HinesSight

I’m cleaning out the link closet

With less than 12 hours remaining in 2005, it’s time for me to clean out this year's link closet where I store funny and bizarre sites that strike me as possessing some sort of je ne sais quoi special élan.

Thanks in general to my fellow ORblogs posters who led me to most of these links, yet now must remain specifically unthanked as I’ve lost track of the cyberspace bread crumb trail that led me to these gems.

Our journey into the funny and bizarre begins, of course, with cats…

--Whenever my feline mental illness starts to kick up and I begin to think, “Maybe it would be nice to have a cat again,” I head over to MyCatHatesYou dot com. A few minutes of browsing the cats that hate me restores my sanity.

--An auxiliary canine-restorative is any of the many web pages devoted to cat haiku, such as this Seattle blogger’s selection. Here’s another entertaining listing. I like this haiku:

The rule for today.
Touch my tail, I shred your hand.
New rule tomorrow.

--Portland blogger Chantel offers up a great riff in her Open Letter to My Cat #2. On the Open Letter front, see also “An open letter to the cat, who pushes glasses off the kitchen counter while we're trying to sleep.”

Moving on to sex and the Internet…

--This Galumpia Adult site is strangely fascinating, and not at all what you’d expect given its name. A notice on the home page offers a hint of what lies inside: “Warning: This site contains images.”

--I won’t reveal how I came across How to Accurately Measure Your Penis, except to say that this information wasn’t being sought by me at the time. Nonetheless, I chuckled my way through what is billed as “A Gay Man’s Guide to Real World Dimensions: Your dick size, a work of fact or fiction?” For both straights and gays, this has to be the definitive guide to the subject.

--Speaking of Fantasy vs. Reality, click on that link for a great expose of Internet poseurs such as Mr. Hilarity, Religious Zealot, The Tough Guy, Homophobe, Brainiac, Role Player, Lothario, The Dark Poet, and Cutie Pie. After reading it, I wondered into what category I fall, since I use my real name and persona in cyberspace.

--Only yesterday talented Chantel wrote "I'll Sleep When You're Dead," a funny tale of noisy sex-obsessed neighbors and thin walls.

Happy almost New Year.

I hope you have a more exciting evening than we’re about to experience, what with our traditional hosting of a vegetarian, alcohol-free potluck for people in my meditation group. When we start sharing tofu recipes, that’s when things really start getting wild.

If the West Coast was Kurdistan

I’d love to be able to secede from the United States. It’d be great to form an independent progressive nation out of California, Oregon, and Washington. I’m thinking like a Kurd, for the Iraqi provinces of Kurdistan are making preparations to secure their own borders.

Even though I’m an American who has lived in a united country for all of my life, it’s easy for me to get enthused about establishing a separate nation that is truly in tune with my values.

If California doesn’t want to come along, I’m equally up with the Republic of Cascadia plan that drops Oregon’s southern neighbor and adds in British Columbia and part of Alaska.

Given my readiness to embrace independence, which surely is shared by many millions of my West Coast brothers and sisters, those who optimistically envision Iraq becoming one big happy country after a new government is formed are, I predict, going to find their hopes dashed.

A recent poll found that 73% of Kurds feel that life is better since the war, compared to only 25% of Sunnis. Just 22% of Kurds oppose the coalition forces, while 85% of Sunnis do.

So a reading of Iraq’s tea leaves points to continued sectarian and ethnic tensions. A breakup of Iraq isn’t inevitable, but an extremely loose confederacy probably is the most that the United States can expect from its nation-building efforts.

I wonder how President Bush will react if the new Iraqi government asks for a complete withdrawal of United States forces. Two-thirds of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition forces in their country, and almost half (45%) say that coalition forces either should leave now (26%) or after a new government is in place (19%).

And there’s a good chance that Iraqi opinion is going to shift even more to the position that the United States presence is making Iraq less, rather than more, secure. If this happens, then Noam Chomsky’s forecasts are likely to come true: (1) an American withdrawal will be requested by the Iraqi government, and (2) close ties will be established between the Shi’ite majority and Iran.

What a prospect. Several thousand American soldiers will have died to establish a Iranian-style theocracy in a splintered Iraqi nation.

I can hardly wait to pledge allegiance to the Republic of Cascadia.

Wolves and fear of the wild

“I like my Canadian wolf fried.” What kind of person would put that bumper sticker on his or her car? I think, a fearful person. Someone who is afraid of the wild that wolves represent.

Thoreau famously said, “In Wildness is the preservation of the world.” I’m familiar with that quote. But until today I hadn’t bothered to read what came before and after those words in his essay on “Walking.”

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the world. Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.

Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence, have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It is because the children of the empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.

Thoreau is right. We need wolfish wildness to remain vital, whether the “we” be a nation of millions or an individual of one. Our heritage demands it. Wildness is embedded in our innermost being.

For we are animals, just like wolves. Even more: the science of evolution tells us that some tens of millions of years ago wolves were us. Or rather, we shared a common ancestor from which sprung the mammalian branch of life that now includes wolves and humans.

Today a HinesSight reader pointed me toward a Los Angeles Times story, “Wolves Thrive but Animosity Keeps Pace.” It’s a disturbing tale of irrational lupine fear. In North America a single person has been killed by wolves in the past 100 years. Wolves account for a miniscule fraction of livestock losses, as noted in my “Ranchers overly afraid of the big bad wolf” post.

So there’s no good reason to fear wolves. Nor any wild animal. Respect, yes. Fear, no.

I grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains where rattlesnakes are common. As a boy who ran wild around those foothills I had a healthy respect for rattlesnakes. I certainly felt a chill up my spine when, crawling through a rocky passage, I heard an unmistakable rattle and made the hastiest exit of my young life.

But I never heard anyone calling for the killing of every rattlesnake in California. Yet quite a few wolf-fearers believe that the only good wolf is a dead wolf, even though domesticated dogs are a much greater danger to both people and livestock. In the LA Times article a Defenders of Wildlife spokeswoman opines that wolves are irrationally feared because of deep-seated myth (such as the tragic tale of Little Red Riding Hood).

That may be. My own theory, though, leans more toward the fear of wildness as the causative factor behind irrational wolf-phobia. Hillary Rosner says in her thoughtful piece, “The Big Bad Wolf and the American Mind”:

American attitudes toward wolves are tied up in the strange relationship we have with the idea of the wild more generally: we want it, but only in places where we designate it, only as decreed and managed by us. So, too, wolves are fine, but only if they stay within certain boundaries and keep their wolfishness to a minimum. Keeping wolves in check is a sign, somehow, that we’ve triumphed as a civilization; let them get out of control, and you never know where else nature might come insidiously creeping back in.

We’ve gotten to a point where anything allowed to retain its stamp of “wild” – whether animal, plant, or landscape – must be rigorously managed down to the last detail. Perhaps there’s no way around it. But it undoubtedly has an impact on the American psyche, perhaps subconsciously altering the way we interpret words like “wild” and “wilderness.”

Yes, absolutely. I don’t think this is necessarily a conservative vs. progressive divide, for my highly conservative mother held the old-fashioned Republican belief that the word meant just that: conservatives conserved, whether it be money or wildlife. Yet nowadays it is the radical right that is the most afraid of wildness, as evidenced by steadily increasing pressures to cut out the “wild” from our remaining wilderness.

Wolves are a strong symbol of wildness. Hence, the irrational hatred of them by those who fear the wild that can’t be controlled. These same people, I strongly suspect, also fear homosexuality, for sexual proclivity falls in the realm of the uncontrollable. Likewise, almost assuredly they distrust non-dogmatic spiritual paths such as Buddhism and Taoism, for these encourage an independence of action and belief that breaks the bounds of conventional religiosity.

In the same sense global warming, I suspect, is looked upon as an accomplishment by most fearers of the wild. “We have tamed nature,” they think—consciously or unconsciously. “Human technology has altered the course of natural climate change. Mankind rules! I like my weather fried.”

Far be it from me to deny anyone their chosen fear. Fear of God, fear of wolves, fear of living in harmony with nature, fear of gays. If you want to live a fearful life, be my guest.

But please, don’t impose your fears on the rest of us. Keep them to yourself. I’d like to hear the sound of a wild wolf howl someday, just as my wife and I have enjoyed listening to nearby coyote song. Those of us who embrace the wild aren’t, well, wild about having it torn away from us.

If you want to try to keep your life’s garden perfectly manicured behind a psychic fence that repels even a hint of wildness, go ahead. Just remember that outside the walls you choose to hide behind lies the world where wild-lovers roam.

Take a peek. Try a howl. You might find an inner wolf yearning to run free.

My “Oh, no!” of Christmas Eve

After telling Laurel that I'd finished wrapping her presents, this wasn’t the question that I wanted to hear on Christmas Eve: “You probably forgot to get me the only present that I asked for, didn’t you?” My calm audible response was, “Ah, um…of course I didn’t forget.”

But inside my head a voice was screaming “Oh, no!” And the worst thing was, at first I couldn’t remember what the requested present was that I had forgotten. Which made sense, of course, yet still was disturbing.

Because I couldn’t ask Laurel what it was I’d forgotten without making my horrendous lapse completely obvious. So I trusted that the God of Forgetful Husbands would come to my rescue. Which she did, a few minutes later.

A sewing machine. Laurel had mentioned several times how much she disliked her current ancient machine, and how nice it would be to have a new model that actually sewed reliably.

I have no idea how this Christmas present request escaped from the bounds of my memory. I remembered several other Laurel-wishes that were stated less distinctly than this one. Perhaps it’s because sewing machines are such a mystery to me (I’ve never used one and have no idea how they work) that the notion of buying one on my own was unable to find a footing in my mind.

Anyway, I made up a colorful “I.O.U. a sewing machine” note on my new laser printer (funny how I never forget to get me the stuff I want), wrapped it up, and had Laurel open the envelope first thing today.

I made a feeble attempt to pretend that the reason I hadn’t gotten the machine was that I needed her advice about what model to buy. However, Laurel’s finely honed wife-intuition saw through me so easily I quickly gave up and said, “Yes, it slipped my mind. But while you were walking the dog today I spent over an hour exploring the confusing world of sewing machines. Here are some models I think you’d like.”

Confession is good for the soul. I felt better coming clean. And I felt even better this afternoon when I put in an online order for a basic mechanical Brother that promises to meet Laurel’s relatively simple mend-and-alter sewing needs.

If any sewing machine aficionados read this, I’d appreciate learning whether you think I made a decent choice (Consumer Reports, my tried and true shopping guru, has given other Brother models high ratings).

Having let down one person close to my heart today, I don’t want to make it two. So even though I usually studiously avoid passing on chain letters and similar Internet missives, I’m pleased to make an exception for Randy Smith and his R Blog—where he recently posted the trendy Meme of Four and passed it on to me.

Here’s my response to the game. I had the most trouble answering the movie question, as I rarely see movies twice. Back in my school days I remember seeing “Goldfinger” four times, so I had to put that flick down.

On the places I’d rather be front, my answer was tinged by mid-afternoon hunger caused by a mild fast in anticipation of our 3:00 pm reservation for the Christmas buffet at downtown Salem’s Marco Polo restaurant.

My succinct review of the meal is great. They offered terrific vegetarian/vegan alternatives to the meat entrees. If you’re ever in Salem, give the Marco Polo a try. You won’t regret it.
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Four jobs you’ve had in your life: Cannery worker, medical school research associate, health planner, non-profit executive director

Four movies you could watch over and over: LA Story, Annie Hall, Goldfinger, Shrek

Four places you’ve lived: El Paso, Texas; Three Rivers, California; Portland, Oregon; Salem, Oregon

Four TV shows you love to watch: Survivor, Lost, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Daily Show

Four places you’ve been on vacation: Maui, Hawaii; Camp Sherman, Oregon; Victoria, B.C.; Fiji

Four websites you visit daily: New York Times, ORblogs, Daily Kos, BlueOregon

Four of your favorite foods: Strawberries, grapes, spinach lasagna, tempe

Four places you’d rather be: Heaven, Best Buy store holding a $100,000 gift card, Maui beach with the surf up, Marco Polo restaurant
----------------------------
Handing this off to Keith Ecklund.

On my knees with Indian-accented tech support

Given the accents of the two people I talked with during my Linksys technical support call, I doubt that they were in Omaha. Which doesn’t bother me. Outsource all you want, Linksys, so long as you can get my WRT54G Wireless Router back up and running.

I became desperate as soon as I turned on my laptop yesterday and saw that no wireless connection was available. “What the hell!” my mind screamed in its least joyous holiday spirit. After only a month I’d become addicted to our WildBlue satellite broadband internet that had rescued us from the tortures of 24kbps dial-up.

I wanted my WildBlue back, and I wanted it now. Running upstairs to the router that sits beneath Laurel’s desk I noted a disturbing blinking power light where previously there had been a steadily shining luminance. Plugging the WildBlue modem cable directly into my wife’s computer, internet access was restored.

The culprit had been identified. Now, I figured, it would “merely” be a matter of waiting on hold for several hours while the holiday-strapped Linksys tech support staff handled all the other similarly-panicked customers who were in the phone queue ahead of me.

I ate a bowl of cereal, went to the bathroom, and grabbed a few magazines, fortifying myself for a lengthy stay in tech support limbo—which hopefully wouldn’t turn into hell.

Amazingly, a woman answered my call almost instantly. I fell into the warm embrace of her Indian-accented voice. My savior! And she had such an appealing way of speaking. I’ve spent a lot of time around Indians. I love their accent. Everything said in an Indian English voice sounds so much more profound and wiser.

I’m convinced that if Deepak Chopra was a good old boy from Alabama his books on tape and television/radio appearances would be a good deal less popular. Heck, I’m ready to become the disciple of our waiter when I go into an Indian restaurant and am asked “Sir, how many roti would you like with your meal?” He just sounds so…classy.

Sadly, my relationship with the Linksys woman, which I had hoped would endure for many pleasant audible tech support minutes, ended when she transferred me to a guy who, she assured me, would be able to help me with my problem.

“Ah, the old bait and switch,” I thought. Have a receptionist answer the phone quickly to get the customer’s hopes up, then let him wait on hold for hours for the actual technical guru.

I was wrong again. Another Indian-accented voice came on the line after just a few minutes. I never understood the name that he gave me several times, so I’ll call him “Arjuna” in honor of the Bhagavad Gita—one of my favorite spiritual books.

Arjuna was unfailingly polite, as I’ve always found Indian tech support people to be. When I owned a balky Dell laptop, it made me feel somewhat better to have someone with an exotic accent in Bombay be unable to fix my problem, as opposed to someone with a bland American accent in Kansas City be unable to fix my problem.

I still had to deal with a computer that crashed a couple of times a day, but at least I had the pleasant memory of being told in an elegant Indian accent “Thank you for calling. I am sure that we have been able to resolve your problem.” No, you haven’t, I soon would find out when my Dell laptop crashed again. However, being bullshitted in such a nice voice took a little bit of the edge off of my frustration.

In the case of Arjuna, he quickly had me on my knees. Literally. It was sort of like phone sex, except without the sex. Arjuna would tell me what to do. “Unplug both ends of the cable that goes into the router’s Ethernet port. Now, go to the computer attached to the modem and click on ‘Start.’” And so on.

If I expressed uncertainty about what I was supposed to do, Arjuna would simply repeat his order in a more dominant tone. “Sir, unplug both ends of the router…” I’d hurry to obey, sometimes with a flashlight in my mouth as I kneeled before the malfunctioning equipment perched on a shadowy shelf under Laurel’s desk.

After half an hour of this I started to get irritated. I couldn’t figure out where Arjuna was heading, and I began to suspect that he didn’t either. I mean, it became pretty clear that he was working off of a tech support script.

A little post-call research on a broadband forum brought me to the realization that my particular router model, the dreaded v.5, has tons of problems compared to earlier versions. So Linksys surely gets many calls about the exact blinking light issue that I had phoned about.

Why, then, couldn’t we have gotten right to a fix rather than engage in (to milk the phone sex analogy for all it’s worth) so much foreplay? I probably wouldn’t have minded being ordered around for 45 minutes by the first female Indian accent, but Arjuna’s voice definitely began to wear thin on me by the time we got to what can only be called the tech support money shot.

“OK, Brian. Unplug the power supply from the router. Now, I want you to get a paperclip or something like that and press on the router’s reset button for thirty seconds.”

Sure, Arjuna. I’ll get on my knees one more time, crawl under the desk, put that damn flashlight in my mouth again, and try to hold the flimsy plastic router in one hand while pressing with my other hand on a tiny recessed button for half a minute while you put your feet up on your desk and sip on a chai brought to you by the lovely sari-clad tech support receptionist who, if my karma and her education only had been better, I would be talking with right now rather than you.

As soon as I plugged the power cord back in the power light stayed solidly lit. I had the feeling that the same thing would have happened 45 minutes earlier after pressing the reset button, but Arjuna and I apparently had to play out his tech support script.

The router is routing fine now. I give high marks to Linksys for having a tech support phone line that is answered quickly by polite people with marvelous accents. I just wish that we’d been able to cut to the chase in a more flexible manner. Like, by me saying what my problem is, and Arjuna telling me directly how to fix it.

If I’m going to spend the better part of an hour on the phone being ordered around by someone with an exotic voice, I’d prefer that my “dominatrix” not be a guy from Linksys tech support.

2005 Christmas letter headline: “We’re getting old!”

Once again I’m pleased to share the Hines’ annual Christmas/Holiday Letter. Every year I strive mightily to come up with a theme that encapsulates what the past 12 months have meant to us.

For 2005, it is our sense that we are well on the way to being très anciens (rough translation: old farts). However, sharing this realization with the world — or, at least, the miniscule fraction of such that visits HinesSight — hopefully will have some therapeutic effects.

For if it is indeed true that “you are as old as you feel,” then perhaps our open admission that we are getting old will cause the feeling of such to become less intense, in the same way as trying not to think of an elephant only results in more elephantine thoughts.

Or, if that doesn’t work, I can always glance to my right and experience the youthful glee that, for me, accompanies the purchase of new technology.

In this case, a Dell 3000cn color laser printer that was well worth the $319 that I spent to give myself a pre-Christmas gift. Every home should have one. It came in darn handy at Holiday Letter printing time, since I included six photos of us, the dog, my daughter and her husband, and Spring Lake (the fact that there are two photos of the family pet, and just one of the other subjects, reveals our priority in life).

Conservative and religious types should feel comfortable reading our 2005 missive, in contrast to the 2004 letter—which contained some post-election digs at fundamentalism and Bushism. This year I strove for a spirit of political/spiritual conciliation, managing in two pages to only include a single mention of “unintelligent design.” I’m proud of myself.

Happy Holidays. Here, in PDF format, is our 2005 letter (778 kb).
Download christmas_letter_2005.pdf

Bush is a pathetic peeping Tom

George Bush’s evolving NSA-gate scandal makes him look like a presidential peeping Tom. He scurries around in the shadows, peering through partly-closed shades, afraid that someone is going to catch him invading the privacy of American citizens.

It’s pathetic. More obvious now than ever is how weak Bush is. He isn’t a strong leader with the courage of his convictions. Never has been, never will be. Strong men admit when they’re wrong and don’t try to cover up their mistakes. Wimpy peeping Toms whimper “But I was just looking for my cat in these bushes!” when they’re caught.

Be a man, George. You’ve been spying illegally on Americans, intercepting email and phone conversations without a court order. Take your licks, apologize to the citizens you’ve let down, and make us a promise that you’ll never trash the Constitution again. You know you're on very weak legal footing.

And read Patrick Henry’s famous speech. It’s short. You should be able to handle it. There are a few big words, but Laura can help you sound them out. Focus on the ending: Give me liberty, or give me death!

You like sharp distinctions, George: good or evil, for us or against us. Here’s another one to put in your dichotomy basket: liberty or death. That’s why so many Americans have died in so many wars, to defend our liberty. Life isn’t worth living if it isn’t free.

Bush doesn’t understand that. Projecting his cowardice onto the citizenry, he keeps talking about how important it is to “keep our people safe.” Safe is good, George, but not at the price of our constitutional rights. That’s why this country had a revolution: to get out from under an imperious King.

Bush wants to be a king, not a president. He knows that he isn’t strong enough or smart enough to govern straight up, stating his goals and policies openly and honestly. So he and his cronies rely on secrecy, lies, back-room deals, back-stabbing, and other nefarious tactics to move their agenda along.

The Daily Kos has a nice series of posts today about NSA-gate that indicate how low the Bush administration is willing to go in its attempt to dismantle our constitutional protections.

(1) Bush was so desperate to keep his illegal peeping Tom activities from being revealed he tried to convince the New York Times not to publish its story about the National Security Agency eavesdropping on Americans without a warrant. (2) Contrary to Bush’s claim that congressional leaders approved of the underhanded NSA domestic spying, Sen. Rockefeller wrote a letter to Dick Cheney disapproving of the practice.

(3) Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admits that if the Bush administration had sought congressional approval to give the NSA explicit power to spy on Americans, Congress wouldn’t have agreed. (4) Cheney spoke falsely when he said that if the National Security Agency had had this sort of capability before 9/11, the attacks might have been prevented. The NSA always could eavesdrop on suspected terrorists--with a warrant.

One good thing emerging from this mess is that more people are starting to realize that the emperor has no clothes. King George is naked: morally, intellectually, constitutionally. Right now he’s blustering away, trying to distract us from his NSA-gate failings by accusing the New York Times and other “He’s got no clothes!” types of aiding the enemy.

That’s absurd, George. You’re the enemy when it comes to chipping away at our constitutional rights. The sooner Americans realize this and bravely choose liberty over the fear of death from a terrorist attack, the better.

[Next day update: The New York Times has a good editorial today about the "Fog of False Choices." Bush, they say, is fond of false choices such as invade Iraq or face a nuclear attack. But the most absurd phony choice of all is Bush's justification for his secret program of spying on Americans: save lives or follow the law. You can read the full editorial in the continuation to this post.]

Geese walking on water, a miracle!

I’m ready for rain. Maybe (ugh!) even freezing rain. Here’s Laurel and Serena by our frozen pond. It’s never looked like this before, for sure.

This has been a strangely cold dry December. The moonset one clear morning made me feel like I was in Narnia. Still. Quiet. 21 degrees cold. Kind of eerie.

Our nearby Spring Lake is almost completely frozen over. We’ve lived here fifteen years. This is a first. Probably can be traced to global warming temperature extremes. “Damn you, climate change apathetic George Bush!” I imagine the ducks are quacking, as their swimming area gets smaller and smaller.

Geese walking on water! A Christmas miracle. Or, it would be, if it weren’t for the ice.

I figure that ice isn’t all that unfamiliar to a goose. Especially Canadian geese. Which these may be. I’m not good about distinguishing geese. Telling them and ducks apart is as much as I can do (ducks, small; geese, big).

JibJab’s “2-0-5!” jab at Bush is a must-see

The JibJab folks who brought us the hilarious “This Land” send-up of Bush and Kerry are back with an animated “2-0-5!” review of Bush’s trials and tribulations this year.

I splurged and bought a $1.99 download. That way I can remind myself of the Bush Administration/Republican idiocies and incompetence anytime I want.

Speaking of incompetence, the usually reliable Typepad weblog service messed up some routine computer maintenance last night. Typepad weblogs, including mine, temporarily got sent back in time to how they were a few days ago. So that explains why some recent posts and comments disappeared for a while.

The right is right on immigration reform

This being the holiday season, a time of brotherhood and good will, I’ve been searching my progressive soul for any political common ground that I have with the right-wing in America.

I’ve been listening more than I usually do to Tony Snow, Sean Hannity, Lars Larson, and Victoria Taft (a local Portland rightie) as I cruise around in my progressively pure Toyota Prius, wishing that I could harness the hot air emanating over the radio waves for even greater mileage.

There’s one issue—only one—that makes me nod in agreement when I hear it discussed on the conservative talk shows: immigration reform. Not Bush’s weenie guest worker version, but the hardass lock up the borders and send illegals home variety.

When I read, “Republicans ready to turn the screw on immigration,” I say “Go for it!” One group of House Republicans wants, among other things, to build a 2,000 mile fence along the Mexico-U.S. border, stop granting citizenship to U.S. born children of illegal immigrants, and require employers to verify that their employees are legal workers.

Sounds good to me. Sometimes the right is actually right. Progressives should support this tough immigration reform legislation, even if most on the left will have different reasons for liking it.

I agree with the folks at the Carrying Capacity Network who say that immigration reduction is key to stabilizing our country’s population, which in turn is the foundation for solving our environmental, energy, and social problems in a sustainable fashion.

The Center for Immigration Studies recently released a study which found that more immigrants came into the United States since 2000 than in any other five-year period in the nation’s history. And almost half, 3.7 million, entered illegally. That’s scary.

SUSPS, a network of Sierra Club activists who disagree with the Club’s blasé attitude toward population growth, say “no to racism, yes to environmentalism.” Their desire to drastically reduce immigration, like mine, stems almost entirely from ecological concerns.

I don’t like Michael Savage’s Borders, Language, and Culture jingoish mantra. I’m not interested in keeping America pure. I want American to be livable. I want America to consume a smaller percentage of the Earth’s non-renewable resources. I want America to embrace a philosophy of sustainability rather than mortgage the future for current economic growth.

None of those wants is going to happen unless this nation’s population growth gets under control. And SUSPS points out that immigration is the largest factor contributing to that growth.

So for once I agree with the most rabid right-wingers in Congress on an issue. Miracles do happen.

Green tea extract and me

Somehow I’ve made room for a new friend on our overflowing supplement shelf. Welcome to the Hines household, Most Honorable Green Tea Extract. May you help bring me many years of abundant health and vitality.

Laurel is a major tea drinker. She blends organic black and green tea into a powerful mixture, pours it into large juice containers, and keeps a hearty supply on hand in our two refrigerators. Laurel drinks tea throughout the day.

As for me, I’ve been staying away from her strong caffeinated brew. Given my fifty-seven year old prostate, I’ve got more important things to do than spend half the day peeing (like, blogging about my bathroom habits, which I assume the world must be as interested in as I am).

So even though Laurel has been bugging me for years to drink tea, which has many health benefits (particularly green tea), I had resisted her entreaties. I figured that while my lifespan might be lessened a bit, at least I’d decrease the chance that I’d die staring into the bottom of a toilet bowl.

Then an ad for the Life Extension Foundation’s decaffeinated Mega Green Tea Extract caught my eye. Cool! Now I could “drink” my daily ration of tea in a single pee-friendly capsule.

For several weeks I’ve been happily downing my Green Tea Extract every morning, along with twenty other capsules of various varieties that supplement my already-healthy vegetarian diet. Given that I take another fifteen capsules in the evening, I should live to be 120. Unless one of these nostrums ends up killing me.

Which is just what Laurel warned me about after she read “Burning questions about green tea” in today’s Salem Statesman-Journal. A sidebar to this generally laudatory article said:

Steer clear of green tea supplements. They may not provide the same benefits: A 2005 study found that mega-doses of green tea extract actually helped tumors grow.

Well, that got my attention. I’ll spend more time in the bathroom if that means less chance of spending time in a cancer ward. But before I chucked the green tea extract I wanted to find out more about that study.

Google led me to “Researchers warn of green tea use.” A test tube study did indeed find that very high doses of green tea extract affected a compound that regulates tumor growth.

An abstract of the research, which seemed to be written in English but was totally Greek to me, didn’t reveal the size of these mega-doses—information that also was missing from the researchers’ news release. The only clue was this statement:

Zhou said research has shown cardiovascular benefits for those who drink green tea, but many people are taking large doses of the tea as a powder supplement. This may be the equivalent of drinking hundreds of cups of tea per day.

OK, so a few cups of tea a day are almost certainly good for you, but hundreds of cups a day are bad. Figures. Drinking a hundred cups of day of anything, even water, isn’t going to be healthful. So now I needed to translate 674.25 mg of polyphenols, the amount of active green tea stuff in one of my Mega Green Tea Extract capsules, into a cups-of-tea equivalent.

In the “Available Forms” section of this University of Maryland Medical Center article about green tea I learned that the average cup of green tea contains about 50-150 mg of polyphenols. Let’s take the middle way and call it 100 mg.

Thus I’m ingesting the equivalent of 6.7 cups of tea a day via my single capsule. Maybe less, maybe more. But certainly nowhere near hundreds of cups a day.

My conclusion is that the advice in the newspaper was poorly founded. Green tea extracts should be avoided only if you’re planning on taking huge doses.

If anyone wants to take issue with my conclusion, comment away. I’m open to learning more about the safety of green tea extracts. For now, I’m going to continue getting my seven cups of tea in pill form. I believe it’ll help keep me healthy (and also, out of the bathroom.)

Laughing through the War on Christmas

Real war is hell and not to be joked about. But the so-called War on Christmas is a joke, so it deserves to be laughed away.

Jon Stewart did a good job of this a few days ago in the course of debunking Bill O’Reilly’s false claim about a Daily Show clip. He ended his response to O’Reilly’s misleading attack with:

If Bill O'Reilly needs to have an enemy, needs to feel persecuted, you know what? Here's my Kwanzaa gift to him. Are you ready? All right. I'm your enemy. Make me your enemy. I, Jon Stewart, hate Christmas, Christians, Jews, morality, and I will not rest until every year families gather to spend December 25th together at Osama's homo-abortion-pot-and-commie-jizzporium.

I’m with you, Jon. That sounds like a fun time.

Last year Jerry Falwell announced that “we are winning the Christmas war.” I don’t know who the “we” is. Nor do I know where the “war” is. I live in the nation’s most unchurched state, Oregon, and the only shots I’ve heard fired have come from the Christian side.

Methinks this war is a fantasy. As Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus says, “What ‘War on Christmas’?” She went out searching for signs that the godless secular materialists are succeeding in banishing Christ from Christmas. Wasn’t happening. She found a lot of materialism, though. I wonder if Jesus would be happy having his name so associated.

Over at the Daily Kos, Hunter has a great satirical Dispatch From the War on Christmas. Except the scary thing is, quite a few fundamentalists wouldn’t see it as satire. Here’s an excerpt:

How long must we be persecuted? Christmas is about Peace on Earth and Goodwill Towards All, and how dare the pagan alliance of liberals, non-Christians, hippies and multinational corporations turn this into a damn war zone, where I have to look at every damn sign, and second-guess every greeting, and measure every Christmas tree to make sure that everyone understands that like we do.

This is OUR time of year, as Christians, to show the world what Christianity is, and that Peace on Earth and Goodwill Towards All isn't some hollow greeting card thing, but is the way we live our lives, and fuck them all if they can't see that. I, for one, will make sure that we understand about Peace On Earth if I have to hit every last damn greeter and fast food teenager and checkout person in America with a paper towel value pack.

I'll boycott them all, until every last one of them understands that I am here in the name of Our Lord and Savior to bring PEACE ON EARTH if I have to shove it down every last throat. Especially the damn pagans.

Laurel and I are already sick of Christmas (especially the damn music). However, we don’t have any interest in depriving Christians of their time of credit card joy. We just want to be left alone so we can celebrate the holidays in our own grinchlike fashion.

I’ve been buying presents like crazy. For myself. So has Laurel. That’s how I get into the Christmas spirit: indulging my selfishness. Yet eventually we’ll get around to making some charitable donations, barely squeezing them into the 2005 tax year like we always do.

But not even a dime is going into a Salvation Army kettle. The ubiquitous bellringers deeply irritate me. So far I’ve been merely muttering “No, happy holidays” under my breath when they greet me with a robust “Merry Christmas!” as I rush past them into a store, intent on buying another present for myself.

I think I’m going to start responding with a vocal “Happy Holidays!” from now on. Don’t want to disappoint O’Reilly, Falwell, and their like. As Media Matters shows, they’re eager to pump up the notion of a War on Christmas. Might as well give them what they’re asking for.

And here’s a tip for the Salvation Army: I’d be a lot more likely to put a few bucks into the kettle if you recruited a different sort of bell ringer.

Ann Coulter, hot or not?

I agree, right-wing ranter Ann Coulter is hot.
Until she opens her mouth.
Then, she’s not.

I love Les Schwab

I’ve got a thing going with Les Schwab. Not with the man—my tofuish sensibilities don’t mesh with Les’ “Free Beef” mentality—but with the chain of tire stores that he founded.

Yesterday I bought four tires for our Prius at the south Salem Les Schwab Tire Center and, per usual, my experience with the company was exemplary. I wasn’t thrilled about getting a new set of tires after putting only 20,000 miles on the original equipment Goodyear Integritys, which, along with quite a few other Integrity owners, I can pithily describe as four rolling pieces of crap.

But the Les Schwab employees perked up my spirits as soon as I walked into the store. I’d briefly considered buying tires elsewhere. However, when I called Les Schwab to get a quote on some Toyos I told the guy who answered the phone:

You’ve earned my loyalty after one of your crew ran out to greet me in the parking lot when I came in this spring with a tubeless mower tire that I couldn’t figure out how to fix. He repaired it for free in a flash.

That sort of Les Schwab service is legendary, as described in this glowing online business magazine article: “Four tires, free beef.” They fix flats for free, whether or not they sold you the tires. And when I said “ran out to greet me,” I meant that literally. Les Schwab employees run all over the place. This is one high-energy, high-customer service business.

I love it. Everyone I interacted with yesterday afternoon was positive, enthusiastic, honest, and—most important—real. I always get the sense at Les Schwab that I’m being treated as an authentic human being (albeit with a credit card) by another authentic human being (albeit one who wants me to use my credit card at the store).

After deciding on some top-of-the-line Toyos, the same as we’ve been happily using on our Volvo wagon for several years, I settled in to the customer waiting area. Free popcorn and coffee is another Les Schwab trademark that I personally appreciate a lot more than the free beef (how about a “free tofu” option for us vegetarians, Les?). The popcorn bin was full, as were the coffee pots.

I was within easy earshot of the front desk, so was able to listen to the Les Schwab staff talk on the phone and in person to quite a few other customers. Invariably they were treated with the same respect and competence as I was.

It’s clear that Les Schwab workers enjoy their jobs. Lots of other service businesses, particularly large chains, are filled with sullen employees who, just as clearly, wish they were doing anything but what they’re doing.

You don’t get that feeling as Les Schwab, undoubtedly in part because of the company’s generous profit-sharing plan where half of store profits are set aside for bonuses, health benefits, and retirement trusts.

I was told that my car would be ready in about 45 minutes. At 3:30, right on time, I heard my name being called out. A credit card swipe later I was driving out of the lot on four Toyo tires that are a heck of a lot safer than the near-slicks we were tooling around on before. (Click here to read complaints about the OE tires from other Prius owners.)

And on the positive side, click here to read more praise of Les Schwab from another blogger. The comments to this post are equally positive. Some are quite moving, such as the story about the Les Schwab employee who, at 9 pm, brings four tires to a van stuck in the middle of central Oregon nowhere. The story ends with:

I insisted on tipping him $25 for giving us service that was beyond anything I had ever seen. He said “No thank you” followed by occasional “Sir, it’s just my job.” Not only that, he wouldn’t even let us pay a service fee for coming all the way out there. I have no personal ties to Les Schwab. This was just such an amazing experience that I wanted to share it. I was a Les Schwab customer before, however, now I’m one of their greatest evangelists as well.

I am too. Because when you’ve got a tire problem and see one of these signs, you really are close to heaven.

“March of the Penguins” and “Pride & Prejudice”

This weekend we saw these two movies (“March” on DVD ,“Pride” in a movie theatre) and at first sight they couldn’t be more dissimilar. But with a little reflection I began to see connections.

Long lines of emperor penguins, looking exactly alike, walking to their breeding ground in desolate Antarctica. Not-so-long lines of eighteenth century British men and women, each dressed to the nines, dancing in a lavishly decorated country home with the same underlying intention: breeding.

It’s always about breeding, isn’t it? Darwin tells us that it is. And both of these movies testify to the power that sexual attraction has over us, whether we be a penguin or a person.

Roger Ebert’s review of March of the Penguins includes a cogent discussion of how evolution has fine-tuned these creatures to survive in one of Earth’s harshest environments.

Laurel and I were captivated by the marvelously photographed scenes of the penguins walking seventy miles from the sea to the breeding grounds, finding just the right mate through a mysterious selection process that you’ve have to be a penguin to fathom, getting down to mating, and laying a single egg per each breeding female.

The males then take care of the eggs for two months through complete darkness and powerful blizzards, all without eating, while the females walk back to the sea to rejuvenate themselves after the rigors of egg-laying, after which they make the seventy mile trek again, just in time to cough up some food for the newborn penguins. Whence, the males get to take off on their own walk to the sea.

It looks like an astounding amount of work just to keep a species going. But what’s been called “the selfish gene” doesn’t give a rip about the comfort of the male and female bodies carrying the sperm and eggs needed to keep DNA replicating.

Mate selection, breeding, giving birth, and protecting the newborn until it can start this cycle over again. Those are life’s basic marching orders. Every living entity is hard-wired to obey them, though humans have evolved to the point that the orders can be overridden with enough steely will (witness monastic monks and nuns).

No such will is evident in Pride & Prejudice, thank heavens (it would be an affront against nature to leave a beauty like Keira Nightley un-bred). The central motivation of each of the central characters in this movie is precisely the same as that of the penguins. Being human, they just go about their mating rituals in a different fashion.

I’m sure that when emperor penguin females are walking around the breeding grounds, sizing up potential mates, on some instinctive level they’re thinking “Got to find a guy with big enough cojones to stand without food in the super-freezing dark with an egg on his feet for a couple of months without breaking my baby’s shell.”

Mr. and Mrs. Bennett’s five daughters, including Elizabeth (played by Nightley), are engaged in almost exactly the same exercise. Except, what they’re looking for is a man with a big annual income and house, the Homo sapiens equivalent of sturdy penguin feet and a nicely-formed protective fur pouch (the eggs can only last for a few seconds unprotected from the Antarctic cold).

Laurel and I enjoyed both of these movies a lot. My wife is a stickler for realism, her frequent criticism of flicks being “That wasn’t realistic!”

I incessantly argue with her that movies are supposed to be escapes from, and representations of, the “real” world. If they were exactly the same as the reality we experience every day, what would be the point of paying $8.50 to go see them?

Pride and Prejudice, however, passed her reality smell test. Indeed, I’ve never seen any other period piece that made me feel to such an extent, “This must have been how life really was like back then.”

About the only time I said “Huh?” to myself was when Elizabeth’s eventual love interest, Darcy, says about her at a dance, “tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” He turned out to be wrong, of course.

Keira Nightley is a woman that you’d walk seventy miles over frozen ground to breed with, for sure. Maybe even a hundred miles. So long as you didn’t have to balance her egg on your feet for a couple of months afterward.

Suspicious timing of Statesman-Journal wolf article

Hmmmm. “This is an interesting coincidence,” I said to myself yesterday as I perused the back page of the Salem Statesman-Journal sports section. The headline read “Beaverton man gets in tangle with wolves.”

For on the very day the story appeared the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission was scheduled to meet in Salem and vote on a controversial wolf-management plan. My suspicions were aroused. Could this be a case of anti-wolf media bias?

The reporter who wrote the article, Henry Miller, is in charge of the newspaper’s Outdoors Section. He’s an avid hunter and fisherman.

There’s nothing wrong with that, and I wouldn’t object to him writing an opinion piece about the danger of reintroducing wolves to Oregon. Nor would I object to him writing a factual piece about wolf-human or wolf-livestock interactions.

But it struck me as strange that this story about a Beaverton businessman who goes to Canada to hunt moose and has a close encounter with a wolf pack was published on the same day that the Commission was slated to approve a plan that prevents livestock owners from killing wolves that threaten their sheep or cattle.

Methinks there is some hidden editorializing going on here, masquerading in the guise of Outdoors news coverage. I emailed Miller early Thursday morning, asking him to explain why the story appeared when it did, and why there wasn’t any mention of when this incident took place. I told him that I wanted to know the date of the Canadian wolf encounter, as it was conspicuously absent from the story.

Not having heard back from him after more than 24 hours, today I found the email address of David Leonard, a Salem attorney who, the story said, was along on the moose hunt. Leonard replied to my message almost right away. He said that the incident happened on Tuesday, October 4.

Almost two months ago. Which made me wonder even more why the story appeared on December 1, just in time to fan the flames of opposition to the wolf-management plan. It passed, by the way. Hip, hip, hooray! Or rather, hoooowwwwllllllllll!

As I wrote in my “Ranchers overly afraid of the big bad wolf” post, livestock losses from wolf predation are minimal in areas with significant wolf populations. Since Oregon has zero wolves right now, the losses obviously will be just that, zero, for the foreseeable future.

Similarly, up to 2005 there had been zero human deaths caused by wolves during the past 100 years in North America. One man apparently was killed by wolves a few weeks ago in Saskatchewan. A single death in a century over an entire continent—obviously many more hunters are killed by other hunters than by wolves or other predators.

I told Miller that this fact should have been included in his story, the main lesson of which is that there is indeed an extremely slight chance of being bothered by wolves if you are hunting moose in wolf territory, walking through thick brush with very little visibility, making moose calls at dusk, and responding to the call of what you think is a bull moose in timber.

For the rest of us, wolves are no danger. Hopefully they will find their way into Oregon soon, helping to restore some much needed wildness to our overly humanized and livestockized environment.

I’ll be writing to the publisher of the Statesman-Journal, asking her to look into the timing and source of this story. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association had a hand in its appearing in the newspaper when it did.

But that’s just a hypothesis. Regardless of whether it is true, the job of reporters is to tell us about the news, not try to influence the news. My suspicion is that Henry Miller’s intention was to do just that.