Friday, September 30, 2005

The Sun and Global Warming

Here's another study, this time from Duke University, which says that while man-made emissions play a role in global warming, the sun's activity plays a much larger role than earlier assumed by the climate change computer models:

"The Sun may have minimally contributed about 10 to 30 percent of the 1980-2002 global surface warming," the researchers said in a statement today.


You know when they say
minimally
, they're being quite conservative.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Technorati tag:

Wallace and Gromit

I have real hopes for the Wallace and Gromit movie coming out a week from today. Let's face it, the movies this year have been less than good. Even the kids' movies. Robots? Valiant? People have been so starved for good movies around here, they've been taking their little kids to The Brothers Grimm, which is barely suitable for adults.

I remember well the first time I lay eyes on W&G: My brother and I were on a Christmas shopping expedition in a mall. One of the toy stores had several monitors up, playing The Wrong Trousers. Even with the sound off, we were paralyzed by the sheer spectacle of it, and ran into the store, demanding a copy.

I think that this may well be the second movie this year worth paying mondy to see. At least, I hope it will be, because I've got good hopes for Serenity, too.

Peace,

Tor

Category:

Technorati tag:

How You Say...?

Here's a neat write-up about the Voice of America's online name pronunciation guide. Now if only I can figure out how to become famous enough to get on this list, so people will know how to say my name!

Peace,

Tor

Category:

Technorati tags: ,

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Judith Miller Released From Prison

New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been released from prison, apparently after coming to an accord with the prosecutors. Sounds like she's going to give them what they want.

I think we need to look very closely at the journalistic shield laws in this country. Of course, a journalist should not be allowed to break the law with impunity. But a journalist should have some sort of professional ability to keep sources anonymous. If laws err on one side or the other, it should be in the direction of allowing "too much" information to come out, rather than not enough. Let the sunshine in!

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Technorati tags: , ,

Eastport: Shipyard Or Junkyard?

Nancy Raye has written a Bangor Metro column that looks to the infrastructure needs of Washington County, Maine. It does a good job of pointing out the limitations of tax incentives to lure businesses to Down East Maine when the transportation network in the region is much worse than in Southern Maine.

She advocates more infrastructure spending in Northern Maine, and laments the fact that the politically powerful Southern Maine won't allow it, due to the fact that Eastport could potentially become a major rival to Portland.

I think she has unwittingly made the case for reducing government involvement in transportation infrastructure. Everyone in the state is taxed, and the lion's share of the spending is in counties that are more affluent. Imagine if the folks in the southern part of the state actually needed to improve their infrastructure based on profitability rather than political influence in Augusta and Washington, D.C. I think a few things would happen.

Fewer roads would be built in general, and urban sprawl would be abated greatly. More railways would be built, because any investor would rather invest in the long-term durability of railways. Maine's environment would benefit greatly. And areas like Eastport would suddenly seem to be more competitive with Portland and Boston for trade with Europe. If only the government would get out of the way.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , , ,

Technorati tags: , , ,

Belfast Keeps Its Thrift Store

Another church has agreed to take over the Salvation Army's thrift store on High Street in Belfast, Maine, which is sort of what I expected might happen. There are too many poor and near-poor people in the area for this need to have gone unmet.

Peace,

Tor

Categories:

Technorati tags: ,

Roark's Evil Banner Ad

Just wanted to show off a banner add I made at Addesigner.com. Yes, that's Roark staring at you on the right hand side. Let me know if you ever run into it on any other site. I'll be submitting it to a banner exchange site.

Click here to see the ad. (It's too wide to fit in this column.)

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Lights Out at the Magic Lantern

Bridgton's Magic Lantern movie theater, built in 1929, will be closing because of structural problems with the building. The owners will be building a new theater with the same name, and incorporating some of the decorations from the old building.

I've never visited this theater, and now I won't get the chance. As a part-time projectionist at a local theater, I offer a tip of the aperture plate to the folks who have kept this piece of living history going for so long. May all your lens changes be flawless.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

M. Scott Peck, RIP

Self-help publishing pioneer M. Scott Peck has died.

I have never read any of his books, due to a general skepticism about the self-help pop psychology genre. But now I might.

From the AP obit:
He said he was repulsed and pleased by some of the cult aspects that formed around him. "Half the time when people want to touch my robe," he once told Life magazine, "it feels incredibly icky -- yuck!" The rest of the time, "it feels very good, honest, right."

He described himself as a flawed man who had a weakness for cheap gin, marijuana and women. He wrote openly of his extramarital affairs in what he called his favorite book, "In Search of Stones" (1995), nominally about a trip to Great Britain looking for ancient stone monuments.


He was a fellow that so many put upon a pedestal, yet he was the first in line to offer up his faults. Sounds like a fellow who had some honesty, even if he lacked integrity.

Peace,

Tor

Categories:

Technorati tags: , ,

Maine and the SAT

All I can say about Maine's inkling to use the SAT as a required high school test is

DON'T!!!

I coached kids about a decade ago concerning not only the SAT, but also the GRE and LSAT exams. I know firsthand how easy it is to improve a test-taker's score without teaching anything about any subject materials. Indeed, on the "hardest" math questions on the test, even a prodigious student will run out of time if they try and use the methods they learned in school. I taught particulars about the ways the questions were written, how to spot a wrong answer, and how to make good guess even if the test-taker doesn't understand the question at all.

I hate this test and all others like it with a passion. And I did extremely well on it.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Technorati tags: , ,

Hurricane Bailout Boondoggles

The lobbyists in Washington are licking their chops and salivating at the prospect of the untold billions of dollars that will be disbursed by congress in hurricane recovery funds.

Even entities outside the affected states are lobbying for tax breaks and grants. For-profit, private hospitals want the government to rebuild them so their investors won't lose so much money. Oil interests, air travel companies and farmers are all looking to gorge themselves at the trough.

We just need to get away from this paradigm that the government can best decide who is worthy of their largesse. It always ends up being whoever has the most political connections. Large and powerful companies become larger and more powerful and more profitable, while small businesses and families suffer. This happens regardless of Democratic or Republican oversight.

Peace,

Tor


Tuesday, September 27, 2005

The First Amendment in Bangor, Maine

The Bangor, Maine city council put the kibosh on a proposed ordinance that would ban

the dissemination or distribution by the public of written material, "including but not limited to magazines, brochures, newspapers, fliers, pamphlets and posters" in city buildings. The policy would have allowed material related to the function of each department.


Of course, the folks who dreamed up this scheme weren't just worried about clutter on sideboards in the hallways.

At issue was a newspaper called the Common Sense Independent, published, written and edited by award-winning Maine journalist Terrilyn Simpson.

The publication is critical of the state Department of Health and Human Services, in particular its handling of children who have been taken into its custody and treatment of the children's family members.


Kudos to the council for summarily dismissing this flagrant attempt to quash dissent.

Of course, as is usually the case, the attempt to stifle the distribution of this publication will only lead to broader awareness of it. Here's a link where you will find a downloadable .pdf document of the first issue.

Peace,

Tor

Technorati tags: , , ,

Public Education: The Path to Theocracy

A former board member of the Dover (PA) Area School District testified today that other board members were anti-evolutionists who wanted to use their power to have their religious beliefs expressed in biology classes.

This highlights the implicit danger of public education, i.e. government-run schools. Anything that the government does is at least tangentially political. When it comes to an important area of like like education, politicians won't hesitate to flex their muscles to do lunkheaded things like tell children that evolution is "just a theory."

I've said it many times, and here I go again:

Education is too important to entrust to the government.

It is time to cleave government entirely from education, so rational folk can stop spending so much time and energy and money fighting anti-intellectuals. We'll have our schools, and they'll have theirs. Nobody will have the power to force someone else to have their children educated with drivel like Intelligent Design.

Will the choices of curricula be confusing? A little bit bewildering? Yep. If you want to be a parent, you'll have to figure it out. But I trust the overwhelming majority of parents to do the right thing by their children much more than I trust any politicians of any ideology.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , , , ,

Technorati tags: , ,

Nuclear Power

Christopher Dickey has an excellent column about nuclear power as it pertains to international relations. While the U.S. and other countries have valid concerns that some nations, for instance Iran and North Korea, might be using nuclear power programs to hide nuclear weapons programs, there is a possible international solution:

IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei argues for the creation of fuel banks under international control, where countries wanting to generate nuclear power could go for the low-enriched fuel they need. There would be no danger of their enriching it further for nuclear-weapons production, on the one hand, but there would also be little or no possibility that the United States or other powers could use a cutoff of the fuel as an economic weapon. "Countries will have the fuels they need," ElBaradei told NEWSWEEK last year. "They have the assurance of the supply, but they do not necessarily need to do the job themselves."


International cooperation in the production of nuclear power for relatively clean and plentiful energy would do much more to foster world peace than any other diplomatic initiative possibly could. Economic entanglements with other countries are the antidote to war. Look at the U.S. and Saudi Arabia now. If we weren't bound together by the economics of oil, we'd surely be enemies.

I know that people who watched too many 50s scifi movies won't want to hear it, but the environmental risks from nuclear power are smaller than the environmental risks that stem from continued use of fossil fuels. Increased efficiency and conservation will only go so far when civilization seems to be coming up with more and more gadgets that use electricity.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Technorati tags: , ,

Monday, September 26, 2005

Cindy Sheehan Arrested, Tor Released

Cindy Sheehan's arrest for protesting without a permit has put yours truly into a nostalgic mood.

I used to be a member of a now-defunct street theatre group called The Shebang Street Theatre. It started as a response to the first Iraq war, which was over before the planned protest day. Anyway, the group continued to do some political protests (mostly against the launchings of warships from Bath and Kittery (sorry, Pinky)) and also developed pagan-style celebrations for the solstices and equinoxes. My favorite of these involved a life-size paper-mache replica of Stonehenge.

I'll tell you about that some other time, and also the story of how they came to give me the name "Tor." The story I want to relate right now is about the time that I nearly got arrested for protesting racism in the Camden, Maine police department.

I can't recall the exact year, but it was at least ten years ago. A press release from the police appeared in the Camden Herald, warning people to be on the lookout for gypsies. The gypsies were out to rob everyone's houses in broad daylight, and indeed they had been spotted working their evil in the area!

Another member of the group, Pole Star, made use of his journalistic impulse by going to the police records room to investigate. He found that no gypsies had been implicated in any crimes in the area. He also found that 95% of the property crimes in the area had been committed by white guys in their teens and twenties. So it really would have made a lot more sense for the police to have warned people to be suspicious of Tor.

Anyway, we decided that people expecting a gypsy invasion shouldn't be disappointed. Shebangers being the generally bohemian sort, they tended to have the proper wardrobe and musical instruments required to portray stereotypical gypsies. Someone managed to borrow a hearse. Small Hibachi grills completed the scene.

My role, since I was (and still would be) one of the "straight" looking members of the troupe, was to be one of two trench-coated G-men. My partner and I took to the streets of Camden prior to that year's Memorial Day parade. We handed out photocopies of the press release, to the backside of which had been appended some factoids about the persecution of gypsies throughout history.

Just before the parade came into the downtown area, the hearse barreled into town. A good dozen or so "gypsies" poured out onto the village green and lit their grills and started barbecuing chicken. They played varous stringed instruments, danced, and spoke in the most painfully fake accents imaginable.

My partner and I, as part of the theater, continued to "keep an eye" on the "gypsies." After the parade had passed by, we started the next bit of the theater: to send the gypsies on their way.

Now, the police had been watching this all along, of course. They then came over to ask my fellow "G-man" and I what we were doing. We gave them a copy of the article, at which point they asked us for I.D. We gave them that, as required by law, and they decided they'd better invite us down to the police station for questioning. Just us two, not the rest of the troop.

Most of the "gypsies" had been so gloriously into their portrayals that they didn't immediately notice that two of their troupe were being led away. (We weren't under arrest; we were just not free to leave). As soon as someone noticed, things really got into a fervor. A parade of gypsies followed us the short walk to the station, and then started to shout, "FREE THE C.I.A.!" while we were inside.

After a while, the police let us go, but not before letting us know that the lady who had written the press release had had her feelings hurt by our theatrics.

We said, "Good!"

Peace,

Tor

Technorati tags: , ,

Department of Peace

A couple of Maine women are publicizing Dennis Kucinich's Department of Peace legislation.

The secretary would be charged with bringing alternatives to the president and Cabinet the potential costs of armed conflict abroad and alternatives to present institutions and policies dealing with conflict resolution at home.


Pardon me, but hasn't the Department of State got all that covered?

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , ,

Technorati tags: ,

Agriculture, Pollution and Libertarianism

California is wrestling with the reality that agricultural activity is a major source of pollution, reports the Washington Post.

As a former agricultural worker, I concur. Pollution is one of the issues where I feel a libertarian approach to the economy would improve things greatly.

The article reports that one California legislator has proposed that agricultural operations lose their exemption from that state's clean air laws. I would propose getting rid of all the current clean air laws and setting up one based on property rights. If any business, agricultural or not, impacted the air quality of a landowner, that landowner would get to sue directly. Nowadays, landowners need to sue according to EPA standards, or hope to get a one-size-fits-all regulation enforced:

Residents have formed a citizens' group to fight large dairy producers. Tom Frantz, a Shafter native who heads the Association of Irritated Residents, said area farms are "like a factory in your midst."

"We're really irritated because our lungs are being used as an agricultural subsidy," said Frantz, who has asthma. His group notified farmer Rick Vanderham this month that residents plan to sue him for building a new 2,800-cow dairy without a Clean Air Act permit.

California's debate is not unique: Public health advocates in states including North Carolina and Iowa have pushed to regulate hog, poultry and dairy farms -- known as "confined animal feeding operations" -- with varying degrees of success.


The beauty of having a property rights-based system of pollution control is that non-profit groups could buy the pollution rights to areas they wanted to protect from pollution without having to buy the land itself.

Check out this article for a brief discussion of property rights and environmental protection.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , ,

Technorati tags: , , , , ,

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Opera Browser On The March

The Opera browser, which recently started offering itself for free, is an excellent choice for those of you who have older computers. Since I do most of my blogging on an ancient 200mhz Gateway with only 128 megs of ram, I know whereof I speak.

It has fewer bells and whistles than Internet Explorer, but you get much more speed and fewer system crashes in the tradeoff. Also, since Opera hasn't been a real target for hackers (yet), there's a security benefit, as well. It has a built-in pop-up blocker that, in my anecdotal usage, is superior to the Google pop-up blocker.

They used to offer two versions: a free version with a banner ad that blocked out a good bit of screen space, or a paid version for about forty bucks. Now it's all free, without the banner ad. I wondered how they could make money this way, and now the Washington Post explains:

Giving away the product doesn't automatically mean the company will come into hard financial times. The browser has a built-in search function that allows users to consult Google without opening up another window. Every time a user searches through the Google tool, the search engine pays Opera.


The only time that Opera sometimes lets me down is if I need to look at a heavily formatted web page. Sometimes the webmasters use codes that are specifically intended for Internet Explorer. Fie on them, I say!

Opera also has a built-in news reader, at least in the previous version I use. I will look into upgrading to the new, free version very soon.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Technorati tags: , , ,

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Countdown to Serenity

Just a little under a week to go till the opening of Serenity. If you haven't seen the TV show Firefly, from whence it came, get yourself to a video store and rent it now! You'll have just enough time to see all the episodes without giving up real life.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Technorati tag:

Medicare Drug Benefit

According to the Washington Post, there will be at least 11 insurance companies offering new Medicare prescription benefits from which to choose in every state. The competition is part of what will help keep the cost of the program "low."

I can't imagine that so many will still provide benefits in Maine after the legislature gets through with them.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , , ,

Technorati tags: ,

Friday, September 23, 2005

A Free Market in Transplant Organs?

Another Washington Post article explores a growing internet phenomenon: the solicitation of living donors of organs. As ever, the anti-freedom elitists among us wring their hands and cry foul:

"Our organ allocation system is imperfect, but there is a lot of effort and a lot of thought to make it as fair as possible. Once you go down this road and allow people to jump ahead in the queue through a popularity contest through the Web, you can be assured justice goes out the window," David Magnus, a Stanford University bioethicist, said.

Aside from potentially giving the more affluent, educated or computer-literate an edge, allowing donors to designate their recipient can lead to discrimination, Magnus and others say.

"You could easily see a situation where you have a donor who says, 'I'm only going to donate to a white person,' or 'I'm only going to give to someone with my religion,' " said Douglas W. Hanto of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who represents the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.


I suspect that the number of people who are going to be so bigoted is minuscule. However, even if it were a large number, so what? We are talking about people who likely wouldn't donate anything otherwise. Having the philosopher-kings look over every transaction before it happens to determine fairness and equity is obviously putting an enormous damper on the availability of organs.

Also, what is ethically wrong with selling a part of one's body for another to use? (I am not advocating this; indeed, I used to give blood to the Red Cross regularly till their paranoia about my European travels and Mad Cow Disease put a halt to that.) If it makes more organs available for people who need them, I don't see why the rest of society has any right to stop the transaction.

(A Buddhist aside: We are not our bodies, we are not not our bodies, we are not both our bodies and not our bodies, and we are not neither our bodies nor not our bodies. Apologies to Nagarjuna.)

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , ,

Technorati tags: ,

Just Put the Kids in the Trunk

The Washington Post is covering the trial of an Alabama woman who rented a Nissan Sentra to take a trip from Alabama to Loudon County, Virginia:

Authorities allege that Brown rotated her 10-year-old and 8-year-old daughters in and out of the trunk because the Nissan Sentra she had rented was cramped with three other passengers and a dog. Also in the car, they have said, were Brown's infant daughter, her 12-year old daughter and the girl's 12-year-old friend.


Now I can distinctly remember some family vacation trips that seemed a bit crowded, but nothing like that. I remember my sister and I would ride in the back of the station wagon frequently (which would likely have landed my parents in the slammer a mere twenty years later). But we had plenty of air, and were always within sight of our folks.

It's true that renting a minivan would have cost a great deal more, especially with the cost of gas these days. But it's also true that lots of folks are putting off or canceling vacation trips these days for that very reason. My wife and I went on a camping vacation in northern Maine this year because we needed to do something on the cheap.

If you can't afford it, don't do it. Simple as that. Book her, Dano. Oh yeah, she's already booked.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,


Technorati tags: , ,

Thursday, September 22, 2005

California Dreamin'

Sometimes, I like to look into the details of visitors to my blog. I got a chuckle out of this one, from the California Department of Corrections in Sacramento. Wish I knew if it was an inmate or a worker.

Peace,

Tor

Category:

Technorati tags: ,

Pork for Gulf Coast Casinos?

In general, I'm against using tax policy as a tool to give one sector of the economy or one type of business an advantage over other sectors or types.

I'm really against giving businesses an incentive to move into a certain area where business is slow. I say let the government make the playing field level for everyone everywhere, protect the innocent bystanders from being exploited against their will, and let the free market determine who sets up shop where.

The new Bush proposal to allow casinos to get tax breaks to rebuild in the Gulf Coast region, reported in the Washington Post, really gets my goat. Think about it: the government is subsidizing a type of business that produces nothing but a few rich people (usually the owners), a few dead-end jobs, and lots of misery. If people want to enter into that economic arrangement of their own free will, fine. I'm not an anti-gambling crusader. I've been known to buy a worthless lottery ticket from time to time. But don't give this sort of business a tax break so that other types of business will seem less attractive to enter into.

Casinos produce nothing of added value to the economy. They just redistribute wealth.

Peace,

Tor

Tagged as:

Lost in TV-Land

Last night's second-season premiere episode of Lost really rocked. I won't bore the non-fans about it, because it's too hard a show to explain. If you like good TV and haven't seen it, by all means check out the first season, now on DVD.

Peace,

Tor

Category:

Technorati tag:

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Anti-War Protests and Military Families

Washington, D.C., will be a hard place to get around this weekend, due to anti-war protests and counter-demonstrations. I know a fellow who lives in the next town over who intends to go. Of course, many of the folks in Maine who would be inclined to go would be giving up the Common Ground Fair.

If you read the Washington Post account, you get the sense that both the pro-war and anti-war sides feel that having military family members in their activities lends some credibility to their arguments. Both sides are wrong. Only facts and reasoning and a history of good arguments lend credibility to current arguments, and both sides have a lack thereof. I was against the invasion of Iraq, and am now a supporter of the Libertarian Party's withdrawal plan. But the protesters this weekend will for the most part be acting out of hatred of President Bush, or out of love of him. That is not the way to organize one's political philosophy.

Peace,

Tor


Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Maine Lobsterman: Genius!

You can't help but feel good when you read that a fellow like this has won one of the MacArthur Foundation's $500,000 "Genius" Grants.

Ames, a 66-year-old Vinalhaven native who is both a lifelong fisherman as well as a scientist, was recognized for the research he has done that could help restore depleted groundfish stocks in the Gulf of Maine. The foundation noted that he has "fused the roles of fisherman and applied scientist in response to increasing threats to the fishery ecosystem resulting from decades of over-harvesting."

That refers specifically to a study Ames conducted, published last year in Fisheries, the Journal of the American Fisheries Society, which drew on the memories of past generations of local fishermen to reconstruct the distribution of cod in the 1920s and '30s.

"They gave us incredible information about where and when they were fishing for cod and haddock and where and when those fish were spawning," Ames said. "Up to this point, information of that type was not collected by scientists. It was always unacceptable. We developed a protocol to validate those historical references."


Yes, it is a rarity for a scientist to listen to the people who are working in the fishing industry in Maine. It is even rarer for a scientist to actually be a fisherman. The folks in Stonington must be throwing party after party.

For information on the other 24 recipients, go here.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Technorati tags: ,

Technorati Ad Campaign Spreads Tor's Rants Far and Wide

I just noticed this visitor from Kalispell, MT, via the Washington Post. At first I thought someone had backtracked from the article on stem-cell research to which I had linked. No, it turns out Technorati has an ad campaign running on the site. You can see our blogging buddy Daniel is there, too.

My suggestion to bloggers wanting to maximize their Technorati-generated traffic right now is to pick Washington Post articles to blog about. I don't know how long the campaign will run, or if it will be running on other sites, too. If anyone notices similar ads out there, lemme know.

Peace,

Tor

Categories:

Now You Can't Smoke Outdoors, Either

Portland, Maine (motto: we'd love to be Boston, Mass.) has outlawed smoking on some of the municipally owned and maintained walking trails. (The website does not yet have a permalink to this breaking news, so I am linking here to the previous story on the topic.)

This post may seem a dite self-contradictory at times, but if you'll bear with me, by the end some semblance of cogency should arise.

First of all, I hate cigarette smoke. Last night, I stopped for gas at the Maritime Farms convenience store in Belmont. Just as I was finishing the fueling process, an employee came out the front door and lit up a cancer stick. I shut off the pump, closed my tank, and leaned up against my car, glowering at the girl. She stayed about two feet from the front door. I leaned there for about three minutes before she noticed. She poked her head into the store to converse with the counter clerk, all the time carefully keeping her cigarette-laden hand stretched away from the door.

Then she fully emerged from the store and asked me, "Did you shut off the pump?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Are you going to pay?" she asked.

"Just as soon as I don't have to walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke to do it," I retorted.

Her face went pale, and the cigarette disappeared under her foot. Two minutes later, I walked in and paid.

So you can see that I'm no friend of cigarettes. But I do think that smokers should have the general right to smoke. Limitations on that right should be made only in very specific circumstances. Those circumstances generally involve publicly-owned property.

Notice that I say publicly-owned property, and not public places. By the former phrase I mean property that is owned by a governmental body. Smoking in those places would cause suffering to non-smokers who have paid their taxes to receive the public benefit of those properties. By the latter phrase I mean places open to or dealing with the public, but under private ownership, such as restaurants, theatres and workplaces.

One irony of the State of Maine's current ban on smoking in "public places" is that I as a non-smoker am now subjected to much more cigarette smoke in publicly-owned places than previously. Nicotine addicts who are no longer allowed to smoke in bars and pubs and restaurants now line the sidewalks on which I am trying to walk.

Now, since the sidewalks and streets (and the footpaths along the promenades in Portland) are government property, I would be totally in favor of a ban on smoking in those places. So long as the private businesses were allowed to decide for themselves as to smoking policies.

Those of you who know I'm a libertarian will perhaps see this one coming: I actually would like all of these areas to be privately-controlled areas. The streets, the sidewalks, the footpaths. They should be owned by private concerns who would be able to set any smoking policy as they saw fit. And I, as a non-smoker, would be free to seek out streets, sidewalks and footpaths that were smoke-free. It would be a little extra work for me, but the freedom would be worth it.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , , ,

Technorati tags: ,

Adult Stem Cells May Help Spine-Injured Mice

FOXNews.com is now reporting that the study I referenced yesterday also included adult stem cells. I look forward to seeing how effective they were in comparison with the embryonic and fetal stem cells.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Technorati tag:

Monday, September 19, 2005

Stem Cell Breakthroughs

There have been some extremely promising results with stem cell research in lab animals with spinal injuries. Science fact is quickly catching up with science fiction, and society will need to make some ethical choices very quickly. The excellent results are coming from embryonic and fetal stem cells, rather than the adult stem cells that conservative talk radio hosts vaunt.

In the 2004 election, John Edwards was ridiculed for his seeming hyperbole that a vote for Kerry-Edwards was a vote to let Christopher Reeve walk again. Maybe that doesn't seem so much like hyperbole anymore.

But it is interesting to note that all of this research has been going on within the funding restrictions imposed by the Bush administration. So it was hyperbole to suggest that a vote for Bush was a vote to keep Reeve in the wheelchair.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Surfacing in Maine

Rowan and I just caught the premiere of Surface on NBC. So far, the only thing especially noteworthy about it is that one of the scenes took place in Bangor, Maine. Of course, it was at a fictional military facility, "Port Arthur."

So far, there's nothing special about the show. They are following some of the cardinal rules of horror and scifi, especially the one about not showing the monster too early. I think we will give it at least another episode to see if it improves.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , , ,

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Dennis Dechaine Will Get His Day in Court

Anyone who has lived in Maine for a while has heard of Dennis Dechaine, who was convicted in 1989 of killing 12-year old Sarah Cherry in the previous year. Especially in the last two years or so, his supporters (he has maintained his innocence the whole time) have been making great strides in obtaining a new trial.

Dechaine himself has granted countless interviews to newspapers, radio stations and television stations. The book Human Sacrifice, published in 2002, details most of his supporters' case.

Now Barry Scheck's Innocence Project has helped open the door to a new trial, through the finding that Cherry had another man's DNA under her fingernails.

Regardless of how anyone feels about Dechaine's guilt or innocence, it seems to me fitting that he have a new trial in which the DNA evidence can be brought to bear. I don't know enough about the case or forensic science to have a strong opinion either way. And then the new trial's results can let everyone get on with their lives.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , ,

Pythons and Prejudice

The African -- or rock -- python has exhibited signs of maternal behavior. This is apparently not expected behavior from egg-laying reptiles.

Little things like this can challenge humanity's understanding of itself as distinct from the rest of the animal world. I predict that, within twenty years, most of that distinction will only be understood as being by degree.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Jerome Reynolds II: Free as a Bird

Jerome Reynolds of Brooks, Maine, has been acquitted of charges of manslaughter and murder.

From the Bangor Daily News:

BELFAST - A Brooks man on trial for murder who admitted under oath that he shot and killed a 60-year-old woman after she barged into his home was acquitted of all charges Friday by a Waldo County Superior Court jury.

Jerome Reynolds II was found not guilty of the shotgun slaying of Janet Bacon....

Bacon, of Brooks, was killed by a single blast of buckshot from a 12-gauge shotgun moments after forcing her way into Reynolds' Brooks home on the night of Sept. 29, 2004. She was shot in the face and died instantly. Bacon was unarmed and wearing a nightgown....

State law permits the use of deadly force to defend one's home during instances when a person trespasses with the intent to commit a crime. Reynolds testified that Bacon assaulted him and pushed him to the floor when she burst into his home uninvited that night.

"I thought she was about to commit another crime ... She advanced on me, that's why I shot her," Reynolds testified on Thursday. He later added that events happened too fast for him to react any other way.


I'm not averse to the idea that people should have the right to defend themselves in their own home, but this seems a bit much. Being able to kill someone because they might push you is beyond the pale. I hope the legislature will act to raise the bar required for justifiable homicide.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , , ,

Thursday, September 15, 2005

THE SONGUN REVIEW

The Songun Review is a blog I came across via the handy "next blog" button. It's fascinating to me as an example of communist propaganda from North Korea. I tend to think the author is truly North Korean, due to such wonderful English prose as:

It is the revolutionary soldier spirit of devotedly defending of the leader, unconditionally implementing of the leader's orders and heroic self-sacrifice, that makes the army a vanguard of the unity of the whole society and the single-minded unity. And the Songun comradeship constitutes its basis. The unity of the whole society is a comradely unity after all and its status is determined by the Songun comradeship, a comradeship sealed between the Supreme Commander and the servicemen. North Korea's revolutionary history commenced along with the anti-Japanese armed struggle led by President Kim Il Sung is precisely a history of comradeship.


If this makes sense to you at all, perhaps it's better not to go to the site.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , , ,

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Strobe Lights in Crosswalks

Strobe lights have been installed in a few crosswalks across Maine Street in Brunswick, Maine. Reactions so far are mixed, but the goal of preventing pedestrian injury is extremely laudable.

I haven't seen this particular system, but when I visited London years ago, they had very dim pulsating globes on posts near the entrances to crosswalks. I never saw a car fail to yield to a pedestrian where those were installed.

As a former resident of Brunswick, I can attest to the perils of crossing Maine Street. At some points, there is simply so much traffic to pay attention to, that even an extremely attentive driver can fail to spot a pedestrian. I hope that the new system works, or that the public works people can figure out something else that will work.

Peace,

Tor

Categories:

Pledge of Allegiance, Round Two

By now, the news has even hit the folks hiding under rocks on Mars: a federal judge has ruled that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools goes awry of the First Amendment.

Michael Newdow, the plaintiffs' attorney (and the man who unsuccessfully pushed the same matter to the Supreme Court last year) hits it on the head:

"Imagine every morning if the teachers had the children stand up, place their hands over their hearts, and say, 'We are one nation that denies God exists,"' Newdow said in an interview with AP Radio after the ruling.

"I think that everybody would not be sitting here saying, 'Oh, what harm is that.' They'd be furious. And that's exactly what goes on against atheists. And it shouldn't."


There's an eerie aspect of the daily recitation that I always found unsettling. The only time I really enjoyed reciting the pledge was in Maine Junior Classical League meetings, when we'd recite it in Latin. Other than that, the scene in the Pearl Jam video, "Jeremy," which cuts from students reciting the pledge to students effecting a fascist "Heil Hitler"-style salute pretty much sums up my view.

In the long run, I think the best thing to do is to make public schools themselves unconstitutional. Then people who want their kids to observe deities can send their kids to schools where deities are observed, and the rest of us (definitely the minority) can send our kids to nonobservant schools.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: , ,

An Idiot I Went To School With

I realized when I started this blog that the odds were, someday I'd get to blog about an idiot I actually knew.

Well, I went to school with this idiot. Since our surnames start with the same letter, we were in the same homeroom all through high school. I don't believe we were in many classes together, if any. But I did share a music stand with his sister in the band.

It seems he's an "experimental aviator," and this is the second time that he's unsuccessfully landed his home-built aircraft on water. He was also an experimental aviator in high school: he and two of his buddies dove into the table-sized cake sent over to our Project Graduation party by a local caterer. At least he realized there were showers at the YMCA for afterwards.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Salvation Army Retreats from Belfast, Maine

Now here's a story that stopped me dead in my tracks. Literally. This afternoon, I was enjoying a late lunch down by the water in Belfast. My pager went off, so I went to the nearest payphone. This was at the Main Street Market. One of the petitioners was there to collect signatures. I hadn't even heard the news yet, so was dumbfounded. I can understand that they might not be making a real go of it, what with the high rent on High Street, but I'd think they'd try to find a cheaper location to carry on. Or they could more or less do what they did in Rockland, and have a capital campaign to fund a new store building.

As a person who is not a member of the Salvation Army, or of any other church, I didn't feel it was my place to sign a petition demanding that they continue to devote their resources to a nonviable undertaking. But I do hope that, within a few years, there will be another non-profit thrift store in town. I'll need some new clothes by then. (I'm not kidding: I got several pairs of pants and a couple of nice shirts for work there a couple of years ago.)

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Murphy's Law and Liquid Manure

Check out this story about the overturning of a truck carrying liquid manure.

Disappointing, no?

Murphy's Law seems to have missed a big opportunity here. If I had been driving that truck, they'd still be out there now, sucking up the sewage.

The interesting thing here is that the reporter and website editor do everything to reel you into the story. They don't say, in the headline, "Little liquid manure leaks out of overturned truck." They let you conjure up unwarranted visions of wanton destruction and slimitization. And, oh, that first picture is such a tease. You think, surely, the next picture will show the top of the truck has burst open, and the driver will henceforth be known as Stinky. No such luck.

Oddly enough, this article has reminded me of a job I held at a local farm when I was in high school and on vacation from college. One of my duties was to tame the calves. I'd take them for walks after the morning chores.

Sometimes, especially on a rainy day, there would still be a fine sheen of mud and ... um ... liquid manure on the tarmac of the feeding pens. An unruly calf would decide it was a great time to take his unwitting stableboy sh8-skiing. (Not to be confused with a different kind of sh8-skiing.) As my family can attest, on more than one occasion, I lost my balance.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Monday, September 12, 2005

Pets and Natural Disasters

Cat Out Loud has a worthwhile post titled, Struggling with euthanasia in the face of evacuation. She has also been dispensing other good forethoughts and advice about dealing with pets in emergencies. Obviously, Katrina is the catalyst for this thought (puns mercilessly intended).

My wife and I hope that, if there were ever any looming natural disaster requiring us to leave our home, we would be able to evacuate with our beloved cats. Leaving them defenseless in the woods of Maine is too terrible to think about. I guess instinct might get them through some of the real world's challenges, but two of them are getting up there in years. The oldest one is awful hard to catch when it's time to take a trip to the vet, though.

Peace,

Tor


Sunday, September 11, 2005

Franklin, LA needs protection from FEMA

The National Libertarian Party has a report on the situation in Franklin, Louisiana.

The gist of it is that one small town, without any help from the feds, has been able to help a lot of refugees from Katrina. Naturally, the feds want to horn in to take credit for something that's going well.

They have a snail-mail address for helping the efforts in this town directly.

Peace,

Tor


Thursday, September 8, 2005

CSI Told You So!

Reuters is reporting some unintended consequences of the popularity of the CSI franchise: criminals are being more careful about leaving evidence, or they are leaving evidence behind from people who have nothing to do with the crimes.

Also, juries are expecting higher standards of proof when they hear cases, due to expectations developed from watching the shows.

This reminds me of the story I read some years ago about a fellow in France. The police showed up to search his house, and he demanded to see the search warrant. The gendarmes informed him that search warrants weren't necessary in France, and maybe he shouldn't watch so many American police procedurals.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Wednesday, September 7, 2005

Gay Marriage in California

The California Legislature has approved same-sex marriage, and now the bill is on Governor Schwarzenegger's desk.

I approve of same-sex marriage, and do hope that the governor will sign the bill, or at least let it become law without his signature. Of course, there will be a referendum about it as a result, but at least the debate will be where it belongs: among the public, not in the courtroom.

I know it will be years before Maine ever tries to go down this path, but perhaps that day is just a little closer now. Just the other night, a gay coworker of mine was lamenting Rehnquist's passing because he thought that, with Bush's dual appointees, gay marriage would never be approved by the Supreme Court. I was shocked that he thought the court system was there to be used in that manner. We won't have gay marriage rights in any state till there is popular approval for or acceptance of them, regardless of what courts may decide.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Height of the Land

I just had to share this wonderful photo, taken by my lovely wife, Rowan.


It's the view you get at a spot called "Height of the Land," north of Byron, Maine.

We were blessed to vacation in the River Valley area a couple weeks ago, and I swear to you that every sight was more glorious than the next.

Peace,

Tor
Categories:

A School of Whales

Yes, I know it should be a pod of whales. But these whales have been going to school.

It seems one crafty whale (in captivity) figured out how to set a trap for seagulls. Other whales watched and learned.

At some point, animal behavior is going to force us to rethink animal rights. As a carnivore, I know it won't be easy.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Olympia Reges, RIP

You simply must read this obit if you are fond of stories of people who aren't afraid to upbraid powerful people when they're acting like spoiled brats. The coolest part is how Earl Warren came to her preemptive defense.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,

Thursday, September 1, 2005

Dirigo Update

The group that is supposed to come to the rescue of DirigoChoice and the Dirigo Health Agency is at loggerheads over how to continue to fund the plan.

The problem is that it's more than just a "plan," which we surely need to fix our health care situation. It's a planned economy. Those have never worked.

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,