So much for before & after pics

I thought I was visiting my land to take some before pictures, as in before I get it developed to put a trailer up here. Turns out my forested neighbor beat me to it.

I arrive to try to figure out where my property boundary has disappeared to, and hear someone down hill yelling at me "That's private property!"

What about my private property rights?? Did they take one of my trees out? I don't remember this much sun up here, ever. My property is a stand of old growth Cascade forest, with a little flat spot just right for camping. It seems the last undeveloped parcel here in Washington.

Well there seems to be electricity next door now. Mason county PUD, even though this is Jefferson county.

I knew things were doomed several years ago when they tore down the gorgeous big leaf maple across the street several years ago. That was step one. Now I hear a chainsaw and barking dog from my up hill neighbor, all the noises of home :(

And now, well I will go to this picnic and try to be neighborly. But maybe I should familiarize myself with the procedures for civil lawsuits here in Washington State.

The Continuum: 1963 - 1982 - 2001 - 2010

Where were you in 1963? On June 12, 1982? On September 11, 2001? Today?

Yes it *is* about civil rights. Build that mosque - its a cultural center (thank you Little Theorem).

1963 - JFK assassination (watched the funeral all day on TV)

June 12, 1982 - No Nukes rally in NYC draws 1 million people (I was there!)

September 11, 2001 - An unreal blue sky marked the day - chaos in NYC was felt on the west coast. A red, white & blue streamer from my rear view mirror - continues today, one hybrid car later, in sympathy, in memory, in solidarity, with NYC and New Jerseyans everywhere, with the spirit of tolerance. With the prayer of peace.

How Stable is the State

HR 1586 was signed by Pres Obama yesterday. Known as either "aid to states" or "a state bailout" or a "jobs bill" or "payoff to the special interest teachers unions", it will provide $36 billion to states. Of this, $10 billion is for education, and $26 billion for Medicaid match.

OK a lot of states have been banking on this money. In Oregon I'm sure it will be helpful. What interesting tea leaves do we find lurking? To pass the bill in the House it had to be fully offset (every penny paid for). So I guess there will be no more "emergency" spending bills.

An emergency lets you spend money without the revenue to pay for it. Let's see, I will be taking the kids clothes shopping this afternoon, though I still owe on my credit cards and don't really have any spare money. And no taxing authority either much as I might like. But no doubt they will make it seem an emergency with school approaching quite soon, so spend I must.

But in Congress offsets are the new reality. Closing foreign tax loopholes, and scaling down food stamp benefits starting in 2014. Tricky how future savings can count as a way to pay for something today. Maybe Nordstrom Rack will take my IOU for "I promise not to go shopping next year, so I don't really have to pay for this blouse now do I?"

Oh and rescinding Stimulus money. This is a precedent. To help pay for this aid-to-states bill some of those unspent stimulus dollars have been rescinded, or taken back. Which I guess makes sense, if it was such an emergency why, 18 months after passage of the Stimulus bill, is there money still left on the table?

So, besides the political win for Democratic congresspeople as they flock home to enjoy the rest of their recess in their home sandboxes, will this money stabilize the states? It is another short term temporary infusion. Always deferring the ultimate fiscal reality till tomorrow, after that next election.

If I had not failed Fluid Mechanics

Have you ever been in a situation where everyone seemed to know what was going on except you? Like maybe you didn't speak the language, didn't know how to use the tools. You could watch in bewilderment, but no one was explaining anything to you.

Thats how it felt when I took a course in Fluid Mechanics. Why would someone do this, you may ask? Back in the days when it was easi-er to get into a good college and it didn't cost a quarter-million dollars to send 2 kids to good colleges, if you did well on the math SATs, you were leafletted with postcards inviting you to the exciting and lucrative field of engineering.

Well who in high school doesn't want an exciting and lucrative career? That would use your excellent math skills? Certainly this would be a better life than working at the city library the rest of my days, yes? So why not chose a major, like say civil engineering, at random from a catalog? Well, it didn't work out that great back then (though since then, random choices I've made have worked out very well, more in future blogs, like say that Progressive Party).

Fluid Mechanics was a required course. I didn't fail exactly, how did I manage to get a D - oh yes, I showed up for all the classes, recitations, and labs. So showing up can get a person credit, Keanu Reeves was right.

The one thing that sticks with me, and this relates to the BP news we heard from the Obama administration this past week. A very long equation which solves for theta, and has many terms on the right side. This models fluid flow, apparently. If I look a bit I could probably find it in my garage, since I likely did not bequeath this text to either of my math-y kids (or maybe I burned it, I forget). Anyhow to solve this equation you have to hack off the least significant variables.

Yes and what did we hear about the BP spill this past week? The first news was "75% of the oil has been: burned, absorbed, collected, and is basically gone". Then later Ms. Lubchenko (from Oregon, so you know you can trust her), the head of NOAA, announces it was really 50% that was gone.

OK so the "rest" is still out there - instead of the oil left to clean up being 18 Exxon Valdez' worth, we "only" have 9 Exxon Valdez' left to clean up. Is this supposed to provide comfort? To oystermen, to oil workers, to marsh preservationists, to shorebirds?

And so if 50% or even if its only 20%? Back to that 80/20 rule (which I did not learn in fluid mechanics) - it will cost 80% of the resources to clean up that remaining pesky 20%. So we are a very very long way from being out of the woods. I think Obama and friends can present this data yes, show relief that the static kill is holding yes, but - they should continue to express remorse that we still have a long way to go. I am not ready for optimism on this and I am not buying it.

And what about those variables that got hacked off the equation? What do they represent? How many oil-slicked pelicans?

Entropy: score 1, Order: score 1

Today's tally:
Blackberry bushes (Himalayan, though they are omnipresent in Oregon, they are -invasive- hence unnatural and crowd out other native plants) - carefully trimmed back from the fence, from the street, from civilized sidewalks. Score 1 for order in the universe.

Along to upset the careful civilized order comes a McDonald's fry package (wrapper?), nestling in, to say, hey, I can take over. Score 1 for entropy in the universe.

Did you read the 9/11 Commission report? I did (well, mostly, especially the recommendations section). Connect the dots. I was hoping against hope that some federal agency would think I was a worthy new public administration graduate. Little did I know that there really aren't many federal agencies in Portland, and here I am.

At the time the 9/11 report was penned, there were 88 federal agencies responsible for various aspects of "intelligence". All gathered together to report to a new figurehead - the Director of National Intelligence. Or DNI (and I don't mean NPCs, though it sounds a little the same..) Now it turns out there are over 100 separate agencies! Intelligence appears to have been a growth industry since 9/11.

But we knew that. Bush played every Maslow's heirarchy "security" card in the book, and then some. Fear mongering was politically popular in the Bush era. Follow the money, my friend said, and it is amazing how this applies to so many situations. So it is no surprise that money was poured into intelligence.

I wonder if the Mythical Man Month applies here - the more people you throw at a project, the more interconnected lines of communication you create. Till you have a web of people who have to continue to communicate with each other instead of keeping their eyes on the terrorists in foreign countries that wish us ill.

Mirrored apparently to this multitude of intelligence agencies is the appropriations process. Now, if you watch cspan (no wonder I feel low-energy today, I have not have a dose of cspan in several days now, like someone who's been hiking in the desert, no water... Rachel Maddow will have to do) you will see that the Appropriations process really doesn't ever end in an actual appropriation. Its like a tangent line, you can never get there.

They debate and grandstand in Congress, but don't actually pass actual budgets. So then this is left to the Appropriations committees to do in quiet secret places. Voila, more money (probably even voted in by those Republicans who scream we need to get our fiscal house in order - well I guess they are thinking about tomorrow, not today when it comes to their favorite cause, and maybe even directly benefits their constituents).

Someone should get out the loppers and hack, like those invasive blackberries, those invasive extraneous intelligence committees. Somehow it seems easier with blackberries, for a moment in any case you have wiped them out of a little corner of the universe. But even to get to that state its not really "easy", it takes man vs. blackberry rage. So who will lead the charge to consolidate intelligence agencies?

postscript:
dear Little Theorem - have you read any books on NSA as yet?

What's in Your Newspaper?

I have to wonder how the Oregonian chooses stories that are "newsworthy" these days.

Al Gore, my savior and preacher on the important issue of global climate change - for a week or more stories appear about how a local massage therapist claims she was sexually assaulted by him.

They print the seediest looking pictures they can find of the man. Oh, now it comes out that the woman, 7 years after the alleged act, had her story bought by the National Inquirer. Hmm, any chance she saw dollar signs and fabricated a story to match? Did the Oregonian do any fact checking before smearing a former vice president and Nobel Peace prize winner?

Now their favorite smear target, Mr Bill Sizemore, has a significant legal victory in a Marion county court. A judge, in the ongoing trials where unions have sued to shut down both his political and activist-initiative life, is taking an objective view of matters. He will allow discovery, which in this case turns the tables and allows Sizemore's PAC to sift through all the emails and evidence they can find in union archives. SEIU, OEA, it will all open up.

In both cases, Mr Gore and Mr Sizemore, when there is sensational news, the Oregonian sees this as fit to print. But when tables turn, as seems to be the case for Sizemore, all I read is - nothing.

So, I've quit watching CNN when it turns into People magazine, is this what is happening to our Oregonian as well?

The Law Allows for the Truth Sometimes

The large and powerful forces have met a new reality: the law.

Just when I was thinking that only corporations with lots of money can have legal victories, along comes an objective moment where truth matters. After literally decades of having his name trashed by the unions and other powerful forces in the state, a Marion county judge has decided to allow the truth to speak.

Bill Sizemore's case will allow discovery - the ability to cross-examine witnesses, scan emails, examine documents. Looking for a smoking gun that would show a concerted action to engage in lies to disable him politically.

Remember he ran for Governor as a Republican this past spring. Prior to that his opponents engaged in direct mailings which included false statements such as "Sizemore is a convicted racketeer" which were patently false.

What is the penalty for false political statements with evil intent? I will be watching to see how this plays out. More details can be found at: http://nwrepublican.blogspot.com/2010/07/breaking-hard-judge-guimond-rules.html