Bend

Since my trip home from the Inauguration I've been here, there, and everywhere in between, hence the inconsistent blogging. Now I'm packing up in order to hit the road for Bend, Oregon, my new home of five months. No time to blog now, just yet another plea to stick with me until my life settles into a new rhythm.

RAM

I just installed 2GB of RAM into my computer all by myself. It took a lot of time and some trial and error, but now I feel uber techy.

Furthering that techy feel was my interaction and editing of HTML during my last post. I needed to shrink the map of the United States, but rather than delete it and upload it again with a smaller size, I simply went into the HTML and made the alteration. Two years ago I would never have attempted that, but a couple short conversations with the web guy at my job at the time taught me enough (and instilled enough confidence) to try. What's next, soddering a mother board?

Democratic Majority?

As far as these things go, you can probably just add this to the list of trendy polls. I'm sure there are millions of people out there ready to switch back to Republicanism as soon as the bad taste from W gets washed from their mouths and the honeymoon with Obama wears off, but Gallup just released a poll that says only five states have Republican majorities: Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska, and Nebraska. That's not many electoral votes. Like I said, this will most certainly change, but it's a long, steep climb back for the Republican Party.

Non-Paper Daily, 1.28.2009

*The American Society of Civil Engineers reported: "More than a quarter of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Leaky pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water every day. And aging sewage systems send billions of gallons of untreated wastewater cascading into the nation's waterways each year."

Hat tip to Steve at Washington Monthly.

*The latest stimulus package, now around $850 billion, passed the House today with no Republican votes even after the Democrats made concessions they wanted.

Wikipedia

Here's an interesting blog post about Wikipedia and information on the web. Basically the study says that Google searches for fairly pedestrian topics (i.e. giraffes, Ford, Brad Pitt, etc) often perch the Wikipedia entry on the topic as the top match and always include Wikipedia in the top ten. The author continues by observing that for a medium such as the internet that values heterogeneity and breadth of information, it's certainly interesting that much of what people get from Google is from a single source. Food for thought.

Aaaaaand Back

I've returned from the voyage, but am not sure how much blogging will ensue. Masters classes begin tomorrow and my move to Bend is this Friday. I'll do my best to get these fingers crackin'. Enjoy!

Alive!

It's been a whirlwind few days. After taking the red eye to Washington, DC I spent a day wandering the town then a night at the bar and jumping into bushes (a favorite DC past time). Tuesday started at 5:15am, contained lots of emotions and tons of expended energy trying to stay warm, and ended with another night at the bar (unfortunately no bushes this time). Wednesday started early, included a metro ride in the wrong direction (my apologies to all involved) and ended with a nine hour car ride up to Boston. Phew!

So I'm alive and kicking and got my first real night of sleep since embarking on this adventure, but what can you expect with amazing things happening. A full report about inauguration will come, but here is how I explained it to a friend while chatting online:

Three things: 1) People were joyous. Truly joyous and relieved. 2) Everyone was so kind. It was freezing cold and most people weren't dressed appropriately. That's a recipe for angry folks, but folks were AMAZING. 3) You could hear a pin drop at times during the event... and 4, for good measure: The echo of his words going down The Mall.... that was my favorite part.

Hopefully I'll find some time to blog and a way to upload photos. Stick with me!

Inauguration

I'm currently in Portland preparing for a flight to Washington, DC to attend the inauguration of Barack Obama. This kid is excited.

A warning: Blogging may be sporadic at best... however, perhaps lots of cool stuff will be happening and my fingers will be flying. Vamos a ver.

January 20th will mark the best birthday present I have ever received. After eight years it's finally over.

Non-Paper Daily, 1.16.2009

*There is one important piece of news today: I finished my first student teaching placement. Half way to my masters and certification. Hollller.

Non-Paper Daily, 1.15.2009

*After hitting a flock of birds shortly after takeoff today, a plane crashed in the Hudson River. All passengers and crew made it off safely, in a true testament to training, preparation... and the value of those plastic instructions in the seatback pocket.

*Roland Burris, err The Magic Man, was officially sworn in today as the junior senator from Illinois.

*Hearings on Capitol Hill in regard to Obama's cabinet confirmations continued today. Of the big appointments--Clinton as Secretary of State, Holder as Attorney General, and Geither at Treasury--all are going well, even with the hiccup Geither is experiencing in regard to a former housekeeper he employed who turned out to have exceeded her immigration term. She went on to get a green card and, seemingly, all is well.

*9:00PM eastern time on Friday: That is the hour that Bush's team no longer inhabits the West Wing. Hooray! With the exception of a few key positions, the staffers will turn in their keys and leave for the final time.

Non-Paper Daily, 1.14.2009

*W, at 34%, is leaving the presidency with the second lowest job approval rating of all time... ahead of Nixon... who resigned because he was going to be impeached. It's hard to even include Nixon due to that major caveat, but even if you do, second from the bottom of the barrel isn't so hot. Interestingly, since the election, Bush's approval rating has climbed 9%. My guess is that people feel both sorry for the guy and happy that he's leaving. Whatever the cause, it's worth remember that only 25% of the populace approved of the job Bush did as of November 4th, 2008.

*Last night Barack Obama had dinner with a group of lead conservative commentators. The list: George Will, Rich Lowry, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Larry Kudlow, David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Michael Barone, and Paul Gigot. This morning for breakfast he was joined by a left leaning crowd: E.J. Dionne, Eugene Robinson, Gerry Seib, Ron Brownstein, Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, Andrew Sullivan, and Rachel Maddow. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at these conversations.

*Apparently Obama is putting together an unprecedented-in-size grassroots network whose job it will be to push Obama's legislative agenda. He has millions of dollars and millions of people. This should be interesting.

Comments

Not sure if you all knew this, but I usually add comments in reaction to your comments, so if you didn't know, now you know, so go check out your old/my new comments.

That was a terrible sentence.

I'm ashamed.

Back to blogging.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

"Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" (yes, I know Mrs. House (5th grade teacher), books are underlined, but I don't know how to do that on here) by Barbara Kingsolver is my current read. The penny version: A family tries to live solely on local food for one year and along the way they write about our current corporate food system, it's costs and benefits, and how/why local food is the preferable option.

Last night I read a passage that struck a chord, so much so that I've typed it up for all to see. It reminds me of something my mom always talked about, that we should always make the best of whatever situation we are in. Wonderful advice. Enjoy:

When I was in college, living two states away from my family, I studied the map one weekend and found a different route home from the one we usually traveled. I drove back to Kentucky the new way, which did turn out to be faster. During my visit I made sure all my relatives heard about the navigational brilliance that saved me thirty-seven minutes.

“Thirty-seven,” my grandfather mused. “And here you just used up fifteen of them telling all about it. What’s your plan for the other twenty-two?”

Good question. I’m still stumped for an answer, whenever the religion of timesaving pushes me to zip trough a meal or a chore, rushing everybody out the door to the next point on a schedule. All that hurry can blur the truth that life is a zero-sum equation. Every minute I save will get used on something else, possibly no more sublime than staring at the newel post trying to remember what I just ran upstairs for. On the other hand, attending to the task in front of me—even a quotidian chore—might make it into part of a good day, rather than just a rock in the road to someplace else.

I have a farmer friend who would definitely side with my grandfather on the subject of time’s economies. He uses draft animals instead of a tractor. Doesn’t it take an eternity to turn a whole field with a horse-driven plow? The answer, he says, is yes. Eternal is the right frame of mind. “When I’m out there cultivating the corn with a good team in the quiet of the afternoon, watching the birds in the hedgerows, oh my goodness, I could just keep going all day. Kids from the city come out here and ask, ‘What do you do for fun around here?’ I tell them, ‘I cultivate.’”

Now that I’m decades older and much less clever than I was in college, I’m getting better at facing life’s routines the way my friend faces his cornfield. I haven’t mastered the serene mindset on all household chores (What do you do for fun around here? I scrub pots and pans, okay??), but I might be getting there with cooking. Eternal is the right frame of mind for making food for a family: cooking down the tomatoes into a red-gold oregano-scented sauce for pasta. Before that, harvesting sun-ripened fruits, pinching oregano leaves form their stems, growing these things from seed—yes. A lifetime is what I’m after. Cooking is definitely one of the things we do for fun around here. When I’m in a blue mood I head for the kitchen. I turn the pages of my favorite cookbooks, summoning the prospective joyful noise of a shared meal. I stand over a bubbling soup, close my eyes, and inhale. From the group up, everything about nourishment steadies my soul.

No More Bush. Amen.

Yesterday, George W(!)Bush held his final press conference. Hallelujah! I didn't watch the tape, but apparently he appeared to show some understanding as to the extent he fucked up. No, really, he fucked up. It's easy for people's anger to subside once someone is gone, but it's been a long time (and perhaps unprecedented to this extent) since a president has taken the United States this far backwards. That being said, Kevin put it perfectly when he said let's not forgive and forget too quick, if not for any other reason than avoiding the election of morons like Bush in the future. The excerpt:

I haven't yet watched the press conference myself, so all I can say is: I sure hope Fallows is wrong. It's human nature, of course, for anger over a botched job to recede with time, and perhaps it's also true that anger naturally morphs into other, more complex emotions anyway. How many people today are really angry at Herbert Hoover?

Still, I sure hope that the public doesn't forgive Bush for a very, very long time. To this day I don't understand how such a manifestly unqualified candidate got either nominated or elected in the first place, and the damage this man-child has done to the country during his eight years in office is hard to even put into words. If Barack Obama is lucky, he might — might — by 2016 be able to get us back to where we were in 2000. The last eight years have taken us backward by almost every metric that matters, and as he heads off to Texas, hopefully never to be heard from again, Bush will go down in history as one of the very few presidents to have left the country in demonstrably worse shape than when he got it. It's an elite group indeed.

Non-Paper Daily, 1.12.2009

*After all the tug-of-warring, it looks like Roland Burris will indeed fill Obama's vacated senate seat. Other than him appearing to be a bit of a quack, I think, legally, this is the right move. However, let it be known that, if I ever blog about him again, he will henceforth be referred to as "The Magic Man."

*Obama asked Bush, and Bush complied, to release the second half of the initial $700 billion economic stimulus. I have lots of thoughts ranging around my head about this, more than shall be put in this post, but mainly it's this: Throwing money at the situation won't solve anything unless and until Americans stop consuming more than they produce. The root of this problem goes far deeper than a bunch of consumer and government spending can cure.

*This is fantastic news. Obama's transition team reasserted their word to fulfill a campaign promise to close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. For six years there have been hundreds of prisoners detained there without due process, a fundamental right in the United States. Thanks to years of mismanagement and illegal maneuvering by the Bush Administration, figuring out what to do with those prisoners will be hard, but this is a positive step.

*And so is this. The Obama team has unequivically said they will get rid of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rule for military service. Currently, you cannot serve in the military if you are openly gay. This ridiculous Clinton-era policy needs to be headed for the nearest trash dump. Since when does who you like to make out with have anything to do with your ability to serve?

Money Saving

In these tough economic times there are millions of people taking steps to make ends meet. It often strikes me that there are myriad places folks could save money, but don't as a result of a lack of education or unwillingness to make sacrifices. I read an interesting article this morning about smallish changes in life that result in significant savings. Could you do all or some of these things?

* Buy a bread maker. You can buy one for $55. If it saves you just $4 a week on store-bought bread, that's $208 a year. A 280% return.
* Get a credit card with a great sign-up bonus. Like the AirTran Visa card. Cost: The $40 annual fee. After your first purchase you get enough reward miles for a free flight, saving maybe $250. Then cancel the card. Return: 525%.
* Take out a local library card. Cost: Nothing. If it saves you $10 a month on books, that's $120 a year. Return: Infinite. Note: Some libraries now let you borrow electronic books over the Internet as well.
* Replace your premium cable package with a Netflix subscription and a $100 set-top box. You can download movies and TV programs as well getting DVDs through the mail. Cost: $100 for the cheapest set-top box, plus $17 a month for a three-movie subscription. If it replaces a $50-a-month cable package, that's a 98% return on investment.
* Order a packet of seeds and plant them in a window box or garden. Growing your own herbs, spices, and even vegetables – depending on the amount of space you have – is a great investment. If you spent just $10 on seeds and saved a mere $50 in the year, that's a 400% ROI.
* Switch to a prepaid cellphone. Cost: $20 for the phone, and maybe $100 a year for minutes. Move the rest of your talk-time to free Internet calls, and stop hemorrhaging $60 a month on a cellular plan. ROI: 500%
* Start making your own coffee to take to work each morning. Cost: $20 for a Thermos, $10 for a filter and papers, and $60 a year for ground coffee. Then skip the $4 a day drive-thru. If that saves you $1,000 a year, the return is more than 1,000 %.

I would add one more: cook your own meals in place of eating out. Thoughts?

Non-Paper Daily, 1.11.2009

*An earthquake in Costa Rica has thus far claimed 18 lives. This sounds weird to say, but hasn't it been awhile since we've had a natural disaster?

*The death toll, 870 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, is nearing one thousand in Gaza. It continues to be unclear what Israel is trying to achieve. As we've learned in Iraq (and you'd think they would have learned in the last fifty years there), you can't win these types of battles relying on force alone. Apparently Israel is choosing to ignore that lesson.

*Sadly it's "au revoir" to this year's college football season. It's never too early to begin looking at next year, so here is Rival's initial rankings for 2009. Just a note, both Oregon and Oregon State are ranked!

Geoengineering

As we all know, climate change is happening because greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, are trapping heat inside our atmosphere. The result is the general warming of our planet. Contrary to popular belief, this does not mean all regional climates around the world will become warmer. Instead, climate change will affect weather patterns, i.e. precipitation shift, temperature variation, and changing wind patterns, etc.

I bring this up because there are many theories on how to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Obviously the best place to start is to emit less carbon in the first place (think cap and trade or carbon taxes). However, many believe the situation is so dire that we need to begin removing carbon from the atmosphere in a process known as sequestration.

This week, a group of German and Indian scientists embarked on a mission to implement a sequestration strategy known as iron fertilization. The process consists of spreading iron into iron-deprived ocean waters that will, in turn, spur the growth of plankton that "eat" carbon. When the plankton die, the theory goes, they will sink to the ocean floor, forever trapping the carbon it "ate." At this point, however, scientists don't know how effective this strategy really is, hence the experiment.

The catch is that over 200 countries agreed to a moratorium on this activity. No one knows what the effect will be, intended or otherwise. As our world moves closer to environmental disaster, it will be interesting to see what types of things nations or NGO's start to do.

Non-Paper Daily, 1.10.2009

*Obama and his team released their economic stimulus plan today. From the limited things I've read it sounds like most liberal pundits/bloggers don't think, at $775 billion, it is large enough. Keep in mind that this is just a starting point, now Congress will start crafting the plan. More commentary as this unfolds.

*Obama, continuing his bi-partisan tradition, is honoring John McCain and Colin Powell at an event before inauguration. Though I disagree with McCain on just about everything, some recognition for his campaign opponent sounds good to me.

*Job numbers from last year came out and the United States lost 2,590,000 jobs, or about %1.7 of our total work force. It's the worst loss since 1982.

300th Post!

Milestones are fun to acknowledge, so for all to know, this is my 300th post. This is insignificant on nearly all levels... sooooooooooo, moving along. :)

Depression Weight

No, I'm not talking about eating too much while depressed, I'm referring to a phenomenon many food experts see on the horizon. Studies show that as people struggle economically, one of the first places they cut back in on healthy food, i.e. substituting potato chips for real potatoes. The result? Weight gain during economic depression.

Ummmmmmm

Just sayin'.

Non-Paper Daily, 1.9.2009

*Michelle Obama's mom, Marian Robinson, is moving (it looks temporary) into the White House with the Obama family to help take care of the kids. Strikes me as a good message for Americans: Family helping family and sticking together is a positive thing.

*Dude ate his eye. I guess he won't be needing it soon. Sounds like a sad story.

*It looked like Roland Burris (guy who is supposed to replace Obama in the Senate) was not going to be seated, then it looked like he would, now it looks iffy again. The Illinois Secretary of State is refusing to certify his appointment and the US Senate won't seat him until "his credentials are in order." Time will tell. BTW The basic argument against seating him is that he was appointed by a guy who previously tried to sell the senate seat to the highest bidder. Here's the case in favor of seating him.

Blagojevich

Dude finally got impeached.

Good. This is the last thing we need to be worried about at a time when our economy is on the brink of disaster, we still have hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world, and problems like global warming, health care, etc loom ever larger.

Apparently it's not just that he tried to sell Obama's senate seat, he's accused of generally being a corrupt politician. If he's guilty, and all indicators point to yes, then kick him out and let's tackle the real problems we face.

Blog Title

Never have I ever ready a better blog post title:

Bulls Cloned From Decade-Old Frozen Testicles

Non-Paper Daily, 1.8.2009

*Oh no. Militants in Lebanon shot rockets into Israel, igniting fears of an expanding conflict in the region. What is going on over there? What is Israel's plan, kill everyone?

*More on Israel and Gaza: UN and Red Cross relief has been slowed and, in some cases, stopped into the most devastated regions of Palestine. Certainly that means more lives will be lost.

*As much as I hate the Sooners, and against all the pundits, I'm picking Oklahoma in tonight's BCS national championship game. Time to watch the game!

Non-Paper Daily, 1.7.2009

*Household name Dr. Sanjay Gupta may be the next Surgeon General. Hooray?

*Russia turned off its as supplies to Europe via a Ukrainian pipeline. What does this mean? Rich Russians are mad at rich Ukrainians... so, not much.

*Obama said today that reforms to entitlement programs (ie social security and medicare) will be part of balancing the budget. Pretty bold statement considering how sacred those programs are; we'll see how that goes.

*The state we can all spell, Mississippi, now has the highest teen pregnancy rate. For the prize they knocked off Texas and New Mexico in a heated contest for the honor.

Interesting View on the Recession... Depression

A few months ago I said I would link to interesting articles and blog posts. True to my word (!) here is an interesting take on the current recession... err, depression? The basic argument is this: The various financial and social programs we have in place thanks, in large part, to FDR, are keeping us from soup lines and bank runs. Kevin argues that the last 12 months--stock market crashing, mortgage disaster, etc--have been just as bad as the lead-up to the Great Depression, but the effect is different thanks to a more advanced government.

The post is short, go take a quick look.

Bliss

When asked today if he had any New Year's resolutions, an 8th grader said, "My New Year's resolution is to finally get a world record."

Like, duhhhhh.

They Call it Twitter Because They Couldn't Call it Stalker

During Christmas break I discussed Twitter with a friend. She was unfamiliar with the phenomenon, as was I only a few days before, so I described it based off the "Twitter in Plane English" video on Twitter's homepage. In that video Twitter describes itself as a way for people to inform the people in their network of what they are doing between the important events in their life. For example, someone may write an email or chat on IM about eating breakfast with the family, working, and going to a concert that evening. Twitter, however, allows those folks to share the "little things that happen in your life." Those little things? Mowing the lawn, drinking coffee, picking your nose, etc.

At the end of the conversation my friend say with a wonderfully straight face, "Sounds like they called it Twitter because they couldn't call it stalker."

I laughed and laughed. With the fear of sounding reactionary and, dare I say it, like a fuddy duddy, is Twitter a bit much? Is Twitter the 21st century stalker?

Non-Paper Daily, 1.6.2009

*Roland Burris, the guy embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich appointed to fill Obama's senate seat, was refused admittance into the senate today. On a funny note, he was supposed to attend meeting on Blagojevich's impeachment probe at the same time he is in DC, when asked how he would deal with that he said, "I'm the magic man." Give that man a seat!

*My head hurts.

*For about an hour today it snowed harder in La Grande than I can ever recall... just sayin'.

*A list of the Top 10 bills to be dropped (introduced) in the Senate and their summaries. It doesn't mean they will be passed in their current form, or that they will be passed at all, but for policy wonks it's a way to get an idea of what to expect in the first few months of Obama's presidency. Here's a quick review of what is there and what is missing.

Al Franken

Today the elections folks up in Minnesota formally anointed Al Franken as their next senator. Hooray! Of course, there will be more court challenges, but at this point it looks pretty concrete... er, more like written in concrete that is quickly drying. That puts the final total, at least assuming Illinois ends up with a Democrat to replace Obama, at 59 Democrats, 41 Republicans.

Two Weeks

I've essentially been gone from blogging for two weeks. Interestingly enough, the world doesn't stop when I stop blogging. Go figure. Here's a quick recap about what's been happening:

*Israel is blowing a bunch of shit (and people) up over in Gaza. Ugh.

*The crazy Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich decided to appoint Roland Burris to Obama's vacant senate seat even though ole Rod is under investigation for trying to "sell" that seat for money and influence. Democratic Senators say they will refuse to seat Burris. This should be interesting.

*The Utah Utes dominated the University of Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, completing the season as the only undefeated college football program. Should we be saying, "National Champion?"

I'm sure there is more, but I'm currently distracted by the UT vs OSU Fiesta bowl match-up.

Back!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I never would have thought just how hard it is to blog when I have tons of free time. Weird. Anyhow, now that school is back in session* we'll be back to regularly scheduled blogging. Rather than try to recap what's happened the last two weeks, I'm going to move from this point forward as though nothing has happened in the world. Kapeesh?

*Today, after being in the La Grande School System for twelve and half years, was the first snow day ever. We're getting dumped on.