HinesSight

Human-caused global warming continues as predicted

Thankfully, the influence of global warming deniers appears to be shrinking steadily. Reality has a way of weeding out those who fail to respect it.

Even though this can take a while, truthful facts win out in the end.

But fossil fuel industry-funded deniers, aided and abetted by anti-science media outlets like Fox News, continue to distort the disturbing truth of how humans are warming the Earth's climate much more rapidly than nature has ever done it on her/its own.

For example, when I briefly channel surf onto right-wing talk radio, fairly frequently I hear that "global warming has stopped."

That's bullshit, of course. Yet lies often have a modicum of truth sprinkled over the top of them to make the falsehood easier to swallow.

Climate Progress has a great graph that shows how the B.S. is promulgated in the post, "As Scientists Predicted, Global Warming Continues." (You'll probably need to click on the image below to see the animation; or click on the link and scroll down to the graph.)

Here's the explanation of how the "skeptics" are twisting the truth as known by reputable climate scientists. 

One often hears the statement in the media that global warming stopped in 1998, or that there has been no global warming for the past 16 years. Why pick 16 years? Why not some nice round number like 20 years? Or better yet, 30 years, since the climate is generally defined as the average weather experienced over a period of 30 years or longer?

Temperatures at Earth’s surface undergo natural, decades-long warming and cooling trends, related to the La Niña/El Niño cycle and the 11-year sunspot cycle. The reason one often hears the year 1998 used as a base year to measure global temperature trends is that this is a cherry-picked year.

An extraordinarily powerful El Niño event that was the strongest on record brought about a temporary increase in surface ocean temperatures over a vast area of the tropical Pacific that year, helping boost global surface temperatures to the highest levels on record (global temperatures were warmer in both 2005 and 2010, but not by much.) But in the years from 2005 – 2012, La Niña events have been present for at least a portion of every single year, helping keep Earth’s surface relatively cool.

Thus, if one draws a straight-line fit of global surface temperatures from 1998 to 2012, a climate trend showing little global warming results. If one picks any year prior to 1998, or almost any year after 1998, a global warming trend does result. The choice of 1998 is a deliberate abuse of statistics in an attempt to manipulate people into drawing a false conclusion on global temperature trends. One of my favorite examples of this manipulation of statistics is shown an animated graph called “The Escalator”, created by skepticalscience.com (Figure 1).

There's another highly informative bit of truth-telling in this post: a short video that shows clearly how human-caused global warming continues on unabated, once the transitory effects of volcanic activity and El Nino are taken out of the long term temperature trend.

 

Skin biopsy unleashes my inner anxious Woody Allen

I can't recall what Woody Allen movie this scene was in, but the image has stuck in my mind.

Allen's neurotic character is worried about some health problem that his over-anxious mind has convinced him is deadly serious.

After a visit to his doctor, where he gets good news about his condition, Allen skips down the sidewalk happily saying "I'm not going to die! I'm not going to die!" Then he stops, get a worried expression on his face, and intones...

"Yet."

This closely mirrors my psychological state after I went in for a yearly dermatological exam last Monday. The physician's assistant asked me if there were any areas I was concerned about. 

"Some skin discolorations on my chest," I told her. She took a look. "Hmmmm. This one is scaly," she said. "I'm going to take a biopsy."

Oh, great, I thought. My first skin biopsy. The removal of some skin wasn't very bothersome, compared to what I heard from the PA at the end of my visit. 

"It could take up to two weeks to get the results. Sometimes we want a second opinion. We'll schedule your next appointment for three months from now to check on the other spots that were frozen off. Unless, of course, we need to..."

Her voice trailed off.

But I got the message. If the biopsy was positive, I'd need to get treated for... something or other. I didn't ask the physician's assistant any questions about what that might be. At the time my feeling was ignorance is bliss.

However, over the next few days my inner Woody Allen started to emerge. Even though I didn't feel super-anxious, the unknown biopsy results hanging over my head started to rain increasingly dire thoughts about my perhaps-not-so-long future.

In my darker moments I contemplated the likelihood of untreatable malignant melanoma. I found myself visualizing my funeral.

I made a Note to Self: after you get the diagnosis, make up a detailed screenplay-like outline of how you want the funeral to go, complete with video clips you want played, to make sure your mourners are exposed to all the Good Stuff about your life that should be emphasized.

I also found myself doing a few to-dos that I'd been putting off for a long time. I wasn't planning to spend my last days on procrastinated chores -- far from it -- but there were some things I didn't want my wife bringing up at gatherings after my demise.

"Brian was a great husband, but I can't believe he never got around to _______."

There were moments, though, when I actually felt grateful for the biopsy.

It felt like a wake-up call. Doesn't seem like I'd need a Death Reminder at the age of 64, but as I went on dog walks, mowed the lawn, and did my usual daily stuff, I was struck by how special each and every experience would be if I knew that I wasn't going to be able to do these things for much longer.

Then, in about the closest my unenlightened mind will ever get to a Zen'ish satori, I'd suddenly realize: Hey, you idiot! Every fucking day of your life you should realize that one day you're not going to be able to live much longer!

Meaning, a biopsy with its "you could die soon" potential message is obvious. It grabbed my attention. Yet all around me are other warning signs of a possible impending demise.

Like driving in my car, because serious accidents happen. Like walking along the sidewalk beside a brick building, because strong earthquakes happen (especially here in the Pacific Northwest). I just don't pay much attention to the ever-present risks of dying until something stark like a biopsy comes along.

As the days went by, I began to imagine what the phone call from the dermatology clinic would be like. Though I'd been told not to expect one for several weeks, I thought "it could be sooner." Which it was.

Yesterday afternoon. I glanced at the caller ID before I answered the phone. Yup, it's the clinic. I was pleased with how calm, cool, and collected I felt as I said "hello." Solid reality usually turns out to be easier to deal with than my free-floating anxieties.

"The biopsy was benign," I heard. "Nothing to worry about." Yeah, right. If you only knew...

Which I'm sure they do at the dermatology clinic. Skin cancer is scary. Biopsies are scary. But heck, life is scary. We just don't clearly realize that we're always living on a knife edge, unknowns on either side, until something jars us into feeling the sharpness of everyday living.

Like Woody Allen, I felt really happy after I got the good news. At first I saw my life stretching out before me for a long time to come, per usual. 

But then that Woody Allen yet... hit me. Yes, this time I apparently avoided the loudly ringing wake up call that screams No More Time!

Death has a way of making repeat appearances, though. The bastard teases you with peeks from behind the curtain, then retreats and leaves you alone, until Death marches out on stage and says "Time for your final bow."

Oh, that's another thing. During my four days of biopsy anxiety I started to think about what my last words should be. Either spoken aloud or silently within my head. Guess I need two versions, depending on whether they're meant for public or private hearing.

Another item for my to-do list. Better attend to this pronto. If there's anything I learned this week, it's to live FREAKING NOW.

Jim Carrey makes fun of Charlton Heston's "Cold Dead Hand"

What's not to like about this Funny or Die video, "Cold Dead Hand with Jim Carrey"? We get to see Carrey make fun of...

Charlton Heston. Gun nuts who compensate for a small male sex organ with big firearms. Theologically challenged Christians who somehow believe that God embraces those who cling to their guns rather than love, faith, charity, and all that weenie Jesus'y stuff.

Best of all, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity hate this video. That means most reasonable Americans with a sense of humor will like it.

(Watch the video on Funny or Die if you get an annoying banner at the top of this embedded video, like I did when I checked this post after publishing it.)

Cold Dead Hand with Jim Carrey from Jim Carrey

Disturbing graphs of U.S. health care prices compared to other countries

Just about six more months. Until I'm eligible for Medicare. The part of the United States health care system that works the most efficiently and effectively. Because prices are regulated. I can hardly wait.

Today Ezra Klein shared "21 graphs that show America's health care prices are ludicrous."

For sure.

It's bizarre that Congressional Republicans like Paul Ryan want to make our absurdly expensive health care system even more centered on the largely unregulated  private insurance system that is bankrupting our country.

Compared to other industrialized countries we're paying way more for health care, and getting less health benefits. Conservatives should be outraged by this waste of public and private dollars, not trying to make the situation worse. 

Here's a graph that shows how much more of our GDP goes to health care than, say, in Canada or the United Kingdom.

Vision for Salem's riverfront development to be shown April 1

I'm not a big fan of how plans for Salem's downtown riverfront have devolved from a classy, creative, cool mixed use development to rental apartments and a medical rehabilitation facility.

Nonetheless, I'd go to what seems to be a "sales job" for what's being called the Riverfront Park Community if the day and time didn't conflict with my Monday Tai Chi class. 

It's Monday, April 1, 5:00 pm at the Carousel. Refreshments!

I hope someone else will attend the gathering, then tell their tale. Here's info about it. I'm interested in learning more about what's planned for the old Boise Cascade property. But not so interested to miss Tai Chi.

This is the flyer in PDF form:

Download Riverfront apartments flyer

Why marijuana laws should be left to the states

As officials in Washington and Colorado proceed with plans to sell state-regulated marijuana, they're nervously looking over their shoulders at Attorney General Eric Holder, wondering how the Justice Department is going to handle a seeming conflict between federal law (pot is illegal) and their state laws (pot is legal).

An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times does a good job of explaining why there really isn't much of a conflict between the states and the feds here. The authors should know what they're talking about. Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the UC Irvine School of Law. Allen Hopper is criminal justice and drug policy director of the ACLU of California.

Here's some excerpts from "On Pot Laws, Respect the States" by Chemerinsky and Hopper.

It may be surprising, but no state is required to have a law making possession of marijuana, or any drug, a crime. Therefore, any state can legalize some or all marijuana possession if it chooses. The federal government, if it chooses, can enforce the federal law against its possession and use, but it is up to each state to decide what to criminally prohibit, based on the 10th Amendment.

...There is not a conflict when one level of government prohibits something but another level of government does not. An easy illustration is that murder is a crime in every state, but, except for very specific circumstances, it is not a federal crime. No one would say that there is a conflict. Likewise, a state can decide that certain conduct does not violate state law even if it offends federal law. It is then for the federal government to decide how, if at all, it wants to enforce the federal law.

...Several other states, including California, have laws making possession of up to an ounce of marijuana an infraction punishable by a fine, even though under federal law, it's a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in federal prison. Similarly, 17 states and Washington, D.C., have laws that allow possession of marijuana for medical purposes; there is no such federal exception. Although the federal government can enforce the stricter U.S. law in states that have decriminalized possession or have medical marijuana laws, it has never acted to have those state laws invalidated based on the preemption doctrine.

Simply put, no state has to have a law prohibiting marijuana, even though federal law does. And if a state does have such a ban but wants to repeal it in whole or in part, such as for possession for medical reasons or for small amounts, it may do so.

...Beyond the legal arguments, there are policy reasons for the federal government to not interfere with the Colorado and Washington laws. An important feature of federalism is that states are empowered to serve as laboratories for experimentation with social policies. As the nation embarks on perhaps the most significant public debate about drug policy since President Nixon declared the war on drugs, Washington and Colorado's experiment should be allowed to go forward. The country can then assess whether it succeeded or failed.

Nate Silver says Oregon has only 5% chance of beating Louisville

Uh, oh.

Prediction guru Nate Silver doesn't give the Oregon basketball team much of a chance at beating top seed Louisville in their Sweet 16 matchup. Odds of winning the 2013 NCAA championship are much less, .06% (in boldface).

Oregon (up to 0.06 percent from 0.01 percent) Those who complained that Oregon was underseeded have plenty of evidence in the form of wins against No. 5-seeded Oklahoma State and No. 4-seeded St. Louis. However, the Ducks’ punishment from the bracket makers is not over, as they’ll have to travel across the country to face the No. 1 overall seed, Louisville; the model gives them only about a 5 percent chance of winning that game.

Well, I haven't watched Louisville play this year. But I've seen as many Oregon games as my Pac-12 Network deprived DirecTV receiver allowed. 

And I like how the Ducks are looking, especially the last two games. Still, Silver probably is about right with his slim probability of Oregon beating Louisville. 

Part of what gives me hope, though, is how likely Silver thought, before the tournament began, that Florida Gulf Coast University would make it to the Sweet Sixteen: 3.3%. Now FGCU is the adored underdog of the tournament.

In the Sweet Sixteen. 

I believe... Surprise Nate Silver, you Ducks.

Irritating: United Airlines' constantly changing ticket prices

My wife was seriously angry at United Airlines. But she did a pretty good job of keeping her cool when she talked with a customer service representative late on a Saturday night.

"I've just spent several days planning a family reunion. Tonight I finally figured out the best United Flights to take between Portland, Oregon and Lexington, Kentucky. I'm using frequent flyer miles to go one way, and will be paying cash for a ticket the other way.

It was tough to find a flight where I could use the frequent flyer miles, because you have so many restrictions on them. But earlier tonight I made a reservation. I then went to buy a ticket for the return one-way leg and found that the price had jumped more than $250 in just an hour or two. 

What's going on? This seems unfair. How can you guys change your prices so quickly late on a Saturday night?"

The answer she got wasn't very satisfying.

Prices, the representative told her, can change minute by minute. "Maybe somebody bought several tickets on the flight you want. There may have only been a few seats left at that price."

"But there were lots of seats still available on the flight," my wife replied. "It just doesn't seem right that you can raise the price of a ticket so much and so quickly after I had spent a lot of time planning my trip."

Well, this seems to be par for the course for not only United Airlines, but seemingly all airlines these days. So says an informative CheapAir article, "Air Fares 101: Why Do Fares Change All the TIme?"

The airlines want to be able to have their cake and eat it, too, and they go to great lengths to make that possible.  They employ a very high-tech strategy called yield management which intentionally aims to charge different prices to different passengers in order to maximize the total revenue collected for each departing flight.

...Airlines never just have one fare – they have several, even dozens, of fares for each seat and they employ sophisticated techniques to maximize the number of people who get stuck paying the higher of those fares.

...It’s actually even more complicated in practice. Airlines actually have computer programs that are constantly monitoring flights, analyzing booking patterns, and in real-time changing the number of seats available at each fare level.  If a flight is booking up faster than expected, an airline may decrease the number of seats available at some of their lowest fare levels, or wipe them all out altogether.  If a flight is not selling well, suddenly more seats may appear at fare levels that were previously “sold out”.

Amazon also engages in this sort of dynamic pricing, according to an article in the Portland Oregonian. But that strikes me as more justified, since usually there are multiple sources of something you want to buy online.

Airline travel, though, often is exceedingly uncompetitive.

United basically has a monopoly on decent flights between Portland and Lexington, "decent" being defined as not making a jillion stops and arriving/departing at a halfway desirable time. So when United raised its price by about $250 less than two hours after my wife had checked on the flight, she really didn't have any other airline alternative.

Fortunately, by morning the price had dropped from $800-something to $628 (still higher than the $605 shown the day before). Who knows why? Only the United Airlines computers, and they're not telling.

Before writing this post I checked on the cost of the flight. It's about the same, $654 now. But I noticed that a return flight to Portland on the same plane from Lexington, connecting with a plane that leaves two hours later from Chicago, costs $883 for an economy ticket. I think that's the price United briefly wanted on the night my wife got so irritated at the airline.

So what gives? Why does it cost $229 more to fly on the same plane from Lexington to Chicago to Portland, if you connect with a Chicago flight to Portland that leaves two hours later than another plane?

I took a look at the remaining seats for UA 518, the $654 flight, and UA 627, the $883 flight. At the moment there are 49 economy seats available on UA 518, the flight from Chicago to Portland (an Airbus 319).

On the slightly larger UA 627 (Airbus 620), there are 77 economy seats available. Yet United is charging $229 more to fly on this plane from Chicago to Portland. On a Sunday, so the difference in price can't have anything to do with the schedules of business travelers.

And if it is holiday (Fourth of July) related, why would United charge $229 more for a flight that gets into Portland two hours later, since you'd think that most people would want to return home earlier given that Monday is a school/work day.

Prices for airline tickets just don't make sense anymore.

Not to the customers paying for them. I'm sure somewhere in the complex computer code of the United Airlines reservation system there's a well-defined reason for each and every price change.

Which doesn't make the seemingly arbitrary pricing less irritating. I'd love to fly on an airline that treated its customers fairly, openly, and respectfully -- both in how it sells tickets and treats you while on a flight.

But so far as I know, that airline doesn't exist. Not in the United States, at least.

Senate Democrats need to fix the stupid filibuster

I'm a cranky Democrat today. This headline in the Los Angeles Times deeply irks me: "Obama court pick withdraws, thwarted by Republicans in Senate." As does the quote from Obama I'll include in the story excerpt.

Former New York state attorney Caitlin Halligan, President Obama’s choice for the U.S. Court of Appeals here, withdrew her name Friday, defeated by the Republican minority in the Senate.

Halligan’s withdrawal is the latest example of how the GOP has employed the filibuster rule not only to block major legislation, but routine presidential appointments as well.

The D.C. Circuit decides significant challenges to federal regulations, including those on environmental protection and worker’s rights. Obama is the first president who has been unable to put a single judge on the court.

The Constitution says judges are to be nominated by the president and confirmed by a majority vote in the Senate. Halligan had the support of the Senate’s Democratic majority, but minority Republicans blocked a vote to confirm her. Under the Senate’s rules, it takes 60 votes to close debate and set a final vote.

Obama issued a statement saying he was “deeply disappointed that…a minority of senators continued to block a simple up-or-down vote on her nomination. The D.C. Circuit is considered the nation’s second- highest court, but it now has more vacancies than any other circuit court. This is unacceptable.”

Ooh! President Obama is deeply disappointed... he calls it unacceptable that he can't even get a vote on his nominations to the D.C. Circuit Court (along with other courts).

Now the Republicans who are abusing the filibuster will stop! They have to! Obama and Senate Democrats are deeply disappointed! 

Yeah, right.

The not-so-GOP has been engaging in this sort of filibustering crap ever since Obama was elected. I've got a blog post record of how my crankiness over the filibuster has been festering for several years.

2011: Senate Dems should get tough on GOP filibustering

Elections are won by the candidate who gets the most votes. Control of the House and Senate is determined by which political party has the most candidates elected. But in the Senate, majority rule is dumped in the crapper. 

Nowadays it takes 60 votes, rather than 51, for the Senate to do anything significant, because Republicans have decided that obstructionism is their best bet for making sure Obama is a one-term president.

2012: End the Senate filibuster. Or at least reform the damn thing. 

"Majority rules." Makes sense to me. I can live with that. In both the House and the Senate.

Do away with the Senate's stupid filibuster custom where 41 out of 100 Senators have veto power over what legislation will be passed by Congress, and whether Presidential nominations of administration officials and judges will be confirmed.

Now, here we are in 2013, watching the Senate Republicans try to run out the clock on Obama's second term, so far successfully denying him the constitutional right to nominate judges and have the Senate confirm or reject them on an up-or-down vote.

Kudos to Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley for making such a recent valiant attempt to reform the stupid filibuster so senators at least have to stand up and talk about whatever they want to stop.

And anti-kudos to Senate President Harry Reid, plus other wimpy Democrats, who did essentially zilch about the Republican abuse of the filibuster.

I don't see why it's necessary at all. Do away with the whole damn thing. The Senate has a weird notion that it is the "world's greatest deliberative body." That's complete bullshit. There's hardly any deliberating going on.

There can't be, not when forty senators can prevent a vote on what's being deliberated. 

I'm fine with respecting the will of the majority. This leads to what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls "skin in the game" in his book, Antifragile.

Meaning, if someone takes a stand, this position should bring that person rewards if it works out well, and penalties if it doesn't. If the Democrats pass legislation that turns out badly, they should be punished at the polls in the next election. Or re-elected, if voters like what has happened.

Same applies to Republicans. Let whoever has been entrusted by the American public with a majority in the Senate be able to pass legislation and confirm presidential appointments with a freaking majority vote.

What's wrong with that? Doing something is a hell of a lot better than doing nothing, because at least when you do something, you learn from the results. Gridlock is stupid politics, because no learning is going on. 

If Senate Republicans don't like a bill, or a nominee, they can vote "no." If voters approve of that stand, they'll reward the GOP senators. If voters disapprove, they'll express their displeasure at the polls. But filibustering, preventing any vote from happening, that's cowardly "no skin in the game" politics.

It's failing to get in the ring and fight. It's wimpering, "I don't want a bout to happen, because I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose." Look: if you want to win votes in the Senate, win elections first. Again, this should apply to either Republicans or Democrats.

Democracy needs to be restored to the Senate. Until this happens, I'm going to continue to be an episodically cranky Democrat.

Year supply of Costco vegetarian emergency food fits in small closet

I haven't opened any of the 21 boxes of vegetarian emergency food that arrived yesterday courtesy of Costco (and my VISA card). I hope I never have to.

My wife and I are involved with emergency preparedness efforts in our neighborhood. It's been kind of difficult to get people interested in dealing with a problem that isn't readily apparent -- such as the "Big One" earthquake that is overdue to hit the Pacific Northwest. 

But now that we've learned about how devastating a major earthquake would be to Oregon, I couldn't stop thinking about what life would like here if major bridges on I-5 were destroyed, power lines were toppled, and people in a vast region between the Canadian border and northern California required massive outside help.

It could be months before things got semi-back to normal. So one goal of our neighborhood's emergency preparedness effort is to encourage planning ahead for what hopefully won't happen in our lifetime. But definitely could.

With a time line of 41 events the science team at OSU has now calculated that the California–Oregon end of Cascadia’s fault has a 37 percent chance of producing a major earthquake in the next 50 years. The odds are 10 percent that an even larger quake will strike the upper end, in a full-margin rupture, within 50 years. Given that the last big quake was 312 years ago, one might argue that a very bad day on the Cascadia Subduction Zone is ominously overdue. It appears that three centuries of silence along the fault has been entirely misleading. The monster is only sleeping.

So last week I decided to research vegetarian emergency food supplies. A few hours of Googling revealed that Costco seemed to have the best "package deal," a nutritionally complete, varied, long-lasting supply of food aimed at keeping one person fed for about a year. 

It arrived yesterday.

I was sort of worried about where we'd put it, as the Costco information didn't specify the size of the 21 boxes. Knowing that the shipment consisted of 126 #10 cans, I calculated that it probably would only take up about half of the available space in a small closet that I'd cleared out.

I was right. The stack of 21 boxes (one of which got mildly crunched in transport) measures about 19 inches deep, 39 inches wide, and 54 inches tall. That's 24.2 cubic feet. To me, it's worth taking up that space in our house for some peace of mind.

Which is what Costco's emergency food department offers. I was fortunate to get $300 off my order, because the vegetarian food was on sale at the time I decided we needed it. However, even at full price ($1,800) I consider it to be a good deal.

This amount of food supposedly feeds two people for six months. Based on the 680,000 calories, I suspect it would be a bit less than that for my wife and me. But I just did a rough calculation.

Anyway, I figure that we have insurance on our house, even though it probably is less likely that it will burn down in the next twenty years than the likelihood of a large earthquake hitting Oregon in that timespan. So why not take out some "insurance" that reduces the risk of suffering from a major emergency?

I felt better as soon as the Fed Ex semi truck appeared at the top of our driveway. Engaging in magical thinking, I'd been ruminating "Now that I finally ordered emergency food, probably the Big One will hit just before the food arrives."

Well, it didn't. And like I said, I hope we never have to open the boxes, most of which have a shelf life of more than 20 years. 

Since I haven't tasted any of the food, I can't comment on its culinary goodness. All I know is that most of the food in the boxes is on my "like to eat" list, with the notable exception of some items in one category:

Beans & Protein:   

• 6 Whole Egg Powder (236 servings per can/1416 total servings)  
• 1 Black Beans (65 servings per can/65 total servings)  
• 6 Pinto Beans (58 servings per can/348 total servings)  
• 2 Lima Beans (67 servings per can/134 total servings)  
• 3 Lentils (78 servings per can/234 total servings)  
• 3 Chicken TVP (45 servings per can/135 total servings)     
• 3 Bacon TVP (47 servings per can/141 total servings)  
• 5 Taco TVP (42 servings per can/210 total servings)

I don't like black beans, pinto beans, and lima beans.

So I ordered some other containers to compensate for my bean phobia (I believe it started in elementary school, where I often heard the disturbing song "Beans, beans, the musical fruit; the more you eat, the more you toot." Why would I want to eat food that makes me toot?)

Here's a photo of the other corner of the closet, where two containers of Costco dog food and one each of lentils and pasta reside. After an earthquake I will zealously control the lentils and pasta; fortunately, I'm married to a woman who likes beans.

[Note to self: you forgot about the "cheese" side of "macaroni and cheese." Order some from Costco before the earthquake hits!]

The other items are a water pump with filter and ninety fuel pucks. I pictured using these as one means to boil the water needed to reconstitute the freeze-dried and dehydrated emergency food. 

I was impressed with how easy it was to order these supplies from the Costco web site. Shipping was free. (Meaning, included with the price.) Everything came within a week. The cost seemed eminently reasonable, judging from other sources of vegetarian emergency food I found online.

And the other stuff in the boxes struck me as being nicely thought out. Good variety of grains, fruit, and vegetables. All of which I like. Because they're not beans.

Grains:   

• 12 White Rice (53 servings per can/636 total servings)  
• 6 Millet (52 servings per can/312 total servings)  
• 6 Cornmeal (46 servings per can/ 276 total servings)  
• 6 Rice Flour (75 servings per can/450 total servings)  
• 4 Quinoa (36 servings per can/144 total servings)  
• 6 Amaranth (44 servings per can/264 total servings)

Fruit & Vegetables:   

• 6 Potato Chunks (25 servings per can/150 total servings)  
• 1 FD Sweet Corn (46 servings per can/46 total servings)  
• 1 FD Broccoli (52 servings per can/52 total servings)  
• 4 Carrot Dices (49 servings per can/196 total servings)  
• 2 Onions (45 servings per can/90 total servings)  
• 2 Split Green Peas (46 servings per can/92 total servings)  
• 1 FD Potato Dices (41 servings per can/41 total servings)  
• 3 FD Green Peas (41 servings per can/123 total servings)  
• 6 Tomato Powder (49 servings per can/294 total servings)  
• 2 FD Banana Slices (49 servings per can/98 total servings)  
• 2 FD Strawberries (45 servings per can/90 total servings)  
• 2 FD Raspberries (48 servings per can 96 total servings)  
• 6 Apple Slices (48 servings per can/288 total servings )  
• 1 FD Pineapple (41 servings per can/41 total servings)  
• 1 FD Blueberries (50 servings per can/50 total servings)  
• 1 FD Blackberries (49 servings per can/49 total servings)

Dairy & Basics:   

• 10 Powdered Milk (61 servings per can/610 total servings)  
• 4 Cheese Blend (52 servings per can/208 total servings)  
• 2 White Sugar (646 servings per can/1292 total servings)

Judge rules against Clackamas County on light rail vote

Good news: the Tea Party-inspired phobia against extending light rail to Clackamas County got some pushback from a judge who, unlike the county's newly elected right-wing commissioners, understands what "contract" means.

Hopefully those commissioners now won't be so eager to spew crazy talk about voters being able to ignore legally binding agreements. Judge Deanne Darling slapped them down in a recent ruling.

Clackamas County circuit Judge Deanne L. Darling ruled this week that the ballot title on an advisory light-rail measure the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners placed on the May 21 ballot is “insufficient and unfair.”

Attorney and Oak Grove resident Keith Garza claimed that the measure, as written by the county in February, was misleading because it implies that a public vote can change contractual obligations the county signed in 2010 and 2012.

...Judge Darling on March 19 certified a description of the proposed ordinance to make clear to voters that “approval or rejection of the ordinance will not affect the county’s obligations with respect to [Clackamas County’s] previous contractual commitments.”

“The court’s ruling reaffirms that the county’s promises are binding and that Measure 3-401 does not require an authorizing vote before the county actually does what it already said it would do," Garza said. “It was critically important to me that voters know that they are being asked to cast their ballot for something that won’t have any legal effect.”

Congratulations to Keith Garza for showing that a single informed, reasonable citizen has the ability to get politicians back on track when they forget about following the rule of law.

This time it was Republicans who abused their power, but power belongs to the people no matter who is trying to take it away.

Eugene newspaper looks at Salem's riverfront development (quoting me!)

Ah, there I am, on the front page of yesterday's Eugene Register Guard, pondering the future of Salem's riverfront, wondering whether the re-development of a Boise Cascade industrial area into a mixed-use zone will succeed in revitalizing a part of Salem that could add so much to downtown living, working, and playing.

OK, not true.

Actually I was wondering whether the newspaper's photographer was going to make me look like an old geezer/derelict (albeit in waterproof REI gear) hanging out at a fence overlooking Minto Brown Island Park, pondering the pros and cons of taking my pack and tarp into some bushes by the railroad tracks.

Which is pretty much how I ended up looking. Fine with me. I am who I am, just as Salem is who it is. In each case, for both better and worse.

The story by Diane Dietz, "Riverfront letdown: Salem's ambitious mixed-use development project fizzles," tells the tale of how the dream of a really cool riverfront area with condos, restaurants, grocery store, paths, and other enticing amenities has shrunken to the reality of rental apartments and a medical rehabilitation facility.
Download Riverfront letdown | Local News | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon 

My quotes in the story relate to what could have been, but almost certainly won't be.

Brian Hines, a Salem resident and blogger, imagined a gracious scene, as in Paris or, at least, San Antonio, with a waterfront strung with walking paths and bejeweled with restaurants.

“You could go down and walk around at night and be connected to downtown,” Hines said. “You could sit down in a nice restaurant and watch the lights.

“Developers come in with their little boards and make it all look wonderful.”

...A half-razed Boise Cascade building continues to “uglify” the prominent corner south of downtown Salem, Hines said.

...“Now, they’re going to have a fence that blocks off people from the development,” Hines said. “You’re rolling along on your roller blades or your stroller, and you want to go through the development. You can’t. There’s going to be locked gates, even gates for the paths. ...

“It’s going to be a shadow of what was promised back in 2009.”

Then there are depressing quotes from the lead developer, Jason Tokarski. 

No restaurants will offer a riverside meal.

“That’s one concept that we have thoroughly vetted and that we simply cannot get interest in from either local (restaurants) or national franchises,” said Jason Tokarski, who is overseeing the development now for his family’s Mountain West Investment Corp.

...Consequently, the Tokarskis are chastened. They’re reluctant to show watercolor renderings of development plans.

“I want to be careful that we are not showing something that gets everyone excited,” Tokarski said. “Over the years, it has been difficult to reframe the project in the public’s eyes and to help the city staff and the community understand what would really work on the site — given the economic challenges that persist.

“Salem is not a high-rent market, whether it’s commercial or retail or apartments. It’s not Portland, and neither is Eugene.”

This is what drives me nuts about Salem, a town that has continually disappointed me during the 36 years I've happily lived here (yeah, I'm like a psychologically-split battered denizen; I keep getting beaten up by the city I've shacked-up with, and choose to return for more).

Salem is a city that doesn't believe in itself.

Now, cities aren't conscious beings, so what I really mean is that too many people in Salem don't believe in themselves. They long for a more vibrant town, both culturally and economically, yet are all too willing to accept dashed dreams when their longings are tossed in the trash can of half-assed development.

I readily admit that I'm not a real estate developer.

My wife and I were investors in Salem's Sustainable Fairview, another mixed-use development that has failed to live up to expectations, but owning a few shares in a LLC is a lot different from going way out on a financial limb, like the Tokarski's are doing.

So I'm sympathetic to the attitude, "the market does the deciding." This theme runs through the first story in the Register Guard's two-part, two-city riverfront analysis: "Eugene looks to denser development by floating River City: Eugene explores mixed-use development on the Willamette."

The dream of the Riverfront Master Plan crafted by as many as 1,000 Eugene residents over a two-year period is beautiful, but translating it into reality could be difficult.

The Lane County economy is improving, but developers and banks remain wary. What they see as feasible on the 27 acres of riverfront recently mothballed by the Eugene Water & Electric Board may end up nothing like the public’s vision.

The master plan vision, illustrated in watercolors, shows multistory condominiums over a lively retail district with shops, a restaurant row, a boardwalk and a riverfront “people” area.

...Yet for any development to succeed, there has to be demand, said Ward Beck, commercial real estate broker with Windermere Real Estate of Lane County. For the project to pencil out, landlords have to get sufficient rents.

Beck’s mantra: “If the math doesn’t work, there will be nothing built.”

Beck predicts a 70 percent likelihood that the riverfront plan will sit on a shelf, and only a 30 percent chance that some kind of construction will happen.

“The chances are virtually zero that what ends up being developed will look a lot like the plan,” he said, adding, “It’s beautiful, and it would be nice.”

Yes, it sure would be nice.

To have the Salem and Eugene riverfronts be places that draw people in, elicit "oohs" and "ahs," serve as a locus for both money-making and pleasure-making activities, instill a sense of pride in citizens who now tell visitors I'll show you downtown, but there really isn't much to see or do there.

I've talked to quite a few people about what they'd like to see at Salem's riverfront. Universally, they are bullish on the success of a restaurant, or nightspot, that overlooks the water and has an appealing atmosphere.

So I wonder how intensely Jason Tokarski sought a restaurateur who'd be willing to take a gamble on a riverfront location. This just seems to me a classic example of "build it, and they will come." Salem residents are hungry for something different to assuage their hunger and thirst.

I love to use the example of Apple when criticizing the tentativeness of Salem real estate developers.

Apple makes gobs of money. And Apple doesn't really give a shit about what the "market" wants. Apple makes a market. Apple produces a product that people had no idea they needed, but when they see it, they say to themselves "I have to buy it."

Like I said, I can understand why developers build stuff that they're confident will sell in today's real estate market. However, I also am confident that if a creative, gutsy, ballsy developer threw caution to the wind and built a really out there mixed use development (which would be par for the course in Portland), it would succeed.

Wildly. 

Sadly, it looks like we'll never know whether the initial vision of Salem's Boise Cascade redevelopment could have become a successful reality. Salem awaits a developer who dreams big and refuses to wake up.

(My previous posts about Salem's riverfront are here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Another great reason to get married on St. Patrick's day

Nine years ago I wrote about what a terrrific decision we made when Laurel and I got married on St. Patrick's Day.

It's our 14th anniversary today. We had the smarts to get married on St. Patrick's Day in 1990, which means that as soon as I start seeing mention of green beer in the newspaper or on TV a small still voice in my head starts speaking... “Anniversary, anniversary, anniversary.” 

The mathematically inclined will be able to calculate from the above that... today is our 23rd anniversary! I don't believe that number entitles us to any particular sort of valuable present. However, if you want to send us something lavish, feel free.

What I'm really looking forward to is our 32nd anniversary, just another mere nine years away, because then I -- but not Laurel -- will be able to celebrate a Golden Anniversary: 50 years! Gold, please! And lots of it.

I'm expecting that my Golden Anniversary well-wishers won't hold back because of a minor technicality: my 50 years of marriage will have been to two different women, as my first marriage lasted 18 years.

I feel that what counts in determining my eligibility for getting expensive gifts in 2022 is my overall commitment to marriage. If you disagree, feel free. Attach a note to the gold bullion you'll be giving me explaining why you are sending that gift reluctantly. I'll keep that in mind when I sell the gold and get myself a super-nice present.

This year's anniversary, though, didn't start out great for me.

Turning on my iPhone after waking up (I habitually weigh myself first thing in the morning, then enter the sometimes cheery and sometimes depressing figure into the nifty Weightbot app), I saw that Mint had sent me the decidedly uncheery news that a late fee had been added to our credit card bill.

Damn, damn, damn! I forgot to make the VISA payment! 

This probably wasn't the most romantic thing I could have uttered first-off to my wife on our anniversary. But after 23 years of marriage we've gotten away from some of the lovey-dovey rituals that newlyweds engage in.

I rushed to my laptop. I logged into our credit card company's website.

Ah, hope. Apparently because this was just Sunday, March 17, and the payment had been due on Friday, March 15, I was greeted with a message that implied that, if I made an online payment right away, forgiveness might be forthcoming from a giant financial institution.

I believe this was, by the way, one of the giant institutions that contributed to the second greatest financial meltdown in U.S. history, and received copious taxpayer largessse. So by comparison, my being two days late with a credit card payment was utterly insignificant.

But I figured bringing politics into this issue wasn't going to play very well with the corporate worker bees who handled decisions about late credit card payments. 

Clicking on the "contact" link on the company's web site, I took a different approach. Truthful, yet mildly manipulative in a charming (in my completely biased opinion) way.

It's our 23rd anniversary today. I was smart enough to get married on St. Patrick's Day so I wouldn't forget our anniversary. But wasn't smart enough to remember to pay our ____ VISA card this month -- until today. It was due Friday. I paid it as soon as I woke up.

Your online system showed that the payment (from our bank account) went through immediately, though it's Sunday. I hope you won't charge a late fee on grounds on this being our anniversary; I'm 64 and maybe getting a little forgetful; and we've been steady reliable ______ members. Thanks.

A few hours later I got a response. The $25 late fee had been erased. Sweet! Not as great an anniversary present as a gold bar, but nice. I also got an emailed lecture about the importance of paying on time, complete with tips about how to prevent future forgotten late payments.

My wife and I spend much of our time trying to figure out what is so great about the so-called "golden years." (Aside from getting all that loot on my Golden Anniversary.) So far, what we've basically experienced about growing old is...

It sucks!

But that's a subject for another blog post. One small benefit, which I took advantage of today, is that you can start to play the forgetful old person game. "Gosh, I'm sorry about the late payment. What do you expect from a semi-senile old codger like me?"

Anyway, mark your calendars for March 17, 2022. If you expect the price of gold to rise markedly between now and then, you might want to buy some bullion now for my Golden Anniversary present to save money.

Ryan budget shows Republican commitment to unreality

I've got to give the Republicans credit. 

Now, having written that warm-and-fuzzy sounding first line, I'm faced with figuring out what I should give them credit for. Hmmmm... I'm stumped. Is it the late night hour? Lack of caffeine? 

Perhaps. But much more likely is the fact that the only recent accomplishment of the not-so-Grand Old Party is its undying commitment to unreality. 

Republicans are really good at not comprehending what is real.

Faced with a clear consensus about human caused global warming among 97% of the world's leading climare scientists and obvious planetary effects... Republicans say, "not happening." Faced with equally convincing evidence that more guns and less gun regulations means much higher gun deaths in the U.S. than other industrialized nations... Republicans say, "not true."

Just as bizarrely, faced with a clear-cut election victory by Obama and other Democrats last November, after voters were exposed for an excruciatingly long time to social policy debates between Republican and Democratic positions, the G.O.P. faithful are sticking their heads in the sand and muttering, "Election? What election?"

Greg Sargent nailed the absurdity of this, fantasizing how things would look if the situation were reversed.

Imagine that Mitt Romney had decisively defeated Obama in the 2012 election on a platform of tax cuts for the rich and deep cuts to government as the only way to reduce the deficit, dramatically repudiating the President’s call for higher taxes on the wealthy, continued implementation of the biggest expansion of the safety net in 60 years, and more government spending to boost the economy.

Then imagine that Democrats in the Senate (the only part of government they controlled) responded to this by proposing to dramatically expand health care and stimulus spending and pay down the deficit only with 100 percent tax hikes — and not a single penny more in spending cuts — and on top of that, then suggested President Romney has failed to sincerely try to find common ground with them.

This is pretty much what Republicans did on the Sunday shows yesterday — in reverse. On Fox News Sunday, Paul Ryan confirmed that his budget will repeal Obamacare (even as he counts in his budget the $700 billion in Obamacare Medicare cuts that Republicans campaigned against in 2012). The Ryan budget will supposedly wipe out the deficit in 10 years. This likely will mean even deeper cuts than the ones in his previous budget, which represented the GOP’s fiscal agenda writ large and broadly speaking was rejected by voters last November.

Thankfully, President Obama and Democrat leaders in Congress have a much firmer grasp on reality. Voters rejected Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the Ryan budget approach. That's a fact. Deal with it, G.O.P. People want a balanced approach to balancing the budget.

Not all spending cuts. Not all revenue increases. A balance. Ever sat on a see-saw? Republicans should try it some time. Equal weight on the ends makes for a good balance.

That's what Senate Democrats have proposed: a ten year budget plan that calls for almost exactly equal spending cuts and revenue increases. Sounds good to me. Reflects what voters cast their ballots for just a few months ago.

The plan, assembled by Senator Patty Murray of Washington, would raise nearly a $1 trillion in new revenue over a decade by eliminating tax loopholes and breaks that benefit wealthy taxpayers and corporations. It recommends either limiting the overall itemized deductions of the top 2 percent of taxpayers or eliminating individual loopholes like the favorable tax rates given to hedge-fund managers. Corporations would no longer be able to avoid taxation by hiding money overseas.

At the same time, this budget cuts an equal amount of spending, $975 billion, in a way that avoids the reckless damage to vital programs and to the poor in the budget favored by the House. Nearly a third of the reductions come from new efficiencies in Medicare and Medicaid, building on the reforms in the Affordable Care Act. The rest comes from defense cuts after American troops withdraw from Afghanistan, along with cuts to wasteful programs like agriculture supports.

Dana Milbank wrote a great piece that exposed the magical thinking of Paul Ryan and his fellow Republicans. They believe that by uttering some hocus-pocus bullshit political incantatations with no substance behind them will foot the American public into supporting their effort to conduct class warfare on behalf of the rich.

Here's some of what Milbank said:

Paul Ryan’s budget is an amazing and wondrous document.

Not only does it balance the budget in 10 years while reducing tax rates, it also does so without any pain or suffering — or even breaking a sweat. It achieves not just the longtime goals of policymakers — “a safety net strengthened . . . retirement secured . . . a nation protected” — but also brings about changes in human nature that have bedeviled civilization from the beginning of time. “This budget ends cronyism; eliminates waste, fraud and abuse,” Ryan’s plan promises.

“Now, how do we do this?” Ryan (R-Wis.), the House Budget Committee chairman, asked with a magician’s flourish as heunveiled his budget Tuesday morning.

Here’s how: The former Republican vice presidential candidate’s budget eliminates ___ loopholes in the tax code, cutting the ___ and the ____ deductions. It reduces spending on the ____ program by _____ and the _____ program by _____. Retirees would see ____, students would experience ____ and the poor would be _____.

There are so many blanks in Ryan’s budget that it could be a Mad Libs exercise. But this is not a game. It’s black-box budgeting — an expression of lofty aims, with binders full of magic asterisks in lieu of specific cuts to government benefits. If this were a fitness plan, Ryan, a former personal trainer, would be telling Americans that under his revolutionary program, they could lose 50 pounds in 10 weeks without dieting or working out.

U.S. conservatives are much more anti-science than liberals

False equivalency is the refuge of those who fail to understand the difference between 0 and 1. Meaning, there's a lot of different differentness between having nothing of something, and having a totality of something. 

One-tenth, for example, is a lot closer to zero than nine-tenths is. Yet this is just about how I see the anti-science biases of liberals and conservatives in the United States. 

Sure, liberals have some wacky notions. Many think vaccines cause disease and that genetically modified foods are poison from Monsanto. (There may be some truth in both propositions, but not much.)

However, when we compare the anti-science craziness of liberals and conservatives, the weight of irrationality falls much more on the right-wing side of the political see-saw. Which is why I heartily disliked a recent article in New Scientist magazine that argued for an equivalency between the two.

In the most recent New Scientist issue, I was pleased to find two letters to the editor that took the authors of the article to task.

From Matt Ball
Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell write that "vilifying an entire philosophy based on the actions of its radical ideologues would be unfair" (2 February, p. 24). They then claim that "progressivism stands as the most pressing problem for science."

They seem to be living in a fantasy world where the "lunatic fringe" of the left has real power. Are lefties stopping stem cell research? Denying students knowledge of the basis for all modern biology? Denying women medical services? Condemning us all to a much hotter, extreme future? Passing laws outlawing basic maths and science?

It is so easy to "hippie punch", rather than take on the institutionalized and mainstream anti-science attitude of conservatives in the US.
Tucson, Arizona, US 

From Anne Green
In the US, members of one political party deny basic physics (the effects of greenhouse gases), modern biology (evolution), geology (the age of the planet), astronomy (the age of the universe), physiology ("if it is a legitmate rape..."), sociology ("gays will destroy society!") and economics ("lower taxes mean more revenue").

This is a party whoe highest-ranking member on the House of Representatives Science Committee recently stated: "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell."

What evidence do Berezow and Campbell submit to show that Democrats are more dangerous than the proudly anti-science Republicans? An attempt to put "green" utensils in the House cafeteria. And we wonder why people are so easily confused and manipulated, why so few can analyse arguments with reason and logic.
Tucson, Arizona, US 

Google Reader is going away. Panicky, I buy Reeder.

I love Google Reader. I return to it many times a day on my MacBook Pro. So it was more than a little disconcerting to learn that Google Reader is in its death throes. On July 1, it makes a final exit.

Rest in peace. I'll miss you, my friend. I really liked how simple you were to use, and how you appeared as a web page. I've never used another RSS reader. Heck, I barely know what RSS means.

Unduly panicky, given that I have more than three months to find a replacement way of easily keeping track of the 20+ blogs I follow regularly (Daily Kos, FiveThirtyEight, Climate Progress, Salem Breakfast on Bikes... many others), I wanted to immediately jump into the arms of a Google Reader alternative.

It wasn't as easy to do as I thought. CNET offered up some ideas. So did LifeHacker.

I checked out some of the alternatives. I wanted something that played well with Safari. And looked a lot like Google Reader. Us old bloggers don't like new tricks when it comes to reading posts in a fashion that has worked well. 

I signed up for Pulse but almost instantly got turned off by it. I was able to add my feeds fairly easily, but couldn't figure out how to get the crisp clean look of Google Reader. Seemed like Pulse was more interested in suggesting new content than giving me content from my tried and true blogs.

Googling "Google Reader alternatives," which was sort of weird, given that Google was responsible for killing what I was trying to replace, I was drawn to a Mac app: Reeder.

"Syncs with Google Reader," I read. Customer ratings were in the 4.5 star territory. Screen shot of Reeder looked a lot like Google Reader. Done. One click and the Mac App Store had $4.99 of my money and I had the Reeder app.

After signing in with my Google Reader password, all of my blog feeds were synced to Reeder.

Yes, I was in an app rather than in Safari, but it didn't take me long to learn how to add a post to the Safari Reading List --one of my favorite Safari features. I use it a lot to temporarily save content that I want to peruse for later reading or use as blog post material.

Only after I'd bought Reeder for the Mac did a little voice speak inside my head: Isn't that the same name as the iOS app you use for reading Google Reader stuff on your iPhone? Checking, I found that it was. No wonder I was attracted to Reeder: it already was an old friend.

So if you like how Google Reader looks and works, consider Reeder for your Google Reader reincarnation after the July 1 D(death)-day. I'm assuming that Reeder will carry on just fine without Google Reader, since the only connection between the two seems to be the syncing of subscriptions.

I've been accustomed to using Google Reader within Safari. However, I can see (literally) some advantages to the Reeder app.

The content within Reeder seems cleaner and less cluttered. Plus, the type is larger and easier for my senior citizen eyes to read. One click opens up the actual web page in case content isn't being properly displayed in Reeder.

Shred Oregon makes a true video: "Skateboarding is Transportation"

I'm a senior citizen who gets around on a skateboard. Well, longboard actually. That's a skateboard which is -- get ready for a non-surprise! -- longer.

But almost all of my longboarding is on trails in Salem (Oregon) parks. Usually I land paddle my way along for five to seven miles. 

For other skateboarders/longboarders, their boards are a principal means of transportation. Kudos to Shred Oregon for making a video that will help to educate people, including policymakers, of this fact. 

"Skateboarding is Transportation" should be required viewing for city councilors, county commissioners, state legislators, and others who make decisions about what is, and isn't, alternative transportation (alternative to cars, that is). For example, is it really necessary to ban skateboards in downtown areas?

 

Salem sucks pretty bad when it comes to dedicated bike paths.

Especially multi-use paths (bikes, pedestrians, skateboards, roller bladers, etc.). I don't ride a bike in town, but since I've started longboarding I'm always looking for places other than parks where I'd feel comfortable doing my land paddling thing. And Salem doesn't offer much.

Skateboarders are misunderstood by most people. They associate skateboards with annoying kids who play around and do tricks where they shouldn't.

But, hey, I'm 64 years old; more or less responsible most of the time; never caused any damage to myself, another person, or any living thing on my longboard (squirrels stay out of my way, though many dogs are curious about a guy rolling along on four wheels).

And I'm a skateboarder!

Even though I don't use a longboard for daily transportation, I can testify to the reasons some of the people in the video cited as why they get around on a skateboard.

My longboard easily fits in the back of my small Mini Cooper. A few small tools are all I need to use to maintain it. It's super-simple mechanically. No adjusting of brakes, chain, shifter, etc. as there is with a bike. 

When I get off the board and want to walk for a while, I just pick it up. If I ever pass by a coffeehouse and feel the need for a caffeine pickup, I can take it inside. Lock not necessary.

Longboards are less expensive than bicycles, and arguably better exercise -- especially when someone, like moi, land paddles with a stick, thereby involving his/her entire body (especially the core) in propulsion. 

So the next time you see a longboarder, think great way to get around. Not, crazy skateboarder. Longboarding is becoming increasingly common transportation. USA Today says so.

[Note: driving home on Liberty Road this afternoon I had to make a detour because police were investigating a serious accident involving a skateboarder. Reportedly the boarder is facing a DUII charge and wasn't wearing a helmet. So, yeah, some skateboarders do crazy stuff. But so do priests, lawyers, doctors, politcians, everybody.]

I want to be reincarnated as a cat. Or a street performer.

Though I don't expect any afterlife to follow my death, here's a request in case reincarnation rules the post-last-breath roost:

If I'm headed downward on the evolutionary ladder, being a cat looks like a lot of fun. I'm already messy in the bathroom, like to tease dogs, and am prone to spilling coffee.

Watching this video, I realized I'd be a great cat! (Plus, I can look ever so innocent when I've done something wrong.)

 

Alternatively, if a human body is in my karmic cards, I could see myself being this street performer guy. I like being the center of attention. Crude humor appeals to me. And I wouldn't mind experiencing a life at the opposite end of the white men can't jump balance beam I'm currently standing on.

 

Clackamas County commissioners don't understand meaning of "contract"

Well, a majority of Clackamas County voters decided they wanted a no-nothing Tea Party type, John Ludlow, to head up the Board of Commissioners.

They're getting what they deserve: a guy who doesn't understand the meaning of "contract" -- a simple word that most people grasp. 

An agreement between two or more parties, especially one that is written and enforceable by law. 

An agreement enforceable by law. That's what Clackamas County and Tri Met have in regards to an extension of light rail to Milwaukie.

But Ludlow has set the County on a collison course with a court case he is almost certain to lose.

TriMet filed a lawsuit today to force Clackamas County to follow through on its commitments to the Portland-Milwaukie light rail project.

The transportation agency says the county has delayed final project property acquisitions and $1.3 million in road and signal improvements, and that this could impede the project. TriMet claims that the county is breaking its contracts with TriMet by not letting construction of the line continue as previously agreed.

Way to go, TriMet.

Ludlow and his fellow anti-government, anti-alternative transportation, anti-train, anti-taxes commissioners deserve to have their bullshit put to a stop by the legal system.

Rail phobia is one thing. Failing to abide by a legal contract is a whole other thing.

It seems obvious that when Clackamas County signed a binding agreement with TriMet prior to the passage of an initiative that required voter approval of anything to do with rail in the county, that agreement had to be honored.

The smart approach would be to save the citizens money by admitting the obvious and not engaging in a costly legal battle with TriMet. However, Ludlow isn't smart. Devious, yes. Dishonorable, yes. But smart, no. 

Though he's only been in office a few months, Ludlow already is becoming a source of hilarity with his quasi-dictatorial Clackistan shenanigans. 

The IFC channel already has Portlandia. Maybe we should get TLC channel to create "Clackistan". The show would be centered around a county government in which the elected officials and employees do all sorts of whacky, corrupt stuff at taxpayer expense.

Where in the world could we find such a place, where the government has been allowed to become such a comedy of errors? Hmm...I know! Clackamas County. Cue the laugh track.

Except, this shouldn't be funny to county residents. Hopefully they'll remember the antics of the political jokers they voted for last November and not repeat that mistake again.  

The Oregonian editorial board is sounding an alarm about the trouble John Ludlow is causing in the county commission. When Ludlow loses the TriMet lawsuit, that alarm will be much louder.

Update: Here's a great comment from "edwardalbini" I found on the Oregonian story about the Trimet lawsuit:

Apparently the newly elected Clackamas County commissioners (and many of their constituents including several who are active in this forum) are unaware of the legal definition of the word "contract". That ignorance is on display in last year's Measure 3-401, which set the stage for this lawsuit. 
 
The likelihood is EXTREMELY high the contract will eventually be upheld. If the county commission is making a conscious decision to breach the contract and pay penalties for doing so, only to end up honoring the contract anyway, is that really in the best interest of Clackamas County taxpayers? 
 
Fortunately, Clackamas County will be able to use future I-205 toll income to offset penalties and legal fees. Last month, in a brilliant "spur-of-the-moment" move, County Chairman John Ludlow spearheaded a measure for the May 21st ballot to allow voters to decide whether to institute a toll on I-205 as a defensive measure to the Columbia River Crossing. So the County has that going for them. Wait... uh... Ludlow forgot that I-205 is a FEDERAL highway and did not consult with the Federal Highway Administration before floating the toll idea.  
 
Next, look for Ludlow and crew to push for a ballot measure allowing voters to decide upon whether or not to roll back the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.

More gun regulations, fewer deaths. Study of states proves it.

I accept your apologies, gun advocates. In quite a few posts on this blog, I've been stating the obvious: controlling the availability of guns produces fewer gun deaths.

After all, guns kill people. People don't kill people.  (The number of bare-handed murders is hugely less than the number of murders by a gun.)

But I've gotten quite a few comments from defenders of unfettered gun availability who ignore research proving my point. Hopefully a new study will come closer to convincing them that while they're free to believe what they want to, they aren't free to make up their own facts.

Have a read: "States with more gun restrictions have fewer deaths, study says."

As Congress debates whether to toughen the nation’s gun laws, a study from Boston Children’s Hospital found that states with the highest number of gun laws have the lowest rates of gun deaths due to homicides and suicides.

The research, published online Wednesday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, analyzed gun laws in all 50 states as well as the total number of gun-related deaths in each state from 2007 through 2010. It found that fatality rates ranged from a high of 17.9 per 100,000 people in Louisiana — a state among those with the fewest gun laws — to a low of 2.9 per 100,000 in Hawaii, which ranks sixth for its number of gun restrictions.

Massachusetts, which the researchers said has the most gun restrictions, had a gun fatality rate of 3.4 per 100,000.

“Critics of gun laws have said that gun laws don’t work, but our research indicates the opposite,” said study leader Dr. Eric Fleegler, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Boston Children’s Hospital. “In states with the most laws, we found a dramatic decreased rate in firearm fatalities, though we can’t say for certain that these laws have led to fewer deaths.”

Cause and effect is difficult to prove when studying complicated real world social problems. Kudos to the researchers for not claiming more implications from the study than were claimable.

You can bet that if the NRA had conducted a study and found the opposite -- that fewer gun laws were correlated with fewer deaths -- they'd be shamelessly promoting the research as a solid basis for repealing gun regulations.

The online journal article describing this new research can be read here. Here's the conclusion:

In conclusion, we found an association between the legislative strength of a state's firearm laws—as measured by a higher number of laws—and a lower rate of firearm fatalities. The association was significant for firearm fatalities overall and for firearm suicide and firearm homicide deaths, individually. As our study could not determine a cause-and-effect relationship, further studies are necessary to define the nature of this association.

Absolutely. Do the research.

And let's also pass some nationwide gun control measures, such as universal background checks where the records are kept permanently -- just as they are currently for guns bought from licensed dealers.

Nothing is absolutely certain in life. Except death. It's horribly immoral and unethical to stand pat and shrug our societal shoulders while every year thousands upon thousands of people needlessly die from gun violence in these United States.

About 30,000 people a year are murdered by a gun, or commit suicide by using a gun. The study found a six-fold difference in deaths per 100,000 among the states. With the overall national rate about 10 deaths per 100,000, and the lowest state rate (Hawaii) being about 3 deaths per 100,000, arguably we could reduce gun deaths by two-thirds through stronger gun regulations. 

This isn't guaranteed. But if we do nothing, we'll get more of the same: the most lax gun culture of any industrialized country in the world, and by far the highest rate of gun deaths.

For progressives, defense cuts are positive side of sequester

On the whole it's stupid to make across-the-board spending cuts to much of the federal budget. That's what the sequester legislation does, which both parties and Obama agreed to. 

Stephen Colbert likened this to someone trying to lose weight by using a scalpel to slice 2% of his poundage off over his entire body. The image was appropriately gruesome. 

I don't like the sequester either, in large part because Republicans have come to like it. Anything that shrinks government, they're for. Even if the programs and services being cut are valuable, necessary, and desired by the citizenry.

But many progressives agree with the GOP on this: defense spending deserves to be cut by $500 billion over the next ten years. This is the good side of the sequester: half of it comes out of defense.

Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, wants the sequester to go fully into effect. 

"We should let it happen," Dean said of $1 trillion in domestic, defense and Medicare spending cuts set to be triggered on March 1. "I’m in favor of the sequester. It is tough on things that I care about a lot, but the fact of the matter is, you are not going to get another chance to cut the defense budget in the way that it needs to be cut."

Ezra Klein, another progressive, agrees. He laid out his reasoning in a convincing piece, "The case for the sequester's defense cuts."

Now, sequestration is a really stupid way to cut the defense budget. I’m not arguing that. But a $500 billion cut is not necessarily a stupid amount by which to cut the defense budget. And cutting $500 billion from the defense budget is not necessarily a stupid way to reduce the deficit.

Klein points out that even with the sequester, the defense budget will be down only 31% from the highs reached during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By comparison, defense cuts were considerably larger after the Korean War (43%), Vietnam War (33%), and the Cold War (36%). 

Defense is taking a bigger pecentage hit from the sequester than other programs, almost 10% overall. This is as it should be.

We spend way too much on defense, especially since there aren't any serious threats to the United States that demand ridiculous weapons systems like the absurdly expensive F-35 fighter jet -- which costs $135 million each, could cost $396 billion in total, and has been plagued with problems. 

Still, I'm hoping a smarter approach to federal spending can be found that will replace the sequester. But if Republicans stonewall by demanding all of the cuts come from domestic programs, Obama and the Democrats should say "Fine, then let's stick with what we have."

Because the sequester is halfway good: the $500 billion in defense cuts.

Just do it: read Steven Brill's TIME expose of medical costs

It took me two nights of bathtub reading to get through the 26,000 words of Steven Brill's masterful cover story in TIME magazine: "Why Medical Bills are Killing Us." It was time with TIME well spent.

Do it. If you haven't already. Read the story. You'll never look upon the health care system in the same way again. Most likely in this way:

If you aren't already convinced that hospitals (both non-profit and for-profit), drug companies, and medical device manufacturers aren't dedicated to screwing over the American public, Brill's expose will make you scream: You bastards! 

If you were already convinced, as I was, that scream will be just as loud: I knew they were bastards! 

Aaron Carroll, a physician who speaks the truth about our horribly inefficient and ineffective health care policies, correctly points out that little or nothing Brill wrote about is new news. Read his "You mean its the prices, stupid?"

So I finally got around to reading Steven Brill’s piece in Time this weekend. Yeah it took me a while, but man – why so long? I have a number of thoughts on  it, although I’ll be very disappointed in you long-time readers if you found much of it surprising.

First of all, IT’S THE PRICES, STUPID! Is this really news to anyone (each of those words is a different link, BTW)? Seriously? Not to beat a dead horse, but it’s one of the ways Switzerland keeps its costs under more control. As Sarah Kliff points out, other countries do this, too. Have you guys really not read or heard us talk about Maryland? Yes, it’s the prices. They are super, super high in the United States. Everything costs more here. Granted, the sensational nature of the piece carries far more weight, but I’m shocked at how many of my Twitter followers got the vapors after reading it.

The Sarah Kliff piece in the Washington Post referred to by Carroll provides a good overview of the TIME story in many fewer words. In fact, she does it in one sentence:

Steven Brill started his cover story in this week’s Time magazine with a simple health-policy question: “Why exactly are the bills so high?”

His article is essentially a 26,000-word answer, the longest story that the magazine has ever run by a single author. It’s worth reading in full, but if you’re looking for a quick summary, the article seemed to me to boil down to one sentence: The American health-care system does not use rate-setting.

We should. Medicare is the only aspect of our health care system which comes out looking really good in Brill's story. I can hardly wait to ditch Blue Cross/Blue Shield and jump into Medicare when I turn 65 this year.

There's no rhyme or reason to the charges you see on your hospital bill. Doctor bills maybe make a little more sense. But not a whole lot. Brill's many real life examples make clear that there is very little relation between what a patient is charged, and what the actual cost of the service is.

Medicare, though, carefully calculates what it actually costs to provide a medical service. Then it makes payments based on those costs. This isn't exactly rate setting. But it's a heck of lot better than what goes on outside of Medicare and Medicaid in the private insurance and no insurance sides of health care.

The people who get screwed the most are the ones who can least afford it: those who pay out of pocket. They're at the mercy of the Evil Chargemaster described in horrendous detail by brill. 

The chargemaster, I learned, is every hospital's internal price list. Decades ago it was a document the size of a phone book; now it's a massive computer file, thousands of items long, maintained by every hospital. 

...No hospital’s chargemaster prices are consistent with those of any other hospital, nor do they seem to be based on anything objective — like cost — that any hospital executive I spoke with was able to explain. “They were set in cement a long time ago and just keep going up almost automatically,” says one hospital chief financial officer with a shrug.

Health insurance companies get a discount from the chargemaster prices. My wife and I have noted this on our medical bills, even though they're not from a hospital. Even when we haven't met our deductible, we get a discounted price because we have Blue Cross insurance.

People who pay out of pocket because they lack insurance thus are the only ones who get billed the full chargemaster price. That's obscene. Especially when hospital, insurance, drug company, and other health care executives are making millions of dollars a year.

Our system is terribly messed up compared to how health care is provided in other countries. Brill makes that crystal clear.

Taken as a whole, these powerful institutions and the bills they churn out dominate the nation’s economy and put demands on taxpayers to a degree unequaled anywhere else on earth. In the U.S., people spend almost 20% of the gross domestic product on health care, compared with about half that in most developed countries. Yet in every measurable way, the results our health care system produces are no better and often worse than the outcomes in those countries.

According to one of a series of exhaustive studies done by the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm, we spend more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia. We may be shocked at the $60 billion price tag for cleaning up after Hurricane Sandy.

We spent almost that much last week on health care. We spend more every year on artificial knees and hips than what Hollywood collects at the box office. We spend two or three times that much on durable medical devices like canes and wheelchairs, in part because a heavily lobbied Congress forces Medicare to pay 25% to 75% more for this equipment than it would cost at Walmart.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 10 of the 20 occupations that will grow the fastest in the U.S. by 2020 are related to health care. America’s largest city may be commonly thought of as the world’s financial-services capital, but of New York’s 18 largest private employers, eight are hospitals and four are banks.

Employing all those people in the cause of curing the sick is, of course, not anything to be ashamed of. But the drag on our overall economy that comes with taxpayers, employers and consumers spending so much more than is spent in any other country for the same product is unsustainable. Health care is eating away at our economy and our treasury.

The health care industry seems to have the will and the means to keep it that way. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical and health-care-product industries, combined with organizations representing doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, health services and HMOs, have spent $5.36 billion since 1998 on lobbying in Washington.

That dwarfs the $1.53 billion spent by the defense and aerospace industries and the $1.3 billion spent by oil and gas interests over the same period. That’s right: the health-care-industrial complex spends more than three times what the military-industrial complex spends in Washington.

Brill's analysis re-convinced me of something I already was convinced of: any efforts by politicians of the Republican variety to reduce government health care spending by cutting benefits, or increasing premiums, makes no sense.

It isn't patients who are the problem. The problem is crazily irrational exorbitant charges for services people in other countries pay much less for. Medicare is administered in a highly efficient fashion, much more so than private insurance companies.

Even so, Medicare is constrained by the health care-industrial complex lobbyists mentioned by Brill. For example, Medicare should be allowed to negotiate down the cost of prescription drugs.

The most atrocious Republican idea is to make a bad situation worse by putting even more emphasis on an unfettered free market in health care. We already have the highest medical costs of any industrialized country, with lower than average health outcomes.

Regulation in the form of "Medicare For All" is the best way of bringing costs down and positive outcomes up. For some reason Brill doesn't go quite that far in his list of policy recommendations, but he should have.

Another way to get the gist of Brill's story is to watch a 13 minutes Wonkblog discussion between Ezra Klein and Sarah Kliff. I didn't watch the whole thing, but what I did see, I liked. 

David Withnell omits facts about protest at Dodge dealership

A few days ago I saw some guys holding a banner on the sidewalk in front of Salem's Withnell Dodge dealership on Commercial Street. Couldn't read the banner as I drove past. I figured it was some sort of advertising for the dealership.

Nope. It was a protest by the Pacific NW Regional Council of Carpenters. I learned this via a February 27 letter to the editor in the Statesman Journal from David Withnell.

On Jan. 23, 2013, I showed up for work to find three people in front of my Dodge dealership with a 50-foot banner stating, “Shame on Withnell Dodge — Hurts our community.” Not knowing what this was about, I called the number on the flier and asked.

Apparently the union had a labor dispute with a company that the Northwest Agricultural Show used to build their booths for their event in Portland. Our involvement was solely as an exhibitor in the show. I don’t know this union nor the company they are upset with.

The ag show was a four-day event at the end of January and, 40 days later, they are still out front of my dealership, every day, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. How is this action helping their cause?

They admit they don’t have an issue with me, yet their misleading banner makes it look as if I’m at fault for something.

So shame on the Pacific NW Regional Council of Carpenters (from Kent, Wash.) and shame on the people who think this type of protest is beneficial or right.

Curious about what the labor dispute was about, and somewhat skeptical about Withnell's claim that his dealership was in the dark about it, I fired up Google and did some digging in cyberspace.

First, a quick look at the Council of Carpenters' Facebook page shows that the union calls "Shame On..." fairly frequently. I counted seven shame photos, including the Dodge dealership's (above). So Withnell Dodge shouldn't feel like it's being singled out. 

But shame for what?

Searching for information on what the protest was all about led me to Bill Post's blog, where he'd written "Union Thugs Picket Car Dealer in Salem." Thugs? The guys I saw on the sidewalk were just calmly standing there, holding a banner. 

A letter from the Council of Carpenters included with the post made them sound even less thuggish. The letter, dated January 16, 2013, was addressed to the Northwest Agricultural Show -- where Withnell Dodge was an exhibitor.

Withnell Dodge was cc'd along with other apparent exhibitors, so almost certainly the dealership was sent a copy of the letter. Thus when David Withnell says that he had no idea on January 23 what the protest was about, and that he had never heard of the Council of Carpenters, seemingly either he hadn't read the letter, someone at Withnell Dodge had failed to tell him about it, or the post office took more than a week to deliver mail from Kent, Washington to Salem (unlikely). 

Regardless, by February 27, when his letter to the editor was published, Withnell certainly should have been aware of what the Council of Carpenters had told the Northwest Agricultural Show and the ten cc'd exhibitors.

Here's the last two paragraphs of the letter.

I found the language courteous, albeit strong and demanding. The Council of Carpenters makes it clear that anyone associated with the Show and its claimed payment of substandard wages through a contractor is at risk of a "peaceful and lawful display of banners and distribution of handbills."

Given that Withnell Dodge was an exhibitor at the Northwest Agricultural Show, and was cc'd on the letter sent by certified mail to the director of the Show, it sure seems that David Withnell isn't justified in claiming that the union doesn't have an issue with him.

Pretty clearly, they do. Whether their gripe is justified... that's another question.

I can understand how someone could sympathize either with the Council of Carpenters, or with Withnell Dodge. My point is just that the Carpenters union contacted Withnell Dodge before the protest began and told the dealership why it might be targeted for a banner display.

Which is what has happened. The union followed through on what it said it might do. Withnell Dodge followed through on participating in the Northwest Agricultural Show. Each organization is doing what seems right to it.

No problems there.

However, what bothers me about David Withnell's letter to the editor is that he makes it sound like the protest at his dealership was a complete surprise to him, and that he has no idea why the Council of Carpenters is upset with Withnell Dodge. 

Free speech, including protesting peacefully and lawfully, is part of the American way.

Withnell Dodge should respect that right rather than wrongly portraying the Council of Carpenters as singling out the dealership for a protest without any reason.