HinesSight

Salem Statesman Journal goes to Facebook comments -- trolls freak out

Tomorrow the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon joins an increasing number of web sites and blogs that require commenters on stories/posts to have a Facebook account.

The paper's announcement has created a frenzy among the many rabid, profane, uninformed, hateful, and profoundly clueless people whose main joy in life is leaving anonymous flaming troll comments on the Internet. 

So far, the online announcement has provoked 554 comments.

That's more than I can recall any other Statesman Journal story getting. To increase online readership, I guess newspapers should regularly fiddle with their commenting system, since that generates more interest than, say, efforts to combat hunger, bring about world peace, or cure cancer.

Appropriately, these were the first two comments on the story about moving to the Facebook commenting system.

StellarRat
1:51 PM on November 29, 2011
Well, that will be the end of my commenting. I refuse to join Facebook for any reason.

Name withheld
1:55 PM on November 29, 2011
This comment was left by a user who has been blocked by our staff.

To StellarRat, and others like him/her, I say: "Goodbye and good riddance. If you want to hide behind a fake name, feel free. But this isn't how people should relate with each other."

Regarding Name withheld: as a blogger, I too have had deal with jerks who abuse the privilege (yes, a privilege, not a right) of being able to leave anonymous comments on a web site paid for and managed by someone else.

So I understand why the Statesman Journal is choosing to move to a real name commenting system that, in the newspaper's words, should "create a more civil environment for conversation, and to give everyone an easier way to share with their friends."

Most of the 554 comments on the new Facebook commenting system express disgust and disdain for it.

Some of the reasons make sense, such as the inability of state workers (or anyone else) to share sensitive information confidentially. Others don't, such as the notion that this move is a plot by the left-leaning newspaper staff to silence conservative commenters. I can tell you that among the progressive community, people don't consider the Statesman Journal to have a liberal slant.

Browsing through the first few pages of those 526 comments, I came across -- shock! -- a well-informed, thoughful comment from someone who seemed to know what he was talking about. His comment was fairly lengthy, so I'll include the whole thing in a continuation to this post.

Here's some excerpts:

First, no, Facebook is not greasing the palms of anyone in Salem or the Gannett corporate offices in Virginia. But what they are doing is offering a commenting system at a much lower cost to the company than what Pluck can afford to sell their service for. 

...Second, I'll bet anybody here a thousand buck this decision is made at the corporate level, not in Salem. Generally, comment moderation systems are contracted at corporate and the individual papers must abide. So it's a far better idea to direct your complaints to Virginia, since nobody in Salem is behind the decision. Although the odds of your complaints having any effect on this decision are zero (reference the first point above).

Well, I did some investigative blog reporting on this corporate level issue. After an exhausting whole 30 seconds of Googling (Pulitzer Prize, please), this search result popped up: "USA TODAY switches to Facebook comment system." USA Today is owned by Gannett, as is the Statesman Journal.

And when is the above-linked USA Today announcement dated? Yesterday, November 29. Hmmmm. Sure seems like moving to Facebook is a broad Gannett policy, not a local decision.

I think this is a good move.

I'd seriously consider requiring a Facebook log-in on my own blogs if TypePad had this as a commenting option. When the issue of anonymity has been raised by visitors to my blogs, I've responded in this fashion.

Envision yourself sitting in a coffee shop, having a pleasant conversation with some friends. Then a guy walks up to your booth. He's wearing a mask. He starts yelling at you, spitting, cursing, ranting and raving about something or other. You can't really tell what he's so upset about, he's making so little sense.

"Calm down, dude," you say. "You're bothering us, the way you're acting. If you want some companionship, take off your mask, tell us your name, and sit down with us courteously and respectfully."

"F__k you, jerk!" he yells. "I go by SuprfreekXXX99. I'm not going to reveal who I am, or take off this mask. I'm going to continue to stand here and say whatever I want." At that point, I'd start looking around for a cop. Or someone to diagnose this guy's mental illness.

Yet masked anything-goes anonymity is how a disturbingly large share of the Internet works. This encourages people to say things they'd never speak out loud in public to someone face to face, when their identity was known.

Congratulations to the Statesman Journal for making this move. I think it's going to work out fine.

For some generally positive experiences of other web sites that have gone to Facebook commenting, see here and here.

BlueOregon, a leading political site in this state, moved to the Facebook system for reasons described here. Excerpt:

Nearly six years ago, we launched this site and declared, "BlueOregon will be the water cooler around which Oregon progressives will gather." At first, we weren't sure what we were building exactly. But it became clear very early that our community needed a place to hang out - and BlueOregon became that place.

Unfortunately, BlueOregon has also become a place where trolls have shown up - from all sides on the political spectrum - to throw stinkbombs and create havoc. We've been deluged with folks who aren't interested in chatting around the water cooler, just barging in and screaming at whoever's in the room.

The first foundation of community is identity. Whether your metaphor is a water cooler, or a small town, or a bar called Cheers, you have to have a place "where everybody knows your name" if you're going to create meaningful relationships.

We know this will be controversial. When we first started BlueOregon, many of us defended anonymous comments. After all, anonymity has a long and respected history in American politics. And we were building one of the only places for people to talk about Oregon politics.

But today, there are lots of places. And lots of ways for someone who is dedicated to anonymity to have their say. Here at BlueOregon, we've decided that the benefits no longer outweigh the costs. It's not even close.

It can be pretty demoralizing when you spend time writing a thoughtful post or comment, only to see an instant visceral reaction from an anonymous jerk hurling unfounded charges, insults, and rhetorical nonsense.

Amen to that. Here's the full comment on the Statesman Journal article mentioned above:

Visualize a Cafe Yumm in Salem, Oregon

Hey, my 2007 "visualize" blog post about Trader Joe's worked -- Salem has a store now. So I'm turning my New Age powers into manifesting a Cafe Yumm here.

I've got a perfect location in mind: right next to Trader Joe's. There's a couple of vacant storefronts. The Cafe Yumm franchise info says that 1950 to 2400 square feet are recommended for a restaurant. That seems about the size of the empty space adjoining Trader Joe's.

Come on, Someone in Salem. All you need is $400,000 or so.

My wife and I would throw in a few thousand bucks to become a minority partner with you. Which, hopefully, wouid entitle me to a discount on my favorite Cafe Yumm dish, the Southwest Tofu Wrap: 

Big, grilled tortilla (white or w/w) filled with melted cheddar, grilled seasoned tofu, avocado, tomato, organic salsa, fresh cilantro.

It's amazing. One of the best things I've ever eaten, especially for $6.95. The Tofu Skewer ($3.00) also is a big hit for us. Undoubtedly the meat/fish/chicken dishes are equally Yummy.

There's a Cafe Yumm in Beaverton, Bend, Corvallis, Eugene, Portland, and Springfield. Those are most of the main cities in Oregon. Except, naturally, Salem. Our semi-fair city is woefully behind the times when it comes to cool, hip, healthy, creative restaurants/stores.

No Whole Foods. No REI. No Market of Choice. Until recently, no Trader Joe's. And, sadly, no Cafe Yumm.

The menu would go over great here. I can almost 100% guarantee that, Someone in Salem who could be a potential franchisee. It's largely organic and healthy, but not obviously so. The food is so tasty, even big-bellied, Subway-loving Salemites would be drawn to it.

The story of how Cafe Yumm got started is interesting. From humble beginnings, the creative cooking of founder Mary Ann Beauchamp spread through the enthusiastic “Yummmm! What is this?!!” of her customers.

Let's keep the tale evolving. Into Salem. Next to Trader Joe's. Or anywhere else. Build it and they will buy, Someone in Salem who needs to become a franchisee.

U.S. stands alone in denying climate science reality

It drives me nuts when Americans chant (whether in so many words, or not) "We're number 1! We're number 1!"

No, we're not.

The United States lags northern European nations economically, having a higher Misery Index. We've got a greater proportion of our citizens in prison than any other nation, leading China in absolute numbers even though China has four times as many people. Our health care non-system is the unenvy of the world, costing much more and being less effective than that of other countries.

And we're also near the bottom of scientific literacy among industrialized nations. The proudly know-nothing Republican party bears a large share of the responsibility for this disgraceful state of affairs. 

Witness the fact that the Congress of the United States, because of Republican head-in-the-sand science deniers, has failed to acknowledge the pressing need to deal with a steadily warming world.

The promise to cut emissions was contingent on Congress passing an aggressive cap-and-trade bill. But that 2,000-page bill went into the trash instead of onto the president’s desk. The Great Recession briefly achieved what Congress didn’t — national emissions fell for a short time. But no longer.

“Starting in 2010 it looks like we’re starting to see an uptick again, and you would expect to see emissions continuing to increase in a business-as-usual case out to 2020,” says Kevin Kennedy at the World Resources Institute….

“Nowhere else in the world do you see a political debate about whether climate science is real, whether or not the climate is actually changing,” Kennedy says. “That political climate makes it very difficult to move forward in a comprehensive way. And that is something we need to address in this country.”

Nowhere else in the world. So we're number 1 in at least one area: denial of reality. Unfortunately, this isn't an accomplishment the United States can be proud of. 

Northern Europe shows U.S. how to prosper: raise taxes

I'm a big fan of European "socialism." Which, of course, isn't really socialism.

It's a productive public-private partnership where people pay more in taxes than we in the United States do and get a lot back in return: economic growth, more income equality, greater opportunities for the middle class, stronger social safety nets.

Jeffrey Sachs is an economist who heads up The Earth Institute at Columbia University. He wrote a fascinating piece for the Huffington Post, "The Super Committee's Big Lie." Which is:

The big political lie of the Super Committee is that the deficit must be closed mainly by cutting government spending rather than by raising taxes on corporations and the super-rich. Both parties are complicit. The Republicans want to close the deficit entirely by cutting spending; Obama has brandished the formula of $3 of cuts for every $1 of tax revenues. On either approach, the poor and middle class would suffer grievously while the rich and powerful would win yet again (at least until the social pressures boil over).

What I found most eye-opening in his essay were the statistics about how northern European countries manage to out-perform the United States on a "misery index" that combines the unemployment rate, budget deficit as a percent of GNP, and the current account deficit (basically the ratio of exports to imports).

We're getting crushed on the Misery Index. 

When we calculate the Misery Index for the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe, we find that, lo and behold, the U.S. ranks among the most miserable performers, 5th out of 20 countries. The country with the highest Misery Index is Ireland, followed by Spain, Greece, Portugal, and the United States. All five countries deregulated their financial markets and thereby experienced a housing bubble and bust.

The lowest macroeconomic misery is in Northern Europe. Norway has the lowest score, followed by Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark. All seven countries have lower unemployment rates, smaller budget deficits as a share of GDP, and lower foreign deficits as a share of GDP, than the U.S. We look pretty miserable indeed by comparison.

Lots of people mistakenly think that Europe is in poor economic shape. Sachs says this is true of southern Europe, but not of northern Europe. Even conservatives who like to bash European social democracies recognize this. On right-wing talk radio I often hear envious praise of Germany.

So what can we learn from countries who are doing better on the Misery Index than the United States is? Well, we shouldn't be trying to lower taxes, but rather to raise them. Northern European countries collect considerably higher taxes from their citizens and prosper as a result.

Yet, miracle of miracles, these seven countries collect higher taxes as a share of GDP than does the U.S. Total government revenues in the U.S. (adding federal, state, and local taxes) totaled 31.6 percent of GDP in 2010. This compares with 56.5, 34.2, 39.5, 45.9, 52.7, 43.4, and 55.3 percent of GDP in Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark, respectively. These much higher levels of taxation are raised through a combination of personal, corporate, payroll, and value-added taxes.

The Northern European countries earn their prosperity not through low taxation but through high taxation sufficient to pay for government. In five of the seven countries, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Netherlands, and Sweden, government spending as a share of GDP is much higher than in the U.S.

These countries enjoy much better public services, better educational outcomes, more gainful employment, higher trade balances, lower poverty, and smaller budget deficits. High-quality government services reach all parts of the society. The U.S., stuck with its politically induced "low-tax trap," ends up with crummy public services, poor educational outcomes, high and rising poverty, and a huge budget deficit to boot.

Yes. It's a plain fact: the government often can spend our money better than we can.

Low taxation in the United States is stifling our ability to compete in the global economy. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Our mostly private health care system is wasteful and inefficient. Our citizens aren't being prepared for 21st century jobs.

A Gallup poll conducted about two months ago found that Americans support raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. They also favor increased spending on public works projects, unemployment insurance, and public employees such as teachers, police offices, and firefighters.

In short, a majority of people in the United States want this country to become more like northern Europe, with higher taxes and more social spending. So why isn't this happening? That's the big question.

Sachs offers up some answers in his new book, "The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity." A review says:

Extrication of American politics from the clutches of the "corporatocracy" will require the provision of public money for campaign financing, free media time, a ban on campaign contributions from lobbying firms, and a stop to the "revolving door" between lobbying firms and federal employment. However, Sachs doubts whether effective government can be achieved without the rise of a "credible third party" to break the corrupted Republican-Democratic duopoly.

Makes sense. Hopefully the 2012 election will help get us closer to achieving these goals.

Cavalia is a magical horse show -- Portlanders, go see it!

It's been quite an entertainment week for us. Fresh from seeing Cirque du Soleil's tribute to Michael Jackson at the Rose Garden, last Tuesday we headed to the Pearl District for Cavalia -- a horse show unlike any other. 

There's a connection between Cirque du Soleil and Cavalia: Cavalia's artistic director, Normand Latourelle helped Cirque du Soleil get off the ground and was bought out by the Cirque founders. This helps explain why the Cavalia experience is so similar to the magical atmosphere of Cirque du Soleil.

Well, the parking lot wasn't anything special. But the sight of the gigantic tents housing Cavalia was. I believe the main tent is one of the largest in the world. (All photos taken in dim light with my iPhone 4, which explains the quality of the pics.)

We splurged on Rendez-vous VIP tickets. Good choice. Before the show started we got to gorge on "free" food and drinks in the Rendez-vous tent. Plus, shop for Cavalia-themed merchandise. 

There were plenty of vegetarian choices for us. Pesto pasta, asparagus, hummus/pita bread, salad, and more. Plus good wine served up generously. Along with private VIP bathrooms so we Rendez-vous'ers didn't have to mingle with the plebeian Cavalia-goers when a call of nature was sensed.

Speaking of nature...

We got to Portland early to miss the worst of the late afternoon freeway tieups. Laurel headed to Whole Foods while I trekked to Powell's on Burnside, a Bookstore Wonder of the World. Browsing the new non-fiction section I ended up buying David Abram's "Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology."

Also, Abram's first book, because I could tell I was going to enjoy "Becoming Animal" a lot. I started reading "The Spell of the Sensuous" while sipping a latte in Powell's Books coffee shop, waiting for Laurel to meet me.

The book was an excellent pre-Cavalia mood primer. Abrams starts off "The Spell of the Sensuous" with:

Humans are tuned for relationship. The eyes, the skin, the tongue, ears, and nostrils -- all are gates where our body receives the nourishment of otherness. This landscape of shadowed voices, these feathered bodies and antlers and tumbling streams -- these breathing shapes are our family, the beings with whom we are engaged, with whom we struggle and suffer and celebrate. ...The simple premise of this book is that we are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.

Such is what Cavalia is all about, the horse-human relationship.

Those who expect something else, like the people who left unjustifed "Much of the show was boring" comments on a Yelp review of a Cavalia show in Burbank, are going to miss out on a full Cavalia experience. 

My wife and I are decent horse riders, she more than me. So we probably were better suited than many in the audience to appreciate the astounding skills of both the humans and the horses in the show. The intimate communication between horse and rider/trainer was obvious, yet often difficult to discern explicitly, it seemed so natural.

Case in point: the woman in the second act who engages in a spectacular display of equine choreography with six horses, standing on the sandstrewn Cavalia stage with just her soft voice and a flexible "stick" to control the horses.

A dog trainer would be hard pressed to get six border collies to do what the stallions (or geldings) were accomplishing with seeming ease. Three would circle in one direction, while the other three would circle the other way. Then one horse would break out of the pattern and do something different. 

There's also quite a bit of non-horse performing in the show, probably because the horses need a break now and then. Some of the acrobatics and dancing didn't seem to have much connection with anything horse'ish, but that was fine with me.

Again, this isn't Cirque du Soleil. The non-horse stunts aren't the core of Cavalia. When a bunch of stallions gallop by after an acrobatic interlude, the energy of the show ramps up again.

After it was over, we Rendez-vous ticket holders got a tour of the stables. The horses were being fed, so most had their heads down, munching away, which made my iPhone photography kind of difficult.

(Note: if you also get a chance to walk through the stables, make sure you know how to turn your camera's flash off. It was irritating to see some people flashing away in horse's faces, even though they were repeatedly told "no flash photography.")

Each horse has its own quite-cushy stall. Here's Laurel gazing into one.

We saw a young woman braiding manes. She does a great job. That'd be a cool thing to put on a resume, "Mane braider for a touring horse show."

I didn't know horses got into postures like this. This young horse cozied up to the wall of its stall just like our dog does. Serena loves to curl up on her back, with her paws pressed against something solid.

When I came to a stall where the occupant was standing up and posing nicely, I had to take advantage of the opportunity.

Bottom line, Portlanders: go see Cavalia. It'll be in town until December 4. You'll enjoy it even if you aren't a super horse-lover, but it'll mean more to you if you are.

Here's some You Tube videos of Cavalia. Enjoy the two-dimensional experience, which naturally isn't the same as being there.

 

 

Last observation: quite a few Burbank complainers thought the Cavalia seating was very uncomfortable. We don't agree. The folding seats have backs, and they aren't painful "buckets" like some Yelp commenters said. Cavalia is a Canadian show. Probably the seats were designed for normal human bodies, not oversized/overfed American butts. 

Mitt Romney lies about Barack Obama

When are patriotic, morally upright, truthful Americans going to stop putting up with politicians lying to them? I'm mainly talking to you, Republicans, because right now your party is committing the worst Blatant Lie offenses.

Recently Mitt Romney, the guy who most likely will be your presidential candidate, got a Pants on Fire rating from the highly respected PolitiFact, which sorts out truths from falsehoods. 

Romney approved a campaign ad that claimed Obama said, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." But that's not true, says Politifact.

Here’s what Obama said in the October 2008 speech, which came about two weeks before he defeated Sen. John McCain:

"Even as we face the most serious economic crisis of our time, even as you are worried about keeping your jobs or paying your bills or staying in your homes, my opponent's campaign announced earlier this month that they want to ‘turn the page’ on the discussion about our economy so they can spend the final weeks of this election attacking me instead," Obama said in the speech. "Sen. McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.’"

So the comment is drastically different than the way it's portrayed in the Romney ad. Obama was actually saying that his opponent’s campaign three years earlier had said, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." That context is not included in the Romney ad -- and leaving it out sends a profoundly different message.

Well, that's putting it mildly. PolitiFact doesn't like to use the word "lie." Pants on Fire, though, and lie are synonymous. This wasn't an innocent mistake. Romney knew damn well that Obama was quoting McCain. 

He just chose to lie.

Is this who we want to be President of the United States, someone who has no moral convictions backing up his political credentials, someone who will do anything to win an election, someone who denies reality in favor of fantasy?

It's disgusting, all this blatant lying by politicians.

I'm not saying that Republicans are the only ones guilty of this. Democrats lie also. But Romney is guilty of one of the worst lies: claiming that an opposing politician said something that he or she really didn't.

It'll only stop when voters punish candidates for not speaking the truth, not respecting facts, not coming down on the side of objective (or intersubjective) reality. Saying so doesn't make it so, Mitt Romney.

Amazingly, on the radio I heard a spokesman for Romney claim that because Obama spoke those misleadingly edited words, it was OK to use them in the ad. After all, they were Obama's words, because he said them. Well, turnabout is fair play.

Did you know that Mitt Romney wants to raise everybody's taxes? This must be true, because Romney spoke those words. Check it out.

 

Michael Jackson The Immortal World Tour -- we loved it! (and our VIP seats)

Last Friday we braved a few snow showers in Portland to reach the Rose Garden, where we had tickets to see Cirque du Soleil's "Michael Jackson The Immortal World Tour." Here's my five word review: Wow, Wow, and more Wow!

This show is special. It isn't like a good movie where you enjoy it a lot, but the impact of the flick fades quickly. I'm still affected by this magical production. 

It starts strong, and builds from there.

Eventually I felt immersed in an almost other-worldly experience. Understand, I'm not at all religious. But "Michael Jackson The Immortal World Tour" has moments that can only be described as deeply spiritual -- though not at all godly.

Some performances in the show are manly powerful. Others are womanly delicate. This reflects the dual nature of Michael Jackson. And, heck, of ourselves, whatever our yin/yang blend is.

I came away from the show with several life insights affirmed and strengthened. Diversity, creative self-expression, pushing the personal edge, daring to be different, acting confidently -- this is a big part of what life is all about.

Maybe the entire part. Michael Jackson showed this; so does the Cirque du Soleil tribute to him.

My wife and I decided to blow some of our Social Security income on VIP tickets. If you're considering doing the same, my advice is do it, if possible. But not for the rather cheesy gift bag, which is the only non-seating VIP benefit we got, aside from "free" parking.

On the positive side, I'm pretty sure that we and our fellow VIP'ers had the choicest seats in the arena. This alone is worth the extra VIP cost, in my utterly subjective opinion. We were seated near the runway that projects out from the main stage, about two-thirds of the way down (that is, closer to the end of the runway than the beginning).

Perfect, because much of the show takes place on the runway.

We had great views of the performers, close enough to clearly see their expressions, costumes, makeup, athleticism, dancing ability, and hot bodies. Sure, images of them were projected onto a screen above the stage, but that isn't as good as seeing the performers up close and personal.

I don't know if my wife heard all of my frequent "I can't believe it!" and "Wow!" utterances, since we were wearing earplugs. This is another theme of the show, one shared with all Cirque du Soleil productions: what we human beings are capable of doing, and being, is far beyond the everyday normal.

That's inspiring. Most of us can't run away and join the circus. But everyone can be all that he/she can be, which probably is quite a bit more than what we allow to be expressed.

One of the most mind-blowing performances was by champion pole dancer Felix Cane, who also was high on my personal hot body ranking. I can't begin to describe what Felix can do with a tall pole. Her body and athletic ability border on the miraculous.

(Note: my wife questions whether Felix Cane is the woman we saw in the show. I'll agree that the pole dancer at the Rose Garden performance seemed shorter than Felix. But the moves in this video look just the same as what the dancer we saw did. And Felix is listed in our program.)

Check her out:

 

And here's the Official Preview of the show:

  

 

Policy at Occupy protest act like jerks

Back in the '60s, at Vietnam War protests, people called police "pigs."

I'll admit that this word went through my mind when I watched this You Tube video of police pepper spraying peaceful protesters sitting down at a University of California Davis "Occupy" protest.

 

But now, in my mellowed out sixties (the age, not the decade), I'll call them jerks. Same difference. Here's a CBS news story of the event. And here's a petition calling for the UC Davis chancellor to resign.

I return my Kindle Fire -- after one day

Within half an hour of the earliest time it was possible to order a Kindle Fire on Amazon's web site, my one-click reservation had been made.

Within three hours of opening up the Kindle box after UPS delivered it yesterday, I'd decided to return the pseudo-tablet. Which I did this afternoon.

I'm sorry Amazon, but Apple has spoiled me.

I have a MacBook Pro laptop that I love. I have an iPhone 4 that I love. My wife has an iPad 2 that I sort of love, my limited affection for it perhaps being more a matter of our passing acquaintance relationship rather than an intimate bonding.

Apple products have a certain you can't resist me quality that I was hoping would be evident in the Kindle Fire. Sadly, no. I found the device functional, but not Apple oh-so-cool'ish.

My biggest problem with the Fire, though, wasn't a lack of lust but a deficit in usability. After I played around with the thing for a while my overriding thought was, "Why do I need it?" Not able to come up with a convincing reason, the Kindle Fire is on its way back to Amazon.

I tried reading a book on the Fire. Ugh. It was readable enough, but highlighting passages was annoyingly difficult, and I'm a habitual highlighter/note taker. It looks like paper books are going to continue to be in my hands rather than an e-reader.

Then I fired up the video section of the fire. It was easy to access my Amazon Prime free videos and start watching the first episode of the first season of "24," which I'd never seen.

After a few minutes though, I realized that I'd much prefer to watch TV on, well, a television. We have a nice big screen TV, and a bit of Googling led me to realize that it isn't possible to stream videos from the Kindle Fire to a television, which somehow I'd envisioned myself being able to do.

Well, I'd also not evisioned myself doing this, because I couldn't really see how the Fire would be able to get video directly to our television without an intermediary like the Roku. So I ordered a Roku as a streaming video backup plan. It came a day before the Fire was delivered, but I left the Roku in the box until I could test out the Kindle Fire and see if it could perform a streaming miracle.

It couldn't. I then had no trouble connecting the Roku 2 XS to our TV via a HDMI cable, and also to our wi-fi broadband connection.

Yes, it was kind of a pain to click out video searches with the Roku remote control. A tablet like the Fire would make that easier given its virtual keyboard. However, in short order I'd purchased the first episode of this season's "Survivor South Pacific." (Somehow our DVR had failed to record the series; naturally I assume it was DirecTV's problem, not mine.)

The Roku streamed the television program perfectly, in HD, without commercials. This, by the way, was much better performance than Apple TV offered when I tried to do the same thing with that device. Apple TV requires that a program be downloaded, rather than streamed. 

I gave up when I saw that Apple TV had only downloaded 21 minutes of a one hour program after taking about ten minutes to do even that. Then, when I went back to see how Apple TV was doing, the download had frozen. I'll probably try to get my $2.99 or whatever it was back from iTunes. For now, I'll content myself with blog-bashing Apple TV. Roku is better, so far as I can tell.

Anyway, back to the Kindle Fire. Since I've never felt that I needed an iPad, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I wasn't turned on by the Kindle Fire. It was ever less gadget-desire-kindling than I anticipated it would be, though.

This review pretty much sums up how I feel. The Fire isn't really a tablet; it's mainly an Amazon content provider. And it's e-reading capabilities aren't as good as lower cost Kindle alternatives, if that's what you're looking for.

The review ends with:

Ultimately, the $200 Kindle Fire lacks many features I consider essential in a serious tablet: the ability to work on it using a keyboard, browse the Internet quickly, view whole magazine pages, and so on. But we can't fault it for not being an iPad. It's only a few hundred fewer dollars, and Amazon has never marketed it as a tablet. This is a basic media consumption device.

I wouldn't be discussing pricing if I didn't have some doubts about the Kindle Fire's value. There are no dealbreakers here, but the Kindle Fire is pretty pokey, and the browsing experience is not (yet) what was promised. The Kindle Fire operating system doesn't improve on Gingerbread in any appreciable way, and all it does is put Amazon's services and stores front and center.

I hesitate to recommend that people buy a product that is as unpolished as the Kindle Fire, particularly because I suspect it will end up often as a gift from early tablet adopters to late ones (but remember—this isn't a tablet!). With iPads setting the bar for consumer expectations, I don't like to see usability and responsiveness backslide just because the price is lower. It's not impossible Amazon won't further refine the Kindle Fire with software updates, but there's no precedent for that.

The best way to think of the Kindle Fire is as a decent e-reader that can do some extra stuff—namely, play videos and browse the Internet. For $200, that's not a bad deal—but just make sure that it's one you're willing to make.

Oregon court says "Stop!" to killing wolves

Yesterday I was happy when Oregon Wild reported that the Oregon Court of Appeals had reaffirmed a ban on killing two wolves in our state. 
Download Wolf article 

This above-linked info about the continued stay on any wolf-killing by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) whetted my appetite for learning more about why the Court of Appeals slapped the wrist of ODFW and the Oregon Cattlemen's Assocation (OCA).

I wasn't surprised that Cascadia Wildlands, Center for Biological Diversity, and Oregon Wild won in court. I've been following this issue for quite a while, blogging recently about the absurdity of risking the recovery of an endangered Oregon species just because a few cattle have been predated upon.

So tonight I read the entire 16 page order of the Court of Appeals granting the stay extension pending judicial review of ODFW's kill-happy wolf policy. It's an impressive piece of legal work. Here's some highlights that I found particularly interesting. 

Page 4. The court says that because the Oregon Wolf Conservation and Management plan was adopted in 2005, people have adjusted to these rules over the past six years. Legally, this puts more of a burden on the petitioners (Oregon Wild, etc.) who seek a stay of the wolf-killing. They need to show that a stay is necessary to prevent irreparable harm and that they're likely to prevail upon review. Bingo! The petitioners showed both things. 

Page 5. The court found that, more likely than not, there are 23 gray wolves in Oregon -- more than the petitioners contended, and less than the OCA argued. The goal of the Wolf Plan is to have seven breeding pairs producing two pups a year over a span of three years.

Page 6. But currently there are only two breeding pairs of wolves in Oregon, one of which would have been destroyed if the ODFW kill order of an alpha male had been allowed to happen. Plus, the court found that this alpha male, which has a radio collar, couldn't have killed the cattle which spurred the kill order request by a rancher. The wolf has an perfect alibi: no radio-collared wolves were in the area of the kill. Yet somehow ODFW and the OCA want to kill the alpha male anyway, making the court go "huh?"

Page 8. The court agreed with the petitioners that the focus of the Wolf Plan isn't on sheer numbers of wolves in Oregon, but on breeding pairs. Again, why destroy one of two current breeding pairs, especially since the male wolf that ODFW and OCA seek to kill wasn't responsible for cattle deaths? And here's an important finding by the court which I'll quote verbatim:

As petitioners argue, as predators at the top of the food chain, wolves play an important and unique role in maintaining the balance and health of Oregon's natural environment, and contribute to biological diversity. The court also recognizes that neither petitioners nor their members can be compensated by money damages for the killing of even one wolf. Petitioners also have shown that denying a stay likely will cause irreparable harm to the Imnaha pack itself for the immediate future, and may cause irreparable harm to the reestablishment of the species as a whole in Oregon, at least for the reasonably foreseeable future. To that extent, petitioners have established irreparable harm.

Ranchers want to be compensated for livestock losses. Fine. That's being done. But the court found that everyone who lives in Oregon and enjoys the reintroduction of wolves to our state is harmed by needless killing of these "important and unique" animals. And money can't remedy that harm.

Page 9. Oregon law says that no "person" can kill an individual member of an endangered species, which the gray wolf is. Yet ODFW says that, as a government agency, it isn't a "person," so it can kill away. That's bizarre reasoning. People do the killing for ODFW. The agency is run by people. Yet ODFW wants to be able to ignore the law against killing gray wolves, even though the species is endangered.

Page 11. ln a fine bit of ironic legal writing, the court said "It is not self-evident that killing individual members promotes conservation of the species..." However, ODFW argued that killing wolves is necessary to increase the number of wolves. Wow. George Orwell forecast "doublethink" in his 1984. ODFW has taken it to heart. Killing wolves is necessary to save them, the agency believes, because killing wolves keeps the Oregon Cattlemen's Assocation happy, and then they might support the Oregon Wolf Plan. Weird. Very weird. The court didn't fall for the weirdness.

Page 13. I guess ranchers aren't as tough as the image they like to project. The Oregon Cattlemen's Association argued that ranchers are suffering emotionally as they worry about their livestock being killed by wolves, and by their supposedly huge financial losses from wolf predation. Oh, poor ranchers. The truth is that since 2006 there were 65,000 cattle and calf deaths in Oregon, 94% from non-predator causes. In 2011 there has been less than 20 confirmed cattle deaths by wolves. 

Page 15. Oregon already has a program for compensating ranchers for cattle killed by wolves. So why should wolves be killed, when ranchers are being paid for the loss of their cattle? Since the Department of Agriculture doesn't seem to have implemented the compensation program yet, the court ordered the petitioners to put up $5,000 to pay for any cattle killed by wolves. That should be no problem. I'd be happy to contribute to the fund. 

Bottom line: The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Oregon Cattlemen's Association, got slapped down by the Court of Appeals. The judges found that Oregon Wild and the other petitioners have a good chance of winning their case, and I agree.

Killing members of an endangered species in order to conserve the species doesn't make any sense. I bet the Oregon Wolf Plan will have to be amended to reflect that obvious fact.

God is joking with Republican presidential candidates

I don't believe in the traditional Judeo-Christian God. However, if I'm wrong and the Big Dude Upstairs really does exist, I like his sense of humor.

(Hopefully he'll give me a smiling high-five when I reach the Pearly Gates and say, "Oops. What a surprise!)

Anyway, some cosmic jokester seems to be having a good time with Republican presidential candidates Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum. Each of them believes that God is on his/her side, urging on their candidacies.

Cain says that God convinced him to run for president. 

“I prayed and prayed and prayed. I’m a man of faith, I had to do a lot of praying for this one, more praying than I’d ever done before in my life. And when I finally realized that it was God saying that this is what I needed to do, I was like Moses. ‘You’ve got the wrong man, Lord. Are you sure?’ ” Cain told a crowd of more than 100 people at the Young Republican National Federation, an event hosted by the Georgia Young Republicans at the Westin Peachtree Plaza.

But Bachmann already had gotten a sense from God that she should run for political office, and there's no higher office than the presidency.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., says that she prayed to God about whether or not to run for political office and that those prayers provided her with a "sense from God" of "assurance about the direction" she was taking.

With Perry, God spoke to him through his wife -- which makes perfect sense to me, given the dictates from on high my own wife regularly communicates. (Such as "Thou shalt get rid of your crap in the garage.")

Anita Perry said that God had called her husband to run for president and likened the decision to encountering “a burning bush.” She said that God was testing Perry with his current difficulties.

Likewise, Rick Santorum's wife is serving as a channel for the divine will.

Yes, God has told Rick Santorum to run for president. Just ask his wife, who said last month, “We believe with all our hearts that this is what God wants.”

The good news for Democrats in all this is that God also was behind Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidancy in 2008. 

Sarah Palin believed that Sen. John McCain chose her to be his running mate in 2008 because of "God's plan," according to a top political strategist in the Arizona Republican's campaign.

God, I like how you're screwing around with all these Republicans. It sure looks like you're divinely ticked off at them for being so holier-than-thou sanctimonious, while ignoring your entreaties to help the poor, wage peace, and such.

After all, Jesus is a liberal, so God must be one too.

Electric car parking spaces being used by gas guzzlers

After owning our Nissan Leaf electric car for seven weeks, always charging it at home, I decided to check out the recently installed charging stations at the Chemeketa Parkade in downtown Salem (Oregon). 

There are four of them, conveniently located on the first floor of the parking structure near the walkway to JCPenney's. So convenient, they're tempting to drivers of non-electric cars who blatantly ignore the signs displayed between each charger.

Here's the evidence.

Two parking spaces are dedicated to each charger, as the cord can reach a car parked in either space. So eight spaces should either be empty, or filled with an electric car. Count the electric cars in those eight spaces. 

(Hint: our Nissan Leaf is an attractive light blue. None of the other cars in the photo is electric. If you came up with "one" as the answer, give yourself a carbon free prize.)

This is irritating. Most people respect designated handicapped parking spaces. Why don't they respect electric vehicle only parking spaces?

The most likely reason is that Salem doesn't have a city ordinance that levies a fine for using a space assigned to an electric vehicle charging station. I know this, because after I drove our Leaf into the only open space I grabbed my iPhone and started to snap a photo of the offending gas guzzling car parked next to me.

I hadn't realized that the driver was still in the car.

He jumped out and said, "Hey, don't turn me in. I'm with the EV (electric vehicle) project." The guy was there to fix a broken charger. He apologetically said that his work car couldn't be electric because he does so much travelling around, since the range of a EV is only about 100 miles.

OK, this was a good guy.

I holstered my iPhone camera and turned to asking him parking questions. He said that Salem didn't have any rules against parking a regular car in an EV spot. I told him that the chargers being installed by the EV Project aren't going to be of much use if owners of electric cars aren't able to use them -- an emerging problem.

Hopefully the City of Salem will change its parking ordinance so a ticket can be issued if an ICE (internal combustion engine) car uses an electric vehicle space. Apparently California has such a law, as does the city of Portland. 

California recently considered a controversial revision of its statute, AB 475.I'm not sure if it's become law.

"Pure" electric car owners in California, like us Leafies, were upset that the proposed law would (1) give equal parking rights to hybrid electric cars like the Volt, which can run on an ICE after the battery gives out, and (2) require that a car in an EV slot be actually charging.

Being an EV newbie, I wasn't aware about charging etiquette in early adopter places like California. But from this article I learned some manners:

The existing EV etiquette deems that if an EV parked in a charging space has finished charging, a nearby EV owner may remove the charger and plug it into his or her own car. Now, under the new law, the EV owner who was parked in the designated EV charging space but is now charger-less could be towed.

Well, that doesn't seem right.

But at least California has rules and an enforcement mechanism for Electric Vehicle Only parking spaces. The Oregon Legislature needs to follow California's lead. So does the City of Salem.

I'm going to do some lobbying about this, now that I've seen how many ICE people thumb their noses at EV Only parking signs.

Global warming deniers mocked in great "Denial Tango" song

Rational arguments and solid science only go so far when it comes to pointing out the ridiculousness of global warming deniers.

For true mockery, it takes an Australian band, "Men With Day Jobs." (Reportedly the jobs are Insecurity Guard, Impersonal Trainer, and Communications Impediment.) 

I learned about their Denial Tango on the Climate Progress blog. It's well worth a look/listen. My favorite lyric: 

I'm in denial.
Deep denial.
And as the waters rise about me
I'll just hold my breath and say
"It isn't so."

 

On a more serious note, there's good news on the global warming front. President Obama has put the Keystone tar sands pipeline on hold until after the November 2012 election. This is a big win for environmentalists.

Also pleasing: Rand Paul and his Senate Republican cronies failed to weaken air quality standards that will prevent up to 34,000 premature deaths a year. So much for the "party of life" -- which doesn't consider saving many thousands of lives to be more important than fossil fuel industry campaign contributions.

Help with my .XXX site market research

Until today I'd never considered becoming a purveyor of XXX material.

But I just got an email from my domain name registrar, Dotster, informing me of how important it is to have a .XXX presence now that this top-level domain is available.

Registering a .XXX domain enables you to keep control of your online brand. Landrush is open to members of the Sponsored Community or individuals who qualify to become members. General Availability is open to everyone regardless of whether you are an adult industry professional or simply looking to protect your web presence.

Well, I don't exactly understand what they're talking about. (Suggestion to Dotster: Have a buxom naked woman on a webcam explain how .XXX domain registration works.)

I'm into keeping control of my online brand, though. Which I gather is me, since I'm a blogger.

And given how large the market for porn is, it sure seems like I should be able to come up with a .XXX site that could channel some extra cash into our checking account. "Our" reflects the fact that I'm married, so this circumstance will have at least some slight effect on what sort of porn site I could develop.

I'm thinking of a twist inspired by the popular Porn for Women book, which shows pictures of men cooking, listening, folding laundry, asking for directions, and other outrageous female fantasies. 

The twist would be that I'd aim my .XXX site at the opposite end of the market: women (and, heck, men also, so long as they have a credit card) who are turned on by male messiness. I'd like to embrace cinéma vérité on my porn site, so the most truthful subject I could film -- also, the cheapest -- would be me going about my usual everyday life.

Thus I'm wondering what the worldwide market is for what admittedly would be a narrow niche of the .XXX online offerings: video of a 63 year old man (in good shape!) doing things around the house that would annoy a neatnik, yet (I can only hope) turn on people with a fetish for certain sorts of messiness.

If you're such a person, especially of the female variety, let me know how much you'd pay to have access to regularly updated videos of me:

-- leaving the towels in our bathrooms all askew
-- splashing water onto edges of the kitchen sink without wiping it off
-- tossing clothes on the top of my dresser instead of hanging them up
-- putting my electric toothbrush away with toothpaste still on it
-- not washing the coffee pot for, like, two weeks
-- hanging shirts in my closet so casually they're half falling-off the hangers 
-- stacking mail, books, magazines & notes to myself around my laptop in glorious confusion

Now, I realize that my MessyMan.XXX site will only appeal to a woman who (1) is turned on by male messiness, yet (2) has an exceptionally neat man in her life, so is feeling unfulfilled. (I considered adding "or can't find a messy man," but that sounded ridiculous.)

A small market? Yes.

But with seven billion people in the world and ever-increasing Internet access, a MessyMan.XXX site could be a winner. I await the verdict of responses to this market research blog post. Thanks in advance for your help.

Occupy Portland needs to shut itself down -- peacefully

Great job, Occupy Portland'ers.

For most of your urban park occupying and city street marchifying you've succeeded in raising awareness about the obscene imbalances between the wealthiest 1% and remaining 99% in this country.

But the time has come to pack up, dismantle the tents, have a final General Assembly, vow to keep fighting against Wall Street excesses in other ways, and fade away from the occupy tactics.

When proud progressives like my wife and I think, "Time to go," you know what? It's time to go. 

Peacefully. With dignity. Proudly. 

The Mayor of Portland, Sam Adams, has ordered the Occupy Portland camps cleared by 12:01 am on Sunday. That three day deadline seems entirely reasonable, given how many problems the camps are causing.

You had my support when the media focus was on social change. But now rats, bombs, drug use, drunkenness and such are all that's being reported on the nightly news. Not good.

My wife and I marched at an Occupy Salem rally three weeks ago. Now, we'd stay home. You're losing the people who are most sympathetic to your views. So consider how people on the fence are looking at you now.

Your cause is more important than any feeling of "we're entitled" you may have. Plus, you really aren't entitled to take over public parks indefinitely. They're for, you know, the general public.

Thanks for your passion and commitment. Please direct that energy into continuing efforts to bring back our middle class and economic fairness. And don't forget to vote!

Why I decided to still get a PSA test

I'm a believer in scientific research. I worked as a health planner for over ten years. I wrote a well-received analysis, "Quality of life in allocating health care resources." I understand that much medical care is wasteful, unneeded, and ineffective.

Nonetheless, at my annual physical last week this 63 year old guy still decided to get a PSA test, which is used to detect prostate cancer. Only problem is, the test isn't very effective. In October the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommended against getting the test, in most cases. 

Healthy men should no longer receive a P.S.A. blood test to screen for prostate cancer because the test does not save lives over all and often leads to more tests and treatments that needlessly cause pain, impotence and incontinence in many, a key government health panel has decided.

Reading an article about this in our newspaper, I'd pretty much decided to pass on a PSA test when it came time for my annual physical. If the test causes more harm than good, why get one?

However, I'm fortunate to have a family doctor who open-mindedly discusses options with her patients. We talked about the pros and cons of me getting a PSA test for five minutes or so. In the end, I said "Hey, why not? I'll get a PSA test this year, like I have in the past."

This was what shaped my reasoning: (1) My insurance would pay for the test. (2) I could either ignore the results of the test, or I could pay attention to the results. (3) Either way -- ignore or pay attention -- I'd have more information if I got the PSA test, than if I didn't.

You can read the draft recommendation from the Preventive Services Task Force here. lt seems solid.

Experts at the Oregon Health Science University, a short drive up I-5 from where I live, affirmed the Task Force's review of the literature on PSA test effectiveness. So I'm convinced that, given current knowledge, for most men there's no compelling reason to get a PSA test.

But there's also no compelling reason not to.

It's up to the individual, like me, who is as capable of deciding whether to get a PSA test as to how much importance should be given to the results. Meaning, just as I could have decided to pass on a PSA test, so I could pass on any further diagnosing if the test came back with a positive result.

In the exam room I told my doctor, "The main argument against getting a PSA test seems to be that a positive result often leads to unnecessary treatment, with nasty side effects (impotence, incontinence). However, this implies that patients are helpless to resist the Medical Treatment Machine, which sucks them in against their will."

So I thought, why not? 

A positive test result would worry me, but not nearly so much as it would have before I learned that 80% of positive PSA results are false. Thus usually it makes sense to take a positive result lightly, or even to ignore it completely.

Again, I realized that I could either ignore the PSA test by not getting one, or I could get the test and then ignore the results. (Which turned out to be negative, by the way.) I trusted that my doctor and I could deal with a positive result wisely -- not rushing into a biopsy or surgery without a very good reason.

This attitude is in line with a recent "Perspective" piece in the New England Journal of Medicine: "One Man at a Time -- Resolving the PSA Controversy."

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently released a draft recommendation on screening for prostate cancer, designed for primary care physicians and health systems, and has opened it for public comment until November 8, 2011. After completing a rigorous evidence review, the task force decided to recommend against screening for prostate-specific antigen (PSA), concluding that there is moderate or high certainty that the service has no net benefit or that the harms outweigh the benefits. This grade D recommendation applies to healthy men of all ages, regardless of race or family history. The task force's suggestion for practice for grade D interventions is to “discourage the use of this service.”

...Our perspective is that this evidence of a possible small but finite benefit from the largest trial would best support a grade C recommendation for men 55 to 69 years of age. With a grade C recommendation, the task force would be recommending “against routinely providing the service” while indicating that “there may be considerations that support providing the service in an individual patient” and stipulating that “there would need to be at least moderate certainty that the net benefit is small.” The task force's suggestions for practice in the case of a grade C recommendation include the suggestion that they “offer/provide this service only if other considerations support offering or providing the service in an individual patient.”

A grade C recommendation would allow the patient to be involved in the decision to skip or choose a PSA screening test, after a discussion with a primary care provider about the magnitude of the known harms and the potential for some benefit. The patient could then provide his perspective on how he views the trade-off. Weighing the pros and cons to make a decision about PSA screening is an individual process, and different well-informed men will make different decisions. 

Absolutely.

This is a middle way: recognizing that on the whole, the PSA test isn't called for; but if an individual patient wants one after considering the pros and cons, he should be able to get one.

"Wild Shots" fundraiser skillfully pulls on boozed-up heartstrings

Congratulations to Portland's Crag Law Center for putting on another fun "WIld Shots" benefit event last Saturday night.

After scoring a great Oregonian article, the industrial-chic Holocene on SE Morrison was densely packed with environmentalists decked out in a typically NW diverse array of party-going garb -- from tuxedos to flannel shirts and blue jeans.

My favorite part of the evening was the live auction of nature themed photographic art (hence the name "Wild Shots") and other items. Crag's skillful handling of their biennial art benefit is a case study in how to suck money out of your supporters.

The formula is pretty darn simple: free booze (after buying a $25 ticket) plus inspiring "support us" stories plus quality auction items equals freeflowing bids.

Of course, I may be overemphasizing the importance of the first variable -- free booze -- given that I more than doubled my usual nightly alcohol consumption after drinking in fairly short order a beer and large glass of wine proffered by the busy "Wild Shots" barkeeps.

I felt pleasingly loose, which is exactly the frame of no-mind that a benefit auction should strive for.

Even so, for almost every moment of the live auction my bidding paddle wasn't raised -- in part because my non-drinking designated-driver wife was holding it under her coat in what may have been an attempt to protect our family finances from a mildly inebriated husband who adores the Crag Law Center in his normal state of consciousness and loves it after some beer, wine, and inspired mini-speeches from Crag attorney Ralph Bloemers and fellow Salem supporter Arnold Strong (an Iraq war veteran who shows that green and khaki go well together).

When the auctioneer lady began to plead for cash contributions that'd be matched up to $10,000 by an anonymous donor, my bid paddle hand began to twitch. In between a call for $1,000 and $25 donations I grabbed the paddle from my wife and made what may, or may not, have been a legally enforceable contribution commitment.

I suppose "your honor, they gave me free booze, then tugged on my heartstrings, and I couldn't help myself" could have been argued.

But not only wasn't I going to chance that when Ralph Bloemers recently won an important Oregon Supreme Court land use case, my VISA card soul remained completely content with the donation even in the clear-headed light of today. 

The Crag Law Center does great work for amazingly little cost. 

And their "Wild Shots" benefit is a highly enjoyable way to be separated from your money. Plus, their own. I saw that Crag staff were active bidders on auction items themselves.

(Of course, since they'd been at the event for longer than I had, booze may have loosened their wallets even more than it had mine. Which raises a theoretical legal question: can employees of a law firm sue themselves for alcohol-induced charitable enticement?)

Mitt Romney believes "personhood" begins at conception

It's becoming difficult to find much difference between the crazy Republican presidential candidates and Mitt Romney. This is good news for President Obama, since moderates and independents aren't likely to vote for someone way out there on the right-wing edge.

Not long ago, in 2002, Romney fully supported a woman's right to choose an abortion. Now the flip-flopper in chief says he's on board with a state initiative in Mississippi that defines personhood as beginning at the moment of conception.

In an interview this week with Mike Huckabee, Romney said that he would “absolutely” have signed life at conception legislation while he was Massachusetts governor.

Wow. Good luck with defending that position if you end being the Republican nominee, Mitt.

You want all abortions to be illegal, even in cases of rape, incest, or a threat to the mother's life. You want many, if not most, forms of contraception to be unavailable to women. You want to put up barriers to in vitro fertilization, and open the door to charging a pregnant woman with murder if she suffers a miscarriage. You want doctors to worry about being arrested if they save a woman's life even when her embryo has no chance of being born.

Check out this video for a look at the brave new cruel world Mitt Romney wants to unleash on our country. Nasty stuff.

A statement from the Mississippi Medical Association said the measure's reach would go beyond abortion access. Unintended consequences, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says, may include criminal prosecution of women who miscarry or use contraception and of doctors who administer lifesaving treatment to women with abnormal pregnancies or disease.

 

Mitt Romney also wants to do away with Medicare as we know it and replace it with a voucher system that's almost exactly like the Paul Ryan plan -- which would cost the average Medicare recipient $6,000 more per year. 

So Romney wants to screw over women and senior citizens, not exactly a strong foundation for a presidential run. But, hey, keep it up, Mitt. You can bet that the Obama reelection campaign is loving your extreme rightward tilt.

Coffee measuring rule: use 2 tablespoons per 6 ounces

I love coffee. I've made it every day for many years. But recently I learned that I've been making it wrong. Too weak. Damn you, Mr. Coffee!

Obeying the instructions on my Mr. Coffee drip machine, I've been dutifully using three tablespoons of ground coffee per 20 ounces of water (four 5 ounce cups, which to me -- and lots of other people these caffeinated days -- actually is one cup of coffee, a "Venti" in Starbucks terminology).

But that's just .15 tablespoons of coffee per ounce of water, whereas the Holy Commandment of coffee making is to use two tablespoons per six ounces, which translates into .33 tablespoons for every ounce of water.

Wow! All these years I've been drinking coffee that was only half as strong as it should have been. How do I know this? Check it out:

Jerry Baldwin, a co-founder of Starbucks correctly says, "Don't Be Afraid of Strong Coffee."

When people ask how to make better coffee at home, my first question is "How much coffee is in your coffee?" One of the common problems we professionals encounter away from our own brewing is weak coffee. And there is nothing that can be done to salvage weak coffee.

... on countless occasions I've served our coffee to people for the first time. On first sip, they say, "This is strong." By the third or fourth sip, they say, "This is good." The main surprise, I think, is that most coffee is weak and that's what people are expecting. But as soon as they actually taste the full flavor of fresh, freshly ground, full strength coffee, they have a coffee epiphany.

...We recommend at least a full coffee measure (two tablespoons) per six fluid ounces of water for all brewing methods except espresso. 

This also is what my current coffee of choice, Trader Joe's Organic Fair Trade Wake Up Blend, says on the container: "Use approximately 2 tablespoons of ground coffee for each 6 ounces of cold water."

And almost every knowledgeable-appearing web site that popped up in a Google "coffee strength measures per ounce" search also advised the same Holy Commandment: 2 tablespoons for each 6 ounces of water, with a coffee scoop being defined as holding 2 tablespoons.

(For example, see here, here, and here.) 

Of course, a coffee strength that appeals to one person may not appeal to another. My wife thinks that the coffee I make is a bit too strong, though she happily drinks it. I've come to realize, though, that the way I used to make coffee wasn't allowing the full taste of the beans to come through.

I have Trader Joe's to thank for my caffeinated enlightenment. When a store here in Salem, Oregon finally opened, I started drinking the free coffee samples. I liked the taste of them, noticing that they had a lot more oomph than the coffee I was making. 

Observing the 2 tablespoons per 6 ounces advice on the Trader Joe's container, I changed my Mr. Coffee brewing approach. 

Interestingly, when I used 8 tablespoons (4 measures) to make four cups of coffee in the Mr. Coffee carafe, the brew seemed too strong. So I switched to 6 tablespoons, which I figured was equivalent to 1.5 tablespoons per 6 ounce cup.

But before writing this post I decided to check the Mr. Coffee carafe to make sure that four cups really was 24 ounces, the standard way of measuring a cup of coffee being 6 ounces. I discovered that Mr. Coffee considers a cup to be 5 ounces. 

This meant that the way I now was making coffee, which tasted great to me, was equivalent to .3 tablespoons per ounce of water (1.5 / 5 = .3). That -- coffee research drum roll, please -- was darn close to the .33 tablespoons per ounce Holy Commandment (2 / 6 = .33).

So in an aroundabout way I confirmed what expert coffee brewers had known way before me: using 2 tablespoons of coffee for every 6 ounces of water produces an excellent cup of coffee.

Try it, if you're not already. I bet you'll like it.