and I get some exercise every day.”

“That’s nice,” she said. “Your total cholesterol is still 212 and your LDL cholesterol is 142. They’re both borderline high. You need to talk with the doctor.” Which I did last Monday. I walked out with another prescription: Lovastatin, 10 mg.

“Good god,” I thought, as I drove to Salem’s Oak Tree Pharmacy to pick up the prescriptions that my doctor had faxed in for Flomax and Lovastatin. “Mildly enlarged prostate. Mildly high cholesterol. Mild is nice, but I still feel like a middle-aged male cliché.”

I don’t like getting old. And neither do I like public announcements of my age-related health problems (cyberspace declarations like this one excepted). I wasn’t looking forward to standing at the pharmacist’s counter and having him describe my prostate and cholesterol medications both to me and everyone else within earshot.

My doctor had asked me where I wanted to have the prescriptions filled. I toyed with the idea of getting them from Drugstore.com or a similar online pharmacy. That way my Flomax and Lovastain would reach me in a nicely anonymous fashion and I might save some money to boot.

I decided to support my local pharmacy, though. And I’m happy that I did. I like Oak Tree Pharmacy. It’s small and personal. The owners’ German Shepherd used to stay with them in the store. The dog is gone now but the informal atmosphere remains. John, the pharmacist, spoke to me in appropriately hushed tones. He reassured me that 10 mg is a low dose of Lovastatin and is unlikely to cause any side effects.

Returning home with my bag of prescriptions, I noticed an issue of the University of California at Berkeley “Wellness Letter” sitting on the kitchen counter where we pile our mail. I flipped through it. I came across an article called “Why the pharmacist matters.” I read:

Few of us think of pharmacists as a professional resource. Indeed, many of us shop online and never see a pharmacist, or in a big chain store where the staff often changes, and the person who finds the prescribed drug in the rack and hands it over often is not the pharmacist at all.

If you seldom need a prescription, this may not matter. But if you or anyone in your family takes medication long term—for lowering blood pressure or cholesterol, or preventing bone loss, for example—it pays to know your pharmacist. Here’s why:

The “why” is that a pharmacist (1) understands the medications that you are taking and often is the best person to pinpoint the cause of side effects, (2) may be more readily available for answering questions than your doctor, and (3) can help you avoid interactions and allergic reactions and guide you to less-expensive generics.

Also, it just feels right to me to support a local independent pharmacist rather than buy online or at a giant corporate chain such as Wal-Mart. I already feel guilty buying as many books as I do from Amazon instead of one of Salem’s independent bookstores. Getting my prescriptions filled at Oak Tree Pharmacy helps me balance my bad book shopping karma.

I’d figured, though, that I was paying a substantial price for doing business with Oak Tree instead of Drugstore.com. I just found out that I was wrong. The online cost of my Flomax prescriptions is $57.99 at Drugstore.com (which they claim is an 18% discount). I paid $59.70 at Oak Tree Pharmacy.

And the Lovastatin was considerably cheaper at Oak Tree: $19.05 vs. $31.99 at Drugstore.com. Now, even though I haven’t met my Regence deductible, I still might be getting some sort of health insurance discount through Oak Tree. Regardless, the bottom line is that it is costing me less to buy the prescriptions locally through an independent pharmacy than if I ordered them online.

Speaking of Wal-Mart, a revealing documentary is about to be released on DVD: “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.” You can host your own screening or find out where to attend one.

Vive le Colbert Report

Befitting its pseudo-Frenchness, Comedy Central's “Colbert Report” is pronounced without the ending “t”s. Steven Colbert, the eponymous host of the show, says “Welcome to the Colber Repor!”

If you like sardonic intelligent wordplay, plus a healthy dose of Bush-bashing ala The Daily Show (where Colbert got his start), you’ll enjoy The Colbert Report.

We’ve added The Colbert Report to our regular evening TV viewing. Something else had to go, so Nightline has bit the dust for us. Ted Koppel is on the way out (or gone) and I’ve reached a point in life where I’d rather laugh than cry my way through world events.

A few days ago Neil de Grasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, was the guest. Colbert, as usual, began the interview by jumping up from his desk, bounding across the stage to a table where Tyson was waiting, and waving his hands in the air urging the audience to applaud for him.

Him, Steven Colbert. Not Tyson. This is an example, as Wonkette puts it, of Colbert’s unceasing “arch irony.” You’ll either love it or hate it. I love it.

With his “Me! Me!” attitude before an interview Colbert is poking fun at talk show hosts who don’t really give a damn about their guests, except insofar as they give the host an additional opportunity to toot his own horn.

Early on in the Tyson interview, after his guest explained the basics of the big bang, Colbert (ironically) said all that was way too complicated and he much preferred intelligent design as an explanation for the universe. God made it. Short and simple. Tyson replied:

I’ve looked hard through the universe, and most of the time I find things that look really stupid. Like asteroids headed toward Earth that will render us extinct. That does not look very intelligent to me.

Touché, Monsieur Tyson! A little bit later, now a whole few minutes into the interview, there’s an awkward pause in the conversation and Colbert says:

OK, so we’ve covered the origin of the universe, we’ve covered the big bang, and evidently the extinction of mankind… [takes deep breath, looks up to ceiling, taps blue interview cards on table] …I didn’t think we’d get through all that so quickly.

Great timing, great delivery. Nobody does sardonic irony better than Colbert.

If you’re not able to watch The Colbert Report, or want to get a blogified capsule of each show, become a citizen of The Colbert Nation.

Bird flu + Bush administration = disaster

It sends a chill up my spine when I realize that the same folks who brought us a mismanaged Iraq war, bungled hurricane relief efforts, and a host of other debacles, are in charge of protecting Americans from a potentially devastating avian (bird) flu epidemic.

Bernadine Healy, M.D., a former director of the National Institutes of Health, said that we are “Unprepared for Bird Flu” in a recent issue of U.S. News & World Report. Her uncheery assessment starts off with:

When the avian flu brewing in Asia hits our shores--as most experts believe will happen--and if it maintains its virulence as it morphs--as it is almost a sure bet to do--into a fast-spreading human form, infecting tens of millions of people, the scenario that unfolds will be unlike any other Americans have ever seen.

And it gets scarier from there: “Hospital wards will be choked with thousands of victims young and old. They will be hooked up to respirators, lying in comas, and dying as their heart and blood vessels fail massively.”

My own doctor told me, “It isn’t a question of if a deadly flu pandemic will sweep the world. It’s a question of when.” Once the avian flu evolves into a human strain (creationist denials of evolution won’t stop this from happening), it will take time to develop a vaccine. And then, more time to make and distribute it.

It’s good that the U.S. government is starting to spend money on preparing for an avian flu epidemic. The Senate has moved to appropriate $8 billion, but that’s peanuts compared to what is being spent in Iraq.

President Bush, you say that we’re fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here. How about applying that same reasoning to battling the avian flu? Dr. Healy says that decisive steps have to be taken now so that hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans won’t die when a pandemic hits.

We need a frank and open public discussion if we intend to beat back the many challenges of caring for the sick in a time of pandemic. Catapulting medical care half a century backward is not inevitable, even if it looks that way at the moment, and the prospect is instantly abhorrent if you imagine that you, or those you love, are among the flu-stricken. Already, I see visions of Katrina: finger-pointing as the census of lost souls begins to add up, the feds faulted for not bringing in the cavalry. It doesn't have to be.

No, it doesn’t. But the track record of the Bush administration is pitiful when it comes to dealing with disasters. So it’s understandable why lots of people have been stocking up on the anti-viral drug Tamiflu, causing the maker, Roche, to suspend private shipments to the United States.

The federal government is stockpiling Tamiflu. But given the agonizingly slow bungled fashion in which the feds distributed supplies to Hurricane Katrina victims, I’m not expecting that a FEMA employee will be on people’s doorsteps handing them a Tamiflu packet if they come down with the avian flu.

So I’ve ordered a goodly supply of Cold-fX from a Canadian company, Posiwell. This is a ginseng-based product that has been proven effective in clinical trials. Prevention is the best treatment, and Cold-fX seems to strengthen the immune system. I’ve also got some n95 masks to protect against avian flu sitting in our medicine cabinet.

Hopefully a flu pandemic won’t hit the United States. But since there’s a good chance that it will, I don’t advise trusting that the Bush administration will take care of you.

A hybrid that has it all

Are you yearning for balance in your automotive life? Do you, like me, want it all? Abundant power and good mileage, driving fun and environmental righteousness. If so, take a look at the Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV, which is rated #1 in a “muscle per gallon” index prepared by U.S. News & World Report.

Since my wife and I are on a waiting list to buy the 4-wheel-drive version of this car, I was pleased to see that the Highlander beat out the $65,000 Chevrolet Corvette (#2) and the $453,000 Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (#3), each of which boasts ferocious horsepower but gets piddling mileage.

This is one of the reasons why we’ve come to look more fondly at the Highlander Hybrid SUV. Back in July I opined, “Toyota Highlander Hybrid not so green.” It bugged me that the 4-wheel-drive version got only 31 city/27 hwy while our much-beloved 2004 Toyota Prius is rated 60/51 and reliably gives us 45 mpg in real world driving.

Toyota could have hybridized the four cylinder gasoline Highlander and come up with a car more akin to the Ford Escape Hybrid, which gets about 10% better mileage according to the EPA. We considered the Escape, but the fit, finish, and, yes, fun of the Highlander caused us to buy Japanese.

Zero to 60 in 7.3 seconds and nearly zero emissions. I like it.

If you’re thinking of getting a hybrid, be sure to check out GreenHybrid.com’s “Real Hybrid Mileage Database.” As is well-known, you can’t trust the EPA mileage estimates for either hybrid or regular cars.

In the mixed driving we do in our Prius we’re getting about 10% below the 51 mpg estimate for highway driving. Similarly, the average actual mileage reported by Highlander Hybrid buyers is 26 mpg, which is in the neighborhood of 10% under the EPA highway estimate (taking into account that the 2-wheel-drive version is supposed to get several miles a gallon more than the 4-wheel-drive version).

Right now it’s tough to make a purely financial case for buying a hybrid SUV, especially if you don’t drive a lot. We only put about 10,000 miles a year on our Volvo XC wagon, the car that the Highlander Hybrid will replace. With gas at $3 a gallon, we may never save enough money via the car’s hybrid technology to pay for the approximately $4,500 Toyota is charging for it.

However, the estimated $2,200 federal tax credit for buying a Highlander 4wd that goes into effect in 2006 will ease the financial pain. (To be sure you’ll get the credit, you need to buy a hybrid as early in the year as possible, as I explained in this post.)

In the end, our decision to buy another hybrid came down to putting the money we’d earmarked for a new car where our collective environmental mouth was. Laurel and I both talk a good Green game, but we don’t always play it like we should. For example, I’m semi-ashamed to admit that we still haven’t signed up with PGE for “green power,” in large part because I’m still so ticked at Enron.

A salesman at Capitol Toyota recognized what sells the Highlander Hybrid. He admitted that buyers aren’t getting the car for purely rational reasons. “They want to make a statement,” he said. “They believe in what the car stands for.”

Indeed, we do. Taking a stand against global warming and for America’s energy independence is worth a few thousand dollars to us. Plus, the fun I’ll have driving around in an 268 horsepower SUV with one engine and three (count ‘em, three) electric motors will help make me forget how much the car cost us.

Listen to the Big Bang

Thanks to astronomer Mark Whittle, you can listen to the Big Bang’s first million years of primordial sound, compressed into ten seconds and shifted up 50 octaves into the human range of hearing. Click on this page’s first sound file.

Even on my tinny laptop speakers, I got a chill up my spine hearing this reproduction of what Whittle calls the universe’s primal scream (this link is a fine non-technical description of his scientific work).

The universe was born in silence and soon grew into an awesome roar. Whittle says:

Have you ever wondered what the "Big Bang" actually sounded like? Surely, you may be thinking, this is a trick question -- didn't it just sound like, well, a really big BANG! Surprisingly, perhaps, the answer is "no, not really". As is often the case with Nature, things are not so simple, and a more accurate description would be something like this: a moment of silence followed by a rapidly descending scream which builds to a deep roar and ends in a deafening hiss.

Fundamentalists like to say that science strikes at the heart of religion. That’s hogwash. Exactly the opposite is true: scientific understanding produces a sense of wonder that is the essence of genuine spirituality.

Reading Whittle’s description of how the Big Bang formed the seeds of our present universe is to gain a glimpse into the cosmos’s blueprint of creation, the “mind of God” if you want to use a religious term. He notes that the cosmic microwave radiation that can be sensed by sophisticated scientific instruments depicts the universe’s “genome."

Now, 12 hours after conception, a human is tiny and formless, and all that is present is its DNA. Yet within that DNA, hidden and encoded, is information which determines much of what the developing child and adult will become. So too with the microwave background.

It depicts a compact Universe which is virtually formless, and yet hidden within its delicate patchiness is encoded a huge amount of information, much of which determines how the Universe will subsequently evolve and grow. In a sense, then, studying the microwave background is to astronomy what the human genome project is to the life sciences.

From formlessness came form. From silence came sound. From nothing came something.

Modern science gives us a view of creation that is orders of magnitude more compelling (and, clearly, convincing) than the Genesis mythology and other purely human religious imaginings.

Listen to the Big Bang. You’ll hear more truth in those sounds than in any sermon.

Police need more martial arts training

“Totally unnecessary.” That was my reaction to the story in yesterday’s Oregonian about how two police officers killed a crazed, naked, unarmed man after he had jumped on the roof of their patrol car.

A witness to the shooting, Paul White, said that at no time was the man (Fouad Kaady) threatening or combative. He was just standing on the roof of the car, hands at his side. Undoubtedly the grand jury investigating this case will be told by the officers that they believed their lives were in danger.

Give me a break. Being afraid is a lot different from being in mortal danger. I know. I’ve been a martial arts student for about fourteen years: nine in traditional Shotokan karate, four in a mixed style, and the past year in Tai Chi (I’m getting steadily softer with age).

It isn’t fun having someone throwing punches and kicks at you, or confining one of your limbs in a painful joint lock. But almost certainly you’re not going to die, even outside of the dojo or training hall. Especially not if there are two of you and one of him, and the “him” is confused, injured, unarmed, and non-combative.

I’ve read too many stories where an Oregon policeman shoots someone without a weapon because the officer believes his life is threatened. I realize that it isn’t possible for every member of a police force to be a highly trained martial artist. However, at the least they should regularly spend some time on the mat having punches thrown at them and learning some simple grappling techniques.

Most street fights end up on the ground. That’s a martial arts truism. Maybe that naked guy standing on the roof of the patrol car was about to jump down and rush the officers. OK, so what? One of them could have taken off his gun, handed it to his partner so it couldn’t be used against him, and gotten ready to engage in a good old-fashioned fight with Kaady.

If that had happened, almost certainly the worst that would have happened is a bloody nose, black eye, or some bruises. The cop would be a hero and Kaady would still be alive. Two policemen should be able to handle one injured man, especially if he’s not being aggressive. If you’re afraid to get into some hand to hand fighting when the situation calls for it, maybe you shouldn’t be a police officer.

My wife and I saw the play “Bus Stop” last weekend. Set in the 1950s, as I recall, in the second act a small town sheriff puts a belligerent cowboy in his place. Not with his gun. With his fists. Now, if you’re a 110 pound policewoman, that probably won’t work. But if you’re an average-sized man with some martial arts training, it probably will.

A Salem bicycle patrol officer, Grant, recently joined my Tai Chi class. I don’t know what his motivation is for learning Tai Chi, but I can guarantee that his training will be useful if (or, more likely, when) he gets into a confrontation on the street. Tai Chi is highly effective in self-defense if it is taught by a well-trained martial artist, as my class is.

Warren, the instructor, was talking last night about how Tai Chi’s emphasis on meeting hardness with softness works well in both physical and psychological conflicts. By keeping calm in a threatening situation, you can change the situation to be less threatening. Fear begets fear, anger begets anger.

One of Warren’s Tai Chi teachers, a Chinese man, told me that he used to train the Hong Kong police. I wish police departments in this country put the same emphasis on learning unarmed self-defense skills. Quite a few people would be alive today if they did.

And Portland Copwatch makes a lot of sense when they say that state law and city policy should be changed to emphasize that an officer who uses deadly force with the "reasonable belief" that there is a threat to his or another's life must be able to prove there was an objectively reasonable belief that such a threat existed. In the Kaady case, that doesn’t seem to be true.

Wise Measure 37 commentary

Opening up the Statesman-Journal today, I was deeply impressed with the wisdom of a letter to the editor about Measure 37. Then I saw the letter writer’s name and exclaimed, “I know that guy!” In fact, he was me.

Just to give the conspiracy theorists over at Oregonians in Action something to chew on while they’re waiting for the next check from the Asphalt Manufacturers of America to roll in, yes, 1000 Friends of Oregon put me up to this.

I got a phone call from a 1000 Friends staffer who said that Laurel or I should write a letter to the editor because we’re familiar with the nasty effects a Measure 37 claim near us would have on our neighborhood. I was happy to comply.

1000 Friends of Oregon is near and dear to my heart right now, as it should be for everyone who wants to keep our state from being southern Californiaized.

Still, I’ll agree that Oregon’s land use laws have become somewhat unbalanced. For example, there are too many restrictions on property owners who want to build a home on marginal farmland. But the solution to this lack of balance isn’t to tilt way in the opposite direction, as Measure 37 does.

In the course of looking for a Statesman-Journal online link to my letter, I noted some comments from people about the judge’s decision to strike down Measure 37. One made particularly good sense to me because it focuses on the theme of fairness that I also emphasized:

To all that are aghast at the recent ruling regarding Measure 37, consider the following. You own an upscale resort, one in which you have spent time and money to develop. You are heavily in debt to start the operation but business is good. The natural beauty of Oregon is available to all through your resort. You are booked solid through the high season and able to stay busy when others are slowing down.

With the changes allowed by measure 37, a neighbor of adjoining property comes along and knows that everyone loves his favorite style of bacon and ham. He has always wanted to become an agricultural giant but the right conditions have not been present. Suddenly, his financial status, property ownership and market conditions are perfect for him to start a huge pig farm next door to your resort.

This operation will be total, from birth of the piglet, to shipping packaged first class meat products to the worlds market. It will run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Someone has to feed and care for the critters. If you have never smelled a pig farm, it would be best to say you would enjoy being downwind from any paper plant in the Northwest compared to the odor from a hog production facility.

The only solution under measure 37 is for the local government to stop the farm and pay for the value of the property. After all, your resort was there first. Will this ever happen? Not in Oregon, not in this century, not in our grandkids lifetime. So we have serious questions of compatibility.

We have a system of government in which problems are solved. When a solution is reached some are happy, some are not. Our government and the Constitution from which it functions allow for fairness of issues. Because the majority thinks it is right has many times been proven to be unconstitutional. I for one applaud judges who study the law and can keep our society focused regardless of the ideas that some develop.

After all, it sounds neat to allow everyone to do what they want, when they want. And if government does not like it, it can pay me. Forgotten is the fact that the government is the people, ALL THE PEOPLE, of this state. The law has to be fair to all.
--Clint, 60, Retired, Medford

Best vegetable lasagna recipe

Wanting to improve the world through my blogging, today I’ll surpass all of my previous efforts and share my exceedingly well-tested recipe for vegetarian spinach lasagna.

This is the only dish that I ever bring to a potluck where meat-eaters and vegetarians are mingling. It also is the only dish that I make for visiting carnivorous (or, more accurately, omnivorous) relatives.

In short, this recipe swings both ways. Almost everyone likes it.

A big plus for me is how quickly this dish can be made. You don’t have to cook the lasagna noodles ahead of time. Putting in the ¾ cup of water and covering with aluminum foil results in perfectly cooked noodles (even whole wheat) after 75 minutes at 350 degrees.

Enjoy. I'll throw in a PDF version of the recipe also.
Download vegetarian_lasagna_recipe.pdf
--------------------------------------------
Brian and Laurel's Fabulous Spinach Lasagna
(we got the recipe from someone else
who shall forever remain unknown—but greatly appreciated)

1 lb. ricotta cheese
1 ½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1 package (10 oz) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon oregano
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 jar (32 oz) meatless spaghetti sauce
one-half package (9) lasagna noodles
¾ cup water

In large bowl mix ricotta, one cup mozzarella, spinach, salt, oregano and pepper. In greased 13 X 9 X 2 inch baking dish layer ½ cup sauce, one-third of the noodles (3 noodles) and one-half of the cheese/spinach mixture.

Repeat.

Top with remaining noodles, then with remaining sauce. Sprinkle with remaining mozzarella.

Pour water around edges. Cover tightly with foil. Bake in 350 degree oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until bubbly. Let stand 15 minutes before serving. Makes about eight to twelve servings.

Note: This recipe tastes almost as good with low-fat cheeses, or one no-fat and one regular-fat. We used to use 2 cups of mozzarella, putting 1 cup in the mixture and 1 cup on top at the end, mostly because the packages of mozzarella at the store seem to come with either 1 or 2 cups. But now that we are older, and gain weight more easily, we’ve been putting only ½ cup on top at the end, and giving the remaining ½ cup to the dog—who seems to enjoy it more than we would).

Mushroom and tomato spaghetti sauce seems to work well with this recipe. Whole wheat lasagna noodles cook up fine.

Measure 37 and the voters' will

Yesterday I listened to the Kremer and Abrams talk show on KXL. The conservative member of the duo, Rob Kremer, was frothing at the mouth about how 61% of the voters had voted for Measure 37 and now a single judge had struck it down, thereby thwarting the will of the people.

Outrageous, fulminated Kremer. He thought Judge Mary James should be recalled. Yeah, that would teach a lesson to judges who have the temerity to be independent and exercise their duty to uphold the constitution. Rob, do you recall the notion of “checks and balances” from your high school civics class?

Sometimes the will of the majority usurps the rights of a minority. It didn’t matter how many people were in favor of slavery, denying women the right to vote, or keeping schools segregated. Society eventually came to see that each of these policies was unfair.

Just as Measure 37 was. Exempting some owners from land use laws just because their property has been under family ownership for a long time is patently unfair. As I’ve noted before, my wife and I live in a groundwater limited area where you have to jump through a lot of hydrogeological hoops if you want to build a house on anything less than five acres.

But a nearby Measure 37 claim sought to put 80 homes on 215 acres of farmland. The claimants didn’t think they should have to comply with a Marion County ordinance that protects existing wells in groundwater limited areas. How fair is that? Everyone should have to play by the same rules when the game is keeping wells from going dry.

Further, it’s obvious that Oregon voters didn’t know what they were voting for when they marked “yes” next to Measure 37 in 2004. Laurel did a lot of calling before the election and she found that most people knew very little about this initiative. Here’s what a recent poll of Oregonians found:

More than two-thirds said growth management makes Oregon a more desirable place to live. Respondents strongly favored public planning over market-based decisions and wanted to protect land for future needs instead of using it now for homes and businesses.

So how does this mesh with the fact that Measure 37 passed handily? Answer: voters were deceived by misleading Oregonians in Action advertising. All they saw was poor Dorothy English, an elderly lady who couldn’t build on her land. They didn’t see the reality of Measure 37: irreplaceable farmland being bulldozed for subdivisions.

I believe in listening to the will of the people. However, Oregon’s initiative process is a terrible way of putting our ear to the civic ground. A dull rumble of Yay or Nay is all that can be heard after a vote is taken, not the crisp, clear guidance of a genuinely informed citizenry.

Lastly, how about the hypocrisy of right-wing talk radio? “Damn that activist judge who overturned the voter-approved Measure 37!” echoes over the airwaves.

But why wasn’t there a similar outraged cry when the Supreme Court recently held a hearing on the Bush Administration’s attempt to overturn Oregon’s voter-approved assisted suicide law?

On the front page of today’s Salem Statesman-Journal was a story that said a national poll has found that 64% of the public and 62% of physicians said that “physicians should be given the right to dispense prescriptions by patients to end their life.”

Assisted suicide is a much simpler issue to understand than land use planning. I’m quite confident that the will of the voters is to allow people to die with dignity. I’m not at all confident that Oregon voters want to allow selected property owners to do whatever they want with their land, regardless of the effects on the environment and their neighbors.

Dog kissing: the slobbery truth

Who says the passion has to go when people are in their mid 50s? Why, every evening around midnight there are two bodies entwined on the rug in our family room. The kissing is noisy and uninhibited; the pillow talk sweet and sentimental.

“Who’s got the cutest little tummy in the whole world? You!...Who’s my special sweetums? You!” I never get tired of hearing my wife coo these words, which are regularly interrupted by the sound of lips enthusiastically pressing against soft flesh.

This raw display of affection usually takes place while I’m brushing my teeth in a nearby bathroom. “You’re going to get a dog disease if you keep that up!” I’ll say to Laurel. “I don’t care!” is her invariable reply. “I’ll die kissing my sweet little Serena-kins before she goes to bed.”

Fortunately, we learned from last night’s 20-20 program on ABC that while it’s a myth that dogs have cleaner mouths from humans, they’re safe to kiss. Just keep in mind that when one dog meets another, their usual practice is to press lips to a part of the canine body that humans don’t kiss in public.

If this doesn’t bother you, then the expert advice was to kiss away, for the bacteria in dog’s mouths is species-specific and won’t harm humans (but if you’re thinking of kissing a dog in the Dominican Republic or a similar under-developed country, you should read this first.)

Unrelated to dog kissing, but still on the subject of Laurel, I wish to submit this photo in support of a claim that she is the World’s Most Matching Woman.

I took it at last month’s Corvallis Art Fair. Laurel ended up buying this coffee cup from an artist who said that the pottery was obviously meant to be taken home by her (note the perfectly matching cap also).

Measure 37 struck down

O Joy! We will be doing some celebrating tonight. Judge Mary James has ruled that Measure 37 is unconstitutional.

You can bet that there will be much wailing and knashing of teeth from Oregonians in Action. They'll try to get a clone of Measure 37 on the 2006 ballot, but I'm betting that real Oregonians will see through their B.S. this time around and vote for the 1000 Friends of Oregon alternative.

This is a happy day for everyone who loves Oregon.

Masks to protect against avian flu

Here’s some things to look out for if you, like me, decide to go online and order some surgical masks to have on hand in case the avian flu mutates into a human strain and our streets start looking like this photo.

As ABC News reported recently, “Bird flu concerns make masks hot commodity.” This story says that to be effective, masks should have an “N95” rating: “This means that the respirators filter out at least 95 percent of airborne particles during testing using a ‘most-penetrating’ sized particle of 0.3 microns.”

That also was the advice on an OSHA web page that offers guidance for protecting workers against avian flu. Unfortunately, I read this information only after zipping onto Drugstore.com and buying (or rather, back-ordering) a Flents high filtration mask that looked good but wasn’t “N95” certified. I’ve since cancelled the order.

Since there was a 1-2 week wait to get these masks, I have to assume that quite a few other people are mistakenly believing that a mask of that sort will offer good protection against viruses. It won’t.

When I searched for more information about the Flents mask, I found something interesting. One of the results of a Google search turned up a mention that the Flents mask wasn’t N95-certified or effective against viruses. Yet when I clicked on that link, I couldn’t find the wording in the Google search results.

So I retrieved Google’s cache of that page, which shows an interesting difference between that old version and the current page. Gone now is a warning at the top of the listing for this item that said: “(Does Not Protect against Viruses such as SARS) * * * Not Rated as an N95 respirator * * *”

My suspicion is that as the demand for surgical masks has gone up, some suppliers are taking advantage of poorly informed people and are selling them ineffective products under mildly (as in this case) or more blatantly false premises. So, buyer beware.

I spent some time on the Oregon Digital web site, buynanomask.com. Oregon Digital is headquartered in Oregon City. Perhaps their mask does everything claimed, but I doubt it.

Supposedly it “kills Bird Flu, SARS, and flu on contact.” Doubtful, really doubtful. I was still doubtful even after taking a glance at a PDF file that reportedly provides evidence of how “one nanoparticle on the filter killed 99.999% of the pathogens.” Huh? Anyway, the “research” involved bacteria and fungi, not viruses.

A FAQ about why the mask isn’t NIOSH certified also struck me as ranking high on the B.S. scale. Oregon Digital claims that they intend to submit the mask for certification, but not quite yet.

Well, since I’m concerned about protecting myself from a potentially deadly flu strain, I decided that I didn’t want to be a test case for an unproven mask. So I ended up buying some tried and true N95 surgical masks from an established safety company.

I hope I never have to use them.

The dark side of faith

Over on my Church of the Churchless weblog I wrote yesterday about how religion is bad for societal health. In this post I discussed a study which found that religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics.

A Los Angeles Times editorial called this “The dark side of faith.” We’re seeing that side much more clearly now in the United States.

The forces of darkness, masquerading as fundamentalist Christianity, are trying to get us to deny realities revealed by science, treat homosexuals as second-class citizens, get government involved in private end of life decisions, and stack the Supreme Court with true believers.

Those who would make this country a theocracy have to be fought on each and every battleground where they seek to make their personal beliefs into public policy. I’m confident that the dark side of religion will be beaten back, because the citizens of this country eventually will recognize that they don’t want to be ruled by a Christian Taliban.

As part of this fight, hopefully Harriet Miers’ will come in for some tough questioning about her religious beliefs during her nomination hearings.

It’s disgusting how right-wingers are speaking out of both sides of their mouths: they simultaneously say that Miers’ religion is a private matter and can’t be investigated by Senators, while touting her evangelical (and, by implication, anti-abortion) credentials for serving on the Supreme Court.

I very much agree with this letter to the editor in today’s Portland Oregonian:

The general complaint [about Miers] is not so much about bringing religion into politics but to the bringing in of people who believe in a literal creation in six 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago. It is a belief system that has bundled with it a very broad political agenda.

Most of us readily accept people with religious beliefs different from our own who are active in politics and accept them as we expect them to accept us. The concern is that people with basic beliefs that are contradictory to facts of the real world may enact laws based on their beliefs that affect us in the real world.
--Duane Ray, Gresham

Listen to the Dalai Lama, science-fearing Christians

This is my fantasy: that fundamentalist Christians will read the Dalai Lama’s new book, “The Universe in a Single Atom,” and be converted to his enlightened attitude toward science and spirituality.

James Dobson, just say the word and I’ll be happy to mail you a copy.

I bought this book to give to myself on my birthday, which was last Friday. I’ve just started reading it, but by page three I already was cheering the Dalai Lama’s words:

My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.

That is so refreshing, coming from one of the leaders of a major world religion. Can you imagine the Pope saying the same thing, substituting “Christianity” for “Buddhism”? I can’t, though nothing prevents Christians from similarly accepting that science searches for the truth about physical reality and religion searches for the truth about spiritual reality.

Thus science and religion don’t overlap. They don’t compete. You don’t have to choose one or the other. You can embrace both, as the Dalai Lama does. Most people in industrialized countries are able to do just that.

Unfortunately, the United States is the most religious industrialized nation. And, not coincidentally, the most scientifically illiterate. Fundamentalist Christianity has dumbed down the critical reasoning faculty of Americans to such an extent that our citizens casually accept President Bush’s call for creationism/intelligent design to be taught along with evolution in science classrooms.

Yet evolution is an accepted scientific theory that is strongly supported by fact and creationism is simply subjective religious dogma without a shred of solid evidence behind it. Christian theologians should be busily adapting their articles of faith to be compatible with evolution rather than wasting their time defending creationism and intelligent design,.

Peeking ahead to a chapter about evolution, I did note, however, that the Dalai Lama believes that evolutionary theory lacks an understanding of how consciousness is at the root of reality. Such may sound like an endorsement of intelligent design and Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace has felt the need to defend the Dalai Lama’s position as being compatible with modern science.

What is really indefensible, though, is the United States’ scientific stupidity. As noted in this “America #1?” piece, 20% of Americans think the sun orbits the earth while 17% believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (this bit of information also is quoted in the November issue of Playboy, so clearly it must be true).

Christian leaders of America, after a bit of editing you should insert this advice from the Dalai Lama into your sermons and speeches. I know that you won’t, but you should.

I wish to emphasize to the millions of my fellow Buddhists worldwide the need to take science seriously and to accept its fundamental discoveries within their worldview…Certainly some specific aspects of Buddhist thought—such as its old cosmological theories and its rudimentary physics—will have to be modified in the light of new scientific insights.

Female doctors do it better

It’s my 57th birthday today. Already I’ve gotten a couple of special presents: a finger up my ass and some Flomax samples. And it’s just early afternoon!

Maybe I shouldn’t have scheduled my annual physical for October 7, but that was the best appointment day available when I phoned my new doctor’s office a few months ago.

On the advice of my live-in health advisor, Laurel, I switched to her female family physician from my previous male doctor. Laurel believes that doctors should listen to you and express an interest in your problems. That hasn’t been a big consideration for me, since I don’t have many health problems and so have little to say to a doctor.

Still, I made the switch. When I told friends what I’d done, often I’d hear “Oh, I wouldn’t want to go a doctor of the opposite sex. It’d be too embarrassing.” Yeah, as if having a male doctor fondle your genitals isn’t embarrassing.

Naturally I was curious as to how the most intimate and least favorite part of a middle-aged male annual physical exam would go. I’m pleased to report, just fine. This was the first time that my prostate had been examined by a female doctor and I can confidently say that, based on this sample of one, women do it better.

More gentle, for sure. Smaller fingers are nice. More communicative too. This was my first prostate exam where I got a running verbal commentary from the doctor: “Hmmmm. Feels pretty normal. Regularly shaped. Just about normal size. Well, let’s make that a normal size for men your age who have a somewhat enlarged prostate.”

Great. A prostate exam is the only time you don’t want to hear from a female who is inspecting your genital area that you’re larger than average. Maybe Flomax will get me nearer to normal.

After my physical I wanted to go exercise and forget about getting older. But as soon as I stuck my Courthouse Athletic Club membership card under a scanner a damn computer started playing the Happy Birthday tune.

I yelled at the front-desk staffer, “Turn it off! Turn it off! I’m trying to forget that I’m 57.”

“You see,” I said, “this is a post-traumatic stress day for me. All through elementary and high school I heard ‘Hines 57, Hines 57’ even though my name isn’t spelled Heinz. And now I’m 57 years old. The prophecy has come true. Plus, thinking of ‘Hines 57’ reminds me of roll call in freshman gym class, where the P.E. instructor used first initials and last name. I was “B. Hines.’ Behinds—get it?”

This probably was more than the athletic club staffer wanted to know about me, but she listened as if she cared. “I’ve never had anyone make a joke about my name,” she said. “You’re lucky,” I told her, peering at the name tag on her chest.

“Beckey. Beckey. My daughter’s name is Celeste and she was called Celeste the Pest. It’s possible to find a rhyme for every name. Hmmmm. Beckey, heckey. The heck with Beckey. I’ll keep working on it while I exercise.”

As I opened the door to the men’s locker room I heard Beckey yell, “B. Hines! You better stop or I’ll play your birthday song again.” I laughed. “This is just like high school. Thanks for making me feel younger, Beckey.”

My doctor told me that her mother is sixty. Recently she asked her mother how old she felt. “Thirty-five.” “Wow, we’re the same age, Mom,” my doctor said.

It’s true. Cliched but true: you’re as old as you feel. I feel a lot younger than fifty-seven. Hopefully soon my prostate will be feeling more youthful too. Flomax, do your thing.

Federalist Papers nailed Miers’ nomination

In 1788 Alexander Hamilton foresaw the danger that a President might try to nominate someone like Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

That is, someone who came from the President’s state, who was personally allied to him, who was so pliable as to be the “obsequious instrument of his pleasure” (dear God, please send me such a woman; who knew the Federalist Papers had such an erotic ring?).

Hamilton thought that a President would be ashamed to do this. As Bush should be.

Here’s an excerpt from the History News Network’s instructive article, “What Did the Federalist Papers Say About Supreme Court Appointments?” Alexander Hamilton said:

He [the President] would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.

1000 Friends of Oregon on right track with Measure 37 initiative

Laurel and I were thrilled when we found out today that 1000 Friends of Oregon intends to submit a 2006 ballot initiative that would mitigate the harmful effects of Measure 37, which allows selected property owners to ignore land use laws.

This isn’t an abstract issue of property rights for us. We live in a rural area south of Salem that has been designated a “groundwater limited area.” Expert hydrogeologists have concluded that, by and large, five acres is needed to support a single well. If development becomes denser than that, existing wells will be threatened and could go dry.

Several of our neighbors have had to spend $10-15,000 for a new well because static water levels are dropping in our area. More homes plus less rainfall equals groundwater problems.

This is a real-world equation that property rights zealots such as Oregonians in Action, which sponsored Measure 37, ignore in their abstract fantasy realm where people can do whatever they want with their land without affecting their neighbors.

In “Measure 37 hits close to our home” I wrote about a proposal to build 80 homes and dig 80 wells on 215 rolling acres a short distance from us. That Measure 37 claim now has been approved by both Marion County and the state of Oregon. So, as depressing as it is for us and our neighbors, it looks like this subdivision is going to occur on land that currently is zoned EFU (exclusive farm use).

That land also is part of the south Salem hills groundwater limited area. Dividing 215 acres by 80 homes, we see that the Measure 37 claimants want to put each home on less than three acres—probably considerably less, given that roads and other infrastructure will take up quite a bit of the development.

Marion County will have to decide whether to enforce the groundwater limited area ordinance on this claim. They should, since Measure 37 has an exception for “health and safety” requirements, and water obviously is essential for health.

But there’s a possibility that all of the planned 80 homes could be built, thereby depleting the groundwater that people already living in our community (Spring Lake Estates) rely on for their existing wells.

This is an example of why the 1000 Friends of Oregon initiative is needed so badly. Oregonians in Action isn’t seeing the whole land use picture. Property rights fanatics don’t recognize that everyone has the right to use and enjoy their properties, not just Measure 37 claimants.

Oregonians in Action doesn’t want landowners’ freedoms to be infringed by government without compensation or exemption from land use rules. Well, Laurel and I don’t want our own landowner freedom to be infringed by Measure 37 claimants who don’t want their freedom infringed.

Almost always, life is much more like a circular boulevard than a one-way street. “What goes around comes around.” Oregon’s land use laws have to reflect the evident fact that what I do on my property affects my neighbors, and vice versa.

It isn’t fair to allow one owner unbridled freedom to do whatever he wants with his land, without considering how that is going to affect the ability of other people living nearby to do what they want with their land.

When you live in the country, if you don’t have a well that pumps enough water for your household needs, you’re screwed. You might be able to temporarily run a hose from a neighbor’s house or have water trucked in, but those aren’t lasting solutions.

No working well, no rural home. It’s that simple. There’s no city water department to turn to, no hydrological angel who is going to rescue you from your aridity.

I agree with Cody Hoesly that 1000 Friends of Oregon and other supporters of wise land use planning need to find their own poster child, just as Oregonians in Action did with Dorothy English.

There are lots of people being threatened by Measure 37 claims. Oregon voters need to see their plight before they will support the 1000 Friends initiative.

The Aristocrats: a movie about the world’s funniest joke

Well, according to Wikipedia, publicity materials for “The Aristocrats” actually was where the term “world’s funniest joke” was used. Regardless, after seeing the movie last Saturday night I’m not sure the joke deserves that appellation.

But it surely is one of the most disgusting and obscene jokes in the world, which makes it damn funny. I laughed out loud a lot during the unrated movie’s 87 minutes. Laurel was her usual outwardly stoic self, as was the couple about our age next to us.

Most of the Salem Cinema audience was considerably younger. And they laughed even more than I did. A laudatory New York Times review notes that The Aristocrats features at least 60-70 retellings of the joke.

You’d think that would be unbearable (haven’t you said “Now, tell me if you’ve heard this before?” because you did’t want to inflict even a single retelling on your audience?). But this is a special joke, as the Wikipedia article describes.

It has (1) a setup: a “family act” going in to see a talent agent, (2) the act: described in as much detail as the teller prefers, and (3) the punchline: when the agent asks what the act is called, the answer always is “The Aristocrats.” It’s the middle portion of the joke that makes the movie so captivating.

For here the usual incest, pedophilia, and bestiality themes can be explored in as much delicious, disgusting, delightful, disturbing detail as the joke-teller desires, limited only by his or her imagination and any concern he or she might have for the delicate sensibilities of the audience (which, for the professional comedians featured in the movie, is next to zero).

Yesterday I had a coffee house conversation about the movie with some friends. Hans asked, “Why is potty-mouth language so funny?” I couldn’t come up with a good answer. Shit, fuck—it just is.

I don’t know. Why were the flaming fart jokes so funny on the early South Park episodes? They just were. Farting is funny. That’s a constant of nature, just like Newton’s laws of motion and other universals.

But in The Aristocrats we learn that unfunny things also can be funny. Many tellings of the joke featured young children engaging in marvelously nasty sex acts with their parents and grandparents, interrupted only by sex with donkeys, dogs, and other animals, capped off with the family’s bodily orifices being filled with urine, feces, and seminal fluid.

In real life, none of this would be funny. In fact, it’d be grounds for lengthy jail sentences. However, one of the marvels of comedy is that the abnormal can come to seem normal. Good comedians—and there are many in The Aristocrats—bring us to look at life through their crazed eyes, revealing that the boundary line between “normal” and “abnormal” is more blurred than we usually like to believe.

Along these lines, I just read a Science News article about child prostitutes in Thailand. It had been assumed by human rights groups that “prostitution and other forms of child exploitation stem from a toxic social brew of poverty mixed with a lack of education and job training.” The reality, though, is quite different.

Researchers found that parents in northern Thai families actually urge their children into prostitution in order to reap financial rewards. The article reports that most former prostitutes “said that they had worked short hours and had had the freedom to choose or reject clients. The women generally didn’t regret what they had done.”

This isn’t to excuse or downplay the problem of child prostitution. It’s just an example of how comedy that pushes the limits can help us realize that reality usually is less black and white than we generally take it to be. We like to make sharp distinctions between morality and immorality, good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

The Aristocrats shows that when you hear nasty language for 87 minutes, it doesn’t seem nearly so nasty anymore. Boring, maybe. But not nasty.

There’s a few other jokes told in the movie. Here’s a version of my favorite, called in this case “Mbututogo.” As noted on that web page, the movie version substitutes “The Aristocrats” for “Mbututogo.” And the punchline is “Very well. But first…The Aristocrats!” A great joke, either way.

If you want the real thing, there’s a web site—The Aristocrat’s Joke—where you can read countless versions of the joke and even submit your own creative take on it to be rated.

I just looked at a few highly rated versions on the first page, one of which was extremely nasty, one was typically nasty, and one was politically nasty (Michael Brown, the ex-FEMA director, somehow got into the act).

No! Tell me it isn’t so!

I can’t believe it. Who would have guessed? Paris and Paris are no more. Their engagement is off.

It will be tough, but somehow I’ll find a way to fill the hole that today’s CNN story left in me. I’d become attached to the marvelous symmetrical beauty of it all: Paris and Paris, blonde and blonde, filthy rich heir and filthy rich heiress.

Now we’ll never know what it would have been like for their child to introduce his or her parents: “This is my mom, Paris. And this is my dad, Paris.” Plus, there’s a good chance they would have called their offspring “Paris.”

Sigh…

I guess you can’t count on anything anymore. The center just doesn’t hold. Why, I even heard from a reliable source that George Bush is drinking again.

In case you’re a gambler, the betting line is 40 to 1 that he’ll check into a rehab program. I’d say the odds are quite a bit better that Paris and Paris will get back together again before they break up again.