Blog

• Seems like there's going to be some kind of parade today. #
• Anyone know how to embed a video Youtube-style on a WordPress blog, using your own file uploaded to your own server? #
• Underreported fun fact: apparently Glen Beck was the Nobel Committee's second choice. Who would have guessed? (sort of via @wil_m) #
• Early snow in Missoula affords yet another opportunity to determine who understands the difference between "weather" and "climate." #
• RT @zenogantner "YO OBAMA, I'M GONNA LET YOU FINISH, BUT I JUST WANNA SAY THAT MLK JR WAS THE BEST NOBEL PRIZE WINNER OF ALL TIME." #
• Holy wow: Nobel to Obama. http://bit.ly/iZIjS #
• MMC snap-ins and Powershell cmdlets #
• Explain to me how the acronym/jargon "i9n" isn't a solution without a problem. Or maybe it's txt speak? #
• Help with fence pull to improve North Hills elk habitat Saturday, 10am-1pm. RSVP: snicolarsen@msn.com or rmason@selwaybitterroot.org. #
• Trying out Coen's new straitjacket. #
• Woman crashes into inanimate object, blames object: http://tinyurl.com/y89rlb3 #

The new meme on the right is that Obama is “narcissistic.” In support of this claim, George Will has been counting “first-person pronouns” in Obama’s speeches. It’s an absurd metric, of course, but what’s even more absurd is that it apparently didn’t occur to Will to run a comparative analysis on the remarks of any past presidents.

Fortunately, Mark Liberman at Language Log has been fact checking George Will on this claim since the last time he trotted it out earlier this year:

“This time around, Barack Obama’s Olympic remarks included 26 first-person-singular words out of 1130, for a rate of 2.3%. This is slightly below his typical rate for presidential press conferences, and a bit more than half the rate of the George W. Bush pressers that I measured earlier (2.3/4.49 = 51%, to be precise)….

“There are two interesting questions here, it seems to me. The first one is why George F. Will is so struck by rates of first-person usage, on the part of Barack and Michelle Obama, that are significantly lower than has been typical of recent presidents and first ladies on similar occasions. The second question is how many pundits and talking heads will follow his brainless lead this time around.”

For my part, I wonder what the criticism on the right would have sounded like if Barry hadn’t tried to promote Chicago to the IOC. I’m guessing it would have sounded something like this: “Well, it’s increasingly clear that our Dear Leader isn’t going to lift even one finger to try to convince the IOC that the Olympics should be in Chicago. I guess he’s too worried about the possibility of taking a hit in the public-opinion polls if he fails. I don’t know about you, America, but I think if I were president I’d try a little harder to get the Olympics not only in my own country but in my own hometown. Then again, like most liberals, he probably wishes he were from France, anyway. Next caller!”

• I cannot believe the stupidness of Youtube regarding using music as a soundtrack on a personal video. #
• RT @SteveHynd: Obama WH already got more from one buffet lunch with Iran than Bush WH did in 8 yrs of saber-rattling. #
• I just like saying "faster disaster recovery." #
• Bad news for Hardin, MT. American Police Force run by swindler with long rap sheet: http://tinyurl.com/yb29tmm #
• Waiting for the new grandparents. #
• Trying to get the dr.'s office to change the codes so the lab can resubmit so the "covered prenatal care" can be covered. #
• Are MacBooks always over-represented in coffee shops, or is it something about The Break this morning? #
• Seriously? There's no single-serve web site to tell me what postage to put on a basic letter to Canada? #
• Natural childbirth in a hospital? It's possible-I know, I was there. http://tinyurl.com/yac37dz #
• Natural Childbirth-In A Hospital?: http://bit.ly/AFxtb #
• Nice feeling to be adding a new subfolder under Clients/. #
• Trying to internalize the axiom: Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity/carelessness/obliviousness, etc. #
• Gearing up. #
• Wishing I were at the Baltimore Book Festival. #
• Disturbed to learn that "raining, pouring, old man snoring" rhyme is "a classic description of an extradural haematoma leading to… death." #

This time last year, Missoula had exactly two medical facilities offering childbirth services: the Missoula Birth Center, and Community Medical Center. Then, in November, the doctor who had founded the Birth Center died, no one else could be found to take his place, and the facility was sold to Community.

Community promptly turned the Birth Center into a primary-care clinic, eliminating any non-hospital birthing options for Missoula parents other than home births.

This was disappointing for a variety of reasons, not least because-just about a week before news of the Birth Center’s closing became final-Amy and I had learned she was pregnant. As I write in my latest Missoula Notebook column:

We investigated the possibility of a home birth but gave up on the idea when we learned that our insurance not only wouldn’t cover it but might not even cover hospital care if any emergencies arose during one, because-bizarrely-our insurance company classifies home birth as an “experimental medical procedure.”

We would deliver at Community Medical Center, we decided. It wasn’t our first choice; we felt forced into it; we hoped it wouldn’t go too badly.

Then it didn’t go badly at all.

The rest is here.

By the way, it’s too late for us-this time around-but it looks like Missoula is about to get another Birth Center.

• First yoga class in five months felt good. #
• 741 out of 1,000 words. Not that I'm counting. #
• Tried the "new" Jay Leno show last night. It's like he's HEARD of comedy but doesn't quite have the knack yet. #
• Just interviewed a high-powered Swedish IT executive and was tickled when she mentioned commuting to work on the bus. What, no Town Car? #
• Oh, yeah, when you're not using Gmail, mailboxes have size limits. Feels like 2001 all over again. #
• I always dreamed of becoming a "content creator." #
• Blog commenters: mistake to think people read 2000 word comments on 1000 word posts. Better: 2-3 points + links. Even better: your own blog. #
• "We're not 100 percenters." Trout Unlimited's Tom Reed responds to criticisms of Tester's wilderness bill. http://tinyurl.com/lq7mjx #
• A new birth center for Missoula. http://bit.ly/11UmcQ #
• Sen. Tester's Wilderness Bill: Our Best Bet for New Wilderness Areas, or Christmas for Timber Companies? http://tinyurl.com/n3x2hz #
• Campaign to get Dr. to get lab to stop billing for test Dr. agrees was never done: two months, 5 phone calls, and counting. #
• Why does our new Flip camera need to spend three days "on the vehicle for delivery"? Anyway, Coen footage as early as tomorrow. #
• Declining a job interview. #
• Test #
• So, yes, Huggies do suck. I would have thought being water-proof is the essential, defining characteristic of a diaper. #
• Not succeeding at getting Google Analytics to acknowledge proper installation at http://www.MarginNotes.net. #

I’m embarrassed to learn, from this poll, that about a quarter of Democrats believe Bush purposely allowed 9/11 to happen.

It’s worth noting that people sometimes answer polls this way to express anger at someone or to be obnoxious and so aren’t really sharing their true beliefs. That caveat should probably also be applied to the poll’s finding that two thirds of Republicans aren’t sure whether Obama was born in the United States.

Still, if you are a 9/11 “truther,” let me ask you this: believing that your government contained people who were capable of ordering or at least allowing 9/11 to happen, did you continue to watch Monday Night Football 2002-2008? Get your hair done? Research the best kind of food to buy for your goldfish? Play World of Warcraft?

Did living in a country you believed to be run by murderers give you any sleepless nights at all, or were you able to accommodate yourselves to it pretty well?

Tom Reed of Trout Unlimited responds to criticisms of Sen. Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act here.

My latest Missoula Notebook column is about Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act:

If passed, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act would designate the first new Wilderness Areas in Montana since 1983, and I’m up here, in a plane provided by the non-profit Ecoflight, to get a first-hand look at what the bill would actually mean to miles of backcountry in some of the most cherished wilderness in the state. Down below me is the battle zone: forests and landscapes treasured by hikers, loggers, snowmobilers, mountain bikers, horse packers, anglers, hunters, and oil and gas firms, among others. The Tester bill aims to protect wild land while satisfying as many of these groups as possible. But can it succeed?

Read the rest here.

I really like living in Missoula, but sometimes I have to wonder: if I were back in Maryland, would I have to read letters like this one in the daily paper?

“Five days before the presidential election last November, candidate Barack Obama said on national TV that we were five days away from revolutionizing the structure of the American government. Almost immediately after this statement he went on to say he would establish a civilian national security force as big and strong as our Army and as well-funded as the Army….

Hitler got away with this terrible endeavor in the early 1930s with his “brownshirts,” who seven to eight years later became his “Gestapo.” We are all aware of how this authority raped, pillaged and murdered millions of Europeans until early mid-1945. It’s true; history has recorded it. I want to know – all you readers want to know – what is in store for us with this outlandish proposal of a powerful civilian national security force.”

All of this from Obama’s pledge to increase the size of the Peace Corps and Foreign Service and attempt to interest Americans in “conduct[ing] renewable energy and environmental clean-up projects in their neighborhoods all across the country.”

I puzzle over why the Missoulian chooses to print letters like this one, but I suppose-if they didn’t-it would only confirm the fears of a certain segment of the population that “Obama controls the media” and opposing viewpoints are being suppressed.

As for the letter writer, Paul Bletz of Stevensville, I can only guess that obsessing over this kind of thing is a lot more interesting than learning the details of actual proposed policies.

But I can’t help but wonder how much better off we’d be as a nation if people like Bletz would lend their brainpower and rhetorical skills to debates about non-imaginary issues.

• Chicken carcass soup. #
• Assembling a Fisher Price Cradle 'n' Swing. #
• Coen is always amused when I pretend to be a waiter taking him to his table when I am really just handing him to Amy for nursing. #
• Alleged Griz assault: how NOT to keep a story secret. http://bit.ly/B6M1M #
• Coen fans: more pix in the morning. Been busy with work all week. #
• Amazed by the story of Medal of Honor winner Jared Monti. http://downloads.army.mil/medalofhonor/monti/ #
• Enjoying FB friends who say stuff like: "I was in Dillon for the Labor Day Rodeo and ordered a shot of Wild Turkey…" #
• Clearing the desk this morning for increased dad time all weekend. #
• Is it strange to be proud of how loudly Coen farted during his first doctor's appointment? #
• What, are we in Sweden or Missoula? City Health Department comes to your house to help with breast feeding. #
• Sad after speaking with the city's tree executioner. #
• Smiling goulishly over my homemade fruit-fly trap. #
• Maybe I need a video camera. #
• Why won't Gmail let me send an email to the contact group I just made? #
• Finally motivated to get organized and clear off my computer desktop so I can see my new wallpaper of Coen in his car seat. #
• RIP Patrick Swayze. #
• My building has every convenience. #
• In the construction field, what do you call it when you specialize in interiors? "Finishing," or something like that? #
• It's a boy. #