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The latest from LegacyJournal.info as of:          Monday, 2008-10-06
Current US Pacific Coast Time:        20:52:26
                                                                                                           

BYLINE: Content that consistently informs with clarity, class, context, credibility and character.

MOTTOS: Faster, Better, Easier, and Cheaper.   Arete, Fait Lux, Meliora

GOALS: To play with ideas, trends, people, events, products and places that are fun, interesting, and perhaps even important.



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Archives of Journal Entries: Organized by * Category and by ** Date.

30 of our most Recent Postings:

  1. Legacy Journal: Current
  2. Legacy Journal: Friday: Family First
  3. Legacy Journal: Thursday Two Step: Fire Alarm or Frozen by Fear
  4. Legacy Journal: Monday, the First Day of Fall
  5. Legacy Journal: The Sunday Sermon: Economist Moral Hazard
  6. Legacy Journal:Laidback Saturday
  7. Legacy Journal: Friday Final
  8. Legacy Journal: Friday Fish Wrap.
  9. Legacy Journal: Thursday Time for Truth Telling: 9/11, the Magazine, and the True Myth Makers.
  10. Legacy Journal: Wednesday Time to Weed out the Word Wars.
  11. Legacy Journal: Tuesday Tipoff
  12. Legacy Journal: Sunday Surprises
  13. Legacy Journal: Saturday Samplings
  14. Legacy Journal: Friday Fifth: Change, Cultural Divide, B&B, Google Chrome, and Arctic Drilling
  15. Legacy Journal:  Wicked Wednesday
  16. Legacy Journal:Trifecta: Olympic Games, Democratic Convention, Quad State visit
  17. Legacy Journal: Olympic Swimming Prep
  18. Legacy Journal:080808: The China Olympic Games
  19. Legacy Journal:080808: The China Olympic Games
  20. Legacy Journal:  B&B on the Erie Canal
  21. Legacy Journal: Summer Swing
  22. Legacy Journal:  Thursday Thoughts: Twitter, Triathlons for Horses, and Obama One on Tour
  23. Legacy Journal: High Finance, Bad Loans, and Banking Reform
  24. Legacy Journal: Sunday Chatter x 3: ABC, NBC, and CBS
  25. Legacy Journal: Monroe County: Politics, the Carousel, and the Onterio Beach
  26. Legacy Journal: 50th Malin High School Reunion
  27. Legacy Journal: 2008 mid-point
  28. Legacy Journal: Walking with Religion---Walking with Nature
  29. Legacy Journal: Sunday Supplement
  30. Legacy Journal: Would you believe that ----?

LogRoller® : Keyword searching our LegacyJournal postings begins here.

[ Saturday, September 06, 2008 06:47 ]

Legacy Journal: Saturday Samplings

Section:

Briefs

Summary:

Briefly Noted:

* The eastern press continues to be confused and conflicted as it tries to get its collective self around the Alaskan state of mine.  The latest is a stakeout on several churches in Wasilla

** Meanwhile, the political investigative press has no problem in dissecting and digesting the latest new on NYC Dem Congressional Committee Chairman Charlie Rangle.  He failed to report income from his Dominican Republic ocean side resort hideaway.  Plus, it was purchased with a nice interest free loan.

*** Vice President Cheney is in the republic of Georgia as aid is delivered by U.S. naval ships via an eastern Black Sea post that is close to the loading terminus of a trans Georgia oil pipeline.

**** Bob Woodward has a new tome on the workings of the outgoing administration.  Surprise, that administration was interested in what world heads of state were saying.  Most schools of Journalism call that good reporting; others brand it spying.

***** The Obama campaign and the DNC are recruiting a paid army of voter registration workers.  Unregistered young, mobile, poor, and new US residents are the targeted demographic.  It is well known in California that that profile means Hispanic LA Raza power at the polls.

****** Professional political pollsters do not work for free, but have a worse record of predicting reliable results than the local weather forecasters. 

Main:

Yes, we know it all along:

- Childhood immunizations to not cause autism.

- As many as 20% of Hillary Clinton spring primary voters are leaning to the McCain ticket in the fall.

- Extreme weather, like hurricanes, is always newsworthy and is used to come without a political conventional wisdom label.

- Lehman Bros, Fannie Mae Freddie Mac and People’s Bank of China play in the same league and have the same needs.  Quick cash and credit equivalents.

More:

Footnotes:

[ Wednesday, September 03, 2008 05:47 ]

Legacy Journal:  Wicked Wednesday

Section:

Commentary

Summary:

The mood this Wednesday should be positive:  the citizens of New Orleans, Louisiana have been spared another hurricane lashing, smiling kid are returning to the nation’s class rooms, a bright sun is shining in upstate Rochester, NY, the war in Iraq is winding down, yet another successful Olympic Games have been competed and completed, and the country has two fine candidates for the soon to be vacated office of Commander in Chief.

So, why all the doom and gloom from the pages of the nytimes? 

Main:

image

Today, Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, and Andrew Revkin are at their dypeptic drumbeat worst as they continue their respective personal rants formed by their pessimistic views of the state of the world.  Tom is increasingly bitter about the state of the environment and the prospects for peace, Maureen continues to mischaracterize and denigrate the national political change agents with her wicked literary prose, and Andrew continues to slog on in his blog about the SAD state of research and policy in the emerging science of global weather and climate studies.

What is to be done?  Some have suggested a boycott of the various messages from the “Anger Liberals” of the old Left. There are good reasons that the circulation and the readership of the nytimes is falling like a rock.  The popularity of the press is low and sinking because of it writers and pundits.  The nytime’s own David Brooks has said it best:  on the PBS News Hour coverage of the RNC from St. Paul , Brooks opined “ The public does not like or trust us.”

Unfazed and without reflection , Brooks’ partisan commentary colleague, 71 year old, Mark Shields previously upstaged by David Gergen and Paul Gigot, continued to prattle on about the obligation of professional press people like himself to vett the background and suitability of the children public service folks Sarah Palin to stand proudly in the public kleg lights. 

I am reminded of the time some Santa Rosa public high school civic teachers( one was a former small time journalist) picketed and harassed the chairwoman of the local School Board at the beginning of a new school year.  Their labor issue and the public’s right/obligation to know trumped a single citizen’s right to privacy and sanctity of her home.  When was the last time you felt good about having your home picketed by noisy advocates ?

Meanwhile, tonight Sarah Palin, the 44 Y/O PTA mom and soon to be grandmother from Wasilla, Alaska, will Stand and Deliver on state in St. Paul, Minnesota. Levi Johnston is also said to be a standup kind of person.  For 38 minutes on stage Palin accepted the nomination of her Party, defined herself to the nation, chided the live mic, trip wire prone national media, defended her “little state”, exposed the lack of executive experience of the other candidate team, skewered those who pretend to objectively perform live “dissections” of new faces on the national political scene.

In prime time, Palin ran the table set up a series of bright, forceful, articulate, and funny warmup speakers and left folks like the embarrassing Mark Shields of PBS to slowly twist, turn and trip on his own misanalysis.

More:

Footnotes:

[ Tuesday, June 03, 2008 07:20 ]

Legacy Journal: Water: the Wilds of Wyoming and Beijing, China---A western perspective.

Section:

Sports

Summary:

What do the sparse wastelands of Wyoming and the Olympic architecture of urban Bejing, China have in common?

Main:

Well, to some folks based in and writing for publication from New York City, both places are foreign, exotic, strange, and not easy to understand, a visit not withstanding.

* Take the current report about a spring of wet weather in Wyoming.  The nytimes finds that newsworthy and a bit unusual.  So, now it is now possible for trees to grow, meadow larks to sing, prong horn antelope and cattle to graze.  Meanwhile, there may even be a hay crop from down by the creek.  No wonder Jackie Kennedy wanted her son to get out of town for the summer and get some seasoning and common sense experience on a friend’s working Wyoming cattle ranch.

* And then there is the story of the National Aquatics Center, “The Water Cube” in Bejing the site of the 42 swimming events over two week during the 2008 Olympic Games. The place cost over $100 million in contributed funds from non mainland Chinese sources, was designed by an Australian firm, seats 17,000 and has a light weight, semi-translucent, petroleum based ,Teflon like ceiling.  So, what is not to like about that?.  A writer for the current New Yorker magazine finds much to comment on including the Chinese way of doing urban planning and residential relocation.

Apparently, some writers need to take a lesson from Frederick West Lander and get out of town and into the field of battle more often.

BTW: Frederick West Lander was an eastern engineer who went went west with the Army and later surveyed for the railroads as they snaked their way across the county’s arrid and hostile trans Mississippi frontier in a series of fits and starts.

Ball’s Bluff ( The Battle of Ball’s Bluff during the Civil War on the Potomic River near Washington.)
(by Frederick West Lander)

Aye, deem us proud, for we are more
Than proud of all our mighty dead;
Proud of the bleak and rock-bound shore,
A crowned oppressor cannot tread.

Proud of each rock, and wood, and glen;
Of every river, lake and plain;
Proud of the calm and earnest men
Who claim the right and the will to reign.

Proud of the men who gave us birth,
Who battled with the stormy wave
To sweep the red man from the earth,
And build their homes upon their grave.

Proud of the holy summer morn
They traced in blood upon its sod;
The rights of freemen yet unborn;
Proud of their language and their God.

Proud that beneath our proudest dome
And round the cottage-cradled hearth
There is a welcome and a home
For every stricken race on earth.

Proud that yon slowly sinking sun
Saw drowning lips grow white in prayer,
O’er such brief acts of duty done,
As honor gathers from despair.

Pride, it is our watchword; “clear the boats”
“Holmes, Putnam, Bartlett, Peirson-Here”
And while this crazy wherry floats
“Let’s save our wounded”, cries Revere.

Old State—some souls are rudely sped --
This record for thy Twentieth Corps --
Imprisoned, wounded, dying, dead,
It only asks, “Has Sparta more?”

More:

Footnotes:

[ Saturday, April 26, 2008 07:02 ]

Legacy Journal: Saturday Prep

Section:

None

Summary:

* RITMemoire3: Billy_and_the_Bike.pdf

** Three point standardization and check list lessons:  Communicating was you sense , Analysis of what you sense, & Action plan.  Document what you know, not what you feel.

*** Big Sur to Carmel Marathon Race.

Main:

:  Redmond, Deschutes, Three Sisters, John Charles Fremont, and more.

::  Better your communication and your outcomes by building a World Class High Reliability Organization. Start with Standards

:::  For weekend warriors. 

More:

Footnotes:

[ Saturday, April 12, 2008 06:38 ]

Legacy Journal:Ranch Memoires

Section:

Sons and Daughters

Summary:

* Mission Ranch, Carmel, CA

** “Make my Weekend !”

*** The sea side Gathering Place.

Main:

More:

Footnotes:

[ Friday, January 25, 2008 12:59 ]

Legacy Journal: Science on the Run, Media Muddle, and the Local Weather

Section:

Environment

Summary:

* New junkies are getting whiplash. First ABC evening news nice guy, Charlie Gibson, polishes his exit with a pretty picture of the first sign of spring. It is a brief view of the sun peaking over the horizon at Pt Barrow Alaska. Then the ABC GMA sunrise crew chirps in with a full light clip on the use of mobile Arctic Norwhales being tagged by a research team with temperatures sensors.  The sensors record realtime water temperatures as the pod cruises for food in the open Arctic channels off the west coast of Greenland. The team is assisted by noble and knowledgeable native kayak builders, paddlers, and hunters. Franz Boas of Baffin Bay fame must be smiling.  Yet another early morning weekend crew the recent California rain, snow and avalanche deaths to yet further evidence of AGW .  They almost came unglued over pictures of a cute Zoo born Polar bear cub.

The disconnect is the light. Most fifth graders know that the Arctic regions are cold and dark in winter. Yet, the GMA report fails to date and time their picture. Is there a problem here? 

** Meanwhile, primary politics is piling up and piling on. It is five men standing on the Republican side. One woman, two men and one proxy standing on the
Democrat side.  The good news is that one field of candidates appear to be serious about civility and putting their best public faces, feet, and voices forward. The controversy focused media is not pleased, but voters are ecstatic. 

*** Today the D&C and ABC WHAM, weather guy, Glenn Johnson explains that space satellites can report images, infrared date, and atmospheric water vapor information.  That data can report on jet engine contrails and open ocean water channels through the summer Arctic Ocean ice packs. Apparently, satellites are not able to accurately report the temperature on the earth side of clouds. Nor are they able to take photographs of the North Pole in the dark of winter.


Main:

image

image

: Meanwhile, Revkin of the nytimes Dot Earth blog has a piece that outlines the scientific framework of his views. His lead is begins, The world’s largest group of earth scientists says “the human footprint on Earth is apparent.” The UGS, incorporated in Washington, D.C., and its active 12 subgroup leadership including the Atmosphere group are examples.  Revkin also mentions the AGS and includes part of their October 2006 policy statement. 

“The Geological Society of America (GSA) supports the scientific conclusions that Earth’s climate is changing; the climate changes are due in part to human activities; and the probable consequences of the climate changes will be significant and blind to geopolitical boundaries. Furthermore, the potential implications of global climate change and the time scale over which such changes will likely occur require active, effective, long-term planning. GSA also supports statements on the global climate change issue made by the joint national academies of science (June 2005), American Geophysical Union (December, 2003), and American Chemical Society (2004). GSA strongly encourages that the following efforts be undertaken internationally:

(1) adequately research climate change at all time scales,
(2) develop thoughtful, science-based policy appropriate for the multifaceted issues of global climate change,
(3) organize global planning to recognize, prepare for, and adapt to the causes and consequences of global climate change,
(4) organize and develop comprehensive, long-term strategies for sustainable energy, particularly focused on minimizing impacts on global climate.”

:: TimeInc has a Climate Change piece called Winds of Change. It is not serious science.  Sadly, the article is sophomoric in style, superficial in analysis, and scant in originality.  Here is an example.

“You have Republicans and Democrats getting on board with this,” says Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, “and the reason why is because the public is increasingly there already.” Think about the logic and the grammar: “ increasingly there already”. As Mrs Van taught in the fourth grade, “ Either we have arrived at the station, or we have not.” End of story.

:::  Finally, a very cool blog. Snow biking in Alaska.  Now there is something that Californians transplanted to western upstate New York can identify with.

More:

Footnotes:

[ Saturday, January 19, 2008 15:37 ]

Legacy Journal: Real Cold in Carolina, Coal, and ABR

Section:

Almanac

Summary:

* Some media pundits are predicating that the weather in the northwest corner of South Carolina may effect the Huckaby turnout.  They may not be aware of the North Dakota effect.  A National Geographic writer made the mistake of appearing to dis the state in a recent article.  The temperate response of the state’s citizenry and leadership prompted Charlie Gibson of ABC News to name the state “Person of the Week” Have a good weekend.

** Scots have been using coal for a long time. Coal, iron and willing workers helped build the railroad lines that allowed the for the rapid and reliable delivery of mail, newspapers and people a throughout the British Isles.  Books publishing flourished and station book sales boomed as a result.

*** Meanwhile, look for a ABR movement early this year.  It will have stealthy and crafty anti-Mormon tone.  But, it is a dangerous and unpopular tactic.  Recently, the grandson of M. Gandhi, a resident of Brighton, NY was asked to resign his position with a University of Rochester affiliated peace and non-violence foundation after he wrote a web piece offensive to local Jews with holocaust sensitivities. 

Main:

:  Folks in most parts of the country are not intimidated by weather.  Nor are they fearful of cyclic ice age climate change that moves at a glacial geologic creeping pace.
A recent biography of van Allen of Iowa has a picture of him and other scientists working on defense related missile and satellite research at the South Pole in 1958 where the average temperature was reported as - 58 degrees.  His former grad student, James Hanson of NASA Goddard is not mentioned in the book.

::  The slums of Glasgow, Scotland were fertile recruiting grounds for early Mormons including Brigham Young.  The Eccles family is one example.  Mariner Eccles was in the FDR administration and was part of the first draft of the Federal Reserve System.

:::  And yes, there is a small book out on the life and record of Mitt Romney. Predictably, it is modest, polite, and plain spoken. 

::::  And aside.  The Swedish firm, MySQL will become part of Sun Micro of Silicon Valley.  To the best of our knowledge, the deal is Carbon Neutral.

More:

Footnotes:


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