Dog Sled on Wheels

Eskimos use dogsleds in the far North. They stand on the back end and ride when the going is easy, step off and push when the going gets hard. The sleds can carry a good deal of freight, hundreds of pounds even.

In my neighborhood we have baby joggers, three wheel strollers with larger wheels than are found on a typical stroller. People take their babies for rides in these things. They can walk or jog, or perhaps even run while pushing these carriages.

So I am thinking we could use something that combined the features of these two devices: dog sled and jogging stroller.

It should be big enough to carry a useful load, like a weeks worth of groceries along with a toddler. It should have a step on the back that driver can stand on when the going is easy. It would have three wheels because we do not have snow and ice here. Maybe where you are you would want runners. The front wheel would be steerable. It would need to be connected to a steering device at the back. You could have a hook on the front to connect your dog or dogs to, if you had any. It would need brakes for going down hills, and a parking brake of some sort so your groceries do not go rolling away with your toddler when you stop to talk to someone. It should be light weight. Pushing something uphill is hard enough without it being extra heavy.

Mothers could use it for grocery shopping. Fathers could use it for giving their children rides down the hill near their house. The third world could use it for hauling freight. Owners of larger dogs could use it for exercising their animals.

Bad Movies

A couple of weeks ago we started watching "La Haine" (Hate) on Ross's recommendation. Young hooligans hanging out in the projects outside Paris, nothing to do but be obnoxious. May have been realistic, but was still very annoying. We gave up after 15 or 20 minutes.

Last night we watched "Young Adam". Young man having his way with a succession of women and leaving a trail of death and destruction behind him. Not all his fault, but he does not make any attempt to correct for his actions. He is a villain, not a hero.

Reminds me of "In the Company of Men", which I watched a few years ago, and really hated for the same reasons. Looking at some of the reviews for this movie, I am trying to remember if I found anything funny in it. It is billed as a comedy. I wonder who the hell would think this shit is funny? Maybe the same jackasses who would take the villain for a role-model. Well made movies, I just am not interested in stories about jackasses. I run into that enough in real life.

Mother's Day

The band at church ('the music team') had new electric guitar player, and he had some cool sounds. Some kind of electronic distortion whozer-whatsit, I suppose. They played "Get Together" by the Youngbloods. Talk about Peabody's wayback machine! I recognized the song, and the name of the band, but I did not recognize the name of the song, and I was not able to connect the name of the band to the song. Evidently it was part of the soundtrack for "Easy Rider". Anyway it was pretty cool.

Had a long conversation with Ross about books and movies. He recommended a book titled "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy of "All The Pretty Horses" fame. I just finished it myself, and I have to agree, it is a pretty good book. Grim little story of a father's devotion to his son in a very hostile landscape.

I think Ross told me he was reading, or had recently read, "The Sound & The Fury" by Faulkner. He had also read a detective story for one of his classes called "Bloodshot" by Paretsky which he did not like at all.

Movies:

• Man Bites Dog
• Das Boot (Director's cut. Four hours long!)
• Army of Shadows
• Painted Veil
• King Maker

I read "Das Boot", or saw the movie, or maybe both, I can't remember. In any case the story left an impression on me. I cannot tell whether the images that I hold in my mind are from the film or ones I imagined from the descriptions in the book. I definitely have not seen the four hour long version.

Ross brought home a copy of "Army of Shadows" so Anne and I got a chance to see it. Grim little story of the French Resistance in WWII. As Ross put it, there was no Hollywood to it. Stark realism. Very sad when you have to shoot your best friend in cold blood.

"Painted Veil" we rented at the video store. Based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham. This was a new writer to Ross. He had heard of Faulker, Steinbeck and Hemingway, but not Maugham. I have heard of this guy since forever, probably from my parents, though I could not name any of his books.

"King Maker" was not very good. It takes place in the mid 1500's, and places the Portugese in Thailand. I found it interesting because I had recently finished "Quicksilver", which is all about the goings on in Europe one hundred years later, and trade with the Orient is a key element.

I do not know anything about "Man Bites Dog" other than Ross recommends it.

As far as music goes, all I can do is mention the names of the bands we talked about:

• Sergio Mendes (Bossa Nova)
• Sonic Youth
• Flint

News & Foreign Policy

Jonathan Nicholas writes a column for our local metropolitan paper "The Oregonian". Normally I do not read his column, but a couple of days ago I did. It is one of his more substantive columns. Here is the column, and here is my response:

Normally I do not read your column, but I did today. I think you hit the nail on the head. This might be one of the problems with democracy, or maybe it is just the nature of people.

It is hard to tell, but I think "The Oregonian" has moved farther away from hard news and international news, and more towards the "USA Today" model, that is, all fluff and nonsense.

I susbscribed to "The Wall Street Journal" for a couple of years and I really enjoyed it. I canceled my subscription this year because I found I was not reading it. Either there was not enough time, or I did not have the energy. It takes energy to read serious articles. I suppose that is one reason "fluff" is so popular, it does not take much energy to read it.

I saw a copy of "The Columbian" (a suburban paper printed across the river in Vancouver, Washington) the other day and I was suprised to see that it seemed to be full of hard news and international news. I would not expect that sort of thing from a suburban paper. The "Hillsboro Argus" (our local suburban paper), for instance, does not seem to be bothered by that.

As for our foreign policy? Money talks, and it manages to buy the silence of many.

Iraq

I read something about Iraq the other day that was more than a little disturbing. Ever since we invaded all I have heard is how Iraq's infrastructure was badly damaged and how they were having trouble producing any oil. Poor little Iraq, no oil revenues, oh dear, they need our help. Now I hear that, oh yes, they are having trouble producing oil. Back before the war they were producing 2.4 million barrels a day. Now, because of the war and all destruction, they are not producing anything like that. They are down to 2.1 million barrels a day. Oh my, goodness, ONLY 2.1 million barrels a day. My heart is just torn. That is 70 million dollars of revenue a day. Two Billion Dollars a Month. This is for a country with a population of 27 million. Just where in name of Allah is all that money going? Somebody's pocket, I'll bet.

Another thing I heard recently is that it only cost $5 (five dollars) to produce a barrel of oil. The rest of the 60 odd dollars that they charge for oil is profit. Oh, there are drilling and exploration costs, and they can be huge sums, but I suspect they do not impact the price significantly.

All these madmen running around Iraq with guns and bombs? Somebody is financing all that because they want to get control of the oil revenue. Every time you buy a tank of gas, you are buying a madman a case of explosives. But the madman is on the other side of the world, so it is okay.

Immigration

Seems to me we would not be having such a big problem with illegal immigration from Mexico if Mexico was not in such bad shape economically.

I suspect the United States foreign policy has something to do with Mexico's economic condition. I suspect there are a few large American business interests (Republicans, no doubt) that guided our foreign policy (or lack thereof) regarding Mexico, and that these polices helped keep the PRI in power for so long and prevented any real progress there. So, hooray for Vincente Fox for breaking the PRI's stranglehold. Maybe Mexico can start making some progress.

Radioactive Tobacco

Some time ago (days, years, decades?) I read a story where the fertilizer that was being applied to tobacco plants was being blamed as the root cause of cancer for smokers. The idea was that the fertilizer contained radioactive lead (!?), it was absorbed by the plant, and lodged in the lungs when the leaves were smoked. To support this theory, they had mapped the radiation deposits (using some sort of imaging process) in smokers lungs and found that they had much higher levels of radiation than non-smokers. So the problem wasn't the tobacco at all, but the fertilizer the growers were using. Now I find this report that asserts something similar. It does not mention fertilizer, but I suspect that just means the secret organization that really runs things still has some power to suppress the truth (grin).

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn11974&feedId=online-news_rss20