“You are one of the only guys I know I’m kinda friends with that doesn’t like Rush.”
That’s a hard one. It’s meant as a compliment. Mike and I have been working side by side for a few weeks. I owe him more than a couple beers. He can do more in three seconds, and with more finesse, with a backhoe than I can do in ten minutes with a shovel.
But he listens to Rush Limbaugh while driving the backhoe, and Country music. My music, heavy guitar licks by Roy Buchannan or Pink Floyd, just don't cut it under the noon day sun. But I can’t stand the smooth new country, “Men in boots whining,” and I can’t stomach Rush. There are just so few ways to respond.
“Rush is just a mouthpiece for the people who want to own you. If you like your government telling you what to think, you are welcome to it.” When they were trying to sell us on a war, it was abusing patriotism to get us into Iraq. Now it is the jingoistic pitch against immigration. Being sold to a nation founded by immigrants.
But it is not the hypocrisy of bitter and sordid talk show hosts like Limbaugh or O’Reilly that is so offensive. It is the blatant manipulation. The subtle name-calling. The smirking, superior, “I am SO getting away with this,” lack of conscience, that is so galling.
30 years ago there was a TV show that featured Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker. Archie was laughed at by the left, his bigotry held up for ridicule. The thing is, Archie won.
Now we have a nation where about 45% of the population idolizes the politics Archie Bunker used to create laughs. We have a president who smirks like Archie, who came out in support of creationism, for crying out loud, and who manipulates hard working men and women who should be supporting labor rights and equal rights and supporting the individual over monopolies charging us to breathe clean air.
The Archie archetype himself got some polish and has radio stations and TV stations and employs Rush and Bill who spoon feed us hatred and bigotry right out of Karl Rove’s White House.
Not because Rove or Bush love war or hate Mexicans, but because by fanning hatred, outrage and bigotry, they control the discussion, they get reelected, and they can serve Pfizer and Exxon and ConAgra and all the others who buy them power.
Mike is a good man who knows how to work hard and takes care of his family. So am I. We have more in common than we don’t, but I sure wish he didn’t get his politics from talk radio.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Tipi
The underslab plumbing is in the project. We may actually have a slab poured before July. The girls will be back on Friday, we go racing in Seattle next week -- the ZL1 is locked and loaded.
And this week the tipi has to go up.
The tipi will sit right by the trailer, and will more than double our square footage. The girls and I will end up fighting over it, but in this case, they get double my votes, plus veto power. I just hope they let me use it when they are at their mother’s house.
It is going to be an odd amalgam of living, the tipi. Aboriginal, wired with electricity for heaters and lamps, in the middle of hilltop rural acreage yet with highspeed internet, wireless laptops and wireless printer, adjacent plumbing, two futons, a raised firepit and Afghan carpets.
An adventure for the summer I don't think we will forget. Set up right, the tipi may serve for that first month of school, if the house is delayed.
And this week the tipi has to go up.
The tipi will sit right by the trailer, and will more than double our square footage. The girls and I will end up fighting over it, but in this case, they get double my votes, plus veto power. I just hope they let me use it when they are at their mother’s house.
It is going to be an odd amalgam of living, the tipi. Aboriginal, wired with electricity for heaters and lamps, in the middle of hilltop rural acreage yet with highspeed internet, wireless laptops and wireless printer, adjacent plumbing, two futons, a raised firepit and Afghan carpets.
An adventure for the summer I don't think we will forget. Set up right, the tipi may serve for that first month of school, if the house is delayed.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Power to the people
On Saturday I moved the generator away from the trailer to a spot over by the pump so we could put water on dirt that will support the concrete slab. Which meant that the trailer would be on batteries for a couple of days. The generator is a 30 year old Honda and weighs about 400 lb. Not easy to move.
I debated getting another generator for the well, borrowing or renting or even buying one. Costco had a 5.5 KW unit for about $895, Honda motor. Then I realized I could move the trailer over by the pump to be by the generator. It is pretty scabby over there though, well slurry hardened on the ground and construction pieces left over from an effort years ago.
I decided to hold off. The power company could come to hook us up any day. The batteries in the trailer were new and fully charged. The electrician came on Sunday night and wired the generator to the well so we had water. It was great not having to wash pots and pans out of a gallon jug.
But I left the furnace on in the trailer and the batteries were about dead that night. And it was very, very cold. The furnace would not fire Monday morning with no power for the fan. The girls were cold. It was cold making breakfast before school. Not more than a peep out of either of them.
I figured we would have to move the trailer, or move over to Jon’s for a few days. I didn’t want to do either. I only have the girls through Friday, when they go back to their mother’s house. I wanted continuity in our first stay on the ridge.
Just before 3 p.m., I was on my way to pick up the twins at school. Four white trucks from Central Electric Co-op were coming up our road, trucks on their way to hook us up to the grid. Power for the well, power for the trailer. No more cans of gas in the back of the Excursion.
I debated getting another generator for the well, borrowing or renting or even buying one. Costco had a 5.5 KW unit for about $895, Honda motor. Then I realized I could move the trailer over by the pump to be by the generator. It is pretty scabby over there though, well slurry hardened on the ground and construction pieces left over from an effort years ago.
I decided to hold off. The power company could come to hook us up any day. The batteries in the trailer were new and fully charged. The electrician came on Sunday night and wired the generator to the well so we had water. It was great not having to wash pots and pans out of a gallon jug.
But I left the furnace on in the trailer and the batteries were about dead that night. And it was very, very cold. The furnace would not fire Monday morning with no power for the fan. The girls were cold. It was cold making breakfast before school. Not more than a peep out of either of them.
I figured we would have to move the trailer, or move over to Jon’s for a few days. I didn’t want to do either. I only have the girls through Friday, when they go back to their mother’s house. I wanted continuity in our first stay on the ridge.
Just before 3 p.m., I was on my way to pick up the twins at school. Four white trucks from Central Electric Co-op were coming up our road, trucks on their way to hook us up to the grid. Power for the well, power for the trailer. No more cans of gas in the back of the Excursion.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
A true conservative
It’s easier to be conservative living in a trailer, to be a conservationist, to conserve.
Interesting how the meanings of those words diverge through twisted politics. But there is nothing like having to haul your house for an hour to refill it with water, and dump the sewage, to turn one toward “living lightly.”
It isn’t the money; it’s the time, the effort, the risk, the hassle. A 31 foot trailer wants to go its own way when it’s really windy on the highway, even at 50 mph.
We turn off the propane water heater at night: water heats quickly in the morning and there is no need to keep it hot all night long. The tanks are bulky to refill at one of the local stations, but propane seems like a bargain.
Gasoline for the generator is bought in $5 units, which just fills the small can. That’s a little less than 1 1/2 gallons depending on price. Each purchase will last a few nights, unless we are using the generator all day for construction. I don’t leave the generator on if we aren’t uploading or downloading or needing to recharge the house batteries.
Water. Water. Water is the hardest. I can’t haul enough for thoughtless use. Five gallon jugs for drinking and cooking fit just fine on my large cooler. But it is warm water, and lots of it, that separates living from camping and we come in just under the wire. I wash the plates outside sometimes and rinse with cold water. I shower less often and have forgone the luxury of a long soak with steaming streams running over my head and down my shoulders.
Ironically, I think the girls are showering more often, since I demand they shower whenever they can, at Elizabeth and Jon’s, or at their mother’s house when we go there so they can practice piano for the recital this Sunday.
The twins are into this conservation lifestyle. “Does this burn, Dada?” K.C. asks, holding up an empty peach cup from her school lunch. No, I tell her. We don’t burn plastic. Actually, we don’t burn paper yet, either, not in the open in this tinder-dry climate, but I wanted to start life here on the land in the trailer making that distinction. I hope someday to capture the energy of waste paper to heat the house and reduce the use of propane, trips to the dump.
But that kind of conservation is a luxury. Right now conservation is driven by the necessity of the space in which we live. Turn down the heat. Boil water for coffee on the stove. Don’t let the faucet run. Clean up after yourself and do it now, don’t accumulate, because the unnecessary is sure to get in your way, or in someone else’s way.
Living in 260 square feet demands a certain discipline. Good practice for our transition to the boat, someday.
Interesting how the meanings of those words diverge through twisted politics. But there is nothing like having to haul your house for an hour to refill it with water, and dump the sewage, to turn one toward “living lightly.”
It isn’t the money; it’s the time, the effort, the risk, the hassle. A 31 foot trailer wants to go its own way when it’s really windy on the highway, even at 50 mph.
We turn off the propane water heater at night: water heats quickly in the morning and there is no need to keep it hot all night long. The tanks are bulky to refill at one of the local stations, but propane seems like a bargain.
Gasoline for the generator is bought in $5 units, which just fills the small can. That’s a little less than 1 1/2 gallons depending on price. Each purchase will last a few nights, unless we are using the generator all day for construction. I don’t leave the generator on if we aren’t uploading or downloading or needing to recharge the house batteries.
Water. Water. Water is the hardest. I can’t haul enough for thoughtless use. Five gallon jugs for drinking and cooking fit just fine on my large cooler. But it is warm water, and lots of it, that separates living from camping and we come in just under the wire. I wash the plates outside sometimes and rinse with cold water. I shower less often and have forgone the luxury of a long soak with steaming streams running over my head and down my shoulders.
Ironically, I think the girls are showering more often, since I demand they shower whenever they can, at Elizabeth and Jon’s, or at their mother’s house when we go there so they can practice piano for the recital this Sunday.
The twins are into this conservation lifestyle. “Does this burn, Dada?” K.C. asks, holding up an empty peach cup from her school lunch. No, I tell her. We don’t burn plastic. Actually, we don’t burn paper yet, either, not in the open in this tinder-dry climate, but I wanted to start life here on the land in the trailer making that distinction. I hope someday to capture the energy of waste paper to heat the house and reduce the use of propane, trips to the dump.
But that kind of conservation is a luxury. Right now conservation is driven by the necessity of the space in which we live. Turn down the heat. Boil water for coffee on the stove. Don’t let the faucet run. Clean up after yourself and do it now, don’t accumulate, because the unnecessary is sure to get in your way, or in someone else’s way.
Living in 260 square feet demands a certain discipline. Good practice for our transition to the boat, someday.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Just enough
My coffee table is a charred juniper log. The tree was killed in a fire 30 years or more ago. It’s just flat enough to keep the cup from tipping, if I am careful enough. The log/table works if I move slow enough. If I pay enough attention. Making it work is not high effort, just slow effort, attentiveness.
I thought about laying in boards to make it easier to put down the cup without thinking, but in some ways it would be more effort to make it easy. It would also deprive me of the need to pay attention, in the moment, to how the cup sits crooked on the log.
The twins and I are up here at our new address, living in a tin tent of about 260 square feet with snowcapped and pine clad mountains outside the door. At 13 they still fit in their bunk beds at one end, I have a pseudo queen bed at the other. We have a kitchen. I let them choose which seat they each own at the table, back packs for school on the bench next to them and against the wall, lunch boxes on the table flanking a rack of newly purchased silverware.
The landlord turned our home of the last year into a vacation rental. I thought we had it worked out for the rest of the summer, but nothing is good unless it is in writing and when the FedX’d agreement arrived from San Francisco, there were terms not discussed. The strain on our blended family had become cataclysmic, Lauren and her two boys have gone one way, the girls and I another.
There is wonderful closeness of living in the trailer. I am never far from the girls as they are doing homework, I watch them draw and hear the rustle of turning pages in Manga books they read backwards. They have their iPods, of course. We will have a tipi next week.
My living room is outside, acres of living room. A lawn chair 50 feet from the trailer looks out over the Cascades. Move the chair and see different mountains, the Three Sisters from one point, Mt. Washington from another, Mt. Jefferson from beneath the tree over there.
There is more quiet than I’ve had in many years. It is a lonely, lovely, healing quiet, often quite full. Last night the girls’ godfather came over for a steak. We sat out there in a thunderstorm booming over the mountains and to the north of us, pummeling Black Butte. Jon looked out through juniper to mountains 20 miles away but in our lap, then he looked up at clouds roiling overhead.
“Love what you’ve done with the ceiling.”
Pheasant wander through the sage with double hollow clarinet call, escapees from the nearby hunting preserve. A snake track disappears under the contractor’s outhouse, I look very, very carefully before sitting down. Breezes brush the pines.
Choices are often hard. Rewards hard to see. There are days when sadness clings like humidity. But two beautiful girls read books and do homework, I have a project in concrete and steel 20 yards away. We don’t have TV. We have cell phones, and high speed internet is pumped to us wirelessly from an antenna three miles away when I choose to start the generator.
It is enough. And if I pay slow attention, it is more than enough.
I thought about laying in boards to make it easier to put down the cup without thinking, but in some ways it would be more effort to make it easy. It would also deprive me of the need to pay attention, in the moment, to how the cup sits crooked on the log.
The twins and I are up here at our new address, living in a tin tent of about 260 square feet with snowcapped and pine clad mountains outside the door. At 13 they still fit in their bunk beds at one end, I have a pseudo queen bed at the other. We have a kitchen. I let them choose which seat they each own at the table, back packs for school on the bench next to them and against the wall, lunch boxes on the table flanking a rack of newly purchased silverware.
The landlord turned our home of the last year into a vacation rental. I thought we had it worked out for the rest of the summer, but nothing is good unless it is in writing and when the FedX’d agreement arrived from San Francisco, there were terms not discussed. The strain on our blended family had become cataclysmic, Lauren and her two boys have gone one way, the girls and I another.
There is wonderful closeness of living in the trailer. I am never far from the girls as they are doing homework, I watch them draw and hear the rustle of turning pages in Manga books they read backwards. They have their iPods, of course. We will have a tipi next week.
My living room is outside, acres of living room. A lawn chair 50 feet from the trailer looks out over the Cascades. Move the chair and see different mountains, the Three Sisters from one point, Mt. Washington from another, Mt. Jefferson from beneath the tree over there.
There is more quiet than I’ve had in many years. It is a lonely, lovely, healing quiet, often quite full. Last night the girls’ godfather came over for a steak. We sat out there in a thunderstorm booming over the mountains and to the north of us, pummeling Black Butte. Jon looked out through juniper to mountains 20 miles away but in our lap, then he looked up at clouds roiling overhead.
“Love what you’ve done with the ceiling.”
Pheasant wander through the sage with double hollow clarinet call, escapees from the nearby hunting preserve. A snake track disappears under the contractor’s outhouse, I look very, very carefully before sitting down. Breezes brush the pines.
Choices are often hard. Rewards hard to see. There are days when sadness clings like humidity. But two beautiful girls read books and do homework, I have a project in concrete and steel 20 yards away. We don’t have TV. We have cell phones, and high speed internet is pumped to us wirelessly from an antenna three miles away when I choose to start the generator.
It is enough. And if I pay slow attention, it is more than enough.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Blazers bigger than Portland?
Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard on getting the top draft pick for NBA basketball (read it here):
"Huge. Unbelievably huge. Franchise-making," Pritchard said. "This is bigger than the Rose Garden, bigger than the organization, bigger than the city of Portland. The whole state and the whole area revolves around the Portland Trail Blazers... As we go, so does the city. This has a chance to change the organization and the city..."
Um, Kevin? It's just basketball. A game, a game played by some often very spoiled adults wearing shorts.
Tax reform; great schools; a non cyclical economic base; healthy Ponderosa forests on the east side, clean water on the west side; health insurance for all Oregon children; opportunity for all Oregon children: These are bigger than the City of Portland, these are the priorities around which the State of Oregon revolves, not the Blazers, not basketball.
Get some perspective, will ya? And talk that guy from Seattle into selling the team to a local consortium with some class.
"Huge. Unbelievably huge. Franchise-making," Pritchard said. "This is bigger than the Rose Garden, bigger than the organization, bigger than the city of Portland. The whole state and the whole area revolves around the Portland Trail Blazers... As we go, so does the city. This has a chance to change the organization and the city..."
Um, Kevin? It's just basketball. A game, a game played by some often very spoiled adults wearing shorts.
Tax reform; great schools; a non cyclical economic base; healthy Ponderosa forests on the east side, clean water on the west side; health insurance for all Oregon children; opportunity for all Oregon children: These are bigger than the City of Portland, these are the priorities around which the State of Oregon revolves, not the Blazers, not basketball.
Get some perspective, will ya? And talk that guy from Seattle into selling the team to a local consortium with some class.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Protect us from ourselves
“Sen. Margaret Carter, D-Portland, suggested (in The Oregonian, read it here) that many consumers get taken in by sham sales, and counted herself among them. She said she bought a bedroom set at a furniture store’s 'going out of business' sale, only to find the same set at a lower price at a different store. And the store where she bought the furniture didn't close.
'I was stupid; I was an idiot,' she said, before voting for the bill."
C’mon, Margaret, grow up, shop around. You weren't stupid, you were lazy. Don’t deprive the rest of us the opportunity to learn from our own laziness, don’t protect stores that charge higher prices, by passing a law (Senate Bill 684).
Neither Republicans nor Democrats favor liberty: Republicans want to control our bedrooms, Democrats want to control our wallets.
But Democrats just can't seem to resist the need to pass laws to set the world right for everyone. This bill will cost more to enforce than everyone lost buying a cheap bedroom set from the same store that has been going out of business for the last three years. What a waste of Legislative time and money.
'I was stupid; I was an idiot,' she said, before voting for the bill."
C’mon, Margaret, grow up, shop around. You weren't stupid, you were lazy. Don’t deprive the rest of us the opportunity to learn from our own laziness, don’t protect stores that charge higher prices, by passing a law (Senate Bill 684).
Neither Republicans nor Democrats favor liberty: Republicans want to control our bedrooms, Democrats want to control our wallets.
But Democrats just can't seem to resist the need to pass laws to set the world right for everyone. This bill will cost more to enforce than everyone lost buying a cheap bedroom set from the same store that has been going out of business for the last three years. What a waste of Legislative time and money.
Don't waste money on state police
Democrats in Oregon want to waste hundreds of millions of dollars on the Oregon State Police. And they want make the funding an entitlement, so if money needs to be saved in the future, OSP will not have to share.
The budget is scheduled for a work session on Monday, May 14 at 3:00 pm at the Oregon State Capitol.
Folks, the OSP gets hundreds of millions of dollars a year. How many more highway patrols to you want? What about schools? What about roads? What about investment? What in the hell are you getting for your money?
Will someone please give us some facts here?
Let's talk first about response times and support for other police: Response times have been improved by the increase in the number of cell phones far more than the number of troopers.
Then we need to ask, what is the cost per officer of an OSP Trooper versus a Clackamas County Sheriff if each is a five-year veteran? What is the "efficiency" of those officers, that is, what is the "Total cost per trooper" versus the "total cost per deputy?" or better yet, "total cost per trooper per mile on the road" versus "total cost per deputy per mile on the road?"
Is it possible we might get three deputies for the cost of two troopers? What does that mean for response times?
Let's move on to support for other agencies: do OSP and Clackamas County work as well together as Clackamas and Multnomah Counties on a true mutual aid call? Ask a couple of deputies, and promise them absolute anonymity. Ask them how they like working with the other sheriff's office, and ask them about working with OSP. There are culture differences between all of them: Bernie's agency may be hard to work with, etc. But it's a good question to put out there.
It has been said that a proposed 139 additional troopers alone will cost $17.6 million of new money initially, growing larger every two years, at least $80 million of new money in the next decade for just the increase. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO GET FOR THAT MONEY? You will not get $80 million of lives saved, or $80 million of meth busts, or $80 million of anything that has a positive impact on the lives of Oregonians.
The emphasis so far has been on 24 hour patrols, and more cops on the road. On that subject, see if you can find any statistics, anywhere, that shows that issuing tickets causes a population to drive more slowly, or saves any lives.
OSP sells budget increases with a misuse of numbers: In an accident, force at impact increases by the square of speed increase, (true) therefore, issuing tickets saves lives (false). Invalid because (1) Few accidents are caused by speed in a way that more troopers would prevent; (2) We don't really want traffic to move more slowly, we want it to move more safely, and they are not the same; (3) Things that are true in the singular (one driver) often fail in the aggregate (traffic safety).
Over the same period the number of troopers has been going down, the number of fatal accidents per mile driven has been going down. Ask again: What are we getting for our $17.6 million of new money that will directly benefit Oregonians?
We could put that money into schools, teaching boys and girls how to pound nails, how to weld, how to earn a living; We could create a state service program for all 18 years olds; We could put that money into a bypass around Sisters, Oregon; We could put that money into investments in alternative energy, growing soybeans for diesel fuel, turning logging slash or underbrush clearing into ethanol; We could attract a business with jobs to Newport or Coos Bay; We could improve a bridge. Widen a road. Reform K-8 education by teaching parents how to parent.
There is so much to do with that money, my god don’t throw it away on the OSP.
Time is short. Write your legislator. Find the address on the right side of this article.
The budget is scheduled for a work session on Monday, May 14 at 3:00 pm at the Oregon State Capitol.
Folks, the OSP gets hundreds of millions of dollars a year. How many more highway patrols to you want? What about schools? What about roads? What about investment? What in the hell are you getting for your money?
Will someone please give us some facts here?
Let's talk first about response times and support for other police: Response times have been improved by the increase in the number of cell phones far more than the number of troopers.
Then we need to ask, what is the cost per officer of an OSP Trooper versus a Clackamas County Sheriff if each is a five-year veteran? What is the "efficiency" of those officers, that is, what is the "Total cost per trooper" versus the "total cost per deputy?" or better yet, "total cost per trooper per mile on the road" versus "total cost per deputy per mile on the road?"
Is it possible we might get three deputies for the cost of two troopers? What does that mean for response times?
Let's move on to support for other agencies: do OSP and Clackamas County work as well together as Clackamas and Multnomah Counties on a true mutual aid call? Ask a couple of deputies, and promise them absolute anonymity. Ask them how they like working with the other sheriff's office, and ask them about working with OSP. There are culture differences between all of them: Bernie's agency may be hard to work with, etc. But it's a good question to put out there.
It has been said that a proposed 139 additional troopers alone will cost $17.6 million of new money initially, growing larger every two years, at least $80 million of new money in the next decade for just the increase. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO GET FOR THAT MONEY? You will not get $80 million of lives saved, or $80 million of meth busts, or $80 million of anything that has a positive impact on the lives of Oregonians.
The emphasis so far has been on 24 hour patrols, and more cops on the road. On that subject, see if you can find any statistics, anywhere, that shows that issuing tickets causes a population to drive more slowly, or saves any lives.
OSP sells budget increases with a misuse of numbers: In an accident, force at impact increases by the square of speed increase, (true) therefore, issuing tickets saves lives (false). Invalid because (1) Few accidents are caused by speed in a way that more troopers would prevent; (2) We don't really want traffic to move more slowly, we want it to move more safely, and they are not the same; (3) Things that are true in the singular (one driver) often fail in the aggregate (traffic safety).
Over the same period the number of troopers has been going down, the number of fatal accidents per mile driven has been going down. Ask again: What are we getting for our $17.6 million of new money that will directly benefit Oregonians?
We could put that money into schools, teaching boys and girls how to pound nails, how to weld, how to earn a living; We could create a state service program for all 18 years olds; We could put that money into a bypass around Sisters, Oregon; We could put that money into investments in alternative energy, growing soybeans for diesel fuel, turning logging slash or underbrush clearing into ethanol; We could attract a business with jobs to Newport or Coos Bay; We could improve a bridge. Widen a road. Reform K-8 education by teaching parents how to parent.
There is so much to do with that money, my god don’t throw it away on the OSP.
Time is short. Write your legislator. Find the address on the right side of this article.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Life is not always nice
An article in today’s Oregonian by Shelby Wood talks of gay rights taking two historic steps (read it here). I would agree, but worry they are steps backward.
The first is creation of domestic partnerships for gays. We have now defined another class of human being. To limit discrimination based on sexual orientation, we have created another category by which to discriminate. It would have been better to get Oregon out of the marriage business altogether and we have missed a historic opportunity. But we have railed on this before (read it here).
The second step has to do with laws against job discrimination based on sexual orientation.
It is said the workplace is a nicer place since sexual harassment lawsuits changed behavior in the 1990s. Maybe, but I don’t know if we can equate the addictive power of sex and extortion power of supervisors over women to the stupid insults of ignorant men.
A fellow traveler said a while ago that it is shame, not guilt, that modifies behavior. The problem, of course, is that some men will never feel shame, and others may feel it for all the wrong reasons.
It is difficult to legislate attitudes, but perhaps if we can legislate behavior, the attitudes will follow. I don’t know. But I do believe the power of the state is so great that it must be used judiciously. Or we shall consume ourselves in fruitless debates over what was said, what was meant, who was hurt, and how.
The first is creation of domestic partnerships for gays. We have now defined another class of human being. To limit discrimination based on sexual orientation, we have created another category by which to discriminate. It would have been better to get Oregon out of the marriage business altogether and we have missed a historic opportunity. But we have railed on this before (read it here).
The second step has to do with laws against job discrimination based on sexual orientation.
It is said the workplace is a nicer place since sexual harassment lawsuits changed behavior in the 1990s. Maybe, but I don’t know if we can equate the addictive power of sex and extortion power of supervisors over women to the stupid insults of ignorant men.
A fellow traveler said a while ago that it is shame, not guilt, that modifies behavior. The problem, of course, is that some men will never feel shame, and others may feel it for all the wrong reasons.
It is difficult to legislate attitudes, but perhaps if we can legislate behavior, the attitudes will follow. I don’t know. But I do believe the power of the state is so great that it must be used judiciously. Or we shall consume ourselves in fruitless debates over what was said, what was meant, who was hurt, and how.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Replace or repair
The other day ... about three weeks ago really, I asked my local computer store about the latch on my lap top. The lid would not stay closed, the result of being hauled around in my less-than-tidy briefcase.
The tech behind the counter said it would be about $250 to open the case and replace the latch. “Yeah, you really get hammered when these things are out of warranty.”
Yeah.
So, I hauled out a can of compressed air, some Q-tips and the dry lubricant I use on my Sig P229 .40 semiautomatic and went to work. I worried the lube might cause a short in the keyboard or elsewhere, but I figured a dry lube used sparingly right at the point of friction would be safe enough.
In about 10 minutes I had the latch free and the lid would stay closed. Power of the pen, indeed.
$250 means something to me. And the latch was not broken, it was dirty. Would a new latch have been better? No. My fix will last as long as the 1.67 GHz CPU and the 2 GB of SDRAM, the hinges on the lid and the LCD.
My grandfather was an engineer, so were all three of my mother’s uncles. They repaired and replaced, I was amazed at what they could take apart and rebuild. I used to work on cars, never could call myself a mechanic but I know not to over-torque with a 3/8 inch ratchet.
But the kids in my house don’t do that stuff. They can’t do that stuff at ages 12 or 13 or 17. They haven’t learned, they don’t want to learn, they have no place to learn. And because they don’t pay the bills, they think that paying $250 for a latch is just fine, or perhaps latch failure is a sign from God that it’s time for a new lap top.
I’ve let them down.
The tech behind the counter said it would be about $250 to open the case and replace the latch. “Yeah, you really get hammered when these things are out of warranty.”
Yeah.
So, I hauled out a can of compressed air, some Q-tips and the dry lubricant I use on my Sig P229 .40 semiautomatic and went to work. I worried the lube might cause a short in the keyboard or elsewhere, but I figured a dry lube used sparingly right at the point of friction would be safe enough.
In about 10 minutes I had the latch free and the lid would stay closed. Power of the pen, indeed.
$250 means something to me. And the latch was not broken, it was dirty. Would a new latch have been better? No. My fix will last as long as the 1.67 GHz CPU and the 2 GB of SDRAM, the hinges on the lid and the LCD.
My grandfather was an engineer, so were all three of my mother’s uncles. They repaired and replaced, I was amazed at what they could take apart and rebuild. I used to work on cars, never could call myself a mechanic but I know not to over-torque with a 3/8 inch ratchet.
But the kids in my house don’t do that stuff. They can’t do that stuff at ages 12 or 13 or 17. They haven’t learned, they don’t want to learn, they have no place to learn. And because they don’t pay the bills, they think that paying $250 for a latch is just fine, or perhaps latch failure is a sign from God that it’s time for a new lap top.
I’ve let them down.
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