HinesSight

Obama should declare debt ceiling unconstitutional

All the hue and cry over whether, or how, the federal debt ceiling should be raised again seems increasingly ridiculous to me. After all, Congress and the President already have agreed to every dollar of spending that requires this new borrowing.

So the debt ceiling must be raised for both legal and moral reasons.

It'd be reprehensible for politicians to disown the legislative decisions that Republicans and Democrats alike have made, saying "Yeah, we voted for more spending, but now we refuse to supply the money to pay for it."

Thus I really like the idea that's starting to be floated around: Obama could declare that it is unconstitutional for him to fail to protect the credit-worthiness of the federal government.

After all, the 14th amendment to the Constitution directs that:

"the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

Back in April Garrett Epps wrote a convincing speech that Obama could give on this subject. It ends with:

I regret that the intransigence of a small minority of members of Congress have forced our nation into this situation. I know that some of these same political leaders will now charge me with violating the Constitution -- the same Constitution that they apparently have no desire either to read or to follow. If they truly believe this to be true, I challenge them to bring Articles of Impeachment against me. The charge should be that I did what was necessary to support our troops in the field, to bolster our public credit, and to prevent destitution and despair among American families. I welcome that debate.

But as long as I remain president, the national debt of the United States shall not be questioned. That is my pledge to you, to the world, and to the memory of the brave men and women who gave the last full measure of devotion to rescue the United States from forces who long ago sought its destruction.

I'd stand up and cheer that speech. As would a majority of other Americans, I bet. Though it's unlikely that Obama will go this route, it's certainly something for him to seriously consider.

Just the possibility of pursuing the "constitutional option" should make Republicans more willing to seriously negotiate about raising the debt ceiling, rather than acting like cry babies and walking away from the table as they're doing now.

Salem's riverfront: frustrating concrete wasteland

Making my annual visit last Saturday to Salem, Oregon's wonderful World Beat Festival, I was struck by a couple of dichotomies.

Arriving at the multi-cultural event, after just a few minutes of booth browsing at least one reason why some displays were crowded and some were empty became evident.

Looking good is popular.

Being good -- that truthfulness, benevolence, and forebearance stuff -- not so much.

Leaving the World Beat Festival, another dichotomy was frustratingly evident.


The main entertainment stage is near the Willamette River. It was great to watch Chinese dancers with such a beautiful natural backdrop of water, trees, and Minto Brown Island.

But then I walked a short distance toward downtown Salem and came to the edge of a concrete wasteland -- the remains of a now-unused Boise Cascade industrial site. Local investors Dan Berrey and Larry Tokarski bought the 13-acre property in 2007, hoping to transform it into a mixed use development.

Hasn't happened.

The development stalled last year and hasn't started up again. If anything, the Boise Cascade property is uglier than before. The main warehouse is half torn down, with chain link fences walling downtown Salem off from an expanse of barren rubble.

From the edge of downtown you can peer through the fence and get a glimpse of the verdant riverfront.

Just past the Riverfront Park stage, where the Chinese dancers and other entertainers did their thing at the World Beat Festival, the glimpse is a full-fledged vista.

This is what Salem is missing: a vibrant, year-round connection to its riverfront. Other cities have restaurants, shops, coffee houses, night clubs, boat rentals, and such along a major river that flows through town.

Salem basically has nothing. Just a park next to a difficult-to-cross busy street (plus train tracks) which attracts throngs of people only for special events during the summer.

There's a gem waiting to be revealed just a few hundred yards from downtown Salem. People are hungry for A Cool Place To Go in Oregon's excessively sleepy capital. It's easy to picture how successful a creative mixed-use development would be along the riverfront.

For now, though, that vision is frustratingly distant. Get going, Boise Cascade site owners. Build it and they will come. For sure.

Michelle Bachmann lies about her lying -- disgusting!

Anyone who values honesty, forthrightness, and straight talk should look at how Michelle Bachmann responded to some questions from Bob Schieffer about her horrible PolitiFact accuracy record.

Then, vow never to vote for her. This is why many politicians are so distrusted. They even lie about their lying, being able to face the truth about their not facing the truth.

Conservative brains are more fearful

Many people consider that liberals tend to be warm-and-fuzzy emotional types, while conservatives are just-the-facts thinkers.

Well, a scientific study found the reverse to be true. The amygdala, which processes fear, was bigger in conservatives, while liberals have a bigger cortex, which processes complexity.

Everyone knows that liberals and conservatives butt heads when it comes to world views, but scientists have now shown that their brains are actually built differently.

Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study on Thursday in Current Biology.

"We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala," the study said.

Makes sense.

Conservatives tend to have a decidedly black-and-white view of the world. And they favor emotional arguments over reasoned analyses of a problem.

Consider the negotiations over raising the federal debt limit. Democrats favor a balanced approach to reducing future deficits: reduce expenditures while also raising revenue.

This approach was favored by members of the bipartisan deficit commission. But the current Republican position is exceedingly rigid and dogmatic. No new taxes, no increased revenues.

Doesn't make sense. But emotions don't have to.

Legalizing gay marriage in New York a milestone moment

Ah, I needed this: a sign that the United States is on a positive track. Last night my wife and I went to a Salem Social Dance Club event. Periodically I'd check my iPhone to see if the New York legislature had passed a law legalizing same-sex marriage.

When we were about to leave the dance, I checked one last time. Learning that New York had become the sixth state to make same-sex marriage legal lifted my spirits almost as much as the dancing had.

I felt that a milestone had been reached, that our country had finally turned the corner on ending discrimination against homosexuals. The trend seems clear now, as it has for some time, albeit less distinctly.

Gay marriage backers think this vote will have a national impact. I agree. When a Republican state senate agrees to hold a vote on a same-sex marriage bill, and several members of the G.O.P. cast "ayes" for it, that's a great sign.

A majority of Americans, 53%, approve of gay marriage. So this seems to be an instance of politicians following a politically expedient path -- not exactly a groundbreaking event.

But I suspect that ten or twenty years from now, when same-sex marriage is taken for granted and young people can't imagine how the United States ever was so backward as to discriminate against a major class of people, yesterday's New York vote will be seen as a moment when the gay rights movement turned the corner toward widespread acceptance.

I remember when our country accepted that blacks should use separate drinking fountains and restrooms in the South. That seems crazy now. To an unfortunately still-large number of Americans, discriminating against homosexuals is similarly OK.

Not too many years from now, that archaic attitude will seem crazy also.

Jon Stewart is right: Fox News viewers are most misinformed

Recently Jon Stewart sort of apologized on his The Daily Show for saying that watchers of Fox News are the most consistently misinformed media viewers. Well, he shouldn't have. Stewart was right, and the usually accurate PolitiFact was wrong in this case.

PolitiFact came in for a lot of justified criticism when it ruled that Jon Stewart's June 19 statement, ""Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? … Fox viewers, consistently, every poll," was false.

For one thing, PolitiFact often gives a lot of leeway to politicians and public figures who make similarly bold statements. Meaning, Politifact's rulings can be quite subjective.

Consider the recent determination that David Axelrod's saying, "When Mitt Romney was governor, Massachusetts ranked 47th out of 50 states in job creation," is only half true. Actually, PolitiFact found that it was exactly true. Massachusetts did indeed rank 47 out of 50.

But PolitiFact felt that Axelrod should only get a half true because he was implying that Romney was responsible for his state's poor job creation performance. That wasn't what Axelrod said, though. His one sentence factual statement was completely true.

PolitiFact also introduced its own peculiar dose of subjectivity when it assessed Jon Stewart's claim that Fox News viewers are the most consistently misinformed. Note that Stewart said misinformed, not uninformed.

Yet PolitiFact didn't bother to search out surveys that asked Fox News viewers for their opinion on controversial political issues where there is a factually correct perspective, and a factually wrong perspective.

Instead, PolitiFact looked on surveys that focused on basic political literarcy, like whether people knew who the vice-president of the United States is, and if this country has a trade deficit. Chris Mooney discusses this PolitiFact error in "Jon Stewart 1, PolitiFact 0."

Thus, the bulk of the studies cited by Politifact have nothing to do with whether Fox viewers believe the truth, or falsehoods, on politicized and contested issues. I cannot stress how fundamental a distinction this is. Indeed, it is quite literally a separate issue from the perspective of psychology and neuroscience.

From the point of view of the political brain, whether 2 + 2 = 4, or whether Joe Biden is the vice president, is one type of question. It’s the type of question where there’s no political stake and anyone can agree, because it doesn’t require any emotional sacrifice to do so. It therefore likely engages circuits of “cold reasoning.”

However, whether global warming is human caused is fundamentally different. The latter issue is politicized, and thus engages emotions, identity, and classic pathways of biased reasoning. It therefore likely triggers circuits of “hot reasoning.” (For a study showing why the two are so different with respect to the brain, see here.)

It is of course around contested political facts, and contested scientific facts, where we find active, politically impelled, and emotionally laden misinformation campaigns—and it is in the latter realm that Fox News viewers are clearly more misinformed. Once again, I’ve cited 5 studies to this effect—concerning the Iraq war, the 2010 election, global warming, health care reform, and the Ground Zero Mosque.

[Links to those studies can be found in this earlier Mooney post.]

In every instance, just as Jon Stewart said, Fox News viewers were considerably more misinformed than watchers of other news media.

PolitiFact has replied to the criticism of its unjustified "false" rating in a decidedly lame fashion, even though their follow-up piece included this:

By contrast, many readers argued that the only legitimate way to test Stewart’s thesis was to refer to the worldpublicopinion.org studies, since they tested the extent of beliefs that were the result of misinformation, whether it’s Barack Obama being born in Kenya or the stimulus not creating or preserving a significant number of jobs.

Steven Kull, the director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, wrote us after the story appeared to say that testing for lack of knowledge is not enough. "We analyzed the effect of increased exposure to news outlets. We found that with all other outlets, increased exposure generally resulted in less misinformation. However, for Fox viewers, on nine points of information, increased exposure correlated with increased misinformation. This was true of only one point of information for public broadcasting and MSNBC viewers, and two points of information for network news. This effect was found in the 2003 study as well. Fox viewers were the only group for whom increased exposure resulted in greater misinformation."

Kull added that, "simply on face value, such issues as knowledge of who was vice president are unlikely to be related to exposure to news outlets. Information on issues that were very foreground in media reporting and analysis, which ours were, are more likely to be related to exposure" to media outlets.

Face it, PolitiFact, you blew it this time. Surveys indeed consistently have found that Fox News viewers are more misinformed than people who watch other news networks.

To understand why, check out the lengthy list of PolitiFact-certified Fox News falsehoods that Jon Stewart cited on his show.

Apple solves my half-disappeared Arial "p" problem

A few days ago my MacBook Pro lost half of it's Arial "p." I've got no idea how this happened. All I know is that certain web sites which use the Arial font (Google, for one) suddenly were weird to read.

Picture a "p" that's missing it's straight vertical line. What's left is a backward "c." Well, if I looked closely I could discern a faint shadow of the missing "p" line. It was very hard to see, though.

When I phoned Apple support the first guy I talked to was mystified. He checked on his computer to see if any other Macintosh user had complained about a half-disappeared Arial lower case "p."

Nope.

There was nothing in the Apple computer knowledge base about this. I sensed that the support guy wasn't totally convinced that my problem was real. Couldn't blame him, given what I was saying.

All I want is the other half of my MacBook's Arial 'p' back. Can't you give me a download of the missing straight line? The other Arial numbers and letters are fine. I'm just missing half of the lower case 'p.' This is irritating, though. I never realized how many words have a 'p' in them until I tried to read Google search results where every 'p' looked like a backward 'c.'

If I was him, I would have done just what he did. "I'm going to transfer you to a font specialist," he told me. "Hopefully he can help you, because I have no idea what to do."

I love Apple support.

Every time I call for assistance with a problem (I always buy Apple Care along with a new device; it's well worth the money) I get to talk with highly competent, courteous, friendly support staff. Yesterday was no exception.

The font specialist was on the phone almost instantly after Stumped Support Guy transferred me. After hearing my sad tale of the missing straight line on my Arial 'p,' he also dug into the Apple support history/ knowledge base/ or whatever it's called.

I was on hold for a few minutes while he did this.

When he came back on the line, I was told: "Nobody has ever had this problem before." "Wow! I'm unique," I said. "That's great. I suspected this when I Googled Safari Arial font missing p and got zero relevant hits. How often does that happen with a Google search?"

Not surprisingly, the font specialist wanted to rule out customer insanity, bad eyesight, or a late April Fool's joke before spending any more time with me. He didn't express himself that directly, simply saying "I'd like you to email me a screenshot of what you're talking about."

"No problem," i replied. "I've already got screenshots of how the Arial font looks in Font Book [Apple's font manager]. Also, in Pages, where the lower case 'p' is missing it's straight line too."

Here's what I sent the font specialist:

About a minute after I sent off an email to the guy, he came back on the phone. "You're right," he said. "I see what you mean. This is really strange. I've never seen anything like this."

Somehow one half of one lower case letter in the Arial font library had gotten screwed up. I recalled that a recent Apple Software Update included an item that had something to do with fonts. But I couldn't understand how this could produce a half-disappeared 'p.'

If you ever have this problem -- and there's an extremely little chance that you will -- here's how Apple support solved it. The font specialist had me restart my MacBook in safe mode (by holding down the shift key after clicking "restart").

My computer took a long time to restart in safe mode. The font specialist stayed on the phone with me as I relayed fascinating status information to him. "Nothing yet... little ball is still whirling around... still nothing... ooh ooh, a blue screen!... we're getting somewhere."

When I looked at Font Book in safe mode, there was no Arial font at all. The support guy seemed sort of surprised at this. Then he said, "Restart your computer normally."

I wasn't expecting much, given that we hadn't changed anything on my MacBook other than to start it up in safe mode. But this produced some sort of font magic, because after it started up normally the straight line on Arial's lower case 'p' had returned.

Apple support came through again. Hanging up the phone, my computer's Arial 'p' restored to its usual shape, I felt a warm glow toward all things Apple'ish.

This is how a tech company succeeds: make great products; and when something goes wrong with them, offer great customer support.

 

Rory McIlroy, thanks for a flowing Father's Day

I'm a big-time golf fan. Meaning, I only watch the final round of big-time major tournaments like the Master's, British Open, and United States Open.

And even then I'll record the last eighteen holes so I can fast forward my way through the hours and hours of slow-moving golf (same way I watch soccer). That's what I did yesterday also. But thanks to the amazing Rory McIlroy, I was able to watch the final round in record time.

Plus, be wonderfully inspired by the sight of a 22-year old from Northern Ireland blowing away his fellow U.S. Open golfers in record-breaking fashion.

McIlroy was so many strokes ahead at the beginning of the round, I decided to only watch his shots. So I kept clicking the 30-second advance on my DirecTV DVR until I saw McIlroy standing over his ball. Then I'd watch him take another step on the almost flawless journey to his first major championship win.

What mesmerized me the most was McIlroy's demeanor. His 2011 U.S. Open peformance was an archetypal demonstration of what "flow" is all about.

Golf is a precision game where, at the professional level, players are so skilled and so well matched that often just one bad shot is the difference between winning and losing. A putt that misses the hole by a quarter inch can decide who the champion is.

A few months ago McIlroy famously blew a four stroke lead at the start of the final round of the Master's tournament. He shot an 80, the worst round ever for a pro golfer leading after 54 holes.

Obviously yesterday was a different McIlroy. The announcers said that he was playing like a machine. Well, I can understand why they used those words, but I saw McIlroy as being decidedly non-mechanical.

He was marvelously human. He flowed with the moment, with his emotions, with the crowd of photographers capturing every shot, with the pressure of knowing that even his large lead could evaporate after a double bogey or two.

Machines react predictably. They are programmed to do this in response to that.

I didn't get that sort of feeling from watching McIlroy play his final round. I saw a young guy (he looks like a high schooler to me) responding to ever-changing circumstances with remarkable aplomb, focus, and flexibility. McIlroy wasn't unduly bothered by his few mistakes, or thrown off balance with excessive glee after his many great shots.

Those eighteen holes were a great Father's Day gift. Not just to McIlroy's own father, but to all of us father-types watching him flow so well through the final round of the U.S. Open.

Some people -- I'm thinking of my wife -- find watching sports horribly boring. All they see are guys and gals doing something inherently meaningless, like trying to get a little white ball into a small cup several hundred yards away.

For me, though, sports can open up a window onto a view of human nature that is difficult to discern in any other way.

Yesterday Rory McIlroy showed the world what is possible when someone does what they're capable of doing without being limited by the mental bumps, glitches, flow restrictors, and other crap that causes our psyche to screw up some activity.

Saturday I got back to staining a couple of wood rocking chairs that I'm going to add to the decor of a recently-built tree house.

I was having a pretty good time, brushing the first coat onto the considerable number of pieces that comprised the chair. I was flowing along slowly but steadily until a voice inside my head started talking.

"Man, this is taking longer than expected... there's other things I'd rather be doing right now... once I do the front, I'll have to turn the chair over and do the underside... it's going to take at least two coats, and maybe three... I've got quite a bit more to do."

I felt myself mentally cramping up. Suddenly I just wanted to be done with the staining. I started to get sloppy, putting too much stain here while missing spots there. Then I took a deep breath, relaxed, and got myself back into the present moment.

Just do one piece of wood at a time. Enjoy the process. Don't look ahead to a final outcome. Realize that enjoyment of the chair starts now, not later. There's no such thing as "later," just other "nows."

What I did wasn't all that different from how Rory McIlroy won the U.S. Open yesterday. He modeled how to perform an activity excellently via one shot, or one brushstroke, or one whatever.

After that, do another one. And then the next. Respond to what is right in front of you, not some unduly imagined version of it. Enjoy this moment. Relax; flow with what's happening, not pushing the river yet also not letting it passively wash over you.

You're a champion, Rory McIlroy. Not just of the 2011 U.S. Open -- of how to live life, judging by how you performed in this golf tournament.

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

Well, I wasn't one of the first in line this morning to enter the new Salem (Oregon) Trader Joe's on opening day.

But I got there early in the afternoon, which is pretty damn impressive for a retired guy like me -- especially since I indulged in a 30 minute nap just before I left, expecting that I'd need all my energy to fight the crowds cramming the aisles.

The reality was sort of like I anticipated, and sort of not. Here's photos of my Trader Joe's shopping visit, with accompanying narrative (and some comparative price analysis).

The parking lot seemed full when I drove up. I lucked out, though, when a car drove off at just the right time. Thank you, Trader Joe's goddess.

Nearing the front door, the excited Salem shoppers' energy grew more intense. At first I thought a crowd was lining up to enter the store.

But most of the people outside Trader Joe's were seniors who seemed to be waiting for a retirement home bus to pick them up.

By "seniors," of course, I mean people whose hair color was the same as mine. I just was able to drive up in a Mini Cooper S rather than a bus, for which I'm thankful (keep bringing me good health karma, Trader Joe's goddess).

My first thought upon entering the store and glancing to my left, at the checkout lanes, was "Uh-oh. Glad I'm not in a rush."

The lines were long. People seemed happy to wait, though. After all, Salem has waited a long time for this Trader Joe's to open. (See here, here, and here.) A few minutes standing in front of a checkout lane -- no big deal.

Just a few feet down the first aisle, I realized that I had entered a strange shopping land. Seeing the sign, at first I thought "Wow! Organic bananas for 29 cents a pound!" Then I noticed the arrows: that's 29 cents each.

I guess this eliminates the need for weighing produce at the check-out counter. But it makes it tough to compare prices.

When I got home I weighed an organic banana that I bought at Fred Meyer for 84 cents a pound. Our postage scale put it at about 5.25 ounces. That means at Trader Joe's I could get three bananas that size for 87 cents, making the Fred Meyer and Trader Joe's price nearly identical (three 5.25 ounce bananas are almost exactly 16 ounces, a pound).

Hmmmm. I guess nectarines cost that much each (69 cents) this time of year. But this shows how pricing produce individually, when you're used to paying by the pound, can be off-putting.

I like nectarines. Knowing that each of the little juicies would cost me 69 cents, though -- that caused me to walk on by.

I found the chips display a lot more interesting. One of the appealing things about Trader Joe's is their great store brands. I bought some unusally low fat (4 grams per ounce) TJ tortilla chips that were fried, not baked. And they taste great.

The wine department was on the final aisle, the way I shopped. The Charles Shaw bottles, a.k.a. "two buck Chuck," obviously had been popular with buyers all day long.

Knowing the nickname for Charles Shaw wines, I looked around for the exact price. And kept looking around. Couldn't see a sign anywhere. Until...

I looked up. The price was hidden in plain sight. $2.99. Wow! I bought three bottles, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Shiraz. I just opened the Merlot. It's not bad. Tastes better than I'd expect a $3 bottle would.

A few years ago The New Yorker had a fascinating article about Fred Franzia and his Two Buck Chuck -- which really was $1.99 back then. I recall reading that it scored well in taste tests against much more expensive wines. Which makes me feel good, because I hardly ever pay more than $10 for a bottle of wine. Now that Trader Joe's is in town, that might become $3.

Here's the contents of my shopping cart. Taking the photo gave me something to do as I waited in line for a register. Chips, coffee, wine, and fruit. That's what I focused on during my first Trader Joe's shopping excursion.

Being a vegetarian, I wasn't interested in the store's meaty stuff. And since I had some other places to go on a fairly warm day, I didn't pay much attention to the refrigerated and frozen stuff. But I'll be back... for sure.

LifeSource Natural Foods, I still love you. You've got some competition in town, though. I'll be shopping at both Trader Joe's and LifeSource from now on. Along with Fred Meyer, which also is going to be competing, albeit to a lesser degree, with Trader Joe's.

Case in point: organic raisin bran is a big part of my life. Almost every afternoon I have a small bowl, often right before my senior citizen nap. I bought a box of Trader Joe's Organic Raisin Bran Clusters, which I'd never tried before.

Getting home, that was the first thing I opened up. Yum! I liked it quite a bit better than what Fred Meyer sells, Nature's Path Organic Flax Plus Raisin Bran. Here's the two side by side.

The Trader Joe's box (on the left) is considerably bigger, 20 ounces, while Nature's Path is 14 ounces. Cost: Trader Joe's is $4.29, Nature's Path is $3.99. That translates into 21 cents an ounce for Trader Joe's organic raisin bran, and 29 cents an ounce for Nature's Path organic raisin bran.

So Trader Joe's brand is 33% cheaper. Plus, it tastes better.

I've heard people say, "Trader Joe's is just a place where yuppies buy their overpriced snooty food." I disagree, based on my first solo shopping trip (previously I've gone with my wife a few times; she's an even bigger Trader Joe's fan than I am).

Seeing who was shopping at Trader Joe's on opening day, there was an evident eclectic mix of people. Young and old. Well to do and penny pinching. Fit/trim and barely making it down the aisle.

Trader Joe's does have a lot of healthy items, many of which are organic (which usually are pricier than non-organic). But it also has many low-priced store brands. And plenty of comfort foods that make no claim to healthiness.

Welcome to Salem, Trader Joe's.

Based on your opening day, you've going to enjoy a long and profitable stay here. Your almost entirely local staff were efficient, friendly, and appealingly casual (I liked the evident absence of a dress code).

Buy local Oregon strawberries -- even if non-organic

I'm a huge fan of our super-tasty Oregon strawberries, which put the California varieties (at least the ones shipped up our way) to shame, taste and appearance-wise.

This week I started buying strawberries from a farmer's stand on Salem's south Liberty Road, in the parking lot by the Salem Heights Hall. When I brought them home, my wife asked "Are they organic?"

"No," I told her. "But they're local." A mild husband/wife argument ensued.

I feel that we need to support local farmers, even if what they grow is non-organic. Otherwise we'll get more and more fruits and vegetables trucked in from far away, increasing Oregon's carbon footprint and decreasing our taste buds' pleasure.

My wife puts a lot more emphasis on eating organic. She's appropriately wary of pesticides, and conventional strawberries are #3 on EWG's "Dirty Dozen" (a 2011 shopper's guide to pesticides in produce). EWG's advice is to buy organic strawberries.

Well, for some reason it's hard to find local organic strawberries. And when they're available, the price is high -- especially compared to what Fred Meyer has been selling organic California strawberries for (two pounds for $6, or even $4, if I recall correctly).

So Laurel is eating comparatively tasteless organic strawberries trucked in from California, while I've been feasting on sweet, juicy local berries.

Yesterday, when I stopped by the farmer's stand to buy another 1/4 flat for $7, I asked how much pesticide was used in growing the strawberries. Even though I've been buying stuff at this stand for many years, I'd never asked that question before.

A woman told me, "They're only sprayed in the flowering stage. After that, no pesticides are used." That was reassuring. For me, at least. My wife continues to stick with her organic California strawberries.

The local strawberry seller also said that she's been involved with growing Oregon berries for more than fifty years, starting when she was a child and followed the "pick one, eat one" rule.

That was how I did it also, when I frequented U-pick fields soon after I moved to Oregon from California in 1971 and felt like I'd made it to Strawberry Heaven. I ate them without any washing; but back then we also drove cars without shoulder belts or air bags.

The woman told me that a lot more pesticides were used on strawberries in the old not-so-environmentally-aware days. Given how many pounds of Oregon strawberries I've eaten during the forty years I've lived here, this struck me as both present-day good news and historic bad news.

Bottom line for me: I love our local berries -- raspberries, marionberries, blackberries, blueberries, and especially strawberries. When I can buy them organic at a non-exorbitant cost, that's what I'll do.

Otherwise, I'll happily keep on eating local non-organic strawberries. They're one of the healthiest foods, so hopefully the antioxidant and other benefits will outweigh the detrimental effects of any pesticide residue.

(I've been blogging about Oregon strawberries since 2003, soon after I started HinesSight. See "Strawberries say so much," "As Oregon strawberries go, so the state," and "Help me save Oregon strawberries.")

A neuroscientific view of Anthony Weiner's Twitter scandal

I'm tired of all the media attention that's been given to Rep. Anthony Weiner's semi-scandalous Twitter escapades with young women who caught his cyberspace eye.

But I find his story interesting in a scientific sense, having just finished reading David Eagleman's "Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain." Eagleman is a neuroscientist. He also is a terrific writer. His earlier book, "Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives" is wonderfully creative.

(I've blogged about Eagleman's ideas here, here, here, here, and here.)

A central theme of "Incognito" is that conscious awareness is a tiny part of what's going on in the human brain. Most of the work goes on behind the scenes. It's sort of like a child turning the wheel of a carnival ride boat.

The kid pretends that he or she is controlling the motion of the boat. Except, the wheel isn't connected to anything. How the boat moves is determined by a bunch of machinery that the child isn't aware of or focusing on.

Likewise, Eagleman persusasively argues that there's no neuroscientific evidence for free will. This doesn't mean that free will is an illusion, just that current scientific understanding can't find any room for free will to operate in the brain.

People assume that Weiner freely chose to do what he did, Twitter-wise, and that he should be blamed for his actions. Also, punished by being forced to resign his Congressional seat. This doesn't make sense.

Here's an Eagleman quote that shows how wrong almost all of the talk about Anthony Weiner is.

The crux of the question is whether all of your actions are fundamentally on autopilot or whether there is some little bit that is "free" to choose, independent of the rules of biology. This has always been the sticking point for both philosophers and scientists.

As far as we can tell, all activity in the brain is driven by other activity in the brain, in a vastly complex, interconnected network. For better or worse, this seems to leave no room for anything other than neural activity -- that is, no room for a ghost in the machine.

To consider this from the other direction, if free will is to have any effect on the actions of the body, it needs to influence the ongoing brain activity. And to do that, it needs to be physically connected to at least some of the neurons.

But we don't find any spot in the brain that is not itself driven by other parts of the network. Instead, every part of the brain is densely interconnected with -- and driven by -- other brain parts. And that suggests that no part is independent and therefore "free."

So in our current understanding of science, we can't find the physical gap in which to slip free will -- the uncaused causer -- because there seems to be no part of the machinery that does not follow in a causal relationship from the other parts.

Thus Anthony Weiner simply did what his brain directed him to do. More accurately, we should scratch the words "his" and "him" in the preceding sentence. A more correct neuroscientific statement would be:

The brain in the body known as "Anthony Weiner" acted as the brain had to do given all of the genetic, environmental, and experiential influences upon it.

Understand, this doesn't change the wrongness or undesirability of what Weiner did (most commentators seem to feel that his biggest offense was initially trying to cover up his "Twitter affairs").

Similarly, Eagleman says that society has a right to protect itself from violent criminals.

However, in a "Why Blameworthiness is the Wrong Question" chapter he argues that "a forward-thinking legal system will parlay biological understanding into customized rehabilitation, viewing criminal behavior the way we understand other such medical conditions as epilepsy, schizophrenia, and depression -- conditions that now allow the seeing and giving of help."

This is what Anthony Weiner is doing: getting help to modify his future behavior. Eagleman writes:

The concept and word to replace blameworthiness is modifiability, a forward-looking term that asks, What can we do from here? Is rehabilitation available?

Here's another pertinent neuroscientific fact about Weiner, and indeed every human being. Pink Floyd was correct: "There's someone in my head, but it's not me." There's several ways to look at this lyric. Either there's no self apart from the brain, and/or there are many "me's" inside the cranium of each member of Homo sapiens.

Eagleman calls the brain "a team of rivals."

You are made up of an entire parliament of pieces and parts and subsystems. Beyond a collection of local expert systems, we are collections of overlapping, ceaselessly reinvented mechanisms, a group of competing factions.

The conscious mind fabricates stories to explain the sometimes inexplicable dynamics of the subsystems inside the brain. It can be disquieting to consider the extent to which all of our actions are driven by hardwired systems, doing what they do best, while we overlay stories about our choices.

Thus it doesn't make sense to search for the "real me." Or the real Anthony Weiner. There's no such entity. Each of us is a collection of multitudes.

Note that the population of the mental society does not always vote exactly the same way each time. This recognition is often missing from discussions of consciousness, which typically assumes that what it is like to be you is the same from day to day, moment to moment.

...So who's the real you? As the French essayist Michel de Montaigne put it, "There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others."

We humans love to moralize. Especially about others. We have an exaggerated sense both of how righteous we are, and how morally deficient this or that bozo is compared to us.

Over and over in his book, David Eagleman points out how our intuitions about personality, selfhood, conscious awareness, free will, and the like are at odds with what neuroscience is learning about how the brain functions.

The brouhaha over Anthony Weiner's Twittergate is off the scientific mark, along with so much else in our political and gossip discourse. Hopefully eventually 21st century understanding of the human brain will replace our essentially medieval view of morality, freedom of choice, and sinfulness.

Until then, let's give Anthony Weiner a break. There's many more important problems this country needs to deal with than a congressman's Twitter tweets.

(Here's another perspective that makes some good points: "Everything Said About Anthony Weiner is Wrong.")

What I like most about my 2011 Mini Cooper S

About three months ago, after my Mini Cooper S hardtop (pepper white with black roof) arrived from England and I drove it home for the first time, I predicted that the car would bring me perfect happiness.

Since so far I've only been able to drive the Mini from Portland to Salem, then around town here a bit, I can't be 100% confident that this car-of-my-dreams will bring me the unalloyed happiness that I so richly deserve after having postponed the consummation of my Mini love affair for eight freaking years.

First impressions matter a lot, though.

And after spending ninety minutes or so with my new best mechanical friend, I can tell that we're going to get along great. Why, look -- my beloved Thermos coffee mug fits perfectly in the front seat cup holder.

Many other features of the 2011 Mini Cooper S are equally appealing to me. But I'll leave descriptions of most of those for other blog posts once I've had more time to familiarize myself with the appealingly quirky nature of the Mini.

This is a down payment on that last promise. I'll focus not on the Mini's overall driving experience, which is terrific, but on the options I ordered which have turned out to be excellent buying decisions.

For me, at least. Your results may vary.

But if you're thinking of buying a Mini Cooper and having one built the way you want it, how I feel about some options after 1,400 miles of driving time will give you some additional info to consider.

Automatic windshield wipers. I wasn't sure about whether they'd work, but when I was pondering this option with a Rasmussen Mini salesman in Portland, Oregon, he assured me that the automatic wipers turned on and off just fine.

Which, they do. I'm really glad I ordered them.

Here in the Northwest rain is a frequent fact of life. It's great to have the car do the windshield wipers thinking for me: whether they should be on interval or continuous, how fast they should move, when to turn them on and off.

There's a setting for how sensitive they are to drops on the windshield. I've bumped that up to "most sensitive" as this seems to work best for my taste in wiping rain away. As with the next two options, the automatic wipers allow me to think less about controls and pay more attention to the joy of driving my Mini.

Automatic transmission with manual shifting option. lt's been a long time since I had a car with only a manual transmission. So I ordered an automatic. Good choice. I can play around with manual shifting when I want to, either by pushing the gear selector with my right hand or pressing on the dual steering wheel paddle shifters with either thumb and forefinger.

Most of the time I drive around with the automatic in "Sport" mode. The car shifts and sounds subtly different. Not surprisingly, I'd describe the change as...sportier.

It seems to me that going Sport only reduces the mileage by less than one mile a gallon. In mixed city and country driving I get about 28 mpg in normal automatic mode and a bit over 27 mpg in Sport mode. I realize that many serious drivers eschew automatic transmissions, but I prefer to mindfully enjoying the whole Mini Cooper experience, rather than have part of my attention focused on what gear I'm in.

Automatic headlights. This is the first car I've owned where the lights automatically go on and off as needed. So far, I haven't ever overriden the car computer's decision. When the sun is about to set, the lights appropriately turn on. They seem to be biased toward "better on than off," which is the safest way to go.

As long as I'm talking about lights, I've chosen to turn on the daytime running lights option, as I'm a believer in this safety feature.

A few days ago I also turned on the "three click" lane change option, where you gently push on the turn signal lever and a light flashes one or three times. I like this feature, as you don't have to remember to turn off the turn signal after merely making a lane change.

Matching headliner. I made a wise decision to fork over $250, or whatever it was, to get a black headliner in the front seat area rather than the default cream color. Sitting in a car at the dealership, the cream color up top and black/gray down below seemed discordant and distracting.

Going all black makes the interior look a lot more harmonious to me. This is why I didn't get any of the accent color options for the front seat area. Maybe that would look good on some Minis, but I wanted to go for a more subdued look. The interior of the Mini is plenty quirky and eye-catching without any additional accents, to my eye.

White front turn signal lights. Yeah, they do look better on a pepper white Mini. Amber lights aren't very Feng Shui on my car, as they don't harmonize with the white/black exterior colors. Not a big deal, but when I walk up to my Mini from the front I often think "I'm glad I went with the white lights."

Xenon headlights. Nice. I'll admit that I was expecting an even more dramatic difference in night illumination, but I now agree with what the salesman told me: "Once you own a car with Xenon lights, you'll never go back to the regular kind."

Well, this is a rundown of how happy I've been with the major options that I ordered on my 2011 Mini Cooper S hardtop. I haven't regretted any of these decisions, nor have I longed for any option that I passed up.

Next post, I'll extol my Mini's driving and handling virtues.

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

At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck, I'm getting increasingly afraid for America. What worries me isn't that our citizens, political parties, and Congress are deeply divided about how to solve the many problems facing the United States.

There's a more disturbing division which stands in the way of negotiating solutions to our financial, budgetary, environmental, educational, infrastructure, and other social problems.

A split between reality affirmers and reality deniers.

Now, from the title of this post you can tell where I feel most of the reality deniers hang out politically: in the Republican party. But many Democrats, independents, and politically uninvolved people are equally guilty of shunning "what is" for "what I'd like to be."

This is dangerous. Really dangerous.

If two fire trucks from different stations pull up in front of a burning building, there's no problem in having a brief heated (so to speak) discussion about the best way to put out the blaze. However, if one team of firefighters says, "Fire? What fire? I don't see a fire," a pile of ashes could be the result.

Almost every Congressional Republican denies the reality of global warming. Leaving Congress doesn't bring them to their senses, because yesterday former Senator and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum declared that global warming is a concocted liberal scheme designed to bring about more governmental control.

That's freaking weird.

The reality studied by climate scientists isn't conservative or progressive; it's nature, which doesn't subscribe to any particular political leaning. It's fine to disagree about what global warming means and how the United States should respond to it. But to deny what 98% of the world's leading climatologists tell us is happening -- that's super dangerous.

Countries that try the head-in-the-sand thing, pretending that everything is fine when actually is isn't...they won't prosper. Reality has a way of biting deniers of it in the butt.

Last year the National Journal wrote, "The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among political parties around the globe, even conservative ones."

Indeed, it is difficult to identify another major political party in any democracy as thoroughly dismissive of climate science as is the GOP here. Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, says that although other parties may contain pockets of climate skepticism, there is “no party-wide view like this anywhere in the world that I am aware of.”

It will be difficult for the world to move meaningfully against climate disruption if the United States does not. And it will be almost impossible for the U.S. to act if one party not only rejects the most common solution proposed for the problem (cap-and-trade) but repudiates even the idea that there is a problem to be solved. The GOP’s stiffening rejection of climate science sets the stage for much heated argument but little action as the world inexorably warms — and the dangers that Hague identified creep closer.

Today Mitt Romney got blasted by conservatives for saying that global warming is an issue that's real, but he disagrees with how the environmental community wants to deal with the problem.

Wow.

That's what happens when a prominent Republican casts his lot with reality: he's vilified by the many members of his party who believe that truth is whatever they want to believe.

(This nifty flow chart sums up the situation perfectly.)

Witness the fact that 51% of Republican primary voters didn't believe that Obama was born in this country, despite all of the evidence that he was. And how Sarah Palin supporters rushed to Wikipedia to alter the truth about Paul Revere's ride to make it match Palin's personal view of what happened.

My mother was a deeply conservative woman. She was a passionately devoted Republican. Also a great lover of science. I know that she'd be appalled at how today's Republican Party is so willing to disrespect reality.

I hope our country's politicans learn how to embrace a common set of facts, while initially agreeing to disagree on what to make of them. Only in this way will we be able to deal with our problems in a meaningful fashion.

Oregon wildlife agency kills 10% of endangered wolves

Is this government gone crazy, or what?

(I wish I could write government gone wild, but unfortunately the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife isn't really all that big on "wildness," as I'll describe below.)

In the past few months Oregon's wolf population has shrunk from 23 to 17. That's a 26% decrease in the number of an endangered species which used to be, and in the future should be, a integral part of our state's natural ecosystem.

Two of the wolves were killed by wildlife officials to protect livestock. That's insane -- to kill off about 10% of an endangered species population when wolves are responsible for only a miniscule percentage of livestock losses.

In Idaho, which has hugely more wolves than Oregon does, all non-human predators (coyotes, dogs, wolves, unknown) accounted for 1% of cattle losses. So wolves are essentially a non-factor for ranchers in the big scheme of things here in Oregon.

Yet the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has authorized twenty-four landowner kill permits -- essentially permission to shoot wolves on sight, given the animosity, fear, and ignorance of many Eastern Oregon ranchers when it comes to these marvelous wild animals.

These welfare ranchers, who get massive subsidies from us taxpayers for grazing rights on public lands, nonetheless believe that they have a right to do whatever they want with wolves -- even though they're happy to feed their livestock at the public trough.

Disturbingly, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is tilting its wolf management plan way toward the self-centered interests of a few ranchers instead of managing wildlife for the broader public interest -- an unbalanced approach that ODFW also uses with cougars and coyotes.

Today I was pleased to see that eleven conservation groups are calling on ODFW Director Roy Elicker to do what's right, rather than what the Oregon Cattlemen's Association tells his agency to do.

Their letter to Elicker lays out facts that made me furious when I read them. Something needs to change at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

My wife and I have dealt with them on coyote and cougar management issues. Too often, science and common sense take a back seat to simplistic "shoot 'em" attitudes, not what Oregon needs. This is 2011, not 1811.

Here's some excerpts from the letter:

Director Elicker, until our concerns are adequately addressed and thorough documentation is provided to substantiate public claims and legal obligations of your agency, we demand that ODFW immediately halt the issuance of any new permits to kill endangered Oregon wolves, and withdraw the 24 kill permits that have already been given away.

In taking the significant and severe action to kill two wolves and authorize the potential killing of many more, ODFW should have the justifying documentation at their fingertips when those decisions are made. We expect future decisions of this nature will be accompanied by more timely and detailed information.

Your agency’s actions in recent weeks regarding wolf management raise a number of deeply troubling questions. Conservation-minded Oregonians supported a compromised Oregon Wolf Conservation and Management Plan with the understanding that wolf recovery would be the motivating factor guiding agency actions and that the desires of the livestock industry would not outweigh the general public good.

As you know, time and time again Oregonians have overwhelmingly supported wolf recovery in our state. Should ODFW continue to veer away from wolf conservation efforts, public support for the plan and your agency could be seriously undermined.

Wow, I learn to saddle up a horse!

Who says you can't teach an old dog (or guy) new tricks? After sixty-two years of riding horses off and on throughout my life, somehow I'd never learned how to saddle up a horse.

Today, thanks to expert teacher Mike Myers (no, not the comedian), I demolished my false belief that putting on a saddle and bridle required some sort of mysterious skills. All it took was Mike showing me some tricks of the saddling trade in a simple, supportive fashion.

Mike is a wrangler/instructor for the FlySpur Ranch Equishare program that's run out of three locations in the Bend, Oregon area. My wife and I were attracted to this program three years ago after we'd become disenchanted with boring "nose to tail" trail rides, yet weren't inclined to become horse owners ourselves.

With Equishare, you pay a monthly fee that gets you a certain number of riding hours. The cost is quite a bit less per hour than a typical trail ride. Plus, a monthly lesson is included and the type of riding available is limited only by your horsemanship skills. No more trail rides where you plod along at the pace of the least experienced rider.

We'd taken a couple of years off from Equishare, but decided to get back into the FlySpur program this riding season.

Even though it isn't always necessary with Equishare to saddle up your own horse, I was eager to learn how. I'd been shown how to do this before, but the lesson hadn't sunk in. That bothered me -- riding felt kind of like only being able to drink coffee from a coffee house, not being able to brew my own.

This morning Mike got me off to a good start when he said, "I'm going to keep this simple. There's only four things you really need to keep in mind when saddling up a horse." Hey, I thought, I can remember four things. Good teaching technique.

I appreciated Mike offering up some tips about how to move a horse around. I feel pretty comfortable getting a horse to do what I want while I'm riding it. But on the ground, I've been kind of intimidated by how large they are.

Mike demonstrated his "knuckle in the ribs" technique, saying this works better than pushing on a horse with the flat of your hand. He was right. I didn't have any trouble getting Rebel (at least the horse wasn't called Widowmaker) to move into desired saddling stances.

Putting on the bridle was a major breakthrough for me. Again, somehow I'd gone my whole life without ever doing this. Either my horse had been saddled up by a trail guide or instructor, or I'd stood around looking helpless while a friend or relative got the saddle and bridle on.

Horses' mouths appear imposing to me. Putting my hand near a horse jaw in order to insert a nasty looking piece of metal hasn't been on my "Must Do" list. Mike, though, reassured me that my horse was well-trained and would cooperatively open its mouth to take the bit.

Well, sort of. I was met with a clenched teeth reaction that reminded me of how my infant daughter acted when I tried to spoon feed her something she didn't like very much.

Only difference is, I wasn't afraid to put my fingers near her mouth, whereas Mike's advice that "sometimes you have to stick a finger along the gumline" (or words to that effect) wasn't what I wanted to hear as I tried to coax Rebel to open up.

Finally he did, thankfully, leaving me after the horse lesson with all of the fingers that I started with.

After some arena riding and a trail ride, I was kind of disappointed to hear Mike tell us that other riders would be using our horses soon, so we didn't have to take the gear off. Next time hopefully we'll get the whole put-on and take-off experience.

I can see that if you had to saddle and unsaddle horses all day long, it'd get to seem like a chore. But once a month or so, it'll be an equestrian experience for me. I'm looking on this as being akin to a Japanese tea ceremony: the preparation is an integral part of the whole tea-drinking thing.

It felt different on the trail ride, knowing that my saddle had been put on by me -- and wonder of wonders, it wasn't slipping or falling off.

Returning to Rock Springs Ranch, one of the Equishare riding locations, Mike gave us a final tip about how to dismount. Both my wife and I always had embraced the "leap off" approach where we'd slip our right boot out of the stirrup, lift our right leg over the saddle, and then jump off of the horse while sliding the left boot out of the stirrup.

Which, Mike explained, runs the risk of having the left boot getting caught against the horse's belly, or otherwise stuck in the stirrup. Instead, he said, we should try leaving the tip of our left boot in the stirrup, then simply step down with our right leg onto the ground.

Whoa! That worked.

It'd never dawned on me before that if I'm flexible enough to stand on the ground and get my left boot in the stirrup when I'm getting on my horse, obviously I could reverse the process and leave my left boot in the stirrup while I put my right boot on the ground when I'm getting off the horse.

Yup, we're learning new tricks. Mike will show us a lot more, I'm sure, during our next FlySpur Ranch Equishare riding times.

I'm getting more anxious about a debt limit fiasco

So here we are in the middle of 2011, with an economy that isn't great. But it's still a heck of a lot better than it was in late 2008 and early 2009, when Obama took over the presidency.

Remember how horrible it was to watch your retirement or investment portfolio drop 30, 40, 50 percent? Maybe even more, if you were into really risky stuff.

I didn't enjoy those days. When the stock market went back over 12,000, I began to relax some, feeling that the biggest economic shocks were behind us and the United States was on a slow but steady road to recovery.

Now I'm getting anxious again.

A disturbingly large chunk of Congressional Republicans are fanatic about negotiating a debt limit increase on their own terms. Meaning, massive cuts in federal spending and no revenue/tax increases.

That isn't genuine negotiating. It's a ransom demand, as this Daily Kos post puts it.

Financial backers for House Republicans think this is all just a big joke, and that in the end, a deal will get done. Well, they simply aren't listening to what House Republicans are saying, which is that unless a comprehensive fiscal policy is agreed to, there won't be a deal, and that the only comprehensive fiscal policy they will accept is their own.

The only way the debt limit is going to get raised is if Republicans get reasonable. And I don't see that happening. Who knows what the exact odds are, but given the GOP's utter unwillingness to deal with the debt limit as a problem that needs to be solved, there is a very real possibility that we will enter into full-scale default on our obligations.

As they always do, Republicans are counting on Democrats to be the adults in the room. The only problem is that this time Republicans control the House. And unless they walk away from the ledge, this thing is going to go south—and fast.

My worry also.

I can envision the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party being so crazlly anti-government, anti-tax, and anti-Obama that they'd actually enjoy seeing the United States economy tank prior to the 2012 election.

I see them fantasizing that this would ruin Obama's re-election chances, along with producing a massive reduction in the size of government due to a massive drop in tax revenues when we enter a double-dip recession, or even a depression.

Such could happen if the U.S. defaults on its debt, if only briefly. Currently treasury bonds are a safe haven for international investors, not to mention many millions of Americans.

Imagine the shock if the government says, "Sorry, but we can't pay the interest that you're owed." Moody's already is warning about downgrading the United States' credit rating because of the standoff over the debt limit increase. And we're still several months away from the actual August default date.

Republicans, come to your senses. If you engineer another massive crash in the stock and bond markets, Americans aren't going to say thank you. Voters want a balanced approach to deficit reduction.

Raise some taxes on high-income earners; cut some spending on unpopular and unneeded federal programs (war in Afghanistan, farm subsidies, tax breaks for Big Oil, etc, etc). There's a way to get this debt limit deal done without jeopardizing our fragile economic recovery.

The debt limit increase has nothing to do with future spending. It simply allows the United States to keep its promises -- both to American citizens and foreigners.

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, wants tax rates raised to 1990's levels because he's so scared of the catastrophic risks to our economy if the deficit and debt ceiling squabbling results in nothing substantive being done.

Usually I don't agree with Greenspan. But in this case, I say "right on."

Greenspan said Congress has no choice but to approve raising the debt ceiling as the US would risk catastrophe if it does not meet its obligations.

"The problem is we're all going and maneuvering around and as the days pass we're getting closer and closer to the debt ceiling," said Greenspan, who called Washington brinkmanship on the issue an "extraordinarily dangerous problem for this country."

Ethical struggle: how to order coffee in my own mug

Readers of this blog post likely will have two common reactions to it: "Brian, you have too much time on your hands" and "Brian, you think too much." I disagree. To both notions.

Ordering coffee is a subject of great importance to me. Ditto with using my brain to ponder matters of Great Importance (the thought just came to me that those words deserve capital letters).

So I've decided that it's time to bare my caffeinated soul.

I need to talk about the ethical quandary that arises almost every time I go into a coffee house and ask the barista to fill my much-beloved Thermos Stainless King 16 Ounce Travel Mug with some brew.

On the positive side, most coffee purveyors give me a reduced price for using my own mug. At Starbucks, its ten cents. At Salem Oregon's downtown Beanery, it's a marvelous thirty-five cents -- which makes a 16 ounce brewed coffee $1.55 instead of $1.90.

After ordering, though, some moral questions usually start to arise. Typically I hand my mug to the barista with a "16 ounces is up to the line" comment.

I say this because while the Beanery pumps coffee into containers of defined sizes, then pours the content of the 16 ounce container into my mug, other places (including Starbucks) have a more free-form approach to filling a customer's own mug.

Yesterday a Starbucks barista at the south Salem Fred Meyer store offered to give me a senior discount on a tall coffee when I handed her my mug. I told her, "But it holds a grande, 16 ounces." That quashed the deal. However, she said "Your mug looked like it held a tall."

Once I've communicated that an interior line in the Thermos mug marks the 16 ounce level, typically the barista asks "Do you need room?" (for milk).

The pause before I answer isn't a sign of a "senior moment." Rather, it's produced by my mind going into moral quandary mode. My legalistic side considers that since I'm paying for a 16 ounce coffee, I should get a full 16 ounces. Fill the mug up to the line, damn it!

But I do put milk into my coffee.

I just want the milk to be in addition to 16 ounces of coffee, not a replacement for part of the coffee. There's a problem, though, with offering up a simple "No" to the "Do you need room?" question.

The Thermos mug instructions say that liquids shouldn't be added above the "full" line, because the cap has to be screwed on in an open position. If it is closed, the vacuum can be so strong it's very difficult to push the lever from closed to open.

But if I add the amount of milk I like to a full 16 ounces of coffee in the mug, making the liquid level reach almost to the top of the container (ooh, I like breaking the Thermos rules!), I've found that the coffee/milk mixture will ooze through the holes in the lid as I screw it on.

If I'm careful it won't overflow the lid, just come close. This allows me to say "No, I don't need room" and still be able to add quite a bit of skim milk or half & half (depending on how overweight I feel that day) to my mug.

Morally I worry a bit, though, about how I've already gotten a discount for using my own mug, and then I'm able to get a full 16 ounces of coffee in my mug plus a lot of milk, while customers who get coffee in a store container have to ask for room (meaning, less coffee) if they want the same quantity of milk.

This isn't a huge deal to me, just a mild feeling of possible unfairness that I'm getting more coffee than other 16 ounce buyers are. (Remembering that the Thermos mug cost me $20 helps extinguish that feeling.)

My larger moral quandary comes when I'm in a rush and don't want to go through the fill to the brim and carefully screw on the mug top deal. I just want to quickly pour in some milk, close the lever on my mug, and dash out the coffee house door.

In this case, if I say "No, I don't need room," that's untrue. I do, because I don't have time to sip some black coffee and get the brew safely below the full line before adding my desired quantity of milk.

So if I've gotten a full 16 ounces of coffee, often I'll pour some out into a trash container in the middle of the milk bar, then grab the skim or half & half container. I feel sort of funny doing this, since this wouldn't have been necessary if I'd asked for room.

But I also don't like giving up my God Tao-given right to have 16 ounces of coffee put into my Thermos mug if I've paid for that amount.

This does, though, run the risk of splattering coffee on the floor of a coffee house where I get a full 16 ounces, add milk, and then quickly screw the top on my mug -- resulting in an overflow.

("Run the risk" isn't entirely accurate, since this exact scenario happened today as I was conducting research for this blog post. I choose not to name the Salem coffee purveyor where this happened, as I'd prefer not to have the owners use my name as an epithet when they wonder why it's necessary to clean their carpet earlier than they expected. Note: in my defense, carpets shouldn't be used as a floor covering near coffee bars.)

Well, I'll continue to struggle with my ethical quandary. Fortunately, my moral compass seems to function best, or at least most energetically, under the influence of caffeine.