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Oregon Legislators Tackle The Tough Issues

HB 2401, filed at the request of Gov. John Kitzhaber, would tax bird feed and devote the revenue to bird conservation.

SB 99 - Repeals Daylight Saving Time.

SB 461 - If passed would allow you to change your driver's license photo if you don't like it.

HB 2534, sponsored by a handful of lawmakers, would prohibit the use of drones for hunting and fishing and for interfering with those who are hunting and fishing.

There's no question that Oregon's Democratics have a lot on their plates. I'm going out to buy more bird food before they get that tax into place. And it's really disappointing that I won't be able to use a drone to fly-fish, as I was so hoping to get really good at drone flycasting.

It's great to see that infrastructure and other issues have apparently been solved, though.

Ask Your Doctor

Some commonly-used drugs are linked to dementia when used long-term, according to a recent study; explaining the Lefty commenters to stories on O-Live. In other news, some commonly-used drugs are linked to dementia when used long-term, according to a recent study; explaining the Lefty commenters to stories on O-Live.

It also appears that Oregon is number one in something!

Oregon has the highest rate of nonmedical use of prescription opioids in the U.S.

So apparently, legislators are trying to come up with some sort of law to curtail prescription addicition. I know that Rush Limbaugh got hooked on oxycontin or something, and this appears to be a huge problem; some people do find the stuff addictive and move on to heroin because it's cheaper and easier to acquire, but I've never understood it. I've got a big stash of oxy-something here on the mountain that was given to me post-surgery, but I hated the stuff. It made me feel crummy, so I quit taking it. It's still here somewhere. I can't understand how some people not only like it, but become addicted to it. Apparently they do, though.

I can't imagine it. If that makes me weird, I'm happy to go with that.

 

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Seattle's Stocks

Well, no, they aren't going to set up stocks in Pioneer Square and have the citizenry throw rotten food at people imprisoned therein, but it's roughly the same; they've begun "red-tagging" the garbage bins of people who dare to put food into the garbage. The neighbors will notice, and shun the offenders.

Coming down the road, in July: fines for folks who ignore neighborly shunning and continue the unspeakable practice of placing rotting leftovers into the garbage. Welcome to Seattle today!

Doubtless, they'll soon be banning installation of garbage disposals in kitchen sinks as well. They demand, as does the city of Porkland, that residents and businesses compost.

You can put that in your compost bin and buy it back next year in a bag and put it in your garden.

Yes, that's the ticket! You can pay to have your leftovers picked up (or pay a fine if you don't) and then you can pay again to buy some of it back to put on your garden (assuming you even have a garden). Such a deal! What? Why, no, this isn't social engineering. Really, it snot. It's just "encouraging" people to do the right thing. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

Up here on the mountain, we've had a couple of compost bins for years; our coffee grounds and veggie debris go in there (at one point, so did ten years' worth of tax-related paperwork - it composts just fine as well). Some leftovers from the take-out go into our garbage disposal, which I replaced a few years back with a heftier one in case Portland decided to ban them. We occasionally still put stuff into the garbage, but in our family, we manage to fill one 20-gallon can every couple of weeks, so we don't think we're really over-doing things.

But come around to tag my can, and you'll find your can being tagged - hard. And I'll stuff that red tag in your pants. There's only so much bureaucratic crud they should expect you to quietly endure.

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Oregon's Metro Regional Governmental Layer: A Model

Once envisioned, decades ago, as a "model for the nation" (which nobody chose to follow), the Metro regional governmental layer hired "staff writers" some five or so years ago. These "reporters" write stories about Metro happenings and feed them to the media; Pamplin media usually publishes them verbatim. It's catching on:

Gov. Mike Pence is starting a state-run taxpayer-funded news outlet that will make pre-written news stories available to Indiana media, as well as sometimes break news about his administration, according to documents obtained by The Indianapolis Star.

It's a great time to be in media - no need to bother with hiring reporters; think of the cost-savings! After all, taxpayers foot the bill for the compensation packages of these dedicated staff, who write the stories and send them off to the media.

Finally, after four decades, somebody's taking notice of Metro!

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Why You Keep Cats Indoors

It doesn't matter how loveable your cat is, and it doesn't matter how well you feed him/her. You don't let it outdoors for a couple of very good reasons: 1) it will kill native birds. That's what hey do; it's a hard-wired behavior, and you can't train them not to do it. Our native birds have a hard enough time competing with introduced species as it is (the millions of starlings plaguing North America today originated from 18 pairs brought over from England by somebody who thought they were "pretty" and released them into New York City's Central Park in the 1800s); the last thing they need is your kitty stalking and killing them.

2) It's bad for their lifespan. Two things typically kill "outdoor" cats: coyotes and cars. My idiot next-door neighbors had four cats that they let run loose; three were eventually eaten by the coyotes that live in the woods down the hill, and the fourth was struck by a car and died in the ditch behind my mailbox. I heard one of the neighbors walking up the road, calling for "Sammy", so I directed her to the corpse, which was, in fact, her remaining cat. Once again, I mentioned to her that if she wants to have a cat, they live a lot longer if they're kept indoors - although I was secretly kind of glad that "Sammy" had assumed ambient temperature, as I'd witnessed him kill several chickadees and towhees in my back yard. She did, in fact, get another cat - and it is never let out of the house. Who knew? Even dedicated Leftists are capable of learning, after a while!

In the latest example of why cats shouldn't be allowed outdoors, a cat in Tampa, Florida was struck by a car. Found in a pool of blood by the owner, who nonetheless took in to a vet, the cat was officially pronounced road-kill, and the owner buried it.

Five days later, it was back on his doorstep, having clawed its way out of the grave. He needs his broken jaw repaired, and he's missing his left eye, but he's very much alive. He suffered massive brain trauma when hit, which shut everything down and led to a premature declaration of death. It appears that he revived in the grave and hid in the neighborhood for a while before finding his way back home, apparently in hopes of getting some dinner.

If you know anybody that lets their cat(s) roam outdoors, please feel free to forward this post - attribution isn't necessary; it's just for the good of cats, birds, and people to keep the word out there.

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The Situation In New York City

Is dire; store shelves are cleaned out of staples such as bread and beer, although a few hardy souls are still prowling the streets despite the worsening weather. Here's a recent photo from a NYC Whole Foods:

Comcast Writes OR "Secretary Of State" Kate Brown's Correspondence

Oregon's "Secretary of State" was outed today. Not only does she support Comcast's planned $45 billion takeover of Time-Warner, she let Comcast representatives write a letter of support on her behalf, which she dully signed and sent off to the FCC:

More prominent officials with histories of receiving campaign money from Comcast — like Oregon's Democratic Secretary of State Kate Brown — also recently sent personal letters to the FCC supporting the merger.

Records obtained by The Verge show that Secretary of State Brown's letter to the agency was almost wholly written by a Comcast Government Affairs specialist. After a conversation with Brown’s staff, the Comcast official sent Brown a letter he had prewritten for her that even included her typed sign-off, name, and title. Brown’s office sent the Comcast document — containing just three sentences with new or altered language — to the FCC emblazoned with the official seal of the State of Oregon.

Since 2008, Comcast has contributed nearly $10,000 to Brown's two campaigns for secretary of state. Neither Comcast nor the state of Oregon made any attempt tell the public of the corporation’s role in authoring Brown’s letter. Brown’s communications director told The Verge that Brown was too busy to be interviewed.

Oh, there's little doubt that #KorruptKate was "too busy". She has hopes of becoming the state's next governor, after all. And since she's from Porkland, and since she's a Democratic, all she has to do is declare her intent for the office, stonewall the corruption, and she'll be in.

To their credit, The Oregonian noticed the story in national online media, and therefore felt obligated to report on it.

Who needs to think when your feet just go
Who needs to think when your feet just go
Kate Brown, Kate Brown
Kate Brown, Kate Brown

- with apologies to the former band known as Talking Heads; it just seemed to fit. It's lifted from the track, Genius of Love, from the Stop Making Sense concert.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let it Snow

Oh, the worst storm in history is bearing down on the east coast; New Yawkahs, beware! Things are just fine, here - neener neener!

Actually, this is likely to be nothing compared to the one that hit New York City in 1888 - which was likely caused by Mann-made global warming, of course.

Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones

They're growing bones on the International Space Station. There's a reason for that, of course: the scientists hope to gain new insights into skeletal weakening and atrophy in the hope that findings will lead to treatments for bone loss, which happens not only to those in long-term zero-gravity environments, but also to older folks here on Earth.

A group of 40 rodents will call the International Space Station home for two months, during which scientists will test a bone-growth molecule on them in a microgravity environment. Microgravity, which happens when an object (or rodent) is in free fall, lets scientists produce changes in bone and organ systems that can't be replicated on Earth.

It may come as a surprise to find that we've been doing this sort of thing for years; my wife worked on the STS-80 Space Shuttle project, looking into changes in calcium and blood pressure effects of microgravity. Calcium balance, as it happens, turns out to be critical to maintenance: your bones are constantly absorbing and excreting the stuff. In certain circumstances, such as microgravity or aging, the balance is thrown off; they start excreting faster than they absorb, which is why an 80 year-old suffers hip fractures after a fall that would leave a kid unaffected. On  Earth, we call the phenomenon osteoporosis. And this leads us to the next step:

The same thing happens to much younger people in space. So this test is designed to determine whether a molecule that directs stem cells to produce more bone works as well in microgravity as it does in test animals here.

The study hopes to gain insight into better ways to prevent bone loss for astronauts on long flights and for patients back on Earth.

The research, which will begin on the ground sometime soon, is funded by grants from the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space and National Institutes of Health.

My wife's study was funded by NASA-Ames Reseach Center and NIH, and the results laid the groundwork for this study, among others.

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ILWU Thugs Crying Their Jobs Away

Slowdowns by the thugs at west coast ports are now documented to be harming regional economies for no apparent reason:

Longshoremen are some of the highest paid blue collar jobs available. The average Longshoreman wage and benefits package is nearly $220,000 per active worker. Foremen can make upwards of $300,000 a year in wages alone.

That's not good enough; the thugs always want more. And they don't care how many people are hurt, so long as they get what they want.

In early January, Weyerhauser announced it will lay off workers at one of its Longview, Wash., facilities as a direct result of longshore union slowdowns at ports in Tacoma and Seattle. The Journal of Commerce recently highlighted a Federal Reserve national economic report indicating significant economic impact caused by disruption at West Coast ports.

The actions of the thugs are advancing interest at the ports in automation, which means that the majority of the thugs, if not all of them, may soon be out of a job.

At an unidentified container terminal, giant cargo containers are lifted and lowered by mechanical arms, and moved between land and sea on extra-wide truck beds. Without a single human in sight, the machines seem to move of their own volition, carrying out the most complex tasks with complete precision. Depicting a human-created world devoid of humanity, Terminal is a poetic observation of the oft-forgotten transport infrastructure at the heart of our global economy. Finding unexpected beauty and grace in the rhythms of heavy machinery, the film is not only a glimpse into the operations of global transport, but a mesmerising mechanical ballet.

Click the embedded link to see an 8-minute video of the coming future of port operations. And then thank robotics for working toward freeing us from the soon-to-be obsolete ILWU.