HinesSight

I win my own 2009 blog post awards!

This is why I love to blog. Winning awards is so much fun! Sure, I've awarded them to myself, but isn't this what blogging is all about, self-absorption?

Appropriately, I'll answer my own question. Yes, Brian, you're right. As always.

So after browsing through my 2009 blog creations, I declare the following winners. I've included excerpts from my prose to justify, if only to me, why these posts are champions.

Best Human-Related Question
"A rose cleavage tattoo: to stare or not to stare?"

Given a choice between being helped by a busty young thing with a rose tattoo showing in her cleavage, and -- gosh, just about anybody else -- you can guess where I'm more likely to take my return business.

Best Animal-Related Question
"Do dogs try to cover or spread their poop?"

When I told my wife that today's blog topic was dog poop, she said, "You're lucky that this is all you have to worry about." Since at the time she was vacuuming the kitchen floor while I was perched at the counter with my laptop, sipping a cup of coffee and using Google to delve into the depths of dog poop behavior, I have a feeling that her comment had an ironic quality to it.

Best Truest Truth About Salem
"Salem is a tourist draw? Only for bland lovers"

That said, I've no doubt that Travel Salem will be able to attract conventioneers to the area. Groups such as the Bland Lovers Association and People for the Abolition of Excitement will come here like moths drawn to gray. Also, the Watching Paint Dry discussion circle.

Best Urging That Happened, Thankfully
"Keep resorts out of the Metolius River basin"

This should be a no-brainer: preserving a uniquely special place in Oregon -- the Metolius River Basin recreation area -- that is threatened by two large destination resorts. But brains are in short supply among some who approve of this potential travesty.

Best Statement That Too Many People Disagree With
"I love taxes! They do so much good"

Today is tax day. I feel happy. Giving, like they say, is better than receiving. Well, at least equal. Each year, paying our taxes is the biggest gift that my wife and I offer to other people.

Best Premature Survivor Conclusion
"Coach -- the biggest jerk ever on Survivor"

I was so happy Coach (real name, Benjamin Wade) got voted off Survivor Tocantins this week. My wife and I have watched every episode of Survivor over the years. We've seen some real jerks, such as the infamous  Jonny Fairplay and Randy Bailey. But I've never screamed so often at the TV, Vote him off! Get rid of him! Don't trust him!

Best I'd Spoken Too Soon Survivor Conclusion
"Survivor Samoa champions incivility with Russell Hantz"

Regardless, deceit is part of the Survivor game. Every hard-core fan of the show knows this. And applauds it. I love watching a good liar. However, Russell Hantz elicited other feelings in me. Disgust. Irritation. Anger. And not just at Russell. At the producers of Survivor also. They're promoting the heck out of his evil'ness.

Best Grandfather Pride Post
"More granddaughter photos -- can't help it"

OK, I've hit the blog post trifecta: three consecutive days of Maui granddaughter photos. Each evening I sit down at my laptop and think, "Really should write about something significant." Then a voice inside my head screams, "What's more significant than an oh-so-cute two year old girl who is the one and only offspring of your one and only child?"

Best Naked Aging Hippie Photo
"Oregon Country Fair photos -- the '60s live on"

There's loads of attractive semi-nudity at the Oregon Country Fair. This couple simply was semi-nude.

Best Post My Wife Heartily Disagrees With
"A scooter will change your life! Here's why"

I'm approaching the one-month anniversary of getting a Suzuki Burgman 650 Executive scooter. I can predict pretty well how Burgie and I will celebrate: by going for a ride! As you can tell by the exclamation marks in this blog post title and first paragraph, I'm enjoying my new scootering life even more than I thought I would. Yes, I am!

Best "Who Knew Brian Was Like This?" Post
"I become a fearsome ground squirrel killer"

Hopefully the California ground squirrels who have been driving us nutty have an Internet connection and read my blog. Because if they do, they'll realize that this mild-mannered PETA-applauding animal-loving long-time vegetarian has been driven over the "aren't they cute?" edge into a kill the bastards! dark hole.

Best Creative Use of Philosophy
"Sartre, scootering, and sensuality"

I've been re-reading John Paul Sartre's "Being and Nothingness." And I ride a scooter. There's got to be a connection between existentialist philosophy and the joy I feel zipping around on two motorized wheels.

Best Evidence Of Ego Loss
"A real man will call a plumber"

When he arrived, after having told his scheduler that we had three other minor plumbing problems that needed fixing, the first words out of my mouth after "hello" were... "We've got some small jobs that shouldn't take you too long. I called you because my handyman skills are such, I can turn a small problem into a big one with amazing ease."

Best Proof That I Can Still Hang With Young Guys
"Beer frisbee as it's meant to be played"

I came to Beer Frisbee late in life -- two days ago, in fact -- but I've been ready for it since intense training during my California college days in the 1960's. Not by drinking beer, since this substance wasn't cannabis or a psychedelic. Hence...boring! But by spending countless Flower Power hours stoned on various substances and throwing frisbees with my brothers and sisters in altered consciousness.

Best Why Men Should Dance Post
"Ballroom dancing restores yin-yang balance"

Guys, if you need a reason to take ballroom dance lessons, here it is: the woman has to do what you want. You lead. The woman follows. End of story. Until you get off the dance floor. Then your relationship goes back to normal.

Best Movie Review
"Life lessons from Michael Jackson's This Is It"

Over on my other blog I opined that "This Is It" is a great movie. Also, a terrific philosophy. We're always waiting for It to arrive in the future, or wondering what happened to It in the past. Meanwhile, life -- It -- keeps yelling "Here I am! Here! Now!" in the present moment. But often we don't have ears to hear it. This is the main message that I got from the movie. Your results may differ. Side effects may vary.

Best Post Whose Question Should Be Answered With "A Lot!"
"How disappointed should progressives be about Obama?"

With Obama our president for the next four years, wouldn't we get the change that we'd be wanting for the past eight? The way things have turned out so far, mostly not. Nothing Obama has done to date excites me the way his campaign did.

Best Prediction That I Won't Be Able to Brag About If It Comes True
"Hope our Samsung nano-particle washer doesn't kill us"

Oh, she's beautiful. But there are reports she could be deadly. Still, we've brought this high-tech Samsung washer into our laundry room, along with her non-malevolent dryer sister.

Hope our Samsung nano-particle washer doesn't kill us

Oh, she's beautiful. But there are reports she could be deadly.

Still, we've brought this high-tech Samsung washer into our laundry room, along with her non-malevolent dryer sister.

Our nine-year old Maytag washer stopped working about a week ago. This kicked off an intense washing machine research effort, led by Laurel.

She's the designated washer in our household, elevated to that position by virtue of (1) my incompetence in choosing the correct settings for washing and drying various types of clothes, and the related (2), Laurel's emphatic "just let me do it" when I offer to wash something that she values.

So I shuffled along two steps behind as Laurel took the lead in both researching washers and dryers online, plus checking them out in various Salem stores: Sears, Best Buy, Kelly's, Lowes, Brand Source.

This was fine with me. I quickly realized that my skills in choosing high-tech devices such as computers were largely useless in this instance. Consider this interchange:

Me. "Hey, how about this model? Consumer Reports says it's top-rated."
Laurel. "No, I don't like the colors it comes in."

At first I vainly tried to argue that how a washer and dryer work is a lot more important than how they look. But this impeccable male logic fell on deaf female ears. When we were out to dinner with another couple, I turned to the other woman and said, "Can you believe that someone, such as a someone at this table, would reject a top-rated washer because it isn't available in a color that person likes?"

She said, "Absolutely." Her husband wisely didn't say a word.

I also spent quite a bit of time reading reviews of washers we were considering, including the Samsung. I was struck by how often aesthetics came up. I began to realize that my psyche was still stuck in the era when all washers and dryers were white, and they were hidden away as inconspicuously as possible.

On the other hand, some reviews on the Samsung web site said:

I LOVE MY NEW WASHER! First the color, the steel blue looks even better in my home next to the soft green walls of my third floor than it did in the store. I had second guesses in the store about the steel blue, but I’m one-hundred percent certain now that I made the best decision... When I saw it in the store, I fell in love with the design and the color. We painted our laundry room a soft yellow to contrast with the blue and it looks beautiful... The color is gorgeous and matches my brown and robins egg blue master bathroom.

Fortunately, Laurel and I eventually agreed that the Samsung WF419AAU and her drying consort were both technologically sound and aesthetically appealing. When we walked into Lowes and saw a 20% off sale on Samsung applicance, the deal was almost done.

Almost. 

First Laurel had to be reassured that the Silver Care option wasn't going to automatically permeate our clothing with gadzillions of silver nano-particles. We'd read...

The secret behind SAMSUNG’s unique ActivFresh technology is silver - quadrillions of sanitizing silver ions are released into every wash.

The "every wash" concerned my super-Green wife. Appropriately, because there are significant valid reasons to be worried about countless silver nano-particles being released into the environment with the wash water, not to mention into our skin.

I pointed out to Laurel the "ActivFresh" button on the washer. If it isn't pushed, I told her, we'll be safe from the Evil Silver. Salespersons on several stores agreed. So did Samsung support, when she phoned them.

So we decided to buy the washer because its desirable other features outweighed the Silver Care drawback. ("ActivFresh" appears to be a new name for Silver Care, perhaps to hide this nano-particle technology from environmentally aware customers).

Nanotechnology is worrisome, as this article says. 

"There probably are risks, but we just don't know what they are, and that's the problem," Pat Mooney, executive director of ETC Group, an organization that studies the environmental and social impact of emerging technologies, said. "We're eating [nanotechnology], we're using it in all kinds of products that we wear on our skin and our clothing, and yet governments have no capacity to understand or regulate it." 

...In November 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency advised Samsung Electronics that a washing machine that produces "nanosilver" particles to kill bacteria in clothing would be regulated as a pesticide. The EPA is playing coy, stating publicly that the move "does not represent an action to regulate nanotechnology," although in fact it appears to be exactly that.

Yes, it does.

Well, the silver in the washing machine supposedly is only about the size of a stick of gum. And it lasts for more than a thousand washes. So we'll probably survive if a finger slips and pushes the dreaded ActivFresh button by mistake.

Maybe. 

If we're ever both found dead, wearing sparkling clean clothes and with no obvious sign of what killed us, take the Samsung washer in for questioning.

Airport screening is scarier than a terrorist attack

Ah, deja vu all over again.

There's an attempted terrorist attack on an airplane. Whatever method was used, the not-so-brilliant authorities figure will be used again. So innocent passengers have to suffer through screening procedures aimed at preventing an attack that has already happened.

Because the latest attack happened near the end of a flight, now passengers on international flights have to stay in their seats for the last hour.

Idiotic. Irritating. Insane.

You can bet that if the attack had occurred in the first hour of a flight, that's when the non-geniuses in charge of airplane security would have ordered people to stay seated.

Always one step behind. As fellow Oregon blogger Jack Bogdanski said, barn door sealed after horse leaves. A commenter on that post included a link to a right-on story, "What Israeli security could teach us," that is as true today as it was in 2006.

Nearly five years after Sept. 11, 2001, US airport security remains obstinately focused on intercepting bad things -- guns, knives, explosives. It is a reactive policy, aimed at preventing the last terrorist plot from being repeated.

The 9/11 hijackers used box cutters as weapons, so sharp metal objects were barred from carry-on luggage. Would-be suicide terrorist Richard Reid tried to ignite a bomb in his shoe, so now everyone's footwear is screened for tampering.

Earlier this month British authorities foiled a plan to blow up airliners with liquid explosives; as a result, toothpaste and cologne have become air-travel contraband.

By contrast, the Israelis focus on people -- potential terrorists who would be using those bad things. They don't obsess over searching 80 year-old grandmothers in wheelchairs, while the most recent bad guy, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was waved on through security even though he was on a terrorist watch list.

This is one issue that could unite folks all across the political spectrum.

Conservatives are fond of repeating the mantra, "guns don't kill people, people do." They should be happy to adjust their slogan to "explosive devices on planes don't kill people, terrorists do."

Libertarians don't like limitations on individual freedoms. Yet this is what our nation's dysfunctional Transportation Security Administration (TSA) keeps on doing. And progressives are also irked at the senseless new rules, as evidenced by "Flying soon? Have fun with that" on The Daily Kos.

This guy calls TSA The Stupid Agency. I heartily agree.

Has TSA ever considered the possibility that maybe the terrorists aren't really interested in blowing up a plane. Maybe the terrorists figure they win everytime we in the West spend millions of man-hours being hassled, inconvenienced, and generally put upon by a myriad of stupid security measures.

So here's my question: When are we going to rebel and demand a sensible set of precautions?

James Joyner echoes this sentiment in "TSA Making Flying More Miserable."

We’re simply going to make people miserable for no apparent reason.  There have been precisely three attempts over the last eight years to commit acts of terrorism aboard commercial aircraft. All of them clownishly inept and easily thwarted by the passengers. How many tens of thousands of flights have been incident free?  And, yet, we’re going to make hundreds of thousands of people endure transcontinental flights without reading materials or the ability to use the restroom?

Nate Silver, who takes a refreshing factual approach to political and social policy issues, calculated the risk of being on a plane attacked by a terrorist.

There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade.

Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000.

This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

Whatever happened to the United States being "the land of the free and the home of the brave"? Why are we citizen-sheep so willing to submit to largely useless security procedures that make flying a nightmare nowadays?

As the above-mentioned article on Israeli airport security says, "it is illogical and potentially suicidal not to take account of the fact that so far every suicide-terrorist plotting to take down an American plane has been a radical Muslim man."

Political correctness has its place. But not in this case.

It is not racism or bigotry to argue that the prevention of Islamist terrorism necessitates a special focus on Muslim travelers, just as it is not racism or bigotry when police trying to prevent a Mafia killing pay closer attention to Italians.

Here's our disastrous 2009 Christmas letter

It's December 25. A perfect time to share our 2009 Christmas letter, the theme of which this year is disasters.
Download 2009 Christmas Letter (its a PDF file)

Actually, I always title our letter "Holiday Greetings." Laurel and I are, after all, politically correct Prius-driving latte-sipping progressive-voting vegetarian denizens of considerably godless Oregon, so the Christ part of Christmas is irrelevant to us.

I do, though, worship the Great God Google.

As noted on the blog post where my collected Christmas letters are located, I suffered a cyberspace shock five years ago when my "Christmas letter" Google search ranking dropped markedly after I edited a page.

Not that I keep track of such things, having become largely egoless through my 20 minute a day meditation practice that I time using my iPhone, but I've heard from a reliable source that currently my Christmas letter post is #84 out of 58,400,000 "Christmas letters" search results.

If I titled it "Holiday letters" I'd be further down the Google pecking order, so I suck up to the search engine and unashamedly name my annual creations Christmas letters.

As noted recently in my "Christmas letters -- a comforting reminder of simpler times," I enjoy the do you remember when? feeling of handwriting addresses, folding a paper letter into a Christmas card, and snail mailing it to friends and family.

However, I've noticed that more people are sending me emailed Christmas greetings. Nothing wrong with that. They have a smaller carbon footprint, and just as with a mailed letter, I enjoy the feeling of having been remembered.

A Washington Post story said that about 10-15% fewer people are sending cards by mail in 2009. Probably this trend will accelerate as we become more of a read-online culture.

I've got mixed feelings about that. I'm eagerly looking forward to the long-rumored release next year of an Apple tablet device that would double as an e-book reader (and web browser).

But this 61-year old probably won't ever feel equally comfortable reading a Christmas letter online, versus holding one in my hand.

Especially when I'm chuckling -- my habitual reaction to the letter that a friend of Laurel's sends us. It's always marvelously... cynical, ironic, self-deprecating? Hard to find the right adjective.

Here's some excerpts from this woman's 2009 letter. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Well the recession hasn't hit us too hard this year. For a vacation, Heather and I decided to take a trip down to the bottom of her laundry basket. The sites we saw, the relics we discovered were ... indescribable.

...So we are all surviving financially. For Christmas this year, I told the kids that they could choose anything they wanted from Home Depot. I still have $78.39 available on that credit card.

...With Rex gone, Sweetness is thrilled with being the top dog and ruler of our universe. Now in her dotage, she regularly dangles dingle berries, but with old dogs you come to appreciate whatever they have left to offer up. Since she is the only one around here who will clean the dishes, she's definitely a keeper.

...Piano is going well I currently have 749 students and work 12 days a week. And, now I play for a church on Sunday mornings instead of with a rock band on Saturday nights.

Ob la di, ob la da, life goes on...

For sure. Happy Holidays. (Also, Merry Christmas.)

Marion County to vote on enlarging county commission

Today's Salem Statesman Journal reported that voters in my county, Marion, will have a chance to vastly improve our Board of Commissioners setup.
Download County Commissioners article

Marion County voters in May will be asked if they want to increase the number of county commissioners to five from the current three and make the seats geographically based.

The Marion County Clerk's office confirmed that the group "Have A Voice Everyone" collected enough valid signatures — 5,828 — to get the initiative, Measure 24-292, on the May 18 ballot.

This is a great idea.

Marion is the only county of its size in Oregon to have only three commissioners. Two people can run the show, which often doesn't make for sound decisions.

Five heads would be better than three according to Ben Williams, who recently wrote an opinion piece in the Statesman Journal about the wrong-headed way the Board of Commissioners recently went on a land use decision that needlessly sacrificed irreplaceable farmland.
Download Better representation article

If the voters approve the initiative in May, the five commissioners will be non-partisan and elected by district, rather than countywide. More great ideas.

Why should it matter whether a county commissioner has a (R) or (D) after his or her name? We've already got plenty of rabid divisive partisanship at the state and national levels. Local governments should shun those political games and focus on serving citizens.

Who would be better served in Marion County by having a county commissioner represent them who lives in their general area. With the county population being roughly 300,000, if the initiative passes each commissioner would be elected in a district with about 60,000 people. 

More people would run for a commission seat under this arrangement, since reaching out to the entire county in a costly campaign wouldn't be necessary.

My wife and I helped collect signatures for the initiative drive. We're glad it succeeded.

As the photo on the H.A.V.E. (Have a Voice Everyone) web site shows, it's crazy that two people can make decisions for an entire county (the woman on the left is the county legal counsel; two of the three commissioners, Sam Brentano and Patti Milne, are on the right -- along with a bunch of empty chairs that hopefully will be filled by two additional commissioners soon).

The Oregon League of Conservation Voters supports the initiative. But this isn't an Environment vs. Development issue, nor a Progressive vs. Conservative issue.

It's a representative government issue.

Citizens everywhere are justifiably frustrated with elected officials, since often they represent special interests rather than the general public.

When a county can be controlled by only two people, unwise decisions are more likely to happen than if five commissioners were at the table. Every other large county in Oregon has recognized the benefit of having more than three county commissioners.

It's time for Marion County to join them. (Here's FAQ's about the initiative.)

Russell didn't win Survivor Samoa. Unfair?

After the first episode of Survivor Samoa I hated Russell Hantz, this season's evil genius. Watching last night's finale, I almost (but not quite) hoped he'd win.

At the end of this post you'll find a comment interchange between me, Brian, and Tucson -- a regular commenter on my blogs and a fellow Survivor fan. Since this interchange occurred on a post unrelated to the show, I wanted to copy it to this post-finale pondering about Russell's unexpected second place finish.

Tucson and I ended up in basic agreement with a thoughtful NPR blog analysis by Linda Holmes: Russell blew it, because he thought Survivor was all about strategizing and scheming, not interpersonal relationships.

(Short version of Holmes' post is here; long version is here. It's must reading for Survivor geeks.)

Russell was an inveterate liar and jerk on the show. Question is, what's he like in real life? If he was acting on Survivor, it was a masterful performance. But I tend to think that Russell really is as unappealing a guy as he appeared to be.

And that he lied about being a rich oil company executive along with many other things. My Googling of "Russell Hantz" didn't turn up any evidence that he's a highly paid successful businessman.

However, I did find some well-deserved skepticism that Russell is who he claimed to be. Way back in September there was talk that Russell's bio was a lie. Seemingly he doesn't own any property in the part of Texas where he lives. And his "oil company" has a zero online presence.

When someone typed in the address of Hantz Tankering Service, which is the name of his company, aerial photos show a nondescript rural residential road. Methinks Russell is a fake.

Here's the interchange between Tucson and me:

---------------------------------------------

Tucson: At least Russell didn't win Survivor. There must have been a teeny bit of consolation in that.

Brian: I'll confess, rather guiltily, that I actually was rooting for Russell to win Survivor. At least, I ended up feeling that he deserved to win. I didn't like him, but I came to respect his abilities to scheme, manipulate people, and understand interpersonal dynamics.

It was a surprise to me that Natalie won. To my wife also. Taoistically, she played a "yin" game. (And she also looked good in a bikini.) I don't think she deserved to win, given the coattails argument. However, it could be argued (and it was) that she simply played a more subtle game, while Russell's was extremely overt.

I'm glad Russell won the $100,000 Best Player prize. He grew on me over the season. Once in a while I'd even find myself liking the guy. it was nice to see his wife appear on the results hour. I'd been curious about what she would be like.

Tucson: I disagree that Russell played the game well as evidenced by the fact that he didn't win. I give him credit for finding the immunity idols and his strength of will in the final immunity challenge. In the end, the human factor plays a part and Natalie succeeded in that department while using Russell well. Even during the reunion show Russell was completely ungracious and without class.

Brian: Tucson, good points. By "playing well" I meant that Russell's strategic vision was outstanding. His summary of that at the final Tribal Council was terrific, how he played this person against that person for this reason. He had that part down.

But I agree with you that he overplayed that aspect. Russell assumed that the jury members would value strategizing above all else, forgetting that people are feeling beings as well as thinking beings.

I suspect that Russell won their heads, and Natalie won their hearts (the viewer reactions echo this, since Russell was more popular among people who watched him from afar on TV rather than putting up with him on the island).

Tucson: "Russell assumed that the jury members would value strategizing above all else, forgetting that people are feeling beings as well as thinking beings."

Exactly. This is what the bartender guy summarized so well in the final tribal council. Up to that point I was sitting on the fence between Russell and Natalie. The bartender's (can't remember his name) comments struck me as eloquent in that moment and I saw a change in Russell's demeanor after that little speech. I think he knew then that he didn't have it in the bag.

I was continually surprised that people in the game did not seem very perturbed by Russell's brazen, cocky attitude. I realize that it was mostly revealed to the audience and his "good old boy" side to the players, but some of the smarter ones caught on pretty quick.

Nevertheless, he did play a smart strategic game and he would be a formidable competitor in the dog eat dog world of business. I'll give him the 100 grand but not the million.

One thing about Russell that I do admire was his ability to keep his spirits and competitive attitude up during the bad weather when everyone was shivering, suffering and complaining. Not one negative peep or complaint from him. He almost seemed to enjoy and thrive in it.

I am just happy to see that utter ruthlessness does not always pay off. I think all winners of Survivor have had to resort to scheming, betrayal and manipulation as a necessary part of the game, but most seemed to have some level of regret or remorse about it. Not in Russell's case however.

Whatever. It's just a TV show, but one that can teach a lot about human nature.

My sister died today

"In memory of my sister." "An unexpected death." How do I title a blog post that is so painfully unexpected, but which I have to write --- because that's what I do when I hurt, and when I don't hurt: write.

You say it like it is. My sister died today. I got the call from my brother-in-law, Bob, a few hours ago.

He said that Carol Ann, who was 71, went into a room to look something up on her computer that they had been talking about. When she didn't come back after a while, Bob went to look for her.

Carol Ann was on the floor. Dead.

Bob didn't hear a sound. It was a stroke or heart attack. Something sudden. Not a bad way to go. I wouldn't mind being on my computer, maybe writing a blog post, and dying snap, just like that. 

My sister recently complained of symptoms that pointed to congestive heart failure. She'd had some tests. I've got an email in my inbox from her that came yesterday. Carol Ann talked about how one of the new medications she was taking made her feel out of breath and dizzy.

Maybe it killed her. Maybe it didn't. Doesn't matter. Life kills us all. It's just a matter of when.

I haven't cried thoroughly yet. Just a little. Maybe that will come later. Maybe not. Doesn't matter. What I'm doing now, what you're doing now, what everybody in the world is doing now, that's what matters.

Because yesterday you can have sent an email to your brother about how you're starting to feel better, making a comment on the weather...

Some sunshine today, but more rain is forecast.  Hope this signals the end of our 3 year drought.

and the next day you go to look something up on your computer, and then you're gone forever, and you'll never know whether the rain came or didn't, or whether the end of a California drought is over or not.

So Jesus fucking Christ, who neither my sister nor I believes is the son of God, because God almost certainly doesn't exist, and neither will you, or I, or my sister after we die (though I hope to God I'm wrong), do what needs doing now.

Now. Now.

My sister's one and only child, Cathy, should have gotten a Christmas card from me yesterday. Since 2000 she and her equally cruel husband, Steve, have refused to let Carol Ann and Bob have any contact with them or their two children, my sister and brother-in-law's grandchildren.

Cathy and Steve claim to be Christians. I call them something else, nasty swear words that passed through my mind when I heard that my sister had died.

In the card I told Cathy that her mother probably had congestive heart failure. Like I do every year, in every Christmas card, I told Cathy that it would mean the world to my sister if they could get over this ridiculous family spat and let her and Bob see their grandchildren (and child) again.

Now, too late. Too late, Cathy.

If I'm wrong about life after death, and you meet your Jesus, I hope he rakes you over the fucking coals for bringing so much unhappiness to your mother and father, and allowing your mother to die without having seen her grandchildren for ten years, since they were only eight and ten years old.

For a few seconds before I sat down at my laptop, I thought: "Some people are going to think this isn't the right time to write a blog post about my sister dying, since it was just a few hours ago."

And in the next few seconds, I thought: "Screw them. There is no right time to die, it's always a bad time to die, and there's never a right time to write about dying. So this is a good time, as good as any. And if somebody is bothered by that, tough shit."

Maybe one person will come across this who hasn't reached out to someone they should, or done that do it before you die thing we all talk about but never do because we don't really believe that death can come as suddenly as we all know it can.

Wake-up call. That's what the phone ringing a few hours ago was.

It was Life talking through my brother-in-law. Death is here, right next to us, you, me, everybody, one heart beat, one breath, away.

I didn't spend enough time with my sister. I didn't do enough for her. I didn't tell her "I love you" often enough. I always felt that I had plenty of time, and so did she, and eventually I'd be able to make not enough into enough.

Now there isn't. There's no time. So I'm not all that different from Cathy, Carol Ann's jerk of a daughter, except I wasn't quite as much of a jerk of a brother.

I want to make amends. But I can't. Because my sister ran out of time, and so did I.

I wish she was still alive. She can't be. But the rest of us, me especially, can be more alive if her death spurs us to appreciate our living more. I guess that's the greatest gift I can offer my sister, the greatest "thank you."

You gave me so much while you were alive.

And now you've given me a wonderful gift by dying: a deeper appreciation for living, and a gut-check moist-eyed knowledge that wherever you are, I'm heading there one day also, as are we all, and that day could be the next moment.

There's one thing, or ten things, or a thousand things we know, deep down, that we need to do before we die.

Things that when we're lying on the floor next to the computer, knowing this is the end, will make us smile, even through the pain and the oh no not now, because we did one thing, or ten things, or a thousand things that were exactly what needed doing.

Now. Now. Now.

Thank you, Carol Ann. I love you.

Christmas letters -- a comforting reminder of simpler times

Political junkie that I am, sometimes I feel like my head is going to explode from WTF craziness.

"I can't support the health care bill because it doesn't reduce costs enough," says one Senator -- who vigorously opposed the public option that would have saved Americans lots of money.

Thankfully, Christmas letters are helping me preserve my sanity.

They're a connection to the good old days (OK, maybe they didn't seem so good at the time, but now they do) when life seemed slower, simpler, less filled with aggravations.

I hardly ever get actual letters in the mail anymore. Nor do I send them.

Only at Christmas time is there an excellent chance of opening up the mailbox, thumbing through the stack of mostly crap, and coming across an envelope with a handwritten address penned by someone I know.

It wasn't handwritten, but I even got a Christmas card from President Obama yesterday (which I should, given how much my wife and I contributed to his campaign last year). A nice touch, though I'd be pleased to trade this greeting for more toughness on health care reform.

Earlier in the week Laurel and I sat down at our dining room table and got out our Christmas card lists, boxes of cards bought cheaply at after-Christmas sales, stamps, return address labels provided by the multitudinous charities Laurel donates to (one set of which says "Mr. and Mrs. Laurel Hines, a nice feminist touch), and copies of our 2009 Christmas Letter.

Which soon will be revealed to an eagerly waiting cyberspace world, as our previous letters have been.

I'm waiting to do this online sharing, though, until our mailed Christmas cards have wended their way to the recipients. It's so deliciously old-fashioned to drop messages in a post office box and know that it will take days (rather than email seconds) for them to be received.

Sitting at the table, I kind of wanted to have a quill pen, a bottle of ink, and parchment that I'd roll up after finishing my writing and hand to a courier who would jump onto a horse to deliver my correspondence.

Like the poet said, the world is too much with us these days. I invite it in, of course, with my iPhone, MacBook, high speed DSL, satellite radio, and a jillion DirecTV channels.

Still, it's nice to push it away for a moment by handwriting the address of each person on my Christmas card list, folding our letter into squares, signing a card, often adding a personal note, afixing a stamp and return address label, then licking the envelope edges to seal it.

That last step astounded my wife, while seeming perfectly natural to me. I can't remember her exact objections -- something to do with germs and cow hoof gelatin, I think.

I told Laurel that I've been licking Christmas card envelopes for at least forty years. I'm still alive. So it can't be a fatal act of folly. She said she'll still use a sponge to moisten her cards in her own fashion.

That's fine.

Laurel also has a markedly different way of deciding who to send her cards to. I have a name and address list on my computer. I know exactly who was sent a Christmas card the previous year. The list is updated as people are added and subtracted.

By contrast, Laurel kept asking "Do you think I should send a card to X?" as she thumbed through the pages of her (gasp!) handwritten address book.

I'd say, "Well, did you send a card to them last year?" "I can't remember," she'd reply.

Proving that a husband can learn things about his wife after nineteen years of marriage, this was the first time I'd been exposed to what seems to me to be a chaotic way of Christmas carding.

But it suits Laurel.

She looks at each name in her address book and decides whether a card should be sent to them. Like a Zen master, she lives in the moment. Whether they got a card the previous year doesn't matter (in part because often Laurel can't remember whether they did or not).

I found this now-ness interesting. Yet I prefer my systematic system. After all, I'm me and she's she.

The she of our house has another quirk. Laurel writes notes on boxes of cards that were bought and partially used the previous Christmas: "Sent to N through Z."

I asked her what this was about.

"It tells me to send a different card to people in my address book with names that begin with those letters," she told me, "because they got that card last year."

"Do you really think they'll remember what your card looked like?" "Sure," Laurel said. Hmmmm.

My wife doesn't remember who she sent Christmas cards to in 2008, but she's convinced that these people -- whoever the heck they are -- will open up her 2009 card and think, "Sweet Jesus! This is the same card she sent last year!"

Well, I'm prepared to accept this is possible. Women never forget. (Unfortunately for Tiger Woods.)

How depressed should a progressive be about health care reform?

It's looking like the Senate health care reform bill won't have either a public option or Medicare buy-in for people under 65.

That's disturbing. It sure isn't what I and other progressives expected when Obama was elected president and the Democrats won solid majorities in both houses of Congress.

I was looking forward to change I could believe in. Not change that I have to try to talk myself into feeling somewhat good about through the therapy of this blog post.

This morning I clicked in succession on two of my favorite political web sites. Over on FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver opined that it would be batshit crazy for progressives to oppose the Senate bill because it helps low-income and uninsured people so much.

For any "progressive" who is concerned about the inequality of wealth, income and opportunity in America, this bill would be an absolutely monumental achievement.

Then I turned to The Daily Kos, where the progressive mood was a lot darker. Steve Singiser sarcastically congratulated Senate Dems.

Before we begin what I suspect will be a furious attempt to rebrand the reported "compromise" (read: capitulation) on health care as the most meaningful piece of progressive legislation since ever, I think Senate Democrats deserve recognition for doing something that most thought would have been impossible--crafting health care legislation that will, ultimately, please no one.

Well, he may be right about not pleasing political wonks who understand the details of this complex legislation, and have a clear view of what better outcomes could have been achieved (ranging from the liberal dream of a national single payer plan, to the conservative fantasy of doing nothing at all and leaving Obama with a big fat defeat).

But I lean more toward Silver's perspective.

Our health care system is so screwed up, and is hurting/killing so many people, even the watered down Senate bill is a heck of a lot better than the status quo. Just doing away with limits on pre-existing conditions and a lifetime cap on benefits will make private insurance plans a lot more palatable.

On a dog walk this afternoon I got to thinking about how nice it was to be able to walk to a nearby neighborhood lake from our house by going across the creek and through the woods.

When we moved in nineteen years ago, gigantic Himalayan blackberry vines covered a large portion of our five acres. We couldn't get through them for quite a while.

But every year we'd get rid of more of this invasive species. Eventually we were able to hire somebody with a tractor to clear some large areas at one whack. Now our property is completely blackberry free and we enjoy being able to walk through every corner of it.

Health care reform strikes me as being similar: currently filled with a lot of prickly annoyances, but capable of being worked over time into a much more pleasing package.

Cost controls are lacking in the legislation that will be passed by Congress. That's unfortunate, since health spending is bankrupting this country -- and many individuals.

But after the reform package is passed, there won't be any way to undo it.

Americans are going to like what they've been given, and want more improvements. In a few years we'll learn that while most citizens are now insured, people are still paying way too much to inefficient, poorly managed, greedy health insurance plans.

Then hopefully politicans will see the light and support genuine health care reform, not just health insurance reform. I can dream, at least. Which is therapeutic.

Dell customer service: horrible, frustrating, outrageously bad

Canceling an order for a laser printer cartridge should be easy. With Amazon and other competent online retailers it is. But with Dell, it's insanely difficult.

This morning I spent well over an hour trying to do something that should have taken me a minute. There's no excuse for this, Dell. Either you're trying to make it extremely hard for customers to cancel an order, or you are a mismanaged company.

I don't use my Dell 3000cn color laser printer very much any more. I've flown the PC coop and use a Mac now. Dell doesn't offer a Macintosh driver for the 3000cn, so I have to hook my old ThinkPad laptop up when I want to use the printer.

Which I did today, having a bunch of color Christmas letters to print. A message popped up, saying the yellow cartridge was low. I figured I should order a replacement for future laser printing needs.

That was easy. Dell's online ordering system works well. But Dell's unordering system is one of the worst I've ever encountered.

Soon after I pushed the submit button on my order I remembered a box sitting in the back of my office closet that had a Dell logo on it. Digging it out, I saw that it contained a yellow laser printer cartridge.

"Good," I thought. "Now I can save myself $70. Just need to cancel the order."

A whole lot easier said than done. The Dell order confirmation email contained no info about how to cancel an order. I checked the Dell "help" link on its web site. It told me to phone the Home & Home Office number to cancel an order: 1-800-624-9897

OK. Sounded simple enough. Except I ended up on hold after navigating through several automated options.

After fifteen minutes of being told my call was important to Dell and someone would be with be shortly, I put my phone on speaker, remembering that an offer to chat online with a sales person had popped up when I was ordering the yellow cartridge.

I clicked on a "chat" link. And found that I was #7 in line. Didn't sound too bad, since my phone was still playing annoying recorded music and announcements from Dell, assuring me that my call was important, blah, blah, blah.

In five minutes or so I was chatting with a Dell guy. I typed in that I needed to cancel an order I'd made not long ago and gave him the purchase number. He wrote back: "You need to call 1-800-624-9897."

I got testy.

I responded that at this very moment I was on hold with that number, it looked like I'd be on hold for a lot longer, and I had better things to do with my day than spend an hour or more trying to cancel a simple order.

He typed back: "Call our Customer Adjustment Service, 1-800-247-2076." I thanked him, though I didn't feel very thankful.

Dialing that number, I reached another guy who had a distinct Indian accent. I told him I needed to cancel an order. "I can help you with that," he told me. Oh praise Krishna, I thought, finally!

He asked for my order number. I gave it to him. Then he said, "I'll transfer you to someone who will complete the order cancellation."

And I swear to God, holy crap!, I heard the exact same recorded messages I'd been listening to before. Except I figured I now was at the end of the on-hold waiting line that I'd just spent twenty plus minutes on.

I went upstairs to my MacBook, put the phone on speaker again, and tried to figure out another way to cancel my order before the irritating music and repeated "a representative will be with you shortly" messages drove me more insane than I already was.

I tried to reply to the Dell email message confirming the order. I said that I wanted to cancel and was going to refuse to pay a restocking fee if the order was shipped before I could cancel it and I had to return the cartridge.

As I expected, my reply bounced back, since the Dell email had come from an automated system.

Then I tried the "Email customer support" link on the Dell web site. At first the "order support email form" looked promising. I dutifully filled in all the information requested, including my Dell Purchase ID.

Except, that ID wasn't recognized as a valid order number. Also, several entries (zip code, phone) on the Dell email support form were garbled on my Safari browser, probably because Dell figures that it isn't important to make their web site fully usable by Macintosh users.

I recall clicking around and finding another web page that had a "cancel order" listed on a pull down menu. When I selected that, another Oh fuck me!!! passed through my ever-more-frustrated psyche, since I was told to phone the number I was still on hold for.

I fixed lunch. Passed the time by Googling Dell customer support horror stories. Found quite a few (here's an example).

Eventually, after being on hold for about an hour, a human being came on the line. By that time I just wanted to be done with Dell. Plus, I figured it wouldn't do any good to yell at a worker bee who wasn't responsible for the messed-up Dell management.

She quickly canceled my order. Asked if there was anything else she could do for me. I said "No."

Though I was thinking, If you could find the Dell CEO, tie him up, and make him listen to his company's recorded music/messages for a couple of hours, that'd make me feel better.

This being impossible, my next-best goal is to never buy anything from Dell again.

Climate scientist emails show no fraud

Yes, I was right! Three weeks ago I said that the climate research email hack shows global warming is real, because the furor over the stolen messages was a big ado about nothing.

Now AP reporters have read every email repeatedly. They discussed what the emails mean with experts in climate science and scientific methodology.

The AP found that the emails show pettiness, not fraud. Scientists are human, just like the rest of us. They get irked at global warming deniers who try to play fast and loose with facts.

Otherwise, the emails show that climate change science is solid. No big shock: Sarah Palin is wrong. From the AP story:

E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.

The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

XM Skydock -- another reason I love my iPhone

I've been using "love" and "happiness" a lot in conjunction with "iPhone." (see here, here, and here)

Just did it again in this post. I'm loving XM satellite radio's Skydock for the iPhone. It makes me so happy to no longer have to listen to a handful of Portland stations in my car.

Aside from Oregon Public Broadcasting, they're all filled with commercials. And most feature right-wing talk radio at the times I'm usually driving around. Plus, they don't come in very well here in the south Salem hills, especially after nightfall. 

My wife and I had been thinking we should get satellite radio. We frequently drive across the Cascades into central Oregon, where radio reception is even more iffy.

But choosing a receiver and figuring out how to install it seemed complicated. And since we have two cars, we'd need two of them, wouldn't we? I kept on listening to regular radio, and not liking it.

Then Skydock came into our lives.

I saw mention of it in a Best Buy ad and zipped to my MacBook to check out this iPhone device online. I was impressed with the almost 100% positive user reviews on the Amazon listing.

Count me in. I ordered two of the gadgets. Installation was a snap, pretty much.

First I downloaded the free Skydock app onto my iPhone. This is a sweet bit of programming. Attractive, simple, easy to use.

Then I followed the instructions to get a small magnetic antenna attached to the roof of my car, and to snake the thin wire under molding, down the side of the door frame, under a floor mat, and into the Skydock -- which plugs into the 12 volt ("cigarette lighter") receptacle.

This is the only semi-tricky part of the Skydock installation.

I had to do it twice, because the first time I ended up with not quite enough slack in the wire once it was plugged into the Skydock. So I shifted the magnetic antenna on the car's roof over a foot and redid the wire-hiding.

I used an old credit card, as advised in the instructions, to push the wire under the molding. After two tries, I got pretty good at it. I used some black electrical tape to affix the wire to the door frame.

Then it was just a matter of activating a XM subscription. Irritatingly, I couldn't do this online. The XM web site wouldn't recognize my Skydock's ID. When I phoned in, I was told this was a programming glitch. (It still isn't fixed, so I don't have online access to my account -- my only gripe with XM so far.)

I entered twelve favorite channels. Eight music ("Chill" is my favorite) and four talk (great to be able to listen to BBC for some international perspectives).

In our Highlander Hybrid, the Skydock'd iPhone is perfectly positioned near the steering wheel. I can change channels easily by touching an icon on the "favorites" screen of the iPhone app.

In our Prius, it's much more of a stretch. But my wife mainly drives the Prius, and she isn't into changing channels as much as I am (must be a guy thing).

Reception has been great. I've just found a few spots around town where the signal is spotty due to some steep hillsides.

Sound quality is also good. At first I used the FM radio transmitter, but decided to get the XM cassette adapter to avoid the need to shift FM frequencies on a long trip when a station starts to cause interference. 

The best part of the Skydock is not feeling like I'm a slave to over-the-air radio programming. Now I choose what to listen to. Which doesn't include much political talk radio anymore.

My blood pressure must be lower as a result. My anger surely is.

Like I said, mostly I "Chill" to a relaxing but still energetic XM music channel. The $12 or so I pay for a monthly XM subscription is paying health dividends, along with giving me another reason to adore my iPhone.

Global warming: Sarah Palin wrong, scientists right

Gosh, what a choice. Should I believe Sarah Palin, who says that global warming is a fiction, or the world's top scientists and scientific organizations, who say that it is a fact?

I'll go with science, since Palin has lousy credentials when it comes to facts. She doesn't believe in evolution either, which makes her take on global warming even less credible.

Yesterday my daughter asked me what book she should get me for Christmas.

I told her, "Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity" by James Hansen, a NASA scientist and a leading climatologist.

The title of this book appeals to my grandfatherly heart. I've come to have zero patience -- none, nada, zilch -- with people like Palin who prefer to play political games rather than face the science of global warming head on.

Climate change is no joke.

My granddaughter's life, and that of billions of other people, is at stake here. If someone knows more than the scientific groups listed in the link above, prove the science wrong.

How likely is it that Palin can be trusted more than the...

American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Geophysical Union
American Meteorological Society
World Meteorological Organization
Society of American Foresters
American Medical Association
American Statistical Association
and many other well-respected organizations?

What's deeply irritating, and ethically unforgivable, is that Palin and other global warming deniers haven't come up with any solid evidence challenging two basic conclusions that represent the overwhelming scientific consensus: 

(1) The Earth has warmed, and is getting warmer
(2) Humans are almost certainly responsible for the warming

Instead, they prey on the ignorance and gullibility of people with bullshit claims that the recent release of stolen emails from some climate change researchers undermines a huge body of scientific research supporting (1) and (2).

That's wrong.

Al Gore knows that. The Union of Concerned Scientists knows that. The American Meteorological Society knows that. Anybody who has done more than meekly accept sound bites from Glenn Beck and other anti-science blatherers knows that.

Unfortunately, the United States is both the world's largest contributor to human-caused climate change, and the home of an uninformed electorate when it comes to scientific knowledge.

So "global warming isn't happening" ridiculousness finds fertile ground in the American citizenry. This morning I came across this disturbing fact in Richard Dawkins' new book about evolution:

Forty-four per cent of Americans deny evolution totally, whether it is guided by God or not, and the implication is that they believe the entire world is no more than 10,000 years old. As I have pointed out before, given that the true age of the world is 4.6 billion years, this is equivalent to believing that the width of North America is less than 10 yards. 

Democracy is great. But scientific truth can't be left up to a majority vote, especially not when the survival of human civilization is at stake.

I'm not about to let uninformed people like Sarah Palin decide what sort of world my grandchild is going to grow up in.

Fundamentalist religion, I'm convinced, plays a big part in what the guy in this video calls "a fifth column of insanity" in the United States. He's a recovered evangelical who knows the craziness of the fundamentalist mindset.

I love what Frank Schaeffer said (at 3:44 of the video):

A village cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot. It's as simple as that. And we have to understand that we have a village idiot in this country. It's called fundamentalist Christianity.

Not all evolution and global warming deniers are fundamentalists. But many are.

They think that science is part of the Devil's deception, that catastrophes are good because they show that the End Times are near, and that God is in charge of Earth so there's no need to worry about how humans are screwing it up.

Sarah Palin is one of those people. When she spouts falsehoods about global warming, my reaction is: go to hell. 

Which doesn't exist, I'm confident. But that's where she belongs, for wanting to wreck the planet my granddaughter will be growing up in.

Global warming deniers show craziness of conservatives

Conservatism used to be intellectually respectable. As a teenager in the early 1960s I regularly read serious stuff by William F. Buckley and other deep thinkers in National Review.

My mother was a die hard Republican. I shared her commitment to conservatism until I went to college. Back then, there wasn't any conflict between "conservation" and "conservatism."

But now, right-wingers have a well-deserved reputation for being anti-scientific, dedicated not to reasoned arguments and facts, but to shrill sound bites with no substance.

Today the Copenhagen summit on climate change kicked off, encouraged by the EPA's conclusion that greenhouse gases threaten public health and the environment. Which, of course, they do.

No sensible person would deny either that global warming is occurring, or that the effects of climate change are even more serious than predicted.

Crazy conservatives would, though.

And this is demolishing the credibility of a political philosophy that used to appeal to admirers of science like my mother. Now it is extremely rare, in the United States at least, to find a conservative who wholeheartedly accepts scientific truths.

Evolution. The big bang. Global warming. These are facts. Ignore them, and it is impossible to be in tune with reality. That's a huge handicap for a politician.

As is falling prey to basic thinking errors. Such as, something is either right or wrong; there are no shades of gray to truth, no gradations of correctness. Isaac Asimov wrote a great essay about the "relativity of wrong."

The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.

The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing." The implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

Thus the global warming-denying crazies are going wild over the stolen emails from a climate research center. They've seized upon a few comments by scientists that supposedly cast doubt on some conclusions about global warming.

Actually, this isn't true. The American Meteorological Society says that the emails don't have any impact on the society's position on climate change science.

For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true — which is not yet clearly the case — the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the same thing. So does a statement by Nature's editorial board.

Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.

Yet Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and other mouthpieces of the conservative movement ignore facts and keep on preaching their gospel of unreality. Here's the You Tube proof that they're as stupid as Beavis and Butthead.

Fortunately, there's a strong argument that global warming deniers are going to pay a big political price for their idiocy.

Reality has a way of biting back. It can't be Swift Boat'ed in the mindless fashion today's conservatives like to play their political games. The deniers will do anything to confuse the public, just as the tobacco industry tried to obfuscate the dangers of cigarette smoking.

However, the Earth can't be fooled.

When it keeps warming, as it almost surely will, voters will see even more clearly what is becomingly increasingly obvious: the conservative movement in the United States is the party of know-nothing (as well as no-nothing, since they're against everything important that needs doing: health care reform, job creation, energy independence, and so on.)

Medicare might be extended to people 55-64

Oh, yeah. Bring it on, health care reform. 

This 61 year old is absolutely ready to give up his over-priced Regence Blue Cross of Oregon policy and jump to Medicare early, along with 30 million other Americans aged 55-64. 

Scootering at 40 degrees. Loving it. Must be addicted.

Let's consider the evidence for a man (let's call him Brian, for lack of a less realistic name) being addicted to riding his oh-so-beloved Suzuki Burgman scooter.

It's December 5 in western Oregon. The temperature is forty degrees, and falling. He's sitting in a south Salem coffee house, enjoying a nonfat vanilla latte after riding eight rather frigid miles so he can use the French Press wi fi to blog about scootering in forty degree weather.

Makes perfect sense to me. (Of course, I'm he.)

I can't think of a better way to spend a sunny afternoon than riding my scooter. Cold, I'm learning, isn't much of a concern on a Burgman -- at least not compared to most motorized two-wheel transportation.

My extra large Clearview shield, a replacement for the unduly puny windscreen that came with my scooter, does a great job of keeping wind off of me. When I wear the liner that came with my terrific Olympia Motosports jacket, I'm perfectly comfortable at forty degrees and below.

OK, with one exception: my hands. They're most exposed to the wind chill. I've got winter gloves, and added a thin underglove recently. That helps, but I'm not going to be riding for hours in cold weather unless I went to heated gloves.

Riding twenty minutes to a nice warm coffee house, though -- that's definitely on my winter agenda.

Some motorcycle and scooter riders store their bikes during the cold months. I briefly considered that. Just as drug addicts or alcoholics briefly consider giving up their own addiction.

I'm hooked. It's just too damn much fun to get on my scooter and feel the freedom of motoring down the road, any road, without being in the cage of a car.

If you're a rider, you know what I mean. If you aren't, you probably won't. Addictions are like that. Until you've tasted the high, imbibing won't make sense to the unaddicted.

A real fan doesn't bet with an Oregon-OSU point spread

At first I had the title of this post begin with "A real man..."

But I don't want to insult a friend (who would go nameless, if I didn't reveal that it is Hans) who demanded that our $10 bet on the giant University of Oregon - Oregon State football game tonight include a point spread.

I'm betting on the Ducks. Hans, on the Beavers.

Last Sunday, when we got together at the Beanery coffeehouse to negotiate the deal, I argued eloquently that a real fan has so much confidence in his team, he doesn't need the crutch of a point spread when putting down some money on a friendly bet.

As happens all too frequently with my utterly convincing arguments, I didn't convince Hans.

So today I gave it another try in an email.

Hans, it looks to me like the point spread consensus is 10 points. Newspaper articles say it's the Ducks who are favored. I'm pretty sure that's a misprint, since the liberal mass media can't be trusted. Probably they meant the Beavers are favored.

Regardless, I'm willing to accept the 10 point spread.

Before you agree, you might want to consider this quote that I read recently in a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Personality Disorders:

"It's well known that people who demand a point spread when they bet on their favorite sports team, if that team isn't favored by so-called experts, suffer from a lack of self-esteem and confidence in their own view of the world. This holds them back from succeeding in their chosen field. Therapy usually consists in having the patient bet on their team straight up, without a point spread, so he learns to act on the courage of his convictions."

     --Brian

I figured this would do the trick, so long as Hans didn't check to see that the Journal of Personality Disorders actually exists. But wait... Oh, my God! I just fired up Google, and it does! I'm a freaking genius at believable deception!

Except, Hans wrote back:

I am more that happy to bet straight up on the Beavers, as far as my confidence in them goes. But when it comes to the bigger picture, our relationship, I am most focused on the satisfaction of your handing me $10.

As such the statistical probability of that happening is higher with the spread.  So if my goal "conviction" is that I want your $10 and that squeamish look you have when you hand over your money, then not going for the point spread would be violating the confidence I have in my world view. 

And so while I was happy to bet straight up I appreciate your support in validating the appropriateness of the point spread.  So therefore I accept your 10 points. 

Well, that's what I get for betting with a German logician. Not that I accept Hans' logic.

It sure seems like Hans would get vastly more satisfaction from winning the bet fairly, without a point spread, and the expected value from this option is greater than the probability of Oregon winning by 1 to 10 points.

I note, by the way, that the actual consensus point spread is 9.5 points, not 10. Guess I should have done more research before emailing Hans. Not being much of a betting man, I don't know what happens if the Ducks win by 10.

Somehow I have the feeling that Hans will feel he won. Ah, it'll be nice to have something else to argue about.

Anti-tax zealots show disdain for Oregonians

Talk about un-compassionate conservatism.

A front-page story in today's Salem Statesman Journal reports that the group opposing modest increases in taxes on Oregon corporations and high-income individuals is blissfully unconcerned about...

Prisoners being released, teachers being fired, in-home care for seniors being slashed, newly hired state troopers being laid off, and other cuts in essential services that will hurt people in this state.

"If these measures do not pass, the world as we know it will not come to an end," said Pat McDonald of Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes.

No, Pat, your world of big business lobbyists won't be affected.

You'll get a hefty paycheck for coming up with lies such as "job-killing," and your corporate clients will be able to keep paying $10 a year in taxes, instead of -- gasp! -- the $150 called for in Tax Measures 66 and 67 that are up for a vote in Oregon next January.

Outrageous selfishness irritates me. Yes, I can be selfish, as we all are to some extent. But I don't mind paying taxes to support services for people less fortunate than me.

I feel others' pain. And that bothers me more than having a few less dollars in our bank account does.

So I can't understand how rabid anti-tax zealots like McDonald can be so excited about keeping the minimum Oregon corporate tax at $10 and not raising personal income taxes slightly on individuals making more than $125,00 a year and couples making more than $250,000.

Last April 15 I blogged about how I love taxes. They're beautiful. It's how people come together and pool their money to pay for desirable common goods. 

Often, if not usually, government can spend taxpayers' money more wisely than they can. Just look at all the crap people buy. And how it isn't possible for any individual (unless super rich) to pave a road, build a school, or run a hospital.

Government allows us to band together, pool our money, and pay for the communal goods that we can't provide on our own. So tax day should be celebrated, rather than cursed.

It's when we demonstrate that the boundaries of our concern, empathy, charity, and love extend beyond the narrow confines of our little ego-centered me, me, me world.

Pay your taxes with a smile. It's the greatest gift you'll give in 2009.

I'll be voting "Yes" on Measures 66 and 67. Also with a smile.