Walking around Gold Hill lately we've seen a lot of vacant houses. It wasn't that way three years ago. Back then it seemed like everyone was remodeling, painting, landscaping. Boom times. Tiny little houses sold for two hundred thousand. Some people who had bought their houses twenty years ago for thirty thousand put them u

Over at Spiked, part of the news bath that rarely gets mentioned, Rob Lyons reviews Calories and Corsets by Louise Foxcroft. "Foxcroft starts right back with the ancient Greeks, who knew that those who are uncommonly fat... die more quickly than the lean, even if they also recognised that in all maladies, those who are fat

"How do historians rank presidents who achieve prosperity and security for Americans? Let's pose the question this way: What if we had a president who, in his first two years as president, cut federal spending in half; produced budget surpluses in both years; cut tax rates, and slashed unemployment from 12 to 2%? Where shou

The domain name associated with the website grdurand.com has been seized pursuant to an order issued by an U.S. District Court. A federal grand jury has indicted one individual allegedly involved in the operation of grdurand.com and charged it with the following federal crimes: Conspiracy to Commit Snark (18 U.S.C. 1962(

Maybe you thought you'd like to retire some day. Notice the trend. People who were 75 in 1970 started their working lives during World War I. Those who were 75 in 1985 started during the Great Depression. And those currently 75 years old started during the Eisenhower years. Three different attitudes toward work, perhaps?

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form, and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension how like a God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"Well, that's how I would punctuate i

In the Port of Siuslaw; today about 2:00. I drove seven hours to get there and back. With a little luck, I'll drive that every week.

Europe Weird and New in The Wall Street Journal. "European financial markets have gotten very strange. Greece's one-year government bond yield hit 376% yesterday, while Germany, Switzerland and the U.K. sold short-term debt this week at yields below 0%. That means investors are effectively paying the latter governments for

Remember the ecological devastation wreaked by the Deepwater Horizon disaster? Yeah, I don't either. "Some 200,000 tons of methane gas and about 4.4 million barrels of petroleum spilled into the ocean. Given the enormity of the spill, many scientists predicted that a significant amount of the resulting chemical pollutants w

Premiering at the Consumer Electronics Show this week is the first television to run Android 4.0 (known to us geeks as Ice Cream Sandwich). Among its many features: "It will have an integrated 5 MP webcam, which will be used for facial recognition. Why would you need that? Parental control, of course."I still won't buy one,

I highly recommend The Wall Street Journal's Weekend edition. Chock full of feature articles and book reviews. Like this one by Peter Pesic. "Working in London as an apprentice book-binder in the early 1800s, Faraday started to read the books he was binding and to attend popular lectures on science delivered by Humphry Davy

Something about doing jigsaw puzzles makes my eyes much more sensitive to color. When I go outside everything looks different. Today on our walk along the river the bright green moss on the railroad trestle caught my attention.

There was considerable debate earlier in the century about how we should pronounce the years. Would we say "two-thousand-five" or "twenty-owe-five?" For me the "two-thousand" construct won out. It just seemed more natural. And so all the way through last year I would say two-thousand-nine, two-thousand-ten, and two-thousand

Henry Hub Natural Gas Spot Price Chart by YChartsSix years ago I would lie awake at night and listen to the furnace run. Now it lulls me to sleep. When we started the remodel back in 1999 we wanted gas everything: range, dryer, hot water, heat, everything. I had read "The Origin of Petroleum" by David Osborne in the Februa

Oregon has a quirky little provision its state tax code. After you figure how much tax you owe, you can take a credit of up to 50 (100 if filing jointly) for political contributions. It's a tough choice alright. "Gee, should I give this hundred bucks to Kitzhaber and his liberal friends, or should I give it to my favorite

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

And there were in the same country Shepherds abiding in the field, Keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, And the glory of the Lord shone round about them. And they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy

Zeta Woof's greatest hits from Christmases past...History and Tradition "Nora's Freezin' On The Trolley The Original Version Marley's Ghost Christmas Bells Reading St. Luke Anton Raphael Mengs The Charlie Brown Christmas Story"Food and Drink "At Badger's Table Gordon's Fruitcake Grandma Hammersley's Old-Time Mincemeat Ginge

As the season so turns our luck.

Interesting read in the Journal today. "Retired 'Workampers' Flock to Remote Towns for Temporary Gigs; RV Parks Are Full FERNLEY, Nev.Behind the piles of smiley-faced Amazon.com Inc. boxes arriving on doorsteps this holiday season are workers like Ray and Sarann Williams. The retired couple are part of the swarm of seaso

I haven't forgotten you. It's just that I've been busy making Fruitcake and drinking Tom and Jerrys and stringing up 2800 watts of Christmas Power Lighting. And today I started on a new contract.

The Wall Street Journal has a well-crafted obituary.

In the December 19th issue of National Review John Derbyshire reviews The Better Angels of Our Nature. "... Pinker has things to say, backed by sound numerical evidence, that should be of interest to any educated person. The facts and numbers are skillfully woven into a story that belongs ultimately to the mystery genre. In

In other words, we now resume our regular programming. How Doctors Die by Ken Murray drew a lot of attention over the weekend, and for good reason. And in today's Wall Street Journal Bret Stephens writes that he learned A Lesson Before Dying from his own father's long illness. Both articles well worth your time.

It's a family tradition for over twenty years now. We drove up toward Diamond Lake and cut our trees on Forest Service land. Permits are still only five dollars. And why not? It's not like they're letting the timber companies have any. Afterward we sat on the snow and ate sandwiches and cookies and drank hot chocolate and

Gordon and Leslie Durand are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Elizabeth Durand, to Jonathan L. Troyer, son of Tony and Esther Troyer of Tillamook. A summer wedding is anticipated.

A day that will live in infamy. I won't link to all the great articles and tributes today. You can find them for yourselves. But while we dwell on the past, let's not forget to keep our eyes on the horizon. "Seventy years after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. finds itself in much the same situation that it was in prior to World War

Deeper than it looks.

"For decades, its main stomping grounds were in the developing worldexotic locales like the Persian Gulf and the desert sands of North Africa, the Niger Delta and the Caspian Sea. But in recent years, that geographical focus has undergone a radical change. Western energy giants are increasingly hunting for supplies in rich,