http://ignoregon.com/rss/corvallis Aggregated Blog Posts From Corvallis Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:49:34 +0000 en http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-happens-when-you-attempt-to-film.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-happens-when-you-attempt-to-film.html Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:24:00 +0000 In the US:In Sweden: http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/couch-crying.html http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/couch-crying.html Fri, 30 Jul 2010 03:37:00 +0000 This afternoon, after returning home from the clinic and taking the five boys back to their home, I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up, Diane had come and taken the manx girl home, from my garage.I have felt dead today. I didn't sleep much last night. My stomach hurt and I was having allergy troubles.I guess that's why I was so tired today and finally collapsed on the couch. After http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/yes-of-course-this-can-go-on-forever.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/yes-of-course-this-can-go-on-forever.html Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:42:00 +0000 Afghanistan: U.S. Spends $20 Billion Per Year for Air Conditioning in Tents "The term we were looking for is “Forward Operating Base” or FOB. The US has many FOBs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The large ones have many tents and other structures where personnel live and work. And all of them need to be heated in the winter, and cooled in the summer. That can take a lot of fuel."Gallon of gas in Afghanistan costs $400"Pentagon officials have told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee a gallon of fuel costs the military about $400 by the time it arrives in the remote locations in Afghanistan where U.S. troops operate."$1.05 trillion dollars have been allocated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-personal-litmus-test-for.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-personal-litmus-test-for.html Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:29:00 +0000 The morning of 9/11 I heard about it on a car radio on the way to a store. When I got back home I was all over the internet while listening to a radio and my wife was glued to the television.I remember yelling to her in the other room "Why the hell are they repeating Osama Bin Laden's name over and over again?" What was happening was that a vast conspiracy, carefully planned, was being executed right in front of our eyes. In the minutes and hours after our own government and Israeli agents blew buildings up and we were horrified by people leaping to their deaths over and over on TV, carefully placed assets were drilling the myth of Osama and AQ into our subconsciousness during that critical window of opportunity for them, while we were at our most vulnerable. http://jaggy732.blogspot.com/2010/07/get-it-out.html http://jaggy732.blogspot.com/2010/07/get-it-out.html Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:29:00 +0000 It's Thursday already, not that I'm complaining mind you. I have had a rough, painful week. Thankfully my stupid ingrown toenail corrected itself and is no longer red or hurting. Perhaps I nicked the side just a smidge too short cutting them last weekend, and the nail was digging in a bit as it grew out. Meanwhile, with that problem resolved, I've been having some odd pains between my belly http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/obscene-feeding-frenzy.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/obscene-feeding-frenzy.html Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:14:00 +0000 Government Has Run Amok Since 9/11 "Those who understand the exploitative nature of big government suspected that the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks had little to do with the security of the American people and much to do with power and money. Still, the magnitude of the scam, as revealed by the Washington Post last week, is astonishing.Naturally, the politicians justify the growth in intelligence operations on national security grounds. To make sure such attacks never happen again, they said, new powers, agencies, personnel, and facilities were imperative.Now the truth is out: the post�"9/11 activity has been an obscene feeding frenzy at the public trough. Any resemblance to efforts at keeping Americans safe is strictly coincidental.“The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work” the Post’s Dana Priest and William Arkin write. “After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.”It would be a mistake to chalk up the government’s conduct to bureaucratic bumbling. This is not bumbling. It is highway robbery. Everyone who was well connected, either in government or the “private” sector, wanted a piece of the action, and chances are that he �" and many others �" got it. It doesn’t matter that multiple agencies do the same work and keep their findings secret from one another. It doesn’t matter that the volume of paperwork is beyond anyone’s capacity to absorb it. What matters is money, power, and prestige. This is the mother of all boondoggles."Pray to jeebus for an outsized X class solar flare. http://www.writeidea.org/zrii-review-is-zrii-a-scam-can-you-be-successful-with-this-business-opportunity/zrii-scam/ http://www.writeidea.org/zrii-review-is-zrii-a-scam-can-you-be-successful-with-this-business-opportunity/zrii-scam/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:24:00 +0000 Health news authority Natural News has published two very good articles exposing Zrii as being mostly made of \”cheap junk juices\” – apple juice, pear juice, and pomegranate juice, none of which are organic. See Mike Adams articles at Naturalnews.com dated April 24, 2008, and April 25, 2008 (the Zrii \”emperor has no clothes\”; Zrii [...] http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/nine-cats-being-fixed-today.html http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/nine-cats-being-fixed-today.html Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:15:00 +0000 Eight Albany cats and one Corvallis cat are up being fixed today. Three of those being fixed are Machi, Echo and Fantasia. That leaves only Slurpy unfixed here. She still is "slurping" with a cold, which is frustrating. I think she will have chronic herpes, making her probably unadoptible, unless, as she approaches four months of age, her forming immune system kicks in to overcome it. I am http://paulingblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/the-paulings-and-unitarianism/ http://paulingblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/the-paulings-and-unitarianism/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:24:00 +0000 “In Unitarianism I have found a religion without dogma: A growing, changing, open-minded willingness to learn and, above all, to work.“ �" Ava Helen Pauling, “Why I am a Unitarian,” September 18, 1977. Though both Linus and Ava Helen Pauling were avowed atheists,  they did maintain a long and friendly relationship with the Unitarian Church.  [...] http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/missing-gorge-trap-comedy-of-exhaustion.html http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/missing-gorge-trap-comedy-of-exhaustion.html Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:46:00 +0000 All this time, since travelling to the gorge, where I engaged in marathon trapping, I have thought I left a trap there. I thought this in part because the woman transporting to and from clinics said she thought they still had one of my traps, with a cat from the trailer park in it, at a clinic, when I was leaving. That led me to report to her that in fact yes, I had one trap missing when I http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2010/07/econ-101-price-discrimination.html http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2010/07/econ-101-price-discrimination.html Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:54:00 +0000 The Oregon State Beavers have finally learned a little something about price discrimination.  The Oregonian reports that they have increased seat sales by lowering prices - wow, who would have guessed? But you don't always want to sell every unit of a product that you can, especially when you have market power.  This is the lesson of the monopolist.Consider the example of a downtown parking lot, you might wonder why, if a lot regularly has empty spaces, the lot owners don't just lower the price?  The reason is of course that to fill the lot they may have to lower the price so much that their total revenue actually goes down.  This is because they have to charge the same price to all of their customers. The way around this is price discrimination which in this case means charging different customers different prices based on their willingness to pay.  Parking lots do a little of this, charging reduced all-day rates to customers that park before a certain time - the idea is that parkers who come in later in the day face a more competitive parking environment and are less price sensitive.The general rule is that the more you can price discriminate the more you are willing to sell because selling more no longer means that you have to charge lower price to everyone. It is also generally true that the more you are able to price discriminate the more revenue you will be able to make. In the case of a football stadium, price discrimination is easy: you can still charge a high price for the best seats while reducing the price of the more marginal seats, just as OSU has done.  Before you pass judgement on OSU for being so dense no to have figured this out before you have to realize that there is a constraint: you don't want to make it so attractive that folks that would normally pay for expensive seats find the good deal too tempting and would opt for the cheaper ones.  An example of this that I have recently encountered is the current Timbers season ticket sales.  They started selling them first to 'priority groups' starting with current season ticket holders.  Now these would likely consist of some of the highest willingness-to-pay folks, but the Timbers also made a bunch of $99 season tickets available from the outset - and these were apparently so tempting even with their less desirable location that they were snapped up right away by the 'wrong' folks.This decision confuses me - I would have thought that they would not have reduced the price of seats to such a low price until after season ticket sales had been opened up to non 'priority' folks.  But I guess the $99 price was a marketing gimmick to get people to consider season tickets from the start. The difficulty in trying to get the 'right' people (the low willingness-to-pay people) to buy the low price tickets is a general difficulty in price discrimination.  When you can't tell the willingness-to-pay of customers it becomes tricky to design a pricing scheme that gets people to self-select into the right categories.  Clearly if the goal of the $99 Timbers tickets was to get marginal fans to become season ticket holders, it failed.  So whether the Beavers were smart in reducing the price of these tickets depends on whether people that would not normally have attended a game buy them or whether customers swap high priced tickets for these.  Apparently, as overall sales have increased, it looks like mostly the former. http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/survival-pods-all-rage-again.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/survival-pods-all-rage-again.html Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:18:00 +0000 Doomsday shelters making a comeback"Jason Hodge, father of four children from Barstow, Calif., says he's "not paranoid" but he is concerned, and that's why he bought space in what might be labeled a doomsday shelter.Hodge bought into the first of a proposed nationwide group of 20 fortified, underground shelters �" the Vivos shelter network �" that are intended to protect those inside for up to a year from catastrophes such as a nuclear attack, killer asteroids or tsunamis, according to the project's developers."It's an investment in life," says Hodge, a Teamsters union representative. "I want to make sure I have a place I can take me and my family if that worst-case scenario were to happen."There are signs that underground shelters, almost-forgotten relics of the Cold War era, are making a comeback.The Vivos network, which offers partial ownerships similar to a timeshare in underground shelter communities, is one of several ventures touting escape from a surface-level calamity.Radius Engineering in Terrell, Texas, has built underground shelters for more than three decades, and business has never been better, says Walton McCarthy, company president.The company sells fiberglass shelters that can accommodate 10 to 2,000 adults to live underground for one to five years with power, food, water and filtered air, McCarthy says.The shelters range from $400,000 to a $41 million facility Radius built and installed underground that is suitable for 750 people, McCarthy says. He declined to disclose the client or location of the shelter."We've doubled sales every year for five years," he says.Other shelter manufacturers include Hardened Structures of Colorado and Utah Shelter Systems, which also report increased sales."The apparent trend now is to bunker up with a whole bunch of people in what I see as pretty expensive units, rather than the far cheaper single family pods from sixty years ago. I don't know about anybody else, but I wouldn't relish the thought of being cooped up with hundreds of strangers for extended periods of time.But of course the elite super rich among us have their own versions - floating ark palaces where accommodations start at $4 million. http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-is-it-good-for.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-is-it-good-for.html Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:49:00 +0000 Absolutely nothing.Edwin Starr, 41 years ago http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/our-bestest-little-racist-buddy.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/our-bestest-little-racist-buddy.html Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:30:00 +0000 Ethnic cleansing in the Israeli Negev "A menacing convoy of bulldozers was heading back to Be'er Sheva as I drove towards al-Arakib, a Bedouin village located not more than 10 minutes from the city. Once I entered the dirt road leading to the village I saw scores of vans with heavily armed policemen getting ready to leave. Their mission, it seems, had been accomplished.The signs of destruction were immediately evident. I first noticed the chickens and geese running loose near a bulldozed house, and then saw another house and then another one, all of them in rubble. A few children were trying to find a shaded spot to hide from the scorching desert sun, while behind them a stream of black smoke rose from the burning hay. The sheep, goats and the cattle were nowhere to be seen �" perhaps because the police had confiscated them.Scores of Bedouin men were standing on a yellow hill, sharing their experiences from the early morning hours, while all around them uprooted olive trees lay on the ground. A whole village comprising between 40 and 45 houses had been completely razed in less than three hours.I suddenly experienced deja vu: an image of myself walking in the rubbles of a destroyed village somewhere on the outskirts of the Lebanese city of Sidon emerged. It was over 25 years ago, during my service in the Israeli paratroopers. But in Lebanon the residents had all fled long before my platoon came, and we simply walked in the debris. There was something surreal about the experience, which prevented me from fully understanding its significance for several years. At the time, it felt like I was walking on the moon.This time the impact of the destruction sank in immediately. Perhaps because the 300 people who resided in al-Arakib, including their children, were sitting in the rubble when I arrived, and their anguish was evident; or perhaps because the village is located only 10 minutes from my home in Be'er Sheva and I drive past it every time I go to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem; or perhaps because the Bedouins are Israeli citizens, and I suddenly understood how far the state is ready to go to accomplish its objective of Judaising the Negev region; what I witnessed was, after all, an act of ethnic cleansing.They say the next intifada will be the Bedouin intifada. There are 155,000 Bedouins in the Negev, and more than half of them live in unrecognized villages without electricity or running water. I do not know what they might do, but by making 300 people homeless, 200 of them children, Israel is surely sowing dragon's teeth for the future." http://www.writeidea.org/ardyss-brochures-in-quick-review/a-quick-review-of-the-ardyss-compensation-plan/ http://www.writeidea.org/ardyss-brochures-in-quick-review/a-quick-review-of-the-ardyss-compensation-plan/ Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:34:00 +0000 Like any MLM program the Ardyss compensation plan is both pretty standard, and sometimes hard to understand. If you have the years of experience that I do with multilevel marketing, it certainly makes it easier to decipher this document, but if you are new to the MLM business the sheer amount of jargon involved can [...] http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/negative.html http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/negative.html Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:37:00 +0000 I took in two of the kittens to be tested. Both negative. Yaaaahooooo! Happy! Relieved.They're such sweethearts. Am very relieved. http://www.writeidea.org/secret-training-for-st-louis-network-marketing-affiliate-lead-marketing/st-louis-mlm/ http://www.writeidea.org/secret-training-for-st-louis-network-marketing-affiliate-lead-marketing/st-louis-mlm/ Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:17:00 +0000 The St. Louis MLM community is certainly no different from the MLM communities in other cities … that is to say, in St. Louis, the overall MLM community is virtually NON-EXISTANT. Sure, there are the smaller niche communities of specific MLM opportunities, such as Market America, Primerica, and others which have command in their own [...] http://oregonstate.edu/admissions/blog/2010/07/28/ask-kegan-week-1/ http://oregonstate.edu/admissions/blog/2010/07/28/ask-kegan-week-1/ Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:29:00 +0000 Cool new feature on Youtube and OSU’s Facebook page. Kegan Sims, OSU’s social networking guru is answering your questions via Youtube! If you would like to ask Kegan a question, pop on over to the Facebook page and hit him up! -JM Related posts:Get Ready for Pride Week 2010! OSU Student Doris Gonzalez-Gomez featured in [...] Related posts:Get Ready for Pride Week 2010! OSU Student Doris Gonzalez-Gomez featured in Education Week Finals Week- good luck to all http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2010/07/each-year-of-education-matters.html http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2010/07/each-year-of-education-matters.html Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:48:00 +0000 States like Oregon are in a fiscal mess as a result of the recession and are being forced to go through some 'belt tightening.' In Oregon, since the state general fund is vital to education funding, this means some pretty severe cuts to K-12 education.But does it really matter that much if a kid has a year or two of substandard education from such budget cuts through such measures as reduced instructional days or larger class sizes?Yes.New research by a gaggle of economists has found that the quality of a child's kindergarden itself has lifelong implications for children. Here is The New York Times' article and here is a follow up blog post. From the article:How much do your kindergarten teacher and classmates affect the rest of your life?Economists have generally thought that the answer was not much. Great teachers and early childhood programs can have a big short-term effect. But the impact tends to fade. By junior high and high school, children who had excellent early schooling do little better on tests than similar children who did not �" which raises the demoralizing question of how much of a difference schools and teachers can make.There has always been one major caveat, however, to the research on the fade-out effect. It was based mainly on test scores, not on a broader set of measures, like a child’s health or eventual earnings. As Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist, says: “We don’t really care about test scores. We care about adult outcomes.”Early this year, Mr. Chetty and five other researchers set out to fill this void. They examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children who had been part of a well-known education experiment in Tennessee in the 1980s. The children are now about 30, well started on their adult lives.On Tuesday, Mr. Chetty presented the findings �" not yet peer-reviewed �" at an academic conference in Cambridge, Mass. They’re fairly explosive.Just as in other studies, the Tennessee experiment found that some teachers were able to help students learn vastly more than other teachers. And just as in other studies, the effect largely disappeared by junior high, based on test scores. Yet when Mr. Chetty and his colleagues took another look at the students in adulthood, they discovered that the legacy of kindergarten had re-emerged.Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile �" a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher �" could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too....The crucial problem the study had to solve was the old causation-correlation problem. Are children who do well on kindergarten tests destined to do better in life, based on who they are? Or are their teacher and classmates changing them?The Tennessee experiment, known as Project Star, offered a chance to answer these questions because it randomly assigned students to a kindergarten class. As a result, the classes had fairly similar socioeconomic mixes of students and could be expected to perform similarly on the tests given at the end of kindergarten.Yet they didn’t. Some classes did far better than others. The differences were too big to be explained by randomness. (Similarly, when the researchers looked at entering and exiting test scores in first, second and third grades, they found that some classes made much more progress than others.)Class size �" which was the impetus of Project Star �" evidently played some role. Classes with 13 to 17 students did better than classes with 22 to 25. Peers also seem to matter. In classes with a somewhat higher average socioeconomic status, all the students tended to do a little better.But neither of these factors came close to explaining the variation in class performance. So another cause seemed to be the explanation: teachers.Some are highly effective. Some are not. And the differences can affect students for years to come.This is, frankly, a staggering result. When I have talked about the Obama administration's emphasis on collecting and examining longitudinal eductation data I tell them that it represents a way of moving beyond test scores as measures of tecaher and school effectiveness. I emphasize that it allows us to focus on outcomes not test scores. This is a perfect example. I also emphasize that it is important to try reforms so that we can tell what works. In this case it is the amazing STAR study done in Tennessee.  As I have written about before both here and in The Oregonian the STAR study provides a unique opportunity to study the effect of class size - which was found to have real and important impacts.  But, as this study emphasizes, it is the teachers themselves that are the most important factor by far (and as I have said it is impossible to predict success in the classroom of potential teachers so it is important to have a way of rewarding the good ones and discouraging the bad ones).  Anyway, what this study says is that kindergarden itself has lifelong consequences for kids and it is not hard to imagine that this is true, to varying degrees, of each individual year of education.  So these occasional budget slashing years are doing irreparable harm to our kids.  And as the follow up blog post emphasizes, unlike a lot of other effects, the effect identified in this paper (in terms of adult outcomes) are the same for rich and poor kids.  So everyone should be concerned.And if this isn't a clarion call for a permanent rainy-day fund, I don't know what is. http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2010/07/did-stimulus-work-two-economists-say.html http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2010/07/did-stimulus-work-two-economists-say.html Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:17:00 +0000 The New York Times reports on a study by Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi:Like a mantra, officials from both the Bush and Obama administrations have trumpeted how the government’s sweeping interventions to prop up the economy since 2008 helped avert a second Depression.Now, two leading economists wielding complex quantitative models say that assertion can be empirically proved.In a new paper, the economists argue that without the Wall Street bailout, the bank stress tests, the emergency lending and asset purchases by the Federal Reserve, and the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus program, the nation’s gross domestic product would be about 6.5 percent lower this year.In addition, there would be about 8.5 million fewer jobs, on top of the more than 8 million already lost; and the economy would be experiencing deflation, instead of low inflation.The paper, by Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton professor and former vice chairman of the Fed, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, represents a first stab at comprehensively estimating the effects of the economic policy responses of the last few years.“While the effectiveness of any individual element certainly can be debated, there is little doubt that in total, the policy response was highly effective,” they write....But the new analysis might not be of immediate solace to officials in the Obama administration, who have been trying to promote the “summer of recovery” at events across the nation in the face of polls indicating persistent doubts about the impact of the $787 billion stimulus program.For one thing, Mr. Blinder and Mr. Zandi find that the financial stabilization measures �" the Troubled Asset Relief Program, as the bailout is known, along with the bank stress tests and the Fed’s actions �" have had a relatively greater impact than the stimulus program....Told about the findings, another leading economist was unconvinced.“I’m very surprised that they find these big impacts,” said John B. Taylor, a Stanford professor and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “It doesn’t correspond at all to my empirical work.”Mr. Taylor said the Fed had successfully stabilized the commercial paper and money markets, but he argued that its purchases of $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities have not been effective. And he said the Obama administration’s stimulus program has had “very little impact and not much to show for it except a legacy of higher debt.” http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/sad-decisions-on-n-albany-kittens.html http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/sad-decisions-on-n-albany-kittens.html Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:06:00 +0000 I have to get them tested. Their diarrhea is not resolving. I am afraid they may be Felk positive. I've been trying to find some other option for them, if they do turn out positive, but I have no connections anymore at all. I can't get people to even answer the phone, if I call, or return a call. Guess I don't blame them. I am an annoyance to most of the other cat people and groups. I am http://edwardjoninoregon.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-chevy.html http://edwardjoninoregon.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-chevy.html Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:18:00 +0000 I am still recovering from the wreck of my old Honda Accord last September.I sold my 2010 Toyota Tacoma and am now driving this 2005 Chevy Monte Carlo. It works just OK for my needs as a wheelchair person, but I think I am going to keep looking for something that works out better. So I most likely will sell this Chevy as well.I am waiting for 2011 vehicles to be released. It is a little difficult to find much information about 2011's on line right now. There is some information but not what I need. I suppose the car companies keep this information secret until they are ready to sell the new models.The Chevy works out fine for the time being. But I am almost sure that I will buy a new vehicle before Christmas. http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/reverend-teds-back-to-his-old-tricks.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/reverend-teds-back-to-his-old-tricks.html Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:47:00 +0000 But really - who hasn't done crank and had hot monkey sex with a stranger during a massage and then started a church?Ted Haggard: 'I Over-Repented' For My Meth-Gay Prostitute 'Crisis'"Rev. Ted Haggard has been leading his own new church for the past few months, and in a Wall Street Journal profile says he thinks he "over-repented" for an affair with a male prostitute, which he refers to as "my crisis." He also insists he's not gay -- and that his affair was just a massage gone wrong.The profile describes Haggard's new backyard barn church, which features bags of cement and a pulpit made of buckets.Haggard, who announced his new St. James Church in June, told the Journal: "Tiger Woods needs to golf. Michael Vick needs to be playing football. Ted Haggard needs to be leading a church."Haggard was founder and leader of the powerful evangelical New Life Church, before he was forced to resign in 2006 after he admitted to buying meth from a male prostitute, with whom he also had an affair.As recently as November 2008, Haggard's former friends in the New Life church expressed skepticism regarding Haggard's ability to lead, releasing a statement saying that "we cannot endorse his return to vocational ministry."From the Journal:Mr. Haggard said that is ridiculous. He portrays his encounter with the prostitute as a massage that went awry and said he doesn't have same-sex attractions. He dismisses as a "witch hunt" the findings of his former church that he engaged in a pattern of misconduct, including sordid talk and inappropriate relationships. (He said his only fault was cracking a few crude jokes.) But his assurances have raised some eyebrows.Haggard now says his scandal is helping him reach out to people: "It's amazing. People tell me everything. That never happened when we were respectable.""I cuss now," he also boasts." http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-are-booms-supposed-to-work-with-all.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-are-booms-supposed-to-work-with-all.html Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:29:00 +0000 They're working to make some people filthy rich.BP Response Workers Report Low Morale, Lack of Pay, Sickness"BP oil disaster response workers are reporting endemic problems, such as not being paid on time, low morale, rampant sickness, equipment failures and being lied to regularly."Yesterday was a catastrophe," one worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Truthout. "People are waiting 2-3 hours for their paychecks to be brought to them and I know for a fact three people that didn't get paid and no reason was given."The woman has been working as a clerk for Gulf Asphalt Contractors (GAC), a company that describes itself as "the leading provider of sitework (sic) and building construction services in the Florida Panhandle." The company, based in Panama City, Florida, is a BP contractor.While she said she had never been ordered not to talk to the media, she admitted to working amid a climate of fear and believed she would lose her job if her company found out she had done so. "When GAC finds people who have talked to the media, they fire them."She spoke with Truthout on what she explained was "my first day off work in 45 days." She and her co-workers were instructed to take the weekend off due to Tropical Depression Bonnie, but have yet to be called back to work."The last thing I heard them say was not to come into work until we call you," she explained, "What does that mean? We were promised we'd have this work for two years. I don't even know if we have worker's compensation. They are firing people left and right."She works at Port Saint Joe, Florida, which is about a three-hour drive east of Pensacola on the coast."People are being laid off for no reason," she added, then went on to explain that people working on the beaches cleaning up oil "are getting sick, then they go to the emergency rooms, but they come back and we are always told it was because of food poisoning.""Everybody I know has bad morale and is confused and doesn't know what is going on," she continued, "Because I work in the TRG trailer, people come to me thinking I know more than they know, but I don't. I'm coming up with shorter hours and having to wait weeks to be paid. They shorted me 12 hours three checks ago, then when they finally paid me for it, they paid me at a lower wage."Truthout also spoke with a worker in the so-called Vessels of Opportunity program. The program is what BP set up to hire fisherman who are out of work because of the oil disaster, so that they are paid to use their boats in the response effort to do things like laying out oil boom and skimming."They're leaving gaps between the booms and the oil is going straight through them," the man, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Truthout in Lafitte, Louisiana, "This is on top of the fact that the booms don't work anyway. The oil is going over and under them."The man is working on a boat laying out oil boom in the Bay Jimmy region of southeast Louisiana, about an hour's drive south of New Orleans.He told Truthout that the small plastic booms that BP is using to stop the oil from reaching the marsh areas "are a waste of time and money. Some company is making lots of money off of this, when in reality they need booms that are five feet tall above the water with at least a six-foot deep skirt under the water. What they have now is a load of crap."After pausing to look out at the water, he added, "Somebody is getting filthy ass rich off these red and yellow booms that don't do shit. Some politicians' got a buddy manufacturing that crap." http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/celebration-begins-at-bp-headquarters.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/celebration-begins-at-bp-headquarters.html Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:13:00 +0000 No no, most of the oil is from THIS.New Gulf Oil Spill"An abandoned oil well is leaking into a Louisiana bay about 35 miles south of New Orleans after a barge crashed into the well head early Tuesday, the U.S. Coast Guard said." http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/lebanon-shit.html http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/lebanon-shit.html Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:12:00 +0000 Don't Fix a mom cat. Breed kittens. Then threaten to kill them if someone else doesn't take them. That's a winner! Craigslist post below. I've all but given up on helping cats much. I can't afford to help and people take advantage of me. Until cat wranglers are paid, this will be a problem everywhere amongst people try to "fix" the overpopulation problem. It is a common complaint among those who http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/wikileaks-story-has-odor-to-it.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/wikileaks-story-has-odor-to-it.html Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:21:00 +0000 Much as I like the idea of a "Pentagon Papers" expose of government perfidy in foreign wars of fascist convenience there's something, actually a bunch of things, that should give us pause for thought.The first thing that speaks volumes is the amount of play it's gotten in MSM. Of course pack jouirnalism means if a story seems to have a whiff of broad appeal the execrable media has to try to cover it before the competition, a la Lindsay Lohan's latest vagina tattoo. But it can also mean that this is information, or disinformation, that the PTB want in front of the great unwashed as pure propaganda to further an agenda. Remember the Jessica Lynch idiocy? Or go back further to the first gulf slaughter and the widely disseminated and repeated incubator baby hoax to kick off the beginning of the end of Iraq. Now on the face of it these 90,000+ leaked pages are different in that it's damning testimony to the corrupt and sickeningly brutal Afghan occupation, but we always have to remember the people who run the show play chess while we're still sitting around thinking we're playing checkers. As far as the MSM is concerned, there seems to have been close cooporation with the administration about what was going to be "exposed".We have to treat anything like this as disinformation.But what exactly does it all "expose"?Chris Floyd lists the main points:"That the occupation forces kill lots of civilians at checkpoints and botched raids, then lie about it afterward.That these killings make Afghans angry and fuel the insurgency.That elements of Pakistani intelligence are involved with some elements of the many resistance groups known collectively (and incorrectly) in the West as the Taliban.That the Americans are using more and more robot drones to kill people.That the Americans are running death squads in Afghanistan aimed at Taliban leaders.That Afghan officials are corrupt, and that Afghan police and military forces are woefully inadequate."Is there anything new here to people who've been paying attention? Apparently not, we've known all this from reportage, eyewitnesses and the american military itself. Actually the intent of disseminating this old news seems to make people resonate with what they already know while insinuating the true message, involvement of Pakistani and Iranian governments in Afghanistan in aiding the Taliban against the US military. In fact getting this spin inserted into 'left wing media' seems to be the intent here as the war machine gears up for it's much prepared for Iranian Lollapalooza. The whole point for empire is to prolong it's conflicts, to maintain the murderous occupation, to keep the drugs moving and the funding flowing. If the intent of the Wikileaks data dump was to bring the war criminals to justice nobody in his or her right mind should believe it will ever happen.And what about Assange himself? In retrospect the ballyhoo about the CIA hunting down the Wikileaks founder last month seems to have been just more bullshit, a story to set the stage for coming out of his hideyhole with his data dump. I've got to say, anybody who dismisses 9/11 as a distraction and a false conspiracy doesn't pass my personal litmus test.And as for 9/11, is it a coincidence that now we see a story in MSM like this?Wikileaks Afghanistan: Osama bin Laden alive"Osama bin Laden is alive and playing a key role in directing the war in Afghanistan, leaked US military files suggest.Multiple intelligence reports on the whereabouts of the al-Qaeda leader are contained among the documents." http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/photos-of-five-cats-fixed-yesterday.html http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/photos-of-five-cats-fixed-yesterday.html Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:34:00 +0000 Photos of the five Alsea cats fixed yesterday.Big mostly white male.The torti, who has six kittens still too little to be fixed.This female, fixed yesterday, has two kittens only three weeks old.This is the male dumped up there, who isn't really feral.Abbytabby male kitten.I suppose I am getting used to near total isolation from people. I think, if there was a survivor type show, to see who http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/riverfront-restaurant-ribbon-cutting-ceremony http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/riverfront-restaurant-ribbon-cutting-ceremony Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:07:00 +0000 The owners of the Riverfront Restaurant in Corvallis had a beautiful bright sunny July day to hav http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/riverfront-restaurant-ribbon-cutting-ceremony http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/riverfront-restaurant-ribbon-cutting-ceremony Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:07:00 +0000 The owners of the Riverfront Restaurant in Corvallis had a beautiful bright sunny July day to hav http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2010/07/portland-home-values-case-shiller-may.html http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2010/07/portland-home-values-case-shiller-may.html Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:04:00 +0000 Once again, I am farming this out entirely to the Wall Street Journal.  Portland's home values increased slightly from April and from the previous year, but what little improvement there was most likely is representative of the federal incentive programs.  Portland is, and always has been, unexceptional - middling in terms of increases and decreases in home values. Here is the WSJs chart:Home Prices, by Metro AreaMetro Area   May 2010   Change from April   Year-over-year change   Atlanta107.822.0%1.7%Boston155.951.6%4.8%Charlotte116.390.3%-2.8%Chicago121.91.2%-1.5%Cleveland105.851.0%3.7%Dallas119.931.5%2.9%Denver128.240.6%3.6%Detroit68.290.7%-2.5%Las Vegas102.35-0.5%-6.5%Los Angeles174.671.7%9.7%Miami146.330.9%1.2%Minneapolis122.632.8%11.6%New York170.450.8%-0.4%Phoenix1110.9%7.2%Portland147.981.2%0.7%San Diego163.111.1%12.4%San Francisco142.161.7%18.3%Seattle146.821.2%-1.4%Tampa138.290.9%-1.5%Washington182.11.5%7.4%Source: Standard & Poor’s and FiservData http://paulingblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/sidebar-omnibus/ http://paulingblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/sidebar-omnibus/ Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:59:00 +0000 Several new links have crept into our sidebar in recent months, and we thought we’d take a moment to talk about what you’ll find if you give them a click. The most obvious is the Linus Pauling Science Center construction webcam.  In late September 2009, we covered the ground breaking ceremony for $62.5 million building [...] http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-president-at-lewis-clark.html http://oregonecon.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-president-at-lewis-clark.html Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:51:00 +0000 As the Oregonian reported today, Barry Glassner has been hired as the new president at my alma mater, Lewis & Clark College.  This appears to be an extraordinarily good hire, someone with a record of experience and success and will go along way to erase the memory of Thomas Hochstetter, the previous president whose appointment baffled me.  He was embarrassingly bad and a real lightweight professionally, I couldn't understand why the college could not find someone better.Happily, the college seems to have punched well above its weight this time.  One suspects that Portland itself had a lot to do with it for his CV has no liberal arts college experience on it either as a student or professional. His choice is odd, given that he was on tack for a university president position, so one, in fact, hopes that it was the allure of Portland that brought him to LC because otherwise I would be suspicious.I understand that 90% of his job is external relations and I wish him well, but I also hope that he strives to improve the quality and quantity of the academic research that college faculty engage in.  Good liberal arts colleges are focused on teaching but also have faculty that are engaged and current in their fields.  This has not always been the case at LC. So welcome Professor Glassner, and good luck. http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/mimosa-tree-near-the-willamette-river-corvallis-oregon http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/mimosa-tree-near-the-willamette-river-corvallis-oregon Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:50:00 +0000 Flowering Mimosa Tree on a sunny July day http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/mimosa-tree-near-the-willamette-river-corvallis-oregon http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/mimosa-tree-near-the-willamette-river-corvallis-oregon Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:50:00 +0000 Flowering Mimosa Tree on a sunny July day http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/two-unique-vehicles http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/two-unique-vehicles Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:47:00 +0000 Two vehicles several generations apart relevant to the time they are a part of! http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/two-unique-vehicles http://www.christonium.com/corvallistidbits/two-unique-vehicles Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:47:00 +0000 Two vehicles several generations apart relevant to the time they are a part of! http://www.whitewaterraftingblog.com/2010/07/rogue-river-raft-craft-beer-trip.html http://www.whitewaterraftingblog.com/2010/07/rogue-river-raft-craft-beer-trip.html Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000 We're excited to have finished our first ever Oregon Rogue River "Raft & Craft" lodge-to-lodge trip. Our new bestest buddy, Ginger Johnson of WomenEnjoyingBeer fame, was the featured craft beer specialist each evening. She shared information about the Oregon craft beers that folks tasted and offered unique food pairings with each of the beers. This is a special trip and we recognize that there http://www.writeidea.org/uncategorized/5-etapes-incontournables-pour-reussir-en-marketing-de-reseau-sur-internet/ http://www.writeidea.org/uncategorized/5-etapes-incontournables-pour-reussir-en-marketing-de-reseau-sur-internet/ Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:24:00 +0000 1. Trouver votre nicheBien sûr, vous voulez que tout le monde profite de votre opportunité, mais soyez réaliste … tous ne sont pas prêts à sortir de leur “zone de confort”. Les marketers à succès sont déterminés à changer et à s’actionner. Tout le monde n’est pas prêt à le faire.Qui sont les personnes qui [...] http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/five-cats-fixed-today-swimming-in-hagg.html http://catwomanflix.blogspot.com/2010/07/five-cats-fixed-today-swimming-in-hagg.html Tue, 27 Jul 2010 02:05:00 +0000 I took up the five Alsea cats to be fixed today, then went off in search of recreation. I meant to search out somewhere pretty, but ended up at a small reservoir. I can't say it was pretty, like being in the mountains or even other more scenic reservoirs I've visited, but at least the water was wet. There's a trail around the lake. Again, not that pretty, but great if one lived close enough http://jaggy732.blogspot.com/2010/07/its-just-one-stupid-malady-after.html http://jaggy732.blogspot.com/2010/07/its-just-one-stupid-malady-after.html Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:44:00 +0000 I swear, as soon as I get one medical oddity cleared up something else comes along.  My bowel issues have "flushed" themselves out, thankfully.  Everything is moving along nicely.  I have been really careful to drink more water (a large pitcher every day) and eat a balanced diet.  An apple a day, indeed! Meanwhile, I've developed an ingrown toenail on my right second toe.  It hurts.  I'm going http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/it-might-have-been-worth-lot-of-money.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/it-might-have-been-worth-lot-of-money.html Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:33:00 +0000 This article jiggled a memory loose.Remnants of lost polar expedition sought"Lost in the Canadian Arctic, two British polar exploration ships more than 150 years old are frozen in some icy nook and cranny.Despite more than 30 search and rescue missions for Captain Sir John Franklin and his crew, only scraps of evidence -- forks and spoons, shoes, a letter -- have been found of the 1845 expedition.Now a team of Canadian archaeologists is setting off with modern sonar sea-floor mapping instruments, along with historical records to locate HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, reports a BBC News article. The researchers hope to finally piece together what happened to the shipwrecked crew.Veteran explorer Franklin led two ships and 128 men north in search of the legendary North-West Passage -- a narrow channel that connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.The existence of such a channel would revolutionize trading; ships would no longer need to circumnavigate around the Americas to reach the West Coast or Asia. For this reason, the Royal Navy was offering a £10,000 reward for finding the North-West Passage.The passage was eventually discovered by Captain Robert McClure in 1855 during a failed rescue mission for Franklin’s crew. Today ships can use the iceberg-filled pathway, but only in the dead of summer.When Franklin set off on his final voyage, he was motivated by the prize money, adventure and glory. No stranger to the harsh, cold conditions of the Arctic, Franklin had already mapped 1,200 miles of Canadian coastline on previous expeditions.The crew outfitted the front tips of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus with iron so the ships could bust through any icy barriers. The ships also featured the latest technology at the time -- small steam engines.But the Arctic proved a formidable foe. The ships crashed, and whether due to lead poisoning from poorly packaged food, scurvy or simply not enough food, the entire crew perished.Interviews with Inuits during early rescue missions revealed that some members of the crew got crazed and desperate, resorting to cannibalism.The mystery of how all the explorers died is one of the many questions the Canadian archaeologists hope to resolve.The archaeologists are following the same sea route used by Franklin and his crew in 1845: entering the Arctic from the East and maneuvering past Greenland into the vast Canadian Arctic archipelago."In the late 60s I had a girlfriend in high school whose father worked in a funiture store in New York City. I guess they put items on consignment too because he found something in an old chest of drawers that came in. It was a map that was wrapped up in other papers and he had no use for it so he gave it all to me.It was an original map of the rescue mission sent after the Franklin expedition, showing the new northern passage. It was pretty big, about two feet by three feet, and I remember at the time it was about a hundred years old, making it published in the 1860s.I hung on to it for five or six years until I became curious and sent a letter to some museum in Toronto or Montreal including a copy of the legend. They immediately sent one back saying "Gosh we already have one of those, but oh well, we'll send you ten bucks for it."Being a total idiot I never got a second opinion and sent the thing in to them. It's probably preserved in nitrogen in a glass case somewhere, prominently displayed in the museum's Franklin wing.I no doubt bought a couple six packs. http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/beware-cardinal-climax.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/beware-cardinal-climax.html Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:15:00 +0000 Market Astrology"But the opening of Crawford's July issue is definitely the sort of thing that upsets people: "NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE JULY! We mean, of course, the planetary pictures in the sky which are developing towards the tightest harmonic alignments in the most potent areas of the zodiacal circle ever recorded in Earth's written history. These portend increasing and maximizing intensity and rapidity of 'change' on every level of existence: mineral, vegetable, animal, human and spirit. Will Capitalism survive? Will Democracy survive? Will our markets survive? Will governments survive? Will humanity survive? Will Earth survive?"We don't know, but we'll be SHORT for it!"Crawford -- along with other astrologers, who however are merely worried about nuclear war, the end of the world etc. -- is impressed with an imminent unusual alignment that apparently involves five key planets.He writes: "Astrologers call it the 'Cardinal Climax.' It is considered to be the most powerful and important planetary alignment of the modern era. Perhaps it heralds the beginning of the real 'Aquarian Age' or the end of the 'Mayan Calendar.' (After all, what's a few months in a 25,600-year cycle?) These energies actually maximize from July 30 through August 3. There have been 'shadows' preceding and will be echoes afterwards for quite some time."Crawford adds: "This huge alignment will be followed by a Full Moon on the Fall Equinox and a Lunar Eclipse on the Winter Solstice. We expect the depth and scope of dislocations during this period to exceed anything we have ever witnessed, both in otherwise civilized interaction among nations, and likely our fill in natural disasters.""We continue to recommend extreme caution and proper emergency measures such as extra food, water, medicines and cash over the next 24 months in particular. Do NOT wait any longer!!""Over the many years that it has been followed by Hulbert, Crawford's record has been checkered but interspersed with occasional bursts of eerie prescience. Which is it this time?Crawford Perspectives usually publishes on the first Monday of each month. But its next issue is delayed until August 9 -- possibly to save mailing costs if the world ends." http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/youre-stealing-raindrops-that-fall.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/youre-stealing-raindrops-that-fall.html Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:53:00 +0000 They belong to someone else, thief.Collecting rainwater now illegal in many states as Big Government claims ownership over our water"(NaturalNews) Many of the freedoms we enjoy here in the U.S. are quickly eroding as the nation transforms from the land of the free into the land of the enslaved, but what I'm about to share with you takes the assault on our freedoms to a whole new level. You may not be aware of this, but many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from "diverting" water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use." http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/another-of-worlds-backwaters-gets-pre.html http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2010/07/another-of-worlds-backwaters-gets-pre.html Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:00:00 +0000 Look for Mali and Antarctica next.Burma is working on nuclear weapons programme, experts claim"Burma is working on a nuclear weapons programme, experts have concluded, after its existence was exposed by leaked photographs.Intelligence monitoring of the country’s arms purchases from North Korea has been intensified as a result.Satellite tracking and electronic surveillance in particular have been stepped up. Concerns over the regime’s attempts to develop a nuclear bomb prompted the US State Department to demand last week that the ruling junta disclose an inventory of its nuclear technology. Secret documents and hundreds of photographs smuggled out of the country by a defector indicated that it was intent on developing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Jane’s Intelligence Review published a separate batch of photographs showing similar activities in buildings and behind security fences near the capital, Naypyidaw.Fears that Burma had joined a clandestine nuclear network linking North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and Syria have been growing for some time, but there has not been hard evidence until now."