– An Oregon Perspective –
Precision Castparts division laying off workers
Portland’s PCC Structurals Inc. — a division of Precision Castparts Corp., the second-largest publicly traded company based in Oregon — will cut 10 percent of its salaried workers, a PCC spokeswoman confirmed today.
Portland WordPress User Group – First Meeting at CubeSpace (Thursday January 15, 2009)
Thursday January 15, 2009 from 6:00pm – 7:30pm
CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social
Where/When: Thursday, January 15th from 6:00-7:30pm at CubeSpace.
Anyone planning on going?
Thousands of Oregon Guard troops to head to war
Nearly half the Oregon Army National Guard will leave for war in 2009, the most since World War II, with more than 3,000 departing by summer.
They will include men who fight wildfires, search and rescue teams that rescue stranded climbers and help communities overcome floods and freezes.
This month, all 12 of the Oregon Guards medical evacuation Black Hawk helicopters and 100 soldiers, best known for their dramatic interventions, will leave.
Maj. Gen. Raymond F. Rees, the adjutant general who leads Oregons military and office of emergency management, said the state has reorganized emergency operations. Oregon also will turn to Washington, Idaho, Nevada and California for help.
“This is going to be a very demanding year for the Oregon Army National Guard,” Rees said.
Here’s a prayer that all of our Guardsmen come home save and sound!
Senate boosts wilderness protection
In a rare Sunday session, the Senate advanced legislation that would set aside more than 2 million acres in nine states as wilderness. Majority Democrats assembled more than enough votes to overcome GOP stalling tactics in an early showdown for the new Congress.
Republicans complained that Democrats did not allow amendments on the massive bill, which calls for the largest expansion of wilderness protection in 25 years. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other Democrats said the bill — a holdover from last year — was carefully written and included measures sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats.
By a 66-12 vote, with only 59 needed to limit debate, lawmakers agreed to clear away procedural hurdles despite partisan wrangling that had threatened pledges by leaders to work cooperatively as the new Obama administration takes office. Senate approval is expected later this week. Supporters hope the House will follow suit.
“Today is a great day for America’s public lands,” said the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. “This big, bipartisan package of bills represents years of work by senators from many states, and both parties, in cooperation with local communities, to enhance places that make America so special.”
The measure — actually a collection of about 160 bills — would confer the government’s highest level of protection on land ranging from California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range to Oregon’s Mount Hood, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and parts of the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia. Land in Idaho’s Owyhee canyons, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan and Zion National Park in Utah also would be designated as wilderness.
I wonder if this will also limit the exploration of geo-thermal resources?
Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age
The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.
Further on from the same article
The graph of the Vostok ice core data shows that the Ice Age maximums and the warm interglacials occur within a regular cyclic pattern, the graph-line of which is similar to the rhythm of a heartbeat on an electrocardiogram tracing. The Vostok data graph also shows that changes in global CO2 levels lag behind global temperature changes by about eight hundred years. What that indicates is that global temperatures precede or cause global CO2 changes, and not the reverse. In other words, increasing atmospheric CO2 is not causing global temperature to rise; instead the natural cyclic increase in global temperature is causing global CO2 to rise.
The reason that global CO2 levels rise and fall in response to the global temperature is because cold water is capable of retaining more CO2 than warm water. That is why carbonated beverages loose their carbonation, or CO2, when stored in a warm environment. We store our carbonated soft drinks, wine, and beer in a cool place to prevent them from loosing their ‘fizz’, which is a feature of their carbonation, or CO2 content. The earth is currently warming as a result of the natural Ice Age cycle, and as the oceans get warmer, they release increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Because the release of CO2 by the warming oceans lags behind the changes in the earth’s temperature, we should expect to see global CO2 levels continue to rise for another eight hundred years after the end of the earth’s current Interglacial warm period. We should already be eight hundred years into the coming Ice Age before global CO2 levels begin to drop in response to the increased chilling of the world’s oceans.
Disclaimer: I have no idea how reliable Pravda is. But this ***IS*** a different take on the ‘global warming’ crisis.
Union to file grievance against Blazers over Miles
NEW YORK (AP) -The NBA players’ association plans to file a grievance against the Portland Trail Blazers, who have threatened litigation against any NBA club considering signing Darius Miles.
This is turning into quite a PR coup for the blazers. Reminds me of the mis-steps during the JailBlazer era!
A Closer Look at the Portland/Miles Conundrum
On the heels of a Yahoo! report that the Darius Miles/Portland Trail Blazers clock is down to just two games – the Blazers sent out a message to the rest of the league threatening litigation if any team signed Miles “to a contract for the purpose of adversely impacting the Portland Trail Blazers Salary Cap and tax positions.”
“Please be aware that if a team engages in such conduct, the Portland Trail Blazers will take all necessary steps to safeguard its rights, including, without limitation, litigation,” says the letter from Blazers President Larry Miller.
More Trailblazer Drama!
Florida is No. 1 in the AP Top 25; Utah is perfect at No. 2
Oregon finished #10, and Oregon State finished #18.
InsideHigherEd.com has a discussion of the some of the costs of fielding a top flight sports program in the NCAA, using the Texas Longhorns and Oregon Ducks as examples.
Outdoing the Joneses for once, the University of Oregon anointed one of its assistant football coaches a head-coach-in-waiting, too, at $7 million over 5 years. Meanwhile Oregon, like many other universities, cut its academic budget this fall, resulting in fewer courses, larger class sizes and decreased student services.Oregon and UT played in bowl games this year. What was the cost of getting there? One cost is that the football players on their teams are “bottom-feeders” in the annual Higher Ed Watch’s Academic BCS Rankings, based on their abysmal graduation rates and their poor graduation ratio between black and white players. The second cost is in dollars that could be going to academic needs. UT’s athletics budget works out to $244,684 per year for each of its 511 athlete-students, but its official student-related expenditures are $11,344 for each student. Oregon spends $108,000 per year for each athlete-student and $9,222 for each enrolled student. The stats are similar at other Division 1 NCAA institutions.
What is the mission of our state university system? Education or sports? When we’re cutting millions of dollars, have a hiring freeze, and struggling to service all of the students trying to enroll, we have to ask … is it worth the cost?
Is your company car or lorry / truck equipped with a GPS system and monitored by your boss? You have no chance of being undisturbed once in a while?
Do you suspect your jealous partner of having you watched?
Modern technology means that you may be constantly being monitored without even noticing it!
Tracking devices are becoming increasingly compact and unobtrusive. They can be installed within seconds, record your route or relay accurate information on your location to within a few meters via mobile phone around the clock anywhere in the world. You are being tracked like a mad dog or ruthless employer who needs to know your whereabouts 27/7.
With these GPS tracker blockers you can protect your privacy and disappear for a while!
Become invisible for GPS monitoring for a short period and not feel like the “Fugitive”!
Using GPS blockers, GPS positioning systems become ineffective irrespective of where they are installed or hidden. Just switch on your GPS blocker and you disappear instantaneously.
I wonder if this technology could be used to … lower … your miles traveled taxes?
The state of Oregon is toying with the remarkably stupid idea of trying to tax people for transportation based on how many miles they drive. The idea is to use that new tax revenue to replace the traditional per-gallon gasoline tax, which taxes people based on how much gasoline they consume.“A state task force will look at equipping every new vehicle in the state with a Global Positioning System tracking device to quietly record every mile driven and where…. The plan still requires legislative endorsement, and the full details could take several more years to work out, but state analysts said the governor’s endorsement is a crucial step on a road many states are beginning to travel —- ending dependence on the gasoline tax.
‘This is a way to try to develop a fair funding mechanism that we’re going to have to have if we’re going to be aggressive in terms of looking at electric cars and hybrids and plug-ins and all those options, and at the same time continue to invest in our roads and infrastructure,’ said Rem Nivens, the governor’s deputy communications director.”